Wario and Waluigi

are fantastic puns in Japanese. and I think people should be aware.

From an English-speaking perspective, "Wario" is fine and all. You flip the "M" to a "W" (for wumbo) and you get a a fun evil inverted version of Mario, haha. Mario, Wario, that's passable! And Waluigi is...... um.... sounds like they didn't try very much they just suck the "Wa" sound in front of Luigi.

but in Japanese

you need to know two important details

The "R" and the "L" in Japanese are phonetically indistinguishable.

Warui means "bad" in Japanese

So Wario isn't just "Wario" - he's "Warui-o". Flip one sound and you've got an excellent pun that basically reads as "Bad Mario", which is clever and completely lost in English.

And Waluigi. Since "l" and "r" are interchangeable, Waluigi reads just as correctly as Waruigi. Which. If you notice. Is Warui-gi. Slap on one syllable at the start of Luigi's name and you've got the same excellent pun on "Bad Luigi".

ghosting

✦ LELOUCH LAMPEROUGE ✦