Pronouns

Pronouns are grammar constructs that take the place of a noun in a sentence. Common examples include "he", "she" and "you". The most important for our analysis are the first-person pronouns "I" and "me".

The Japanese language has many more ways of saying "I" than English does. Some are formal, informal, masculine, or feminine. Some characters have unique ways of referring to themselves, and knowing which pronoun they use reveals which personality is speaking.

Since English doesn't have this kind of diversity, the translators from TLWiki gave each version of "I" a different format. Below is a table of pronouns, the equivalent romaji (English transliteration) and corresponding English translation.

Significance
Japanese has 3 writing systems: Kanji, hiragana and katakana. Most words are written in kanji and hiragana is used primarily for grammar. Katakana is used for loan words, marking them as "foreign".

Three of the pronouns in the table are in kanji ([ore], [atashi] and [watashi]), which represent "natural" personalities. The other two are in katakana ([ORE] and [WATASHI]), representing "foreign" personalities that were introduced into the world from outside. They are capitalized to emphasize this unnaturalness.