There’s this anime called Bocchi the Rock! and in Japanese the title is ぼっち・ざ・ろっく! Why is “the rock” written in hiragana? I would imagine this being something like ザロック!
ザロック would be weird, because then it’d be a single word. ザ・ロック would be fine.
You can kinda use hiragana and katakana interchangeably. Just like “bocchi the rock” and “BOCCHI THE ROCK” in English.
There’s a bit of trend for certain types of anime to opt for a full hiragana title, like けいおーん or らき☆すた. Typically they’re easy going, slice of life, based off of 4 panel comics, which is what Bocchi is at it’s core.
Just a stylistic choice, really. There’s no hard and fast rule for how to write stuff like that.
It looks cuter.
As many have commented, this is simply a matter of style.
However, a title mixed with hiragana is a little more heartwarming or cute than a title consisting only of English, kanji, and katakana (← This is, of course, my personal opinion).
In fact, there are only a few manga titles that used to be serialized in Manga Time Kirara MAX that consisted solely of English or kanji.
A show called Hokkaido Style aired here on NGN (a local cable channel w/Japanese programming), and you’d think that the title would have been written with katakana for “Style”—except that the title was written as 北海道すたいる。It comes down to a style (heh) choice in situations like this.
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Most probably a stylistic choice.
ザロック would be weird, because then it’d be a single word. ザ・ロック would be fine.
You can kinda use hiragana and katakana interchangeably. Just like “bocchi the rock” and “BOCCHI THE ROCK” in English.
There’s a bit of trend for certain types of anime to opt for a full hiragana title, like けいおーん or らき☆すた.
Typically they’re easy going, slice of life, based off of 4 panel comics, which is what Bocchi is at it’s core.
Just a stylistic choice, really. There’s no hard and fast rule for how to write stuff like that.
It looks cuter.
As many have commented, this is simply a matter of style.
However, a title mixed with hiragana is a little more heartwarming or cute than a title consisting only of English, kanji, and katakana (← This is, of course, my personal opinion).
In fact, there are only a few manga titles that used to be serialized in Manga Time Kirara MAX that consisted solely of English or kanji.
A show called Hokkaido Style aired here on NGN (a local cable channel w/Japanese programming), and you’d think that the title would have been written with katakana for “Style”—except that the title was written as 北海道すたいる。It comes down to a style (heh) choice in situations like this.