So I was headed from Asakusa to Omotesando this morning, and transferred from the Asakusa Line to the Ginza line at Shinbashi station. Walking through, I had to do a quadruple take when I walked past a large digital billboard for the brand Lounie that _appeared_ to be advertising for “ethical rape.”
Upon closer inspection, there was a dark purple G that preceded the “r” in “rape”, making me aware that their campaign’s official title is Ethical Grape. But that’s still gibberish, and their design team is so bad that they’re spending at least 10s of thousands of dollars on a sign that for all intents and purposes communicates in English that the company Lounie appears to support rape.
This is the shit that I hate about standard biz practice of Japan Inc. Also what I hate about the “awwww, Japan, so weird!” bullshit that so many ascribe to. As well as the almost complete lack of critical analysis. Combine all of those and a few years later you get this [shit](https://imgur.com/gallery/140C4hV).
I’m pretty vocal about stuff – though not all the time – but there could be a whole lot more. I’m so tired of this shit and want to see it forced out of the social consciousness. Too much already, time for change.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/wd6lrg/beyond_the_pale_clothing_brand_lounie_fucks_up/
39 comments
“Standard biz practice”? Nah.
Yes, this sucks and is terrible, but let’s not make it bigger than it is.
Only thing being raped is the English language, and maybe the wallets of anyone buying that crap.
Wow. That is a design fail for the ages.
Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t intend anything bad, someone should have spotted that when they were producing it.
Need to change their own name to “Loonie”.
It’s almost as clever as Nankai styling ラピート (rapiito) as the Rapi:t
That’s crappy design, period, certainly not standard business practice. My guess is that by the end of the week they’ll have that switched out.
That being said, it does seem like you are tiring yourself out on something you have no control over. That’s not very healthy
I need a job in Japan proofreading Japanese to English translation and marketing
> I’m so tired of this shit and want to see it forced out of the social consciousness
This shit being … Shitty designs? I don’t think there’s any sort of evil intentions here, just a series of bad decisions from the designer and the people who approved it without thinking it through.
Post this to r/holup
Lmao! Did you take a picture??
This is just a funny “hold up” moment lol it’s not that serious. “Ethical Grape” sounds different enough in Japanese to never be confused with “rape” plus there’s no “wordplay” moment with it, ie. old comedy skits.
English natives aren’t the target and never will be so they can choose whatever assortment of garbage English. Hardly anything worth getting in a tizzy over if it’s not impacting your brand or company.
> I’m so tired of this shit
Like judging foreign nationals for not subscribing to English-speaker triggered feefees? Yep. Same here.
What you should have done, rather than take a picture to use in a series of posts about “oh, how offensive this is…” is walked right back on to the Asakusa line, taken it to Haneda and flown your pathetic ass out of the country.
We would not have missed you in the least.
You’re already catching a lot of flack for daring to have a negative opinion about a thing that happened in Japan, but I think you’re not wrong.
Like, if the same kind of gibberish was used in a kanji tattoo outside of Japan or in a Gwen Stefani music video, all the people attacking you would be the first people in line to condemn it.
Generous of you to assume it wasn’t intentional.
Most people would be surprised by this, then laugh and move on.
Bad English and bad design exist. That’s just a fact. If you are as bothered by this as it sounds from your post, it’s reached an unhealthy level.
You can’t wrap the whole world in leather, but you can wrap leather around your own feet.
Considering the rape problem they have in Japan this is incredibly stupid and gross.
And before any weebs jump on me for daring to criticize, yes they know what the word rape means. The infantilzation of Japanese people on this subreddit is really pathetic. They aren’t ignorant children wandering around without any knowledge of the world.
What is this? You seriously chose a dumb color error as an excuse to express yourself in this way?
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>But that’s still gibberish,
No, it isn’t. It’s just hyper-simplified for a customer base that only speaks Japanese. Why didn’t you bother to even find their website?
[https://lounie.jp/pages/lookbook-2022autumn-1](https://lounie.jp/pages/lookbook-2022autumn-1)
“The latest collection with an awareness of **”ETHICAL” manufacturing using eco-friendly and sustainable materials. The theme color for this season is “GRAPE”.** Please pay attention to his lineup that mixes healthy and relaxing feeling with his retro atmosphere with classical music reminiscent of “wine”.”
Even before finding their description, my guess was “ethically-sourced” fabric with “grape” as the color theme. Why would it be gibberish? It’s not Don Quixote.
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>I’m so tired of this shit and want to see it forced out of the social consciousness. Too much already, time for change.
You sound insufferable.
It’s a simple design gaff, and it’s not even as bad as you claim. Your picture shows three models, and the one on the right is supposed to have a white wall behind her, but it’s very blue. The colors are all off, and that’s either due to a failing LCD display, someone cranking the color saturation way too high, or your photography skills.
And this isn’t even a still image, is it? That middle bit is a video of five separate model shots (which can all be seen in the link above). In every scene the logo appears in the same, central position.
You glanced at this “oops” moment and decided you were going to wait for it to loop back. You must have stood there for while, considering each clip is around 15 seconds. All so you could make this silly, grandstanding post.
Ethical rape is totally METAL!!! You seem like an over sensitive Karen, u/Tokyometal, how very un-metal of you.
Damn, thats some great japanglish.
Crazy fake English for the sake of looking chic and international/modern is very much a thing here. It’s usually pretty bad—but this? This is a special kind of bad 😂
Meh. They’re not targetting English readers/speakers…
As long as it works for the intended target = obviously not you, the poster will have achieved its goal.
This isn’t a reat example because they aren’t simply missin a g. It is there, and the colors for that particular board are off. It is entirely possible on any true color monitor that it looks just fine. Within Japan, grapes are everywhere right now right? August is just the time you see / eat grapes because that’s when they are in season. Anyone thinking about seasonality (an important point in Japanese poetry and art), will see the whole word because they’ll be looking for the whole word. They won’t necessarily even know ‘rape’ is a word off hand.
So, get off your high horse. There are so many issues with your interpretation, with a complete lack of any effort to see it from a non english speaking point of view. Do you work for microsoft? This seems to be on the same level of them banning players for typing night into the text box because the first three letters.
What if it was done on purpose to gain attention?
You would think with the wealth of English teachers in Japan, something like this would be avoidable, but then again, Japanese businesses like to be weird intentionally or not.
While being a stupid design choice the rest of your post reeks of a desperate need for attention. Here, let me play my tiny violin.
Long as its ethical I guess…
r/CrappyDesign
Was it a video though?
My new knockoff brand of threadbare garments…CNC Concord…for the win!!
Proper Nathan Barley, yeah?
Holy shit
I once proofread a company document that really irked me because of its grammatical mistakes but my boss told me that “Don’t edit it. This is how Japanese people understand this document.”
I remember my friend had a cup from a shopping mall. There were fruits and the name of them. The first letter of every word was really big. So naturally when it got to **G**rape…
Why the fuck didn’t they just make all of “Grape” purple???
Yeah you’re just being reactionary right now it’s just shitty business design all they did was put the letter g in a dark purple color which makes it hard to see which they should not have done they should have put the entire slogan in white so it would have been legible that’s all it’s a simple mistake it doesn’t mean that the company itself stands behind rape you’re just being silly now.
he’s the grapist, he grapes them in the mouth
Aggressively hilarious engrish has been a staple of Japan since at least the Showa era.
I’d probably be bummed out if spergy nerds try to go full “akshually”-mode and correct all the wonky English.
It doesn’t hurt anyone and it’s a constant source of entertainment for everyone who doesn’t have a stick up their ass.
Lmao for all the Westerners getting bitchy here, it’s not like western clothing brands don’t put random kanji on their clothes. Yes I am talking about super dry and their 目娛樂節今日
The new swimming pool that opened near me is call “Ina poo.”
Japan and bad English, name a more iconic duo.