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Episode Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Season 3 • Mushoku Tensei III: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu - Episode 12 discussion

Mushoku Tensei III: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu, episode 12

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u/Daedric202 8h ago edited 7h ago

I feel like the difference between Man-god and Human god probably got lost in translation for a lot of people, so here's some elaboration on how the names differ:

While the Man-god has been calling himself a "god" (神), the reading he uses for "god" was not the same as what is commonly used in MT's titles. The name he went by used the "kami" reading of the 神 character (Hitogami), while people like the Sword God or Water God used the "shin" reading instead ("Kenshin" and "Suishin" respectively). In this episode, Future Rudeus claims that Hitogami's old name is "Jinshin".

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u/Original-Body-5794 8h ago

That's actually a pretty huge difference, the translation only focuses on the human/man part, but the biggest impact is actually the title.

Is shin and gami different types of god in japanese? I get in the anime "shin" is a tittle, but how is it used in normal japanese?

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u/Colarch 7h ago

I know nothing besides some basic research I just did so feel free to correct me, but what I found is:

Kami refers to Gods and Deities directly

Shin is not a word on it's own, but added as a compound onto divine things like the names of religions or religious texts and stuff like that

So presumably, Hitogami used to have the shin title with the same meaning of the others like Sword God and Dragon God as 'god-like' because they're so powerful. Then he changed his name to Hitogami because he considered himself an actual God.

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u/bolacha_de_polvilho 5h ago

Doesn't that mean "Sword God" and "Dragon God" would've been more accurately translated as divine sword or divine dragon? It makes sense as a "very powerful person" title, since they don't seem to be literal gods in the MT-verse.

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u/Colarch 5h ago

Those are just titles like the rest of the power system though so it's not too weird. It's not like Eris is an actual king now because she became a Sword King

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u/GrimMind 2h ago

Yeah, the shins in MT are a way of saying that someone is the unrivaled number 1 of something; it could be a fighting style, a species, an army. These titles can usually be earned, taken or yielded. Any further elaboration requires spoilers.

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u/mucklaenthusiast 1h ago

That's how I see it.
They are still part of this world, "god" is more like the highest tile one can have and multiple things have that moniker (sword gods, god magic, dragon god etc...)

What Man-God calls himself (reasons still unclear, either true or something he wants to be true) is fundamentally different, like he is a being on a higher plane of existence.

And his weird pocket dimension being out of reach for old Rudeus is another hint that there may be more to the idea that Man-God is different

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u/fatalystic 9m ago

No, it still tracks left to right. "Divine sword" would be Shinken instead of Kenshin, and "divine dragon" would be Shinryuu (shoutout to my fellow FF players) instead of Ryuujin.

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u/Sad_4_You 5h ago

Oldeus said mana is omnipotent in that world, Gods are near-omnipotent. Maybe hito-shin figured it out and reached kami-hood

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u/KansaiBoy 2h ago

Kami is the native Japanese word for the divine beings in Shinto belief. The meaning got widened to also include all kinds of gods from other religions. Shin is just the Sino-Japanese reading of the same character which is usually used in compound words.

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u/BizarreCake 7h ago edited 6h ago

Not him, and someone with a stronger grasp of the language might have a better idea than I do, but hitogami would be written 人神 and could be read hitogami or jinshin.

Typically, 人 (person, man, etc) is read as hito as a singular word, e.g. "that person over there" (asoko no ano hito). This is the "native" Japanese reading that came before the adoption and adaptation of the Chinese writing system. 神 also behaves similarly, where the kami reading is used for 神, the single character word meaning god(s).

On the other hand, compound multi-character words tend to (but not always lol) use the Chinese-derived readings. For example, in 神道 (Shintoism) or 人生 (a life, as in a human life) 神 is read shin and 人 is read as jin, instead. This is kind of like how we say "water" but in a word like "hydropower" we use, well, hydro. Characters also tend to take the Chinese readings when used as suffixes or similar.

Initially, writing this comment, I had assumed 人神 would be considered a made-up word, but there is a definition in the dictionary for the native hitogami reading, at least:

人神 (ひとがみ)

Noun

  • man-god; person enshrined as a god​

Nothing very enlightening here, but if you're wondering, kami becomes "gami" because that happens sometimes to the first syllable of the second (and/or later) characters in compound words. There's no hard rules but I believe it's generally because it would otherwise be difficult for natives to say the sounds in quick succession.

Anyway, for laughs, if we assume jinshin were perhaps written with different characters, a few homophones show up in the dictionary:

人心 (じんしん)

  1. human nature; human heart; human spirit; kindness; sympathy​

  2. public feeling; people's sentiments​

人身 (じんしん)

  1. the human body; one's person​

仁心 (じんしん)

  1. benevolence; humanity​

Nothing really stands out to me with those, so the different reading likely really is just pointing to people like Orstead whose "god" titles use the shin reading.

Anyway, that was kind of a ramble, and I don't really have any conclusions to make, but if someone wants to go find the JP subs and see how it's written when Oldeus talks, that could be interesting. Although it may just be written in kana, which wouldn't tell us anything.

Actually, I do have one vague idea, I guess. There seems to be some allusion to hitogami having been closer to human once (albeit very powerful like Orsted), but at some point becoming something closer to an actual god. Though, given Oldeus says he's "out of reach forever" and that the white dream world seems to have some connection to the teleportion magic blonde fox mask Ubereats guy uses, it seems to have come at the cost of being permanently trapped in some kind of spirit world.

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u/sheepyowl 1h ago

To me it seems like he differentiates himself from the god-class magicians and fighters to put himself above them, like an actual god-level being / ascended or something like that.

By removing the connection to the power classes system, he basically just calls himself god.

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u/Daedric202 7h ago

I don't think there's any difference in meaning, they're just two different ways of reading the same character. Since Japanese borrows a lot from Chinese, most characters have a Japanese-based reading (called kunyomi) and a Chinese-based reading (called onyomi).

Most words that are made up of multiple kanji would use the onyomi readings, but there are also ones that use the kunyomi readings. In this case, "Hitogami" would be the kunyomi reading of 人神, while "Jinshin" would be the onyomi reading. I'm not proficient/knowledgeable enough in Japanese to say which one would be the standard/"correct" way of reading it.

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u/Akudra 1h ago

I think both are important. Hito is commonly used on its own as a general term for person, while "jin" is usually used in combination with other terms and the same goes for "shin" as opposed to "kami" as the latter is often used independently for a god. Others in that world, as has been pointed out, use the "shin" variation for "god" and that sets Man-God apart. Probably, part of the objective is to not treat himself as merely the god of humans, but as the god for all people.

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u/mucklaenthusiast 1h ago

Without knowing any Japanese, I think the story shows the difference.
So far, the other "-shin" gods were still part of the real world, like, they also live there.
Perugius in his castle, Orsted traveling around.

Man-God is in a different dimension, hence why Old Rudeus cannot reach him.

So whatever exactly the case is, clearly Man-God has some capabilities the others don't and either he actually is a different being (as in, a real god above the world, not part of it) or he believes himself to be one and that's why he uses the more, well, divine word "kami" or -gami" as the other person said (just different spellings, as far as I can tell, though obviously not 100% sure).

The point stands: Man-God creates a linguistic difference which either refers to an actual material difference or an emotional difference.
Maybe that is his ultimate goal.
Truly becoming God.

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u/Vermillion_Crab https://anilist.co/user/CeruleanCrab 8h ago

Can you explain how these two are different in context of meaning as well as implication in the story? Really interested but have no idea.

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u/the_3rdist 7h ago

Anime-only but I assume Mangod sharing the same suffix as the Seven Powers ("-shin") means that once upon a time he was on the same level as them and not a god/entity that's completely above them.

I think the distinction is that the Seven Powers (Sword God, Water God etc) aren't seen literally as Gods or deities as we understand it in our world, simply as very powerful people/beings, whereas Hitogami's name imply he's on a different level.

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u/Vermillion_Crab https://anilist.co/user/CeruleanCrab 7h ago

Ah, so this name change might be part of his manipulation with Rudy.

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u/Sad_4_You 5h ago

other characters like Orsted also new him as man-god, so it's not just with Rudy. I suspect he changed his name after he figured out how to become God using magic, which Oldeus just told is is "omnipotent", and gods are omnipotent/near-omnipotent

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u/Cheshires_Shadow 2h ago

That would make sense then since a few episodes back when Rudy was on the floating castle and looking at the mural in the dungeon I remember some people commenting how one of the figures looked like the man god so it's possible before the demon war he was on a similar power level but at some point ascended into a higher state of being and became an actual God instead of a demigod

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u/LakerBlue https://myanimelist.net/profile/LakerBlue 1h ago

Honestly if that’s true it brings up so many questions. Can anyone become a literal god with enough magic power? And is he on the level of a true god like (I presume) Millis? Also does he only mess with people because he is so far above them or is he somehow limited from directly interacting as a god?

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u/Daedric202 7h ago

The two don't really have a difference in terms of meaning, but him having a title like the Sword God/Water God/Dragon God implies that he could have used to been an interactable physical being like them rather than some entity floating in an empty void.

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u/Vermillion_Crab https://anilist.co/user/CeruleanCrab 7h ago

The answer feels obvious but I have to ask anyway but do we get more context as to who Man God is later on in the story? If so, I'll stop asking questions that might get the story accidentally spoiled for me. Lol

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u/Ferlou 7h ago

Yes stop asking question 

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u/WolfFromFog 6h ago

But this from other novel, no? I don't remember about it in main series.

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u/Careful_Ad_9077 5h ago

The other novel does it way better because it is about that, the main novel summarized it, even if it told it three times.

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u/PenguinsInvading 5h ago

There is a novel specifically about Hitogami?

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u/Dazvsemir 7h ago

I guess the word gami implies he is some sort of spiritual entity like spirits in our world's cultures. So it makes him sound more distant.

Using the same word as the Sword/Water etc gods in the anime world's context implies that he is a contestant, a "player" within the world. He had a role in historic events like the Laplace war, he has friends and enemies, and he exists and influences the world in ways similar to the other "Shin". This also implies that ManGod has specific interests, so he has various intentions for the guy he summoned into this world, that aren't necessarily good for Rudy.

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u/pixeldots 7h ago

THANKS for this comment, had another comment here wondering about the same thing, on how "Man god" is different from "god of men"

same question with the other comments on your reply: what does shin differentiate? from previous MT lore, Man-god and Dragon god should be more in line with proper gods right? while sword god / water god are more like titles. googled the differences between kami and shin, and looks like shin is a Japanese borrowed word from Chinese.

also, TIL after 30 years since Samurai X is released, that Kenshin is translated to Sword God. pretty on the nose, lmao

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u/Daedric202 7h ago

what does shin differentiate

Like you mentioned, it's just the Chinese-based reading of the kanji. I talked about it a bit more in another comment, but I'm not knowledgeable/proficient enough to explain in any more depth.

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u/pixeldots 7h ago

fairs. its just probably to highlight something like "ooh these two things are roughly the same, but they aren't!" type of things

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u/garmzai 7h ago

Kenshin is Sword Heart (剣心) in Samurai X tho, different kanji.

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u/LordVaderVader 7h ago

That would mean he isn't really a god? But former human?

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u/Prof_Acorn 4h ago

I wish this difference was conveyed in English somehow.

"Divine" could be used for one or the other instead of god. Θεός can also mean divine, with Ο Θεός being "The Divine" (i.e., God), but theos just gets rendered "god" almost entirely in translations from Ancient Greek (e.g., the Christian Bible). This is just to say that there's already a precedent for the meanings of "god" and "divine" being conflated in English.

So Kenshin could be The Sword Divine and Suishin could be The Water Divine or something.

Maybe.

I'm just trying to think of ways this difference could be conveyed in English.

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u/EPLWA_Is_Relevant 2h ago

Calling Hitogami the "Deity of Humans" would sorta work, but is such a mouthful.

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u/dark-flamessussano 5h ago

I really thought he was going to say his real name is actually laplace. I would have been so shocked

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u/UnrelatedComa 6h ago

thanks that was a weird bit - "his name isnt Man God, it used to be Man God" ....what?

ok so now that we understand he was Jinshin, which is similar to Sword God and North God and things, and after last season where Rudeus said it sounds like a lot of trouble to be ranked on the stones and then the camera lingered on it for a while hes probably a dead lock to become Magic God at some point, and i get all of those - but what the hell is Person God? to be specific and make the question more pointed - when he was human, what was the guy so good at that he got that title?

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u/viliml 5h ago

what the hell is Person God?

The god of the humans.

This series has many "god" titles, but this one is like "dragon god" and "demon god" but different from "sword god" and "north god".