What’s in a Title: IDOLY PRIDE

この一歩から

この

I think there is some familiarity with “this” word so I will be giving some more context into it’s pattern and then translate it. 

The word この comes from the usual こそあど言葉 or the ko-so-a-do words. It is a word pattern that depends on the distance of the speaker and listener. For instance: 

• この(it’s closer to the speaker)
• その(it’s closer to the listener)
• あの(it’s not close to the speaker nor the listener)
• どの(is asking a question, it can be translated to “which” in this form)

The word この simply means “this”.

一歩（いっぽ）

一歩 is made of two kanji. The first is 一（いち, there are other readings you can find more here.）The second kanji 歩 can come from the verb 歩く which means to walk. So roughly speaking, you can think of this saying “small amount”, as in a small amount of effort. You can even translate it to “step” or “stage” (probably not a good translation for this title but in a way it makes sense given the story.)

However, there are other shorter ways to translate this like saying  “one step”. 

Put this together with この and you get “This One Step”. 

Since “stage” fits in with the story; you could also go with “This Stage” if you like to be a bit avant-garde.

から

から is a particle that means “from”, “since”,etc (“because”, “after”). However, used like this it is better to use the first meaning “from” because it usually means a time, place, a quantity of something, or an origin of something.

Put this together with the rest and you can get two translations,  “From This One Step” and “From This Stage”.

And last but not least the official translation:

A solid translation from Funimation. 

This anime title is from the first episode of IDOLY PRIDE. You may have seen other entries where I’ve talked about it. Once when I was talking about digital manga and when I bought it on BOOKWALKER. 

I started the show a couple of years ago, but thanks to reading the manga (which is only available legally in Japanese), I knew what was going to happen for the most part (at first I thought they might pull a Fuuka or Promised Neverland Season 2 on me).

Without spoilers, it is an idol show akin to IdolM@ster, Wake Up Girls, and Love Live! School Idol Project. A younger sister is trying to surpass her older sister as an idol with 9 other girls that are a fairly new idol group. There is a ranking system called VENUS, that ranks each idol group/individual idol on many aspects (likability, following performances, etc.). It’s kind of like athletes’ stats in sports. 

Considering I read the manga first, it was great to see it get adapted. I did get the sense of “oh no I’m reading the manga so if I watch the anime it might spoil the manga and vice versa” but, I went ahead and enjoyed both. On another note, I’m a bit surprised MAL hasn’t got this manga on their site yet. Anyway, give it a shot if you like idol anime. Here’s a trailer: