What’s in A Title: Kageki Shojo!!

桜舞い散る木の下で

（さくら　まいいちる　このした　で）

桜（さくら）

If there’s one thing about Japan that comes to my mind, it’s gotta be cherry blossoms. This is what this word means. If you didn’t know, now you know where Sakura from Naruto probably got her name from. You know with the pink hair and all. 

Random note if you put this kanji with the kanji for meat 肉（にく）it becomes horse meat. Yeah pretty weird.

Another random note: Cherry blossoms are one of my favorite flowers.

舞（まい）い散（ち）る

The first kanji means dancing or dance while the second kanji in verb form means “to fall (like leaves or blossoms from a tree)” or “to scatter”. Put it together we have something like “to fall as if dancing”. And if we add 桜 we get “Cherry blossoms falling as if dancing”.

木の下（このした）

This is just an expression putting the kanji for tree 木 and below 下 together between the possessive particle の.  It literally means, “under a tree”. Not underneath it of course but under it. Like this:

で

In this context the particle で means that something is acting upon the previous word. Kind of like this sentence: 

木の下で少女が寝てる。The girl is sleeping under the tree.

So in this situation we have something like “Cherry Blossoms Dancing Under the Tree”. And that will take care of the translation on my part. Now let’s see what Funimation cooked up.

More poetic take but the meaning is still there. Love how they did this one.

This episode title comes from the first episode of Kageki Shoujo. I’m back to watching seasonal anime again. Had to recover from speed running the My Anime List 2021 Anime Challenge back at the end of May. I’ve watched some good stuff in this Summer 2021 anime season. Like Kanojo mo Kanojo, Bokutachi no Remake, and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni SOTSU. I ended up watching about 9 or 10 shows from this season alone. They were bangers when it came to first impressions. But, enough of the tangent. Let’s discuss Kageki Shoujo a little bit more.

This anime is about girls attending a prestigious acting school with desires of becoming a top actress. I honestly said “背が高い過ぎる！”, when I first saw one of the main characters. I enjoyed watching this show. Kind of reminded me of Revue Starlight. Well not the fighting during a musical but the core of going to an acting school to become the best actress. That kind of thing.

Here’s a PV of the anime if you are interested: