Talk:Kouichi Sakakibara/@comment-6052796-20140825160353/@comment-397235-20140913185014

I'll answer these in reverse order:

In the military, you don't first-name people because, in a firefight, you need a response RFN and yelling something like John isn't necessarily the best way to do that. That's why military nicknames are more often than not a play on your surname.

In Japan, your surname is given before your given name because your family is more important than you as an individual, and furthermore, all your actions represent your family (which is why so many Japanese chose not to surrender in World War II; it would've reflected poorly on their family).

Jamison refers to most people by their last names because he's their boss, and he's old school. However, he does at least occasionally use suffixes for people he respects (he always refers to Betty as "Ms. Brant" for example); Peter is a rookie teenager when he starts working for Jamison, so he's not had a chance to earn that respect. Even after Peter's been at the Bugle for years, it's too set in Jamison's mind the kid with the glasses who takes pictures of Spider-Man is "Parker."

It's kind of like the scene in The Avengers between Tony, Pepper, and Coleson. Pepper calls him Phil, to which Tony blinks at her and asks "Who's Phil? His first name is 'Agent.'" Tony genuinely likes Coleson, so it's not a lack of respect (he was furious Coleson was KIA and he was unable to prevent it, which manifests as Tony calling him an idiot); it's just...weird to think of him as Phil.

And first but not least, Kouichi is unusual. That's what brings he and Sanae together: they're probably the only people in the entire town who like American horror novels.

Apparently I forgot to save my updates, because I had another point to make about the last names thing. The dub gets this wrong a lot. Tomohiko first-names Izumi, Izumi specifically gets Kouichi's permission to first-name him the very first time they meet and then never does it again (nor does he reciprocate), and at several points first and last names are used within the same conversation.

When the class is discussing Yukari's death, Aya mentions Takako saying she saw the whole thing. Noboru blinks at her, before clarifying she means "Sugiura." The purpose of this is two-fold: Aya is Takako's friend (and has no sense of decorum anyway); Noboru is not, and given how introverted Takako is he honestly had no idea what her first name even was. It's actually fairly clever for a throw-away scene.