King Kai Fist?

[Goku Densetsu]

Hey all, quick question.

In Budokai 1, whenever you execute the Kaio-ken, the attack is named as "King Kai's Fist", x2, x5, and x10 following. Now, I was wondering, why did they use this? Now I haven't played the game in a long time. And I don't remember if what they say in the story mode. Then in Budokai 2, they use Kaioken. I've never really seen this before. Just wondering. Thanks.

[Big Momma]

It's more-or-less a direct translation, isn't?


"Kaio" is "King Kai" in Japanese...and Ken is "fist(s)"

Haven't taken a Japanese class in ages, so I may be wrong.

[Kaboom]

Yeah, for that game they "translated" the word "Kaio" into "King Kai." The quotes being because it's not actually a perfect translation, but whatever. That was the idea behind it.

[Goku Densetsu]

But I mean, why don't they just call it Kaioken? That's what EVERYBODY else calls it.

[Taku128]

Because whoever at Infogrames/Atari translated that game doesn't know shit about the series? If someone was handed a script to translate and had never seen an episode of Dragon Ball Z in their life they'd translate Kaio-Ken as something along the lines of "Fist of the Lord of the Worlds". Obviously there would be some communication with FUNimation as to what they call attacks and characters, which is why it's King Kai and not Lord of the Worlds, but King Kai's Fist pretty clearly just slipped through the cracks.

[Great Saiyaman I]

It's a direct translation. It's about as bad as calling Yamcha's Roga FuFu Ken "Fist of the Wolf Fang". It doesn't really matter.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

It's a direct translation.

It's more like a half translation. You see, the "kai" part means "world", which they didn't translate.

[MCDaveG]

Ken is always translated as fist all the time, but it can mean also sword or simply an attack.
So now you have for example Wolf fang attack.....

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Ken is always translated as fist all the time, but it can mean also sword or simply an attack.
So now you have for example Wolf fang attack.....

The Kanji 拳 (Kobushi) literally means "fist".

[Herms]

It's a direct translation. It's about as bad as calling Yamcha's Roga FuFu Ken "Fist of the Wolf Fang". It doesn't really matter.

It'd be more like translating Roga FuFu Ken as "Fufu the Wolf's Fang Attack". But that has more to do with how absurd "King Kai" is as a translation of Kaiou.

[Thanos]

They likely gave it that name in the first Budokai for the same reason Goku says (or used to say) "Kay-o-ken".

[Patient-mental]

They likely gave it that name in the first Budokai for the same reason Goku says (or used to say) "Kay-o-ken".

I always just assumed that's how American's pronounced "kaio" (kay-oh-ken), without using the phonetic structures of the Japanese language.

[Rory]

I'm more interested in why they chose chose "x5" instead of "x3", which is a more well known level of Kaio-ken (what with it being the technique he used to actually stand a chance against Vegeta).

[BobZ]

I've always liked the translations in Budokai 1. Enjoying the japanese dialogue with ridicilous translations like "YOU AUNT SALLIES!" is always a WIN. To this day I still like popping the disc into my PS2 and whenever I see ""King Kai's Fist", I smile. It's so right and wrong at the same time, it's funny. And I actually like it because it gives some background and explanation of the technique, clearly stating that this is a move created by the character who is known as King Kai. While Kaioken to a non-japanese speaker would be like "Kaio-what" as Vegata says in TeamFourStar's depiction of the scene. But still... it's cheesy non the less. And it's better to stick to the original.

[DanielSSJ]

At least it's internally consistent with their shitty translation of Kaio.

[Marco Polo]

I love how Goku was doing a kick when he said King Kai Fist.

[Ajay]

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