A Killer Space Ship By Any Other Name

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In which we explain why we missed a name.

Okay, so we all saw the NECH-EN name for the new Earth Pendulum Machine archetype in the OCG? Well, okay, some of you are complaining Qliphort is a bad name change. The thing is, Qliphort isn’t wrong, that’s an entirely accurate way of reading the Kana (written Japanese characters).

The term Qliphoth is usually spelt クリフォト(Kurifoto) in Japanese. However, the new monsters from New Challengers are spelt クリフォート  (Kurifo-to). Why is this relevant?

Because the ー mark lengthens the sound of the O, that gives it an r sound, as a result, it sounds like Fort, instead of Fot. Which goes a bit of a ways to explaining the design of the Qhilphort (in that they look like space age fortresses.)

Now, why did we get this wrong? Because most of the Org was focusing on Qliphort Tool’s flavor text:

システムをレプリカモードで起動する準備をしています…
C:￥sophia￥sefiroth.exe 実行中にエラーが発生しました。
次の不明な発行元からのファイルを実行しようとしています。
C:￥tierra￥qliphoth.exe の実行を許可しますか？　<Y/N>…[Y]
システムを自立モードで起動します。

See the bolded word, there? Qliphoth? That’s why we ignored the rolling O into R sound. Based on Konami’s own text, we were assuming they meant Qliphoth for the name. But it appears with the TCG name (and the OCG spelling) that Konami intended Qliphort instead, a portmanteau of Qliphoth and Fort.

So Konami didn’t change anything, the Org simply got this one wrong.