[OCG] Translating the new Xyz archetype

Join our Discord to discuss this article with fellow Duelists

Become a Patron to support us for 12 years of all-volunteer work

There’s a lot of wonky wordplay going on that makes it difficult to come up with a satisfying name.

So in Wing Raiders, the new Booster SP, the third theme has finally been revealed to be a Super Sentai-influenced group of ranger-esque main deck monsters, and giant robot-themed Xyz monsters.

These are the Chouryou （超量） monsters, and there’s an interesting bit of wordplay behind them.

The word itself technically isn’t a word in Japanese, combining the kanji for “super, great, over-, surpass” and “amount”. However, it IS a word in Chinese, meaning “Excess”. It’s also how the Chinese version of Yugioh has chosen to translate “Xyz” , though this seems to be the result of taking the most commonly used name for the term among fans. In other words, the Xyz-Exceeds debacle in China ended up being Exceeds’ victory.

Long story short, there’s definitely some sort of reference being made to the Xyz vs Exceeds debate that plagued fans around the start of Yugioh Zexal.

At the same time, it may also be referencing the idea of these guys being primarily really big super robots.

The word play also goes even further here.

The Xyz monsters in this group all have the word “Magnus” somewhere in their names, a word meaning “great” in Latin.
The one known main deck monster is Red Layer.
The trap card showing off a powerful sword is called Magnuslayer. Get it? Cuz Slayer. It’s a sword. You know. That slays.

And of course, it’s also a combination of Magnus and Layer, the robots and the rangers.

Or “Great” + “Layer”.

In other words, “Over” + “Layer”.

And now, though this may be a stretch, we return to the two kanji of Chouryou to find that it’s [i]very[/i] similar if we look at “chou” as “over” and “ryou”, loosely, as “layer”.

We got a lot of LORE here, folks.

The main reason for bringing this up, in addition to me finding it interesting, is to explain why it’s taking so long to figure out exactly what we’d like to translate these guys as. The first name that goes out usually tends to be the one that sticks among the playerbase, and I as well as the rest of the Org would rather not shove out a half-thought name for the sake of speed alone.

With that said, I’m looking forward to the reveals of more of these Xyz-Exceed-Super-Robos myself! Hopefully we’ll have something figured out soon (or hopefully Konami just goes ahead and reveals what they’re calling these guys in the TCG).

Discuss this madness on our forum if you feel like it.