hi!! i'm a newer kagurabachi reader and I've been SO curious about the honorifics that are used in the original, as the official english translation has removed them/uses things like "sir".
I'm mainly curious about what Shiba calls Chihiro, but if you already have a post explaining this, i'd loveeee to know what everyone uses as well <3
Hello and welcome to Kagurabachi! Thank you for reading my nonsense!
I haven't made a post about honorifics so I'll just jot the essentials about Shiba and the older generation down here.
Shiba refers to Chihiro as "Chihiro-kun", which is normal for a friend of the family that's older than the person he's talking to. He probably uses Chihiro's first name to 1) differentiate him from his father and 2) because he can as an older adult who's known him since birth. He also calls Char "Char-chan" and Hakuri "Hakuri-kun", following Chihiro's example of going straight for first names but keeping the expected honorific. He's a bit more relaxed with the younger generation, it seems.
You see, dear void, an amusing yet somewhat frustrating thing about the older generation of guys (Shiba, Azami, and Kunishige in particular) is how they're subtly distanced from each other. They refer to each other by last name only.
Dropping honorifics entirely shows that they consider each other to be good friends, don't get me wrong. Otherwise Shiba would be calling Kunishige "Rokuhira-san" or "Rokuhira-kun" instead of just "Rokuhira", for example. But since they are Manly Men who don't want to be too soft or vulnerable, they never use each other's given names (Togo, Soushiro, Kunishige). Chiaki was the only one who did among their group.
Speaking of Chiaki, she called Azami "Sou-chan"! It's a cute nickname that only she could reasonably get away with using for him. That's what he gets for being a few years younger than the rest of them.
Likewise, Shiba and Kunishige have called Chiaki by her given name instead of her last name (Soga). She was very dear to all of them and being a girl, it was "safe" to show that by using her first name. Manly Men don't have to keep up as many barriers when it's a close female friend.
Other than that, Shiba's general way of referring to people is in line with what would be expected from a guy who regularly flouts rules but still takes his job seriously. He drops honorifics with Samura, Mashiro, and others he sees as peers while still calling his boss Hasumi-san. It's definitely part of the "cool" vibe that most of the Kagurabachi characters bring to the series since he's not the only one to do that by far. Social rules are bent in fiction all the time for flavour, after all.
Hope this is what you were looking for, Anon!
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