MovieChat Forums > Ima, ai ni yukimasu (2004) Discussion > title means 'be with you' as far as i ca...

title means 'be with you' as far as i can tell.

posted 18 years ago by youdontsmellbad
15 replies | jump to latest

i found nothing on this site to tell me what the english translation of the title was. so i looked it up. i haven't seen it. i was just curious about it.

[–] jiamin64 18 years ago

well, it means 'Now, I'm going to meet you' but taht's teh direct translation. The english title of the film is 'Be with you'

[–] youdontsmellbad 18 years ago

AWESOME! SWEET! TOTALLY NECESSARY CORRECTION!

[–] christophe__r 18 years ago

ima = now

that's as far as i got :) i thought "ai" meant "love" and yukimasu would be the verb "yuku" but i'm not sure what that means. i've learnt a bit of Japanese so perhaps a Japanese speaker could help me understand the translation of this title.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MRockwell219 18 years ago

"ai ni yukimasu" means I'll be with you, and "ima" is literally "now" but it sounds more like "as soon as possible". so I'd translate it, as a Japanese speaker, "I'll be with you soon". "ima yukimasu" is used in everyday conversation and it's exactly the same as "I'm coming". "ai ni yukimasu" sounds more poetic.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] hladik 18 years ago

Is there a verb "yuku" (for yukimasu), or does it come from "kuru", and "yu" is just some particle?

[–] hladik 18 years ago

You can tell from the Kanji that this "ai" is not love, but comes from "au" -> to meet.

[–] indigoskies 18 years ago

Yukimasu is written just like ikimasu in kanji, but it's a more poetic and archaic way of pronouncing it.

If you ask Japanese speakers (as I have), whether they use 'i' or 'yukimasu', they use 'i' more often.

[–] christophe__r 17 years ago

I've thought about this too much now.

Ima = now

ai = the kanji that its spelt with means "meet" but the word can mean "love". I like to think of it as a double meaning.

ni yukimasu = to go.

The English translation of the title that I always think of is
"I'm coming/going to meet/love you now."

[–] shinigami_no_miko 17 years ago

I'm sorry, but I'm a little confused. If it's spelt with the kanji (会) which translates to "meet," how can it also mean "love"? The idea of a double-meaning is sweet, but I guess I don't really understand how you're getting it from the words. I feel like if "ai" were written in kana alone it would be more ambiguous and I could understand this translation, but since it clearly uses the kanji (会 "meet"), then I don't understand.

[–] christophe__r 17 years ago

Yes the kanji are different but the words sound the same and are spelt the same in kana. Think of English words that have the same spelling and sound identical but havw different meanings. "Mean" being an example.

Wakaru?

[–] butterfly_36 17 years ago

it is true that the sound of "ai" means both "meet" and "love", however the kanji written this way means "meet". also the particle "ni" makes this clear. the actual verb "to love" is "ai suru" and not "ai ni". Many japanese words are pronounced the same which is why kanji are so important to tell them apart in written text.

[–] srmcnamara 17 years ago

This reply is a little late, but, no one really answered the question completely.

The general translation, as a few people pointed out, is literally 'Now, I'm going to meet you".. but, the verb 'yuku' can also mean 'to die'. It's a play on words that's really significant to the story. If you remember, at the end of the movie when we're learning what's in Mio's diary, she talks about how she realizes that she'll die when she's 29.. and that while she has the option to walk away from it all, she can't because she now knows what a wonderful life she'll have... Then she says "Takumi-kun, Yuji, ima ai ni yukimasu" -- it's really beautiful I think. While it's literaly true that she is going to meet them right then, it's also true that she will die because of it.

It's interesting because in the title, only the kanji for the 'a' part of 'ai' was written specifically with the meaning 'to meet'. The yuku part was left in hiragana. If the author wanted to make the meaning 'to go' clear, they could have used the appropriate kanji. Someone is bound to wonder why then wasn't 'ima' written in kanji... probably just to make the meaning of 'yukimasu' more ambiguous. If only 'yukimasu' was written without kanji, you'd notice right away that something was different about it.

Cool, huh?

[–] christophe__r 16 years ago

I knew I was onto something :D I just picked the wrong word. I still like my meaning even if it doesn't work, haha.