(sorry for the jank formatting—that’s what I get for not hitting Preview before submitting!)

Ah, of course! I did have that rule in my notes, but for some reason I just didn’t connect it with r being alveolar—thank you for the clarification!

When I clarified “name-class” that’s sort of what I was getting at (the set of all possible names that could fit that pattern), but it’s helpful to know that there’s an actual duplicate and that they’re Japanese feminine names. Hmmm…Minori? Mihari? Matsuri? All shots in the dark, since I still haven’t the foggiest idea what these shows are. Maybe if I focus on the hyphen I can figure it out. It sure ain’t Psycho-Pass…

Just judging by the structure of the synopsis of #3 (and also resorting to “cheating” by looking up riniv in my lexicon), I. Chika and (?) N***ye are the lead characters with the other three being secondary (sort of a Kyon & Haruhi + Mikuru, Itsuki, and Yuki situation?). The only Chika I can think of is Utsunomiya Chika from Kaguya-sama, but that’s clearly not what this is.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

I haven’t actually seen this show, but I guessed that the bit at the beginning was something like 高１ (perhaps not exactly a guess—I think it’s come up before), so I was able to put together that 1. it takes place in high school (wow, that narrows things down!) and 2. clearly this anime-dećt is vital to the plot, since it’s mentioned twice. The combination of those two got me to anime-dećt = anime club, and that was enough to get the ol’ synapses to fire while staring at the name.

Ćé = Chika (Ćika + é)
Nye = Natsuki (Nacuki + é)
Mǒ = Mio (Mio + é)
M**ŕe = i(still)dk
Aé = Aya (Aya + é)

Haven’t looked at the hints yet because I’m stubborn. Something that struck me as intriguing is that #1, #2, and #3 all have the name (or name-class, I suppose) M***ŕe. If I understand the vowel assimilation rules first described here correctly, the fact that we have a short vowel at the end implies that the original name ended in a consonant, since if there were a vowel there the resulting assimilated vowel would be long. This is obviously atypical for Japanese, which only allows the moraic nasal as a final consonant; the only Japanese name I could think of that is similar is the surname Miura, but I think that would be rendered as either Miurá or Miuré depending on gender, and even then it would be r rather than ŕ (barring a phonological rule I haven’t yet become aware of involving compensatory lengthening or something like that). Should I then interpret this as a non-Japanese name which would have vowel epenthesis in Japanese but could be rendered more faithfully to the original intent in a language which allows more complex closed syllables (e.g. how Aerith is pronounced as ending in /isu/ in Japanese but /ɪθ/ in English)? If that’s the case, it seems extraordinary that the same pattern would appear in three unrelated anime if it were a foreign character name.

Haven’t made much headway in actually coming up with a guess, unfortunately. Curse my inability to remember character names!

Forgive me for seriousposting, but I genuinely feel bad for white people (particularly cishet men) that such a huge proportion of them not only don’t know how to dance, but are terrified of dancing. That manifests in different ways, from being a wallflower to taking an aggressive stance and saying that dancing is for [slurs], but it all stems from insecurity. I mean, entrainment to a rhythm is one of the most ancient of human communal activities, and yet it’s all but locked away for crackers across the Anglosphere! I feel very lucky to have been brought up in a culture where dancing is a part of everyday life; thanks to that constant early exposure, it’s now a way I can let loose and express joy through motion. If we ever get those reeducation camps set up, I propose that we include a basic salsa class or something (shameless cultural bias—I’m open to other suggestions) to improve quality of life and social cohesion.

Recommended

(can’t reproduce the color in the Compatibility column, but I used some emojis: the first four five are green (💚), second two are light green (💙…there’s no light green), and last two are yellow(💛))

Not Recommended