Seven Seas Entertainment received a barrage of social media comments over online disagreement on romanization and translation of its upcoming danmei series, Little Mushroom by Yi Shi Si Zhou. The company originally announced the novel’s license in 2025, but after last week’s pre-order announcement, longtime fans took to X (formerly Twitter) to voice their shock and disappointment.
What initially started as concern over the use of MTPE (machine translation post-editing) and MTL (machine translation) after acquisition by Media Do quickly devolved into anger and name calling over the English translated names. Some online users have gone so far as to directly harass and send threats to both the translator and Seven Seas Entertainment.
The main complaint centers around the romanization of the lead character’s name, which is originally written as 安折. Within the novel’s description as well as other associated material, the name is written as “Anzhe” and “An Ze,” while fans insist the that it should be “An Zhe” and “An Ze” for the two characters. Other criticism included the decision to translate a character’s title, written as 审判者/审判官, as “Judge” rather than the fan preferred “Arbiter.” Self-identified Chinese native speakers explained their logic in the comments.
After deliberation, Seven Seas Entertainment responded to comments on its X post and stood firm on its spelling of the Little Mushroom character. This response further fueled anger as many fans threaten to boycott and even cancel their pre-orders over the matter. Soon, users decided to take it a step further and track down the novel’s translator on X, and demanded a response. The translator, who added they are a native Chinese speaker, explained the logic behind the naming as: “there are no published grammar rules on romanization of mushroom names that I know of, but at this time we’ve decided that mushrooms shouldn’t have surnames (sic).” In other words, the choice was made because “Anzhe is Anzhe because he’s a mushroom and like Jesus has no last name (sic).” However, this explanation only facilitated the onslaught of critique, accusing the translator of creative overreach and unnecessarily “misinterpreting the story.” The translator has now locked their account.
As of yesterday morning, the official Seven Seas issued a statement on the ongoing online debate, and quoted its stance from a similar situation in 2024. It upheld its decision to “trust the recommendations” of their professional translators. If fans have any issues, they are told to contact Seven Seas directly rather than harassing people who work for them.
