What does marumaru mean?

For example, this anime title ひとりぼっちの○○生活 (Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu). What does marumaru mean here?

  • Have you tried a dictionary? – Eiríkr Útlendi May 21 '19 at 19:51
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Unless I'm missing something, this maru maru (〇〇) is not intended to be the maru maru (丸々), so the dictionary entry you link to doesn't give an answer...? – Earthliŋ May 21 '19 at 21:46
  • @Earthliŋ, ha! I honestly thought they were looking for the word まるまる. It never occurred to me that they might have just meant 〇〇 as the name of the placeholder. Cheers! – Eiríkr Útlendi May 21 '19 at 23:03

まる is a name of this circle symbol, and ○○ is read out loud as まるまる, なになに, etc. It is used to make a placeholder or to mask a part of a sentence/word. English equivalent is **, __, "blank", "blah" or "bleep". In this case, I think the author used it just to make the title look more interesting.



○ or × are often used as replacement characters for something that should be somewhat obvious to the reader but is not actually spelled out for some reason. One common example is using real life names of people or brands in fiction, e.g. マクドナルド→ マクド○ルド. The reasons could include trying to avoid notice of the person/company in question for possibly infringing use of their name or others.

However, in your example it seems to me rather a filler for a word (which are often two characters in Japanese), so possibly you are supposed to fill it in using your imagination.


I think Igor is correct; I'd add the idea that it might be a spot for you to insert your own name. Perhaps it's an easter egg left by the author so you can insert yourself into the title. After all, 'Hitoribocchi no (name) seikatsu" would roughly translate to something like "All Alone, (name)'s Life" or maybe "The Lonesome Life of (name)."

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