To my fellow manga geeks:

[timepiececlock]

What the hell is "fu fu fu" or "ku ku ku"?

I've seen it several times in scanlations, particularly Naruto (I only read like 3 manga series, so go figure.)

I don't know what it means in Japanese or romanji, but amidst the English it looks patently ridiculous.

Comments

[run-atreyu.livejournal.com]

Just a thought on this, but I'd never heard of this before and tried it out loud. When you pronounce it in the Japanese it does actually sound quite evil. If you look at in the Romaji and read it as you would in English it sounds ridiculous, but not so in the Japanese. The 'ku ku ku', for example, sounds like the rat-a-tat of gunfire with all the harsh 'K's in close succession. 'Fu' in Japanese is an h/f mixture of a sound so it sounds like a breathed evil chuckle or something.