Also nicknames are a thing. That one certainly sounds like such.
To me, "Pepesha Andreanof" sounds more like an attempt at a proper-sounding full Russian name than a nickname, just like Stardust's (who is an actual artist in-story) civil identity of "David Jones" and Shy's "Teru Momijiyama" (which, as far as I can tell, is a relatively normal Japanese name). All I am saying, it seems more like a lack of research on common Russian names and naming conventions on the writer's part (especially compared to their knowledge of Japanese and English names), than any particular artistic choice.
But again, I will take a heroic, awkwardly-named Russian character in a manga over a perfectly researched, villainous one any day. :-)
PS: Pepesha's surname seems to be a cognate of "Andrey" (Russian for Andrew), but the proper spelling would be something along the lines of "Andreyeva" (the spelling of most Russian surnames is gendered, with the endings "-ov", "-ev", and "-of(f)" indicating masculine forms, while female forms typically end with "-ova" or "-eva", with some particularities).
last edited at Nov 12, 2019 11:52AM