やつら
やつら
yatsura
= they; those guys; those people (informal, often contemptuous)
Yatsura (やつら) means ‘those guys’ or ‘they’ — an informal, often contemptuous plural pronoun for referring to a group of people. It belongs to the same rough pronoun family as aitsu and koitsu, but adds the plural suffix -ra to indicate multiple people.
Yatsura (やつら) is formed from yatsu (やつ, a rough word for ‘guy’ or ‘fellow’) plus the plural suffix -ra (ら), making it ‘those guys’ or ‘they’ with a dismissive or hostile edge. It refers to a group of people the speaker views with contempt, rivalry, or distance: yatsura ni makerumon ka (やつらに負けるもんか, ‘I’m not going to lose to those guys’), yatsura wa doko ni iru? (やつらはどこにいる？, ‘Where are those guys?’). The singular yatsu (やつ, that guy/fellow) and plural yatsura are in the same rough register. Polite equivalents: karera (彼ら, they/them — standard/neutral) or ano hitotachi (あの人たち, those people — polite).
The -ra plural suffix in Japanese is itself informal and slightly rough: oretachi (俺たち, we/us — rough), kimitachi (君たち, you guys — casual), yatsura (those guys — dismissive). In formal Japanese, individual people are referred to as ano kata (あの方, that person — respectful) or pluralized with gata (方々). The suffix -ra signals informality and a certain bluntness about the people being discussed. Yatsura in particular implies that the speaker sees the group as rivals, adversaries, or beneath social consideration.
Everyday use
やつらには絶対に負けたくない。
Yatsura ni wa zettai ni maketakunai.
There’s absolutely no way I’m going to lose to those guys.
Casual / Social Media
やつら全員なんでそんなに強いの！？攻略サイト見ても全然勝てない。
Yatsura zenin nande sonna ni tsuyoi no!? Kouryaku saito mite mo zenzen katenai.
Why are all those enemies so strong!? I can’t beat them even with a walkthrough guide.
Formal / Cultural context
時代劇では、主人公が「やつらを一網打尽にしてくれる」と啖呵を切る場面がある。
Jidaigeki de wa, shujinkou ga ‘yatsura wo ichimou dajin ni shite kureru’ to tanka wo kiru bamen ga aru.
In period dramas, there are scenes where the hero delivers a bold threat to catch all those villains in one sweep.
Yatsura is most at home in Japanese fiction — particularly manga, anime, and period drama — where rough masculine speech registers are stock-in-trade for heroes, rivals, and antagonists. A protagonist rallying against adversaries, a warrior dismissing opponents, a detective contemptuous of criminals — all will reach for yatsura to refer to the opposition. The word’s energy is adversarial by default: it frames ‘those people’ as an opposing force rather than a neutral group.
Interestingly, Urusei Yatsura (うる星やつら) — a landmark manga and anime series by Rumiko Takahashi, running from 1978 to 1987 — uses yatsura in its title. The name roughly translates to ‘Those Noisy/Troublesome Guys from Uru Star’ and captures the rough, chaotic energy of its large cast of alien and human characters. The series is considered foundational to the romantic comedy and supernatural harem genres in manga, and its title introduced generations of Japanese readers to yatsura as a way to describe a motley, unruly group of characters — a nuance of fond exasperation rather than pure hostility.
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