Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2006-09-29]
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kizoku
 Posts: 47 Location: Ypsilanti, MI |
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How japanese/american should dubs (or subs) be? My personal opinion is, they should not jar. For me, that means they should carry the Japanese flavor if the anime is set in Japan. If set in Britain, then a British accent is better.
Think about Upstairs/Downstairs done in colloquial American. Or Lord Peter Wimsey. People would laugh themselves sick, just like they did in "The Black Shield of Falworth" when Tony Curtis said, "Yonduh lies da castle of my fadduh." A question follows that might possibly be a spoiler, if anyone here hasn't already seen most of Bleach. spoiler[On a slightly separate subject (we are, mostly, talking about the Bleach dub) I remember a scene where a bunch of characters ride up riding giant pigs. I thought, "Sheesh, they're acting just like a bunch of dumb bikers." Then, "Omagawd they're riding HOGS! They are a motorcycle gang! That's hilarious!" So on to my question. Is that a joke in Japanese too? Do bikers over there call their Harleys (or other bikes) hogs?] Thanks |
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Royal Devil
 Posts: 194 |
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Harley's are a distinctive American motorcycle as is stuff like "hogs". Thing about Bleach is, Kubo seems to like to incorporate foreign things into it. Each character has his or her own song, most of which aren't Japanese. Not to mention all the English, Spainish, and German that gets thrown in as well. So I guess it's more of an American thing Kubo thought would be nice to throw in. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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The fact of the matter is, stuff like Air or whatever, those shows aren't going to show up on Adult Swim. They aren't mass-market, mainstream action shows designed to appeal to a gigantic audience of both hardcore and casual fans. They're niche shows. So the audience for those shows generally gets what it wants - normally the company releasing it will do a faithful subbed version that has liner notes or whatever. You do get what you want with shows like that. But with shows like Bleach, mass-market, long-running action shows that really aren't complicated but just have a lot of dense Japanese dialogue, it's really important for fans to understand that that show isn't just for them, it's for everyone, and it's being shown in a venue where the most people can see it and enjoy it. It isn't just about what the fans want done with the show, it's what's going to make the show enjoyable to people who aren't super-mega-hardcore otaku who already have all the episodes memorized in Japanese. I mean, to be quite frank, the people complaining about small cosmetic changes to mass-market action shows are the people who already stole the show on the internet, so who says they get to complain anyway? The show isn't being aired for them. Furthermore, you're talking about "always" and "never", as though it can only be ONE WAY OR THE OTHER, but this is a massive grey area with some shows going one way or the other on the spectrum. There's room for a hundred different kinds of releases; some shows get streamlined for American broadcast and then released in a more "faithful" version on DVD. Some shows are only released in a Japanese-faithful version. Some are only released edited. There's room for all of this, it's not like the presence of one negates the other. We don't live in a world of absolutes, and this is certainly not an all-or-nothing scenario. |
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FlamingPinecone
 Posts: 131 |
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Narutards is something I can mutter under my breath in public forum, however Bleach tards don't even quagulate to form a real solid coverall insult. Something of which I am sure I'll need once I see enough of Bleach to form a proper opinion. Bleachers is a solid interum name but a permanent solution is in order. Bleazzers (Bleach + Boozers) No...Bleatards...no. It will probably come to me in a dream envolving 12 homunculi and expired tapioca. The sap has spoken. fawhooosh! |
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FlamingPinecone
Posts: 131 |
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One more thing, I though the drawings and overall look of Trinity Blood and Fantastic 4 were actually well done, it's just they move as rigidly as a Hanna Barbara cartoon.
They are however shockingly good at covering up this error, if I didn't have some art training I don't think I would pick up on these errors so quickly. fawhooooosh! |
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Lapis Lazuli Lolita
 Posts: 220 Location: The N-Field |
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Trinity Blood didn't seem like a show that would really hit it off in the mainstream like Inuyasha or Fullmetal Alchemist, but it seems to be doing quite well. I mean, vampires are cool and all, but I didn't see people flocking to Spike TV to watch Blade: The Series. The future can really hold anything. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Trinity Blood is - at least on the surface - another "badass vampire with big coat and crazy weapons" anime series, so on a very superficial level, it's tailor-made to be a hit here. Shows like Hellsing, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, etcetera - those have all been big hits and you can kinda lump them all together as action shows with enigmatic badasses as the main character. That Trinity Blood isn't REALLY like that at all is kinda moot. |
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Lapis Lazuli Lolita
Posts: 220 Location: The N-Field |
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Could you imagine seeing Hellsing on [adult swim]? |
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MorwenLaicoriel
 Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I could. I haven't had a chance to see Hellsing, myself, but it seems like a mainstream action series in the same vein of the others mentioned. It's much more mainstream than a lot of other shows, particularly shoujo. (Even Fruits Basket--which probably sells better than Hellsing--would feel 'weird' on Adult Swim compared to Hellsing, just because it generally doesn't appeal to the casual, "mainstream", mostly male fans [as] seems to draw.) |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6868 Location: Kazune City |
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I'd have to say that I agree with Zac on the localization front; just as the fansubbers knew their audience and created their subtitles accordingly, Viz knows its audience ("mass-market," casual fans that don't know the second thing about Japanese culture), and has done what they feel is right to draw ratings and build a consumer base for their products, like manga volumes and DVDs. I started seeing some Bleach fansubs in the fall of 2004 when the series first started, and while I've got a bit of that hardcore elitism in me, I hope that the dub's airing on TV will attract more fans to the Bleach franchise and to anime in general. Compared to what shows like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z had to go through to get on the air in the late 1990s, there really aren't any major issues with the Bleach dub. One minor thing that doesn't matter is the handling of "Soul Society" (which was in Engrish in the Japanese audio, so you can't call it a mistranslation unless they meant "Sole Society") -- I liked the null-article version better, i.e. "I'm from Soul Society" vs. "I'm from the Soul Society". I just thought it was cooler to read/hear "Soul Society" without "the." It's kind of like in Genshiken, where the fansubs and the DVDs don't use "the" and say, "Hey, you wanna join Genshiken?" or "I'm gonna hang out at Genshiken," where the Del Rey Manga uses "the Genshiken."
And, I absolutely agree that Bleach is more of a "popcorn movie" than an arthouse flick; it's funny, it's action-packed, it's even tenderly dramatic at times (like episode 3, which went a long way in convincing me that the series was even worth watching), but it's still a shounen series with a bad-ass main character who wants to be strong and fights successively stronger enemies. Whether the hardcore "inner circle" likes it or not, the anime world needs these series like Bleach, Naruto, Trigun, Hellsing, Bebop, Dragonball~, and others that are cool/fun enough to appeal to non-fans and make them think, "Hey, this thing called 'anime' could be worth getting into and spending thousands of dollars on!" Series like Air, on the other hand, will not have this effect, despite the praise that the hardcore sector gives them. |
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Shale
Posts: 337 Location: The Middle of Nowhere, DE |
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My two cents on the Rant O' The Week:
First off, I agree on the Zanpokutou thing. Pick a theme and stick with it. Second, I don't agree that honorifics are completely untranslatable. Sometimes a title - Lord/Mr./Dr./etc. - works. Sometimes it doesn't - even "Mr." usually sounds extremely formal, and trying to create a cute nickname to approximate "chan" is a recipe for disaster. Just watch the first season of Rayearth. But I digress. Honorifics are supposed to communicate a degree of respect and a certain type of relationship. How a person says another person's name can change the character of an entire conversation. So, in an English dub, it shouldn't be that hard to change phrasings and tone based on the honorifics in the original Japanese. Karin doesn't have to give Ichigo some moronic nickname (I'm sorry, but that's the only word for "Ichi-bro") to show that she's feeling filial. If she takes on a more formal, respectful tone, that gets the same point across, and without trying to directly translate a word that has no direct equivalent in English. Same with the nuances expressed through not using an honorific at all, although that would probably take more creative phrasing. Still, it's much better than trying to make honorifics and affixes mean something that, in English, they simply do not mean. Last edited by Shale on Mon Oct 02, 2006 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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To make a comment in "broader" terms (meaning, I don't really care if it's unnecessary for "Bleach" specifically), why CAN'T we leave certain terms simply for the purpose of expanding vocabulary? While I totally agree that terms like shinigami or zanpakuto have really no real use for an American (or probably even a Japanese) in everyday or professional life, what is wrong with leaving them in context and letting people LEARN what they mean. Heck, how many US fans now know what a "Gundam" is or a "Zaku". For that matter, the Hollywood/Sean Connery movie "Rising Sun" had a whole explanation for sempai/kohai. Anime "fans" now know what: kawaii, arigato, ninja, ohayo gozaimasu and other terms meaning just by consistent use. Human beings are adaptable creatures, people WILL learn what something means just from seeing it used. If we're going to argue that something is "less marketable" because the viewer must (by necessity) expand their vocabulary by watching (which may or may not be true, I honestly don't know) then that is just sad and pathetic for our nation.
Also, while pondering the name thing, I was left with a thought. A few years ago (or less?) they didn't even leave Japanese names intact because they'd be off-putting to a US audience (or so the thinking went, revisit above line of thought). Anyway, now that the names are left intact why NOT just use the "family" name when appropriate. A large number of American people probably wouldn't be able to distinguish between some "family" names and some "given" names. (Inoue vs. Orihime) And since family name is more commonly used, people might just think it IS the first name, and since Japanese regularly puts the family name first ANYWAY people would put it in the correct order by "accident". Now I realize this flies in the face of the "instructional" aspect I just noted in the preceding paragraph, but it was a weird thought that hit me. Not saying it should be implemented per se, but I find the thought amusing and simply wonder. |
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Not our nation, just the larger market of non-anime enthusiasts, and I will tell you why. What you were saying would make sense if Bleach went direct to DVD, and the major source of advertisment would be word of mouth, and buzz within the community. Or if it was going to have a run on some artsy-fartsy premium or extended cable network. But I think Viz looked at the [as] audience and the level on which the most popular(rated) shows operate and said to themselves, "lets make this as easy for someone who doesn't know anything about Bleach(anime) as possible". Lets face it, anime on [as] has not been doing very well lately. And while to get an anime on [as] still gives great exposure, and any company would grab the chance to get on, it has been slipping(last week was the first good anime Sat in a while). IMO Viz wants to make as many new crossover anime fans as possible through Naruto(younger) and Bleach(4 years older). It is more of them going into a market in which 75% of couldn't care less about anime, than anything else. Both of them were done well(highly tolerable),(sure you can argue about voices and the such), But if one of these shows is your introduction(first) to anime. You would think these shows were great. Once you become a fan, then you will start learning more and more about terms and the such. But both of these shows are great intro shows, and Viz knows that. Course thats just my opinion. |
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Haterater
 Posts: 1727 |
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By "fans", you mean people that just watch fansubs, right? I'm an anime "fan", but I don't know some of the terms you just mentioned. That tells me that anime "fans" will get those terms if they watch a lot of fansubs in most cases. |
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Sweet Lou
Posts: 14 |
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Japanese society by and large writes their names in the Western order when writing in English anyway. It's pretty much common knowledge that when their work comes overseas, we adapt it to a style that best suits us. The only people that really bitch about it are elitist fansubber kiddies and their entourages. Just look at how many celebrities of Asian or even Japanese descent flip their names or use an entirely different name altogether because they recognize the venue their work will be presented in.
And I truly don't need to get into the sheer multitude of Japanese works, which originate in Japan before even being licensed or so much as glanced upon by a North American licensing firm, that use the Western nomenclature format. Not only does it appear within many animated works themselves, but even the animator staff credits use them. Some examples are the Fullmetal Alchemist movie, Ghost in the Shell SAC, and even some of the lineart booklets that came with Gundam Seed/Destiny had the voice actor names written in English in our naming format. You'll be surprised to see Japan does it just as much as we do. |
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