Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Doesn't Yaoi Anime Get Dubbed?
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crosswithyou
Posts: 2895 Location: California |
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Disclaimer: I don't watch dubs
Wow, I can't imagine dubbed bl... If it just had some bl themes like YOI then it's easier to imagine, but full on bl series like Doukyuusei? No, thank you. I guess it's kind of like how it's difficult for me to read bl manga in English. The dialogue sounds so much cheesier and overall unappealing in English. Wonder why that is... Perhaps because English is more familiar? Slightly OT, but it'd be easier for me to accept English-dubbed bl anime than English-dubbed adaptations of BLCDs though. BLCDs are somewhat of an art, imo. Seiyuu who can act well/convincingly in BLCDs have my utmost respect because you know it ain't easy. |
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Merida
Posts: 1945 |
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From my experience, many "hardcore" BL fans are also fans of Japanese seiyuu and listen to BLCDs, so i doubt dubbed BL anime would appeal to them very much. And jeez, people never seem to get tired of that "is YoI BL or not?" discussion...how many times did we have that now? |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2242 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I think the origins of BL as a genre in Japan and also the west are a force that pushes it against becoming mainstream, and by a broad definition, the more "mainstream" an anime is, the more likely it is to get dubbed.
BL originally appealed to girls due to its "taboo" nature. The same was definitely true of its main fandom in the west. It was never designed to serve as an example for LGBT rights or as a vector for "normalization" of those types of relationships. In fact I think a decent argument could be made that anime which do have those kinds of themes aren't really BL in the classic sense (like No. 6 would probably be an example of this. It appealed to BL fans but I wouldn't call it BL). Dubbing's purpose is to take an anime and make it more accessible, more widely available, and less "niche", so that goes against the grain of BL's origins. Now I think in recent years BL has become less of a "taboo" thanks to social progressive movement in society, which in some ways dilutes the original appeal of BL in the first place, so I suspect the genre itself will continue to change and grow. I think there's going to be a lot more anime/manga with those kinds of relationships that aren't in any way classical BL, and a whole spectrum between. So going forward I don't except that anime with non-hetero characters or relationships would be dubbed any less frequently than any other anime of the same popularity. |
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Alexis.Anagram
Posts: 278 Location: Mishopshno |
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Thanks for clarifying, I'm not familiar with BL works on this order so I'll take it upon myself to make some associations, but as I'll explain below, that's not exactly the problem.
I used the prevalence of unhealthy relationships as a genre trope to frame my concern but you're helping me see that it was perhaps an unhelpful generalization (and here I said I wasn't trying to be reductive). My issue with BL is what I perceive as a cultural trend towards further marginalizing a population with already limited access to social platforms by appropriating gay male identities and experiences and employing them as fantasy fare for others (namely, women): so, fetishization as a practice of deliberately distancing the audience from the subject in order to foster an idealization that is, in this case, romantic and "safe." Those problematic genre tropes are just a part of this larger process, which is how I understand BL to be relevant as a category or identifier: otherwise, what exists to separate BL from a story (any story) in Japan that features queer male and/or masculine romance?
Certainly not! But BL by definition isn't a genre or category (or, indeed, demographic) that treats kinkiness as fair play: it selectively highlights a specific community which doesn't (to my understanding) share equal standing with BL as an industry such that they can correct the record on their actual needs and experiences. Fiction doesn't have to be pro-social, but it is still accountable for the manner in which it impacts real people in the real world.
Appreciate the reference, I'm familiar with the anthology but haven't read it. Obviously, a gay man writing about his own fantasies which are rooted in his own lived experiences is authentic and powerful in that brings folks who read it closer to a meaningful understanding of at least that one gay man's perspective and story, which puts his voice front and center and gives him the power to determine how to represent himself. And for that matter, as I said, I see YOI as a show written by women which makes a conscious effort to do something political and subversive in a manner which would seem to contradict (or, at least, supersede) the explicit design of the BL industry. With all that being said, I don't see BL as an abject evil or BL fans as direct adversaries: if space can be carved out within the BL industry and community for gay men to reclaim their stories, all the better. But it's just as important to recognize and affirm those independent spaces where queer stories exist on their own terms, acknowledging those queer communities which don't have access to or feel represented by the BL moniker. |
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Vibrant Wolf
Posts: 109 Location: Canada |
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thank you. you totally beat me to it. |
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2538 Location: Germany |
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The problem is that many of them are low key releases to begin with or even OVAs, so good luck getting a full US productions around those green lit. The board obviously pointed out a bunch.
I also really really didn´t drink the Shonen-ai (there IS a destination) on Ice cool-Aid, but it looks nice and i am technically interested in an ice skating show. I guess it´s harmless. Let´s see if it will crack 100 eps... Hetalia easily manged that, so i wasn´t too surprised in the end. The home media numbers are still twice whatever passes as a hit these days. |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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I'm not sure I understand the "deliberately distancing" and "safe" comment. BL is defined as a genre of romance, between men, for an audience of women/girls (regardless of who actually writes any given piece; there are gay men who write BL, but as BL and not as "fiction by gay men"). It's part of shoujo/josei's interest in gender and sexuality in general which was carved out as a separate category in the 90's for marketing reasons. You're right that as a genre, it isn't trying to represent or appeal to actual gay men, just as most of shoujo' explorations of gender and sexuality aren't intended to represent or appeal to actual sexual or gender minorities, but the point of all of that is to explore alternate ways of constructing sexuality and gender (in particular alternate views of men and masculinity), and, especially in the case of BL, to allow women/girls to access and identify with gender, relationship and sexual traits that women aren't normally expected or allowed to have. As a consequence, a significant fraction of its audience is not straight or not cis (but still overwhelmingly female / female assigned at birth). There is plenty of BL that does deal with social issues, although mainly those that fit into its interests (marriage, raising children, forming a family) rather than those of primary interest to Japanese gay men (workplace discrimination, being accepted as normatively masculine, freedom from compulsory heterosexuality). The problem is that since it's coming from an explicitly female perspective, it doesn't necessarily address those issues in a way that gay men appreciate. If your problem with BL is that it is about m/m relationships without being for those men in real life m/m relationships, then yes, that's a definitional part of it and therefore not an easily fixable problem. But it's "distancing" only insofar as not being overtly about women makes it easier for the mainstream to ignore it, and it's not "safe" at all; BL is hotly contested by conservative groups in Japan (as a "corrupting" influence on young women that will make them "abnormal"; lesbian, trans, feminist, sexually active, etc.), and under the sparkly surface a lot of very socially contentious stuff is going on there.
I don't see any contradiction. There's plenty of BL that addresses gay marriage and the social status of m/m couples far more directly than YOI does (as I said up thread, the first BL manga to explicitly discuss gay marriage dates to 1987). YOI could have gone much further with its topics if it had been willing to commit to the BL label; although there's good and compelling reasons why it didn't, they're economic, not anything to do with being "political and subversive". |
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crosswithyou
Posts: 2895 Location: California |
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Yes, and yes. I have no interest in dubbed BL and do not find them necessary. What I do want is some more Doukyuusei-level adaptations of quality BL stories though! With the exception of maybe Mirage of Blaze, I find most anime adaptations of BL series to be fairly lackluster, even OVAs which are supposed to have higher budgets. I would kill for a faithful, quality OVA adaptation of Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai or Yuuutsuu na Asa. *_* (With the original BLCD cast, of course!) No TV series because then they would have to cut out a lot of content. Aaaaaaaand I'm getting OT again. (Love your icon btw!) |
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Keichitsu0305
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Got to admit I'm rather disappointed that I read this whole thread and no one mentions the dub for Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 and this is based of a tv series were Anno more or less confirms Kaworu and Shin's relationship.
So let's me try and list all currently English dubbed anime BASED on BL manga or video games. Gravitation (Kimi to Boku for original manga - Nozomi Entertainment) Dramatical Murder (Nitro+Chiral - Sentai) Tokyo Babylon (technically a shoujo but whatever - US Manga Corps) Earthian (comes from Wings magazine same as Clamp's Tokyo Babylon - Media Blasters) Descendants of Darkness (Hana to Yume - Central Park Media / Discotek) Fake (Libre Publishing legit BL magazine - Media Blasters) No. 6 (novel but manga adaptation in Aria - Sentai) Loveless (Monthly Comic Zero Sum - Media Blasters) Mirage of Blaze (Cobalt magazine - Media Blasters) Kizuna (Libre Publishing - Media Blasters with motherf**king Dan Green!!) ...Of course Media Blasters would spend money on dubbing BL since they've dubbed hentai plenty of times and don't we all adore those? Edit: I hesitate to call From the New World a BL or a Yuri anime but rather a Sci Fi horror/drama with a LGBT subplot (novel then manga adaptation Bessatsu Shounen Magazine - Sentai ) Personally I can't Yuri!!! On Ice as BL anime or even stuff like Flip Flappers as a yuri... because they are original screenplays. So is Eva 3.0 but my point is that these shows weren't based of manga or novels and it's just happens to contain romantic relationship between two guys. Boy love anime are such because they adapt preexisting material that were specifically aimed at the young women demographic. That's it! No need for the confusion. Of course this isn't a rule (no doubt that Yuri Kuma Arashi is a girl love anime) but, what I'm trying to say is that there's more to the show than JUST the romantic element. It still sucks Funimation didn't dub Sekai Ichi or Sentai dubbing Love Stage but there might have been some sort of contract/deal limiting them. |
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BlueOla
Posts: 161 |
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I never said that it can't have more going on, but, as the definition suggest BL stories are "focusing on romantic or sexual relationships between male characters". If the relationships are not the focus, surely the story in question is not BL? Honestly whether or not you personally categorize the series as BL doesn't change the fact that the creators label it only as "sports". That's it. I think they know their own story?
What sort of BL coding? I feel like Alexis.Anagram already covered this, so I won't go too deep, but it certainly used few tropes and when it did it was more of a self-aware reference than anything else. Even the seemingly "seme-uke" status of the characters stops being relevant (and in fact stops being a thing entirely) around episode 6. It uses certain things to cue the audience in but soon abandons them and does its own thing, creating this large rift between itself and other BL, and showing that things CAN be done differently. I honestly don't understand how someone can watch it and think "oh yeah, that's just like any other BL". I've been consuming BL for years, so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about.
I feel like the issue again is your own personal categorization and not the official categorization of the anime. It went far because it was the first sports anime, and in fact the first anime with this sort of following that dared to mention and even promise gay marriage. If compared to BL manga then yeah, it didn't go that far, but that's comparing tangerines to oranges. Yeah, they have similar aspects but you can't expect them to do exactly the same things. And tell me of a BL manga covering such topics with such a large following. Exactly. That's what makes YOI a big deal. It's not that it was the first to ever sorta kinda discuss gay marriage in Japanese media, it's that it's the first one that did so and has gotten as close to mainstream as anime ever could (alongside SnK and such). And really, they never come out and say it? I mean... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/94/3a/29/943a295a109e5ba4da45960eba642381.jpg That's pretty unambiguous if you ask me. |
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BlueOla
Posts: 161 |
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Maybe, you know, from the actual definition of BL? "Japanese genre of fictional media focusing on romantic or sexual relationships between male characters". In that case, calling yoi a BL does make it less of a sports anime because it implies that it focuses on the romance and not on the sport, which is just not true.
Except that yoi isn't called a BL. The only people calling it a BL are you guys - officially the anime is labeled sports and nothing more. So no, it's not "the truth", it's just you forcing your opinions on others. And no, of course they didn't write it with LGBT people in mind, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't present the gay relationship well and respectfully anyway? Which they did do, so what does the target demographic matter?
Well, no, the reason it brings negative connotations is because most BL works present some from of rape, dub-con or otherwise questionable sexual behavior as well as painful heteronormativity. I can't think of any of these as positive things and they are related to neither of the reasons you mentioned.
Of course the relationship was deliberately done to be vague, those things don't happen "accidentally" but that doesn't make it bait? Bait means that the relationships is at some point denied, which it never was. And no, not every interview. She's also said that the engagement rings are proof that Victor and Yuuri are soulmates (that's her actual wording) and that they had to rethink their plans for the future because Victor and Yuuri can't live without each other. Intentions aside, I think it's past the territory of baiting? And funnily enough, in the commentary for the volume 4 of the DVDs Kubo and a few of the seiyuu are commenting on ep 7 and on their roles live and when the kiss scene comes up, one of them goes "congratulations on your marriage", and Kubo just calmly corrects "not yet, that's still in the future". If that's "bait" then we don't need non-bait. |
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svines85
Posts: 42 |
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Very interesting, thanks for the great article
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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I'd say YOI has as much narrative focus on the relationships as the sports, and certainly the fans are as invested in the relationship as the sports (if not more so). And it's labeled only as sports because it's Technically Not BL, just like No 6. is labeled only as science fiction or Loveless is labeled only as fantasy. BL varies quite a bit on the romance/other plot distribution, based in part on the size of the magazine it's published in, but BL is pretty niche and even the bigger magazines have difficulty supporting large numbers of long ongoing series. Not officially being BL gives works access to more resources, so they can tell a larger story around the romance.
The character designs. Victor's behavior. Yuri's response to Victor's behavior. The narrative arc of their relationship, and how the romantic bits are framed. It never stops using BL narrative and visual conventions, and it certainly never abandons the seme-uke coding; look at the body language, facial expression, and physical placement in the scene in the hotel room where they talk about their future, or the pairs skate routine at the very end. I don't see this rift you're talking about at all.
For a mainstream anime, yes, it's the first to (get that close to) going there. But I don't see how YOI being successful and popular somehow means its BL influence can be dismissed. And the point is that Victor's comments are juuust ambiguous enough in context that they can be interpreted as a joke. They never say "I love you" to each other, they don't mention marriage when exchanging the rings. That's how Technically Not BL stuff works; no matter how heavily implied, there's nothing you can point to that conclusively demonstrates they're a couple. Your arguments so far, including your response to missts, revolve mainly around "I like it so it's not BL" and "it doesn't have these features I associate with BL but which aren't universal, necessary or definitional for BL". If YOI had placed Victor's arm a few inches lower during the Schrodinger's Kiss, thrown in a couple "I love you"'s and put "an exciting new BL series!" in its marketing, it would have nothing to differentiate itself from reams of BL aside from being an overall top-quality series and having a fat budget for its spectacular animation. |
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iamtooawesome
Posts: 351 Location: Thailand |
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[quote="lebrel"]
An unconfirmed pairing can be freely labeled as headcanon by the fans unless the creators confirmed that it was canon,In this case the Schrodinger's kiss of ep.7 was already confirmed by Mitsuro Kubo during her Spoon 2Di magazine interview where she suggestively implied that it was a kiss (@Aki_the_geek). She recently confirmed in the otomage interview that the ring Yuri presented Victor is also a proof of their status as soulmates . She also added that "Victor and Yuri can't imagine being apart from each other so Yuri moved in with him in Russia". All the magazine translations are available in Aki's twitter. Oh this is a classic, If you're still not updated with the infamous Overcome Chihoko incident that happened during the YOI stage event(that's why it topped tumblr), this is the most official canonical proof that they're officially canon. YOI is not yaoi nor BL, but if the sources are not enough gay for you then I don't know anymore edit: Dramatical Murder got dubbed, but you can guess that it was pretty forced and terrible. The BL merman movie and the boy who fights aliens oav got dubbed too. I dont know why everyone was surprised when that kissed happened in No.6, everybody assumed that it was shounen but it was clearly labeled as Shounen Ai in the manga and it came out first. Last edited by iamtooawesome on Sat May 06, 2017 12:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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BlueOla
Posts: 161 |
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Yeah, no, I somehow can't see any of that. At the beginning - maybe, but in general, no. I'm not saying the first impressions don't remind me of typical BL - they do, but that's why YOI is subversive - it starts off with the typical stuff we know and then flips it on its head. Also I cringe every time someone even as much as implies that Victor is the typical seme and Yuuri is the typical uke. Uke are pretty much 99% girls with a different set of genitals and that certainly can't be said about Yuuri. I'm not saying that Yuuri isn't less confident and in general less out there than Victor (although that shifts considerably later on), but that's not because he's the girl of the relationship but because of his anxiety. And Victor "I used to have really long hair and skated in a costume that suggested both male and female genders" Nikiforov is often coded in feminine ways as well. I'd say they end up equally masculine and feminine in the end, therefore not falling into the "seme-uke" stereotype. The illustration of that is actually the pair skate - in which they switch from male to female roles throughout the routine. I know that many people would like to see them as the typical seme-uke couple, but luckily that's not what they are at all.
Victor's comments are ambiguous? How? How in denial must one be to consider that "ambiguous"? I know that some people prefer to shrug it off as a joke but there's no reason for it to be one and it's very clearly a denial tactic rather than an actual argument since it makes no sense in the context. In fact I'd say that claiming that Victor and Yuuri's relationship is only "implied" is more of a joke. I'll always point to the rings and to Victor's lines regarding them - that's great evidence, it's not my problem if someone wants to deny it. Apart from that there's my favorite scene - the airport scene which is a great depiction of their relationship. That's not how friends act, that's not how a coach and a skater acts - that's how a couple acts. No one can tell me otherwise. And nah, I'd say my main argument is that: It's not officially labeled as BL so it's not BL, and you can't really argue with that. And it doesn't have the features that define a BL series so I think it's fair to say that it's not a BL series. Huge surprise here but gay relationship =/= BL. I'm not saying it couldn't have been a BL or that it couldn't have been marketed as a BL - of course it could have, and it could have been done quite easily, just as you mentioned. But it's the fact that it was marketed as a sports anime with a gay romance on the side that makes the whole difference. It's the first of its genre that wasn't afraid to go that far, despite not officially being BL. It's what gives me hope, as a gay individual, that maybe we'll get more well-written gay relationships in non-BL anime which I would so desperately love to see? Especially in such well-made, popular anime? That's why it NOT being BL matters. |
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