Ever since the announcement of the re-dubbing of Sailor Moon, I've been thinking a bit about the days when anime characters received westernized dub names. Most English speakers knew Usagi as Serena. Likewise, Satoshi from Pokemon became Ash and Taichi from Digimon was Tai. I'm sure there are other series that gave characters westernized names, but I'm not as aware of them as I am of these three examples. If you know of any others, please comment and tell me.
Nowadays, dubbing companies want to preserve characters' original Japanese names. But what if they didn't? Think of an anime set in modern-day Japan. Think of the characters. What would those characters' names be if the dub changed them?
I have often wondered this, especially in the case of the anime, Azumanga Daioh. Chiyo would likely have a "cute" name like "Christie", Sakaki would have a more masculine name like "Morgan", and Osaka's nickname would be "Alabama". Even after all those name changes, there are so many gags and cultural references that they'd have to cut or change to make the show make sense for western audiences. Basically, the show would be butchered. Kind of like the original Sailor Moon dub.
My final thought on the subject regards anime in which the characters' names are clearly western to begin with. When I mentioned Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan to my dad for the first time, he had to cut me off to tell me that Eren's name should be Japanese. I tried to defend myself by telling my dad about Mikasa, but I purposely neglected to mention that her last name is "Ackerman".
I guess the east is as interested in western culture as the west is with eastern culture. At least, that makes things a bit easier to translate.
I'm halfway through sketching all of the Challenge prizes-- three down and three to go. I was about to start the fourth when my mechanical pencil broke. I don't know how it happened. The lead just doesn't want to come out. Guess who'll be buying a new mechanical pencil tomorrow. Anybody know of any good brands that won't randomly stop working?
I might have to rethink the 4KRR. It's very behind schedule, and I get the feeling that one person might be dropping out.
So far, I got no feedback on this post that I made. You don't have to read the thing about the artwork, but I would like to hear thoughts on the rest of the things I brought up.
I also had this idea for a World where people plug their works. Of course, I don't have a lot of active subscribers so I don't know how good plugging your work will be if I created the World.
I wanna draw something so bad now! I haven't posted anything since May and I want to get back in the game.
Back when I had frequent access to the TV, I'd watch the Toonami block on Cartoon Network. I'd come home from school (it occurred in the afternoon at the time) and veg out for two hours.
These were the days before there were hundreds of series available online for viewing. You had to take what the network gave you. So I watched the limited repertoire of anime that Cartoon Network had for viewing. One of those happened to be Tenchi Muyo.
To be honest, I didn't get "Tenchi". There were too many cultural elements that I wasn't familiar with. That, and I wasn't able to catch it everyday. But I still watched it, mostly because of the cat/rabbit/spaceship, Ryo-Ohki. Hey, I got a thing for cute, made-up animals, OK?
Flash forward a decade later, and I found "Tenchi" on Hulu. I thought eventually I'd watch the episodes in order. Well, with the introduction of anime streaming on Anime-Planet, "eventually" happened late last spring (if one could call it spring).
On Anime-Planet, each anime has a series of tags that describes it. For "Tenchi" one such tag was "ecchi".
Wait a sec.
This show aired on TV! During after-school hours! Don't tell me they hacked it to bits like Sailor Moon and DBZ....
I went through a couple subtitled episodes. Nothing too bad. Maybe they didn't water it down as much as I thought. From what I saw, it looked more-less the same.
Then I got to the hot spring episode.
When that episode aired on Cartoon Network, one of the characters, a woman named Ryoko, was wearing a lavender bikini in the hot spring. When I saw the same episode online, she was completely naked. Now, it wasn't graphic or anything. Still it was very apparent that she wasn't wearing any clothes.
Suddenly everything made sense. Except for the fact that Ryoko has a tail at some points, but at other times, she doesn't.
I have spoiled myself to death with Naruto. Every week or so, I go on Leaf Ninja and click on the little manga spoiler updates. Then I read the poorly written fan reactions. Lately, there haven't been many fan comments on the main pages, so I went to the forums. I learned some big news on those forums: Naruto is ending this fall.
Do I believe it? Yeah. From reading the manga synopses, it doesn't seem that it can go on much longer. Besides, I think the fans are losing interest. After all, comments on Leaf Ninja are few and far between. Even the guy running the site hasn't done much updating.
Personally, I think it's time for Naruto to end. It wore out its welcome some years ago. My own interest declined towards the end of the Pain arc. Now I'm over 100 episodes behind in the series, stuck somewhere in a repetitive filler arc.
For those wondering, I don't read the manga due to the inconsistencies in the translation. I'm not fond of fan translations (which are more like transliterations) either 'cause they're illegal. Heck, I find most action manga hard to follow anyway.
I still consider myself a Naruto fan, though nowhere near as hard core as I used to be. After all, it was my favorite anime at one point. Still, I think it's time to let go. I have every intention to finish the series, filler arcs and all. Then I'll have some closure. I'll remember the good times when the characters dreamed of achieving great things, when Naruto wasn't all-powerful, and when the dead characters didn't come back to life.
I still wonder if Naruto will officially advance in ninja rank after all this time. And I still wonder whom each character will wind up with romantically. I guess those answers won't be too far away.
I was thinking about all kinds of ideas for characters, drawings, and World posts. I want to get them all down before I forget. Warning: This could get long, so I'm breaking it up into a bunch of pages.
Character/story ideas...
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