Saturday 12 April 2003

Pic of the day: Tasteful angelic nudity. Leaving a bit to imagination, but you know how much that helps. (Note: Japanese angels, tenshi, seem to be female, unlike the angels of Judaism and its descendants. How convenient for the plot.)

Anime disappointment

It's good to have the day off from work. Freed up some space on the hard disk and downloaded a little more anime.

I am kinda disappointed to learn that the Japanese anime creators are after all not friendly to the practice of fans translating anime into English using subtitles (a process known as fansubbing, if you feel like searching on the Net). It may have been a good thing once, but today Japanese youngsters have access to the Net like the rest of us, and they also learn basic English in school. Now Japanese are not famous for their fluent English (the languages are very different in structure and to some extent sound) but they do master the alphabet and basic vocabulary. How much more do you need to learn "click here"?

Yes, it turns out that Japanese download the free fansubbed copies from the Internet instead of buying the original. The quality is quite good, and only a small part at the bottom of the screen is obscured by English. Besides, Japanese like English. They just don't like it enough to perfect it. It is a scary thought that somewhere in Japan, young people are learning their English from amateur translated anime ...

I have been thinking about this for a few days, but I don't think I have been writing about it before. Sometimes it is hard to remember, because I write so much in my head. The hand may hurt, but the head is still lining up things to write. I guess that is a good thing - it could have been the other way around.

***

After months of waiting, episode 2 of the anime "Happy World" is out in fansub. I am disappointed. I warmly recommended the first episode despite occasional nudity, because I felt they conveyed a message very powerfully. You may or may not agree with the message that a young man needs a young woman to rescue him from an existence of constant misfortune – I certainly don't agree with it in its purest form – but it is a concept for which we are primed by nature or culture. When performed with such grand symbolism (the young woman appears as a literal angel before transforming into a naked girl) it becomes a metaphor or parable that weaves through the whole story.

Or that was what I expected. To my disappointment, the second episode seemed to lose direction and became mired in "ecchiness" (indecency). While not exactly pornographic, there were plenty of scenes that could excite the more sensitive young men. Possibly some dirty old men too, but that's a topic for another time. I guess I had expected the series to tone down the sexual temptations and focus more on the building of an emotional relationship. But this is still lacking. The guy Just Doesn't Get It. (Of course, you could write that off as realism ...)

I still enjoyed the episode, but I am now reluctant to recommend it to the age group where it would seem most natural. That's a shame really. I feel that this kind of myth is basically good and healthy.