Okay, I don’t mean that. Well, not really. Well, I mean it a little. Let me explain what I mean.
I decided over the past few days to start watching some anime without subtitles and without dubs. I mean, the native Japanese, no filter.
My Japanese isn’t good enough to say I understand everything. Depending on the episode/anime/context, I’d say I understand between twenty and fifty percent of the conversation.
But I didn’t realize just how much translations are a crutch. There’s so much cultural subtletly, so much voice acting subtletly, so much animation subtlety from which the subtitles are a complete distraction. Watching without subtitles and understanding the native Japanese makes it so much like a different anime it’s not even funny. And people who use subtitles – or kami forbid, dubs, completely miss this.
I’m really not kidding about that. I watched the first three episodes of “Hibike! Euphonium” without subtitles, and it feels like I’m watching an entirely different anime. It feels foreign. And that’s, I think, what it’s supposed to feel like, because, at the end of the day, it is foreign. The cultural things that the translation (sometimes by necessity) glosses over can’t be glossed over. For example, at one point, Asuka said “Kumiko-han“. That’s a subtletly completely ignored in the translation, mostly because you can’t do much with it. Han is a Kansai honorific. How would you translate that?
Now, if one is watching because they know some Japanese but not enough to understand everything they’re saying, fine. I get that. I use subtitles for that purpose myself. I wouldn’t understand half the things going on in an anime if I didn’t have subtitles.
YET. I wouldn’t understand them YET.
But there’s a difference between using subtitles/translations to help with sticky things that you might not understand, and using subtitles/translations with absolutely no intention of ever understanding the native language. It just doesn’t work, and leads to things like those godawful localizations from those godawful localizers who are proud of not knowing or understanding the culture. And I’m not really convinced that having subtitles/dubs/etc., is worth the trouble that people who don’t (and won’t) understand the culture ultimately cause to anime and the Japanese culture it represents.
So I realize that subtitles/dubs aren’t going away. And they do quite a bit to normalize and/or popularize Japanese media, such as anime. But a part of me wishes they would. Because then the people who would actually watch from there are the ones who would have actually put forth the effort to understand it.
Is this gatekeeping? I guess so. But the thing is, gatekeeping isn’t always a bad thing.
It’s not always a good thing either.
Which is why I said I mean it a little.
If it’s not clear, I’m kinda torn on this. I know there are advantages and disadvantages, I know it’s not always a good idea to gatekeep, as much as I know it’s sometimes the best idea in the world. I know that anime would benefit from being appreciated by people who can’t speak the language, as much as it is detracted from.
But at the end of the day, my wish is, at the very least, that people would understand, and care about, what they’re actually missing. Because, you’re missing a lot.