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Finally got around to watching Hellsing Ultimate (or whatever the one that actually follows the plot of the manga is called) between Netflix discs of Black Lagoon, and holy crap the English.
I dunno if this is a trend or not, but there was a bit of it in Hellsing and Black Lagoon is just LOADED with it--English dialogue, spoken by VAs who do not themselves speak English, interspersed bizarrely into the Japanese dialogue. I don't expect a Japanese show produced for a Japanese audience to have fluent English, but it -does- sound awful. And what's worse, the choice of which lines to speak in English is so arbitrary and bizarre. In Black Lagoon especially--one second Revy is complaining (in Japanese) that she doesn't speak Japanese. Then she's telling the other character to speak English, in English. Then, despite the fact that apparently neither character can speak or understand the other's language, they hold a perfectly normal conversation. In Japanese.
The utter strangeness of Balalaika speaking (lots of) (awkward) English so Rock can translate it for a Japanese group is rendered even more bizarre by the fact that Balalaika speaks Russian in that same episode--and it's heavily implied that Rock can use Russian in the first place. In the manga, at least, he translates directly from Russian.
And there's the assumption that English is the language spoken between the Black Lagoon's crew, since three of them are American, Revy only speaks English and maybe Thai, and Rock speaks a few different languages. But they all speak Japanese, because it's a Japanese show. As it should be. Why all the weird orders in English, then? Is there something so uniquely idiomatic about "Hit it, Dutch" that it requires making that poor VA sound things out again? Makes no sense to me.
Consistency, producers. CONSISTENCY. At least try?
(the best example I can think of re: doin it rite is probably Code Geass, where "Yes, my lord!" is spoken in English to the British nobility and everything else is left in Japanese. There's also a charming bit in Nadesico where Captain Yurika speaks English to cheerfully threaten the representatives of a foreign government--the show subtitles her in Japanese, and the translation of those subtitles is -not- what she's saying. I loved that.)
I dunno if this is a trend or not, but there was a bit of it in Hellsing and Black Lagoon is just LOADED with it--English dialogue, spoken by VAs who do not themselves speak English, interspersed bizarrely into the Japanese dialogue. I don't expect a Japanese show produced for a Japanese audience to have fluent English, but it -does- sound awful. And what's worse, the choice of which lines to speak in English is so arbitrary and bizarre. In Black Lagoon especially--one second Revy is complaining (in Japanese) that she doesn't speak Japanese. Then she's telling the other character to speak English, in English. Then, despite the fact that apparently neither character can speak or understand the other's language, they hold a perfectly normal conversation. In Japanese.
The utter strangeness of Balalaika speaking (lots of) (awkward) English so Rock can translate it for a Japanese group is rendered even more bizarre by the fact that Balalaika speaks Russian in that same episode--and it's heavily implied that Rock can use Russian in the first place. In the manga, at least, he translates directly from Russian.
And there's the assumption that English is the language spoken between the Black Lagoon's crew, since three of them are American, Revy only speaks English and maybe Thai, and Rock speaks a few different languages. But they all speak Japanese, because it's a Japanese show. As it should be. Why all the weird orders in English, then? Is there something so uniquely idiomatic about "Hit it, Dutch" that it requires making that poor VA sound things out again? Makes no sense to me.
Consistency, producers. CONSISTENCY. At least try?
(the best example I can think of re: doin it rite is probably Code Geass, where "Yes, my lord!" is spoken in English to the British nobility and everything else is left in Japanese. There's also a charming bit in Nadesico where Captain Yurika speaks English to cheerfully threaten the representatives of a foreign government--the show subtitles her in Japanese, and the translation of those subtitles is -not- what she's saying. I loved that.)
