Yuu, a young healer with the power to heal the hearts of monsters, receives a mysterious bottle from his father as a gift. When Yuu touches the bottle, Merc, a girl made of liquid, appears from it. Merc has no memories from before she met Yuu and wants to learn more about who she is, so the two of them set out on a journey through various countries. – ANN
Episode Summary: Yuu is a young man with a developing ability to heal agitated beasts and monsters. His adventuring dad brings him home what looks like just a weird bottle of water, but inside is a magical water fairy named Merc with a snappy personality and a desire to lead Yuu out on his own adventures.
As Yuu and Merc plan to embark on a quest (since Merc’s horoscope leads her to believe that it’s the best time to do so), they get involved with a small, fluffy monster who seems insistent that they follow him. Their fluffy friend leads them to a large monster in need of healing. Though Yuu’s abilities may be somewhat untrained, his natural talents are able to calm the beast. To show thanks, their fluff ball companion elects to join them as they adventure into the unknown.
Masaru Saiga is a fifth-grade boy who aims to become a puppeteer. After Sadayoshi Saiga — the CEO of the giant home telephone maker Saiga and Masaru’s father — passes away, Masaru inherits 18 billion yen. Masaru is targeted for his wealth, and is saved by two people. Narumi Katō is a man who has studied Kung-Fu and has a weird illness called “Zonapha Syndrome,” and Shirogane is a silver-haired woman who controls the puppet “Arurukan” (Harlequin). Together, Masaru, Narumi, and Shirogane get thrown into various conspiracies by those who would try to steal Masaru’s fortune. – ANN
Episode Summary: Narumi is a martial-arts expert, but you wouldn’t know it from his day job as a costumed advertisement for a circus. As he’s handing out flyers to passers-by, a boy runs into him with his luggage. This young man, Masaru, is on the run from several very threatening men-in-black who seem immune to physical attacks. Narumi and Masaru escape from them onto a train, but their safety is only temporary; these dark figures, who are soon revealed to be puppet-like automatons, attack their car and derail the train, crashing it into Narumi’s circus tent.
Inside, Masaru and Narumi find themselves cornered, until a silver-haired woman wearing a sparkling unitard descends from a tightrope above and takes control of the huge marionette in Masaru’s luggage. This woman, Shirogane, has a long-standing commitment to Masaru’s family, and uses her skills to rescue him. Still, she doesn’t know much about the lay of the land, so as Masaru receives medical treatment, Narumi and Shirogane reach an uneasy truce.
Mullin lands his dream job with the demon king he’s always held in awe, but when his tenure begins, it turns out the demon king isn’t quite what he expected. Beelzebub is a hardworking female demon but her dedication to her job is only rivaled by her love for everything fluffy. – ANN
Episode Summary: Though human beings have many myths about Hell, in truth it’s a very pleasant place, populated by demons who don’t appear as sinister as expected. In fact, they’re actually fallen angels who still (in some ways) serve God, and they’re led by the intelligent, powerful, and cuteness-obsessed demon Beelzebub. Beelzebub’s assistant, Mullin, has always looked up to his leader (and might even have feelings for her), but can’t reconcile the image he had of her with the reality of her personality. In truth, Beelzebub is very capable, but her comfort around Mullin manifests as laziness and continued expression of her love of soft and fluffy things.
Their relationship is a bit of a tug-of-war, which blows up when Beelzebub wanders off in Hell Ginza and gets lost. Mullin worries that, in spite of her battle prowess, she’ll end up getting mugged – or worse. When he finds her, he lets his emotions show, and Beelzebub doesn’t know how to react. The real problem is that she’s started to feel feelings she doesn’t have the experience or the vocabulary to define, and it seems to be Mullin’s fault.
I’d planned to finish seasonal anime stuff before my husband and I left on an out-of-town vacation – obviously, that didn’t happen (the vacation was fun and much-needed, though!). It’s funny, though, how I start looking forward to the next season when I’m done with the current one, but while I’m still in the midst of the current season I always have the urge to write about unrelated things. I’m sure it’s a side-effect of my anxious and avoidant personality issues. Anyway, I spend a decent amount of time keeping up with ani-Twitter in general and recently caught a thread in passing regarding the state of anime simulcast streaming. The specific conversation was in regards to some of the less user-friendly aspects of streaming websites, as well as how those sites might be disinclined to make changes or updates because of a (specific?) group folks who “evangelize” legal streaming in spite of its perceived problems. The thread got me thinking about the situation we’re in to the point I thought it was worth writing about.
To put it plainly, one could argue that I’m one of those streaming evangelists. When I present panels at anime conventions, part of the information I often provide to the audience are the legal channels by which they can view the anime I’m discussing. I also use the official English translations of the titles when they’re available, so that when people are searching for anime they’re more likely to find those viewing avenues instead of “unofficial” ones. To me, operating this way isn’t as much out of a sense of duty (although I do know a couple people who work within the US industry side of things), as it is a perception of how much easier it is than what I used to have to deal with to watch anime.
Like a lot of fans of my generation, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with fan-subs and other unofficial means of viewing anime. Let me tell you, the means of access that we have now is leaps and bounds more user-friendly than the mish-mash of torrent or direct-download websites and video formats that were the norm many years ago. Without going too far into it (again), for a long time there were no good central hubs of anime acquisition, no standardization of formats until much later in the game, and there was often some kind of delay between broadcast and episode availability for the simple reason that people were volunteering their time to perform unpaid fan-work to translate and encode video files. And you often didn’t have much of a choice in the quality of the translation; I still have some video files from the early-ish 2000’s where a native Italian-speaker translated a series into English because no one else was doing it – it was a good service to the community, but it definitely doesn’t read that well. On the upside, there was a much more direct line to translators in those days, along with supplementary notes about translations. I feel like I learned a lot from people whose language and cultural knowledge of Japan was more expansive than mine and I suspect (and hope) some of those individuals are able to do paid translation work nowadays.
“Chotto, shitsukoi desu yo!” – Shitsukoi (しつこい) translates to “obstinate” or “persistent.” The context is that a man has approached this woman on the street about a “job” (forced prostitution) and won’t leave her alone. From “Tokyo Tribe 2” translated by Kanji Subs.
That isn’t to say that modern streaming translations are altogether infallible or always superior to fan translations. While I suspect that some criticisms of streaming translations come from fans whose familiarity with the techniques of translation and understanding of the Japanese language might not always be top-notch, I’ve also been in situations where my rusty grasp of Japanese and my decent English ability have been able to suss-out some unsatisfying “official” translation choices. In some cases the problem may be as minor as dialog that doesn’t “flow” properly in English; translation is always a push-and-pull between forces that demand slavish accuracy and those that translate more liberally in service of fuller localization. I’m more on the side of liberal translations myself, as long as the original intent is preserved, but there’s absolutely a great deal of wiggle room.
Panty says, “yarou” (野郎), a suffix meaning “wild or uncouth” (literally “field boy”) that, in context, often has negative connotations. Panty is mad because the announcer was wrong about her career. The word “yarou” doesn’t have a sexuality component; a better and less problematic choice (imo) would have been a term implying a lack of intelligence. Official Funimation streaming translation.
In other cases I find that language sensitivity is an issue that even official, vetted translations have trouble avoiding. The examples that stick out to me are those that use gendered or sexual slurs in place of more general or neutral words. While I love Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt in large part due to its general vulgarity, the official English translation makes some of these kinds of missteps. It definitely says something about our culture when insults towards male characters are so frequently focused on their lack of perceived masculinity, and the series is full of them. Even back in 2010 when this series was released, though, I feel as though words like “f*g” or “s*ssy” were already perceived as insensitive and generally off-limits, even if the reasoning wasn’t as clear to many people; the fact that these subtitles were not only produced, but were also not subsequently edited and finessed when I think it would have been easy enough to fix at least the online version, just goes to show that paid professionals have their blind-spots and other subjective challenges. For every Land of the Lustrous or Made in Abyss, which have translations that consciously use gender-neutral language for non-binary characters, there are several other anime translations that stumble. Let’s not forget thatYuri!!! On Ice, an anime released only 2 years ago that’s largely about a romantic relationship between two men, still had a subtitle translation that assumed a potential lover’s gender when none was implied by the Japanese word used.
Here, Victor uses the term “koibito” (恋人), which translates to “lover” and is gender-neutral. This line takes place after mentioning Minako, Yuri’s ballet instructor – it’s an understandable (though somewhat careless) error which was corrected in Funimation’s English Dub. Official Crunchyroll streaming translation.
It’s easy enough to be an armchair translator when you’re not the one sweating to complete an episode translation under a deadline, and I think that’s something many of us, whether we’re enthusiastic about anime streaming services or not, forget to acknowledge. Language is full of nuances, idioms, and complications; to expect a translation put together at odd-hours of the day (which sometimes becomes a reality if an anime’s scripts aren’t available with enough lead-time), quickly and with little opportunity for translation-checking, to be perfect right out of the gate is always going to be unreasonable, no matter how talented the translator.
I agree, though, with some criticisms of streaming services, mostly in regards to the inability of viewers to provide feedback about errors or other aspects of the viewing experience. While I do think that some translation criticisms boil down to pedantry or one’s desire for one language to reflect another one like a mirror (rather than as, for example, a different instrumental arrangement of a popular song), as I’ve mentioned there are choices that are more obviously actual mistakes – mistakes that have remained in place for months or years, based on the screen captures I took for this piece today. If there were some obvious feedback button on an episode’s streaming page where users could report a language issue, time-stamped at the appropriate point in the episode, that might be helpful to quell some of the complaints. This would, of course, require a new set of resources, including employees available to read and determine the veracity of the complaints, as well as a way to easily change subtitles or re-upload files, but it could be an avenue for innovation that hasn’t been explored yet. To Crunchyroll’s credit, they’ve already shown that they can respond to ad-hoc user feedback; earlier this anime season, they added a content warning to the first episode of Goblin Slayer after users responded to the unexpected shocking nature of certain scenes.
Oh, Lupin… from “Lupin III: Part 2,” Episode 155, screen cap from Crunchyroll.
Ultimately, though, some rough translations and other relatively minor issues aren’t enough to scare me off from being a streaming evangelist. While I hate to beleaguer the point, as I’ve said my earlier fandom years were defined by fly-by-night translation groups, hard-to-acquire digi-subs, and a general decentralization of fan spaces that made it a lot of work to be an anime fan. This time period had its perks, not the least of which was its frontier spirit and its enduring illusion of being somehow more “special” because of its niche qualities. Unfortunately, anime fandom was also a bastion of sexist gate-keeping and online (and in-person) harassment, both things I experienced many a time in supposedly “welcoming” spaces. Streaming services, many of which, like Amazon or Netflix, are general-use and present anime alongside other popular media, have helped bring anime out into the light, thus inviting new and more diverse fans and helping to drown-out at least some of the jerks. A lot of non-anime fans I know have at least heard of Crunchyroll and are familiar with what anime is and what some of the popular series are (and I no longer have to keep explaining that anime isn’t “Japanese cartoon porn!”). And streaming is easy, relatively inexpensive, and available in high-definition – all things my college-aged self only dreamed about. The only thing streaming isn’t is permanent, and that’s something I hope changes; while buying digital downloaded episodes on Amazon or iTunes is definitely an option, it’s still an imperfect one. As someone with a collector’s tendencies, I prefer to own the things I like, and that’s becoming more difficult.
I’m sure in 10 years we’ll all be preoccupied with some other very passionate debate about anime consumerism. The streaming landscape may have changed completely by then, and with every improvement there may be an equal amount of new, unforeseen problems to deal with. I don’t fault people for wanting more convenience and user-friendliness from their hobbies and experiences. However, I also think it’s important to take stock of what we have now, and to be thankful for the challenges that have been addressed and overcome; myself from 10 years ago would be blown away by the things we fans have access to today. Though I’m not trying to come across as some old crone waving her broom around and yelling at kids to “get off my lawn!” I do think that seeing the transformation firsthand (similar to the transition between analog to digital video and audio formats and the continual increase in internet speeds, to name a few other technological advances from my lifetime) has allowed me the perspective to give a little leeway toward companies providing me a much-welcome service that I thought I may never see. And I’ll definitely keep letting people know that it exists!
And as a palate cleanser, an actual parody sub. “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” by Duwang subs.
Minato Narumiya is beginning his freshman year at the local Kazemai High School. Mr. Tommy, adviser to the Japanese archery Club, is keen to recruit Minato, as well as his childhood friends Seiya Takehaya and Ryohei Yamanouchi. Ryohei convinces the reluctant Minato to attend the Club’s orientation, where he also meets Kaito Onogi and Nanao Kisaragi. Singling Minato out, Mr. Tommy introduces him as a rare Japanese archery talent and asks him to demonstrate in front of everyone. However, Minato’s arrow fails to hit the mark because he is afflicted by a serious condition. – ANN
Episode Summary: With a new school year comes a fresh start, and Minato needs one; after the death of his mother, most of the household responsibilities have fallen on his shoulders. At a new school where he expects to know very few people, he thinks he might be able to fade into the background enough to go home rather than joining a club (which he doesn’t have time for anyway). This plan falls apart quickly as several factors come into focus. First, his neighbor Seiya is one of the few people from his previous school attending the same high school, so they end up having to interact as a matter of course. Secondly, the two boys reunite with Ryohei, a friend from their elementary-school days who transferred away in middle school. Thirdly, the high school is hoping to resurrect its Kyudo – traditional archery – program, and Minato may end up right in the middle of it.
Minato has some history with the martial art, though he’s adamant that his domestic responsibilities necessarily keep him from getting involved in the newly-re-established club. His friends, suspecting that his internal desire might win-out against his perceived familial obligations, manage to get him to come to the first club meeting. But it turns out that Minato is carrying some additional baggage and the resulting anxiety results in missed shots and a some subsequent bad feelings. As he mulls the situation, he finds himself drawn to a hilltop Kyudo practice field within a shrine as the moon glows above. There he meets a mysterious archer, one with beautiful form and perfect aim.
