You know it is kind of strange right now, a lot of old dubs from the past are starting to pop up on the various different legit streaming sites. I know that such shows never die on any of the pirate sites, but since I do my best to avoid such sites it is useful to me to be able to go back and watch all these old shows. It is that fun feeling of Nostalgia that comes over you when you get to see a show that was once only on something like Toonami, back in the day. Though it is very interesting to watch the obscure sets of Dubbed anime that came out back when I was much younger.

The main thing that interests me is how they try to translate meaningless nicknames or honorifics. True enough we have an honorific system... kind of, here in the west but we do not have anywhere near as much as the Japanese. Well I guess it is not that much... however unlike here in the west the Japanese honorifics are not completely limited to age. Take the honorific "san", the closest English translation would be "Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs". In Japan people are taught to use "san" to be polite to others. As where in America the use of "Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms" actually changes with your age. Well at least in my experience it changes I could just be making something up. However, when I was a child when a teacher or parent or guardian wanted to get my attention that would be the only time when they would use "Mr" on me. It was generally to imply that I had screwed up or was already being punished. Now, as an adult, it has the regular sort of meaning of being polite and respectful. Anyway, enough about that let me talk about the other honorifics. My personal favorites from the past are "Senpai" and "<name>-nii/neechan".

These ones are particularly interesting because back in the 90s we did not understand the cultural significance of those particular honorifics. Any anime fan know senpai is an honorific given out to someone who is your senior. So a lot of 90s anime would literally translate the honorific into the name of the person. My personal favorite example was in Excel Saga. Hyatt would always call Excel "Senior Excel". While a wonderful literal translation it can interrupt the flow of the episode. Not that I am going to complain too much it was pretty funny. Then there was Samurai Showdown. When the kids in Haohmaru's village referred to him as "Big Brother Haohmaru". It was likely that he was just "Haohmaru-niichan"... I do not know for sure because I have not watched the sub of that movie. It is just too much fun to laugh at the terribleness of the dub. Then there is the whole localization thing.

In the 90s it seemed like a lot of things were given two treatments. The first was a literal translation, the second was making whatever what was said suitable for kids. Even back in the 90s anime was still pretty adult. If you watch the subs the translation is not lost at all. However, there is one really strange series that I watched that had a most unusual localization. It was the series Those who Hunt Elves. The dub in this series was full of pop culture references left and right. Every joke, insult, whatever was turned into a pop culture reference. Now maybe it is my age, but this is one of the times when the anime is ruined because I do not get 99% of the references.It is just the strangest thing. You know something is supposed to be funny.. but you are not sure why.. man I hate it when that happens.

Oh well, back to watching a series that was recently released on dubs again. I do so enjoy having the dubs. Now I can do menial grinding in video games without having to worry about missing much. It is also kind of weird to think of how far I managed to get in this series before I stopped watching. I mean... really some shows I think I only managed to get through what 20 episodes. Then I sit down and watch them all in a row and i turns out I was have way through the series when I stopped watching for whatever reason. Hmm well that is just another interesting thing.. I have a hard time perceiving time.