Japanese-English

Post by **AndyThomas** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 10:34 pm

Well, I'd hesitate to say I'm a whizz anymore, but I should be able to pick out the difference between father and uncle, yes - is the video on your site? Also, in terms of Hagen faking his death - I think I need to watch the episode again, but wasn't he simply stranded? Bearing in mind he was on a defencelss planet, perhaps he would have given them away by trying to contact Earth - and in any case would have been out of range... I suppose once Lamia's heritage was revealed to him he was a liability, and it would have flagged her presence to have returned. As to raising Lamia in isolation - well, bit tricky to explain where he'd just got a baby girl from, perhaps?!

Post by **AndyThomas** » Thu Jul 11, 2002 1:16 pm

*Andy shakes off a vision of Mike rugby tackling an unsuspecting tourist, ramming headphones on them and demanding to know if Prof Hagen is really Shiro's Dad!*Um, yes, right - what I was wanting to post about was, it's funny how these things come around and how people's views have changed; have a read of this from last September:Blast from the pastI'd almost forgotten how long ago the old forum kicked off, December 1998... wow... It's funny going back that far actually, you can see just how far off track the memories were until the full tapes turned up!

Jim Box · Post by **Jim Box** » Thu Jul 11, 2002 1:25 pm

Hmmm, Iv'e been reading this thread with interest and there is a Star Wars element to all of this which may have been unnoticed by all.Shiro doesn't live with his dad yet ends up at the acadamy, Lamia (Princess Lamia/Leia?) ends up with old Ginga face unbeknown to Shiro (Luke and Leia?)Perhaps to protect them from the Imperial master they were seperated that way, Lamia for her powers, Shiro for his skills as a pilot.Kirara does a good Chewbacca impression anyway!Perhaps old Ginga/ Shiro's dad was at some time threatened to be some sort of Darth Vader type dude.But tht later fell on Caliban perhaps?Lamias powers are equivalent to "The Force" hence the Imperial master wanting her to join and be on the dark side, and hence the search for F01.Jim

Post by **AndyThomas** » Thu Jul 11, 2002 2:44 pm

Hm. There are certainly design elements of Star Fleet that are bang out of Star Wars, the cockpit laser guns being the most blatant examples - and arguably the whole shape of X "No we didn't rip off an X Wing" Bomber!But I think it's reaching in terms of storyline, because Lamia and Shiro clearly aren't genetically related and there's no rebellion involved etc. Plus it isn't Shiro who goes head to head with the Imperial "Darth Vader" Master - it's Lamia/Leia.The other interesting difference is that although I've tended to draw similarities between Luke Skywalker and Shiro, Shiro is actually an academy brat whereas Luke wasn't until he actually joined the Rebellion. There's no sense that he was ever going to be anything other than a fighter...I'll tell you what Star Fleet is somewhat similar to though - the old style Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials. Why? Because of the cliffhanger endings and the ongoing story. It's a funny old mix of genres...

Happosai · Post by **Happosai** » Thu Jul 11, 2002 5:55 pm

Just a quick pointer about the use of family titles in Japanese: I know they use some titles, e.g. Auntie (oba-san), Sister (onee-san), Brother (onii-san), etc. for people who are not actually blood relations, e.g. a young girl might refer to an older girl as onee-san (older sister).However, I'm not sure if someone would refer to someone else as father (ojii-san) if they weren't related (other than to refer to someone else's father)...especially if addressing them formally.I'll have to do a bit of research...[Happosai]

felice · Post by **felice** » Mon Oct 14, 2002 11:02 pm

My theory on the relationship between Prof Hagen, Shiro, and Lamia, is that the Prof and his wife had a messy divorce shortly after Shiro's birth (possibly due to him spending too much time on the X project), and she got custody of the kid. Despite having regular visitation rights with Shiro, the Prof was lonely, and when he found Lamia he was very happy to have a child to raise full time himself. So, Shiro and Lamia both knew Professor Hagen as their father, but don't know each other well.

FZeroOne · Post by **FZeroOne** » Tue Oct 15, 2002 6:18 pm

Quote Quote: from AndyThomas on 9:18 am on July 10, 2002One other thing - when you consider when this dubbing work was done, very early 80s, Manga Entertainment wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye. So I suppose the industry's experience with translating Japanese shows must have been relatively limited at that point? Fair comment? Before I begin - IIRC, "Ginga" is Japanese for "Milky Way", a quite common visual background in many animated productions. It was also a Japanese bomber from W.W. I.I, and some anime do go quite heavy on the military analogies ( ever wonder why so many heroic mecha have "Zero" on the end of their name?! ), but I suspect X-Bomber isn't one of them. I don't know a great deal about anime translating - my Japanese skills beyond "Ba-kas!" are, erm, zero - but going by what I do know about the early days of anime in the West:It is probably fair to say that the anime translation business in the early days wasn't overly developed. However, theres quite a bit more early Western anime appearances than is sometimes considered, including Astro-Boy, Gigantor, and Battle of the Planets. Its probably fair to say, though, that in those days the licensees were more interested in trying to get the series cleared for U.S. T.V syndication - and this would be *childrens* T.V. - and to ####, or rather, Heck, with accurate translations. There was probably also a rather smaller pool of suitable and experienced voice actors in those days as well, which is probably why you get lots of deja vu when watching early anime releases! These days, with the explosion in US anime relases, theres a larger pool of voice actors (though you still get deja vu - watch Evangelion then Nadesico on Saiko-Exciting to see what I mean), there are computer aids to help dialogue fit mouth movements better, and some recent anime dubs have been absolutely superb - and this coming from a real sub fan.