Re: About Kenji, a Fanfiction character.


to megami@usagi.jrd.dec.com
from Les Jenkins <Dream@cris.com>
subject Re: About Kenji, a Fanfiction character.
date Sat, 01 Mar 1997 10:53:29 -0500
hikari wrote:

  I heard from people who tried to do that and got hammered.  So,
  well,
  what shall I do?  Maybe other people have higher degree of patience,
  but
  for me, I simply don't respond well to nasty thing, that's part of
  my
  nature which I am afraid can't be changed easily.  And you, my
  friend,
  you at least pay attention to details in the AMG series, but you
  can't
  say the same for others, right?  And I am sure you know of people
  who
  based their stories *solely* on DH version and dubbed OVA (which
  contains a lot of translation errors, such as that "I want you to be
  my
  girlfriend" thing), not to mention even with such limited
  information,
  they choose to overlook even some more useful hints.  That doesn't
  seem
  very responsible to me.

Personally, and this is entirely an opinion on my part, I think you're
getting your panties in a wad over nothing.  Still, your comments
brought up a couple of points I thought I=A0should cover.  About how some
of the fanfic writers are basing their stories solely on the Dark Horse
and dubbed OVA series which contain a lot of "translation errors" allow
me to point out that it is a common misconception that subtitled anime
is a straight and literal translation of the original material when, in
fact, it often is not. While it is true that dubbed anime does contain
more "adaptations" of dialogue than subbed does, that's primarily for
proper lip synching purposes and every attempt is usually made to make
the new line as close as possible to the old one, with the possible
exception of dubs done by Streamline Pictures (which is an entirely
different topic I won't get into here).  Subbed, however, is not without
it's own frequent adaptations.  Especially when the original dialogue
would make little to no sense in English.  That's half the reason you
get liner notes with subbed anime is so they can tell you what they
changed and why.  To think that you can watch either and dubbed or
subbed and get a complete picture is pure folly.  To do that you must
learn Japanese and watch the original unedited version of the show.
Same goes for the manga.

Now, considering that Japanese is easily as difficult a language to
speak as English, and arguably harder to learn how to read, I would
think it a bit unreasonable to expect every fanfic author who happens
not to be Japanese already to go through the time and expense necessary
to learn Japanese before putting pen to paper and writing up a short fan
fiction.  For most folks anime watching, and fan fic writing, is just a
hobby they do to relax and fill up some of the spare time they have when
they're not busy earning a living or going to school or raising a
family.  On top of that, even if these people DID=A0go through the troubl=
e
and expense to learn Japanese before attempting to pen a fan fic,
there's nothing that says they will interpret the stories in the manga
and anime in the same way YOU do.  That's why it's called "Fan Fiction".
It's one fan's take on a story based on characters and concepts from
another show or manga they happen to be a fan of and it's based wholly
on THEIR=A0interpretation of that show or manga and whatever material fro=
m
that show or manga they've managed to be exposed to.  Whether or not you
agree=A0with their interpretation is really beside the point.  If you're
looking at these fan fictions and expecting them to be 100% in
compliance with events and concepts depicted in the original manga then
you're really setting yourself up for disappointment.  Hell, you're
lucky if the author of the original manga is 100% consistent throughout
their own series, let alone a fan in another country working off of
whatever material they've managed to come across.  Even the folks who
turn the mangas into animes take artistic license to hand when doing
so.  I don't know if you've noticed, but the stories that introduces
each of the Goddesses in the anime is quite different from the ones in
the manga.  In fact, only the first tape introducing Keiichi and
Belldandy comes close to the story presented in the manga.  Urd and
Skuld's intro stories are completely different in terms of the events
depicted.=A0 Belldandy is not quite so demure in her original manga
depiction's either.  I rather like her personality in the manga a bit
more than the anime as she's a bit too subservient in the anime for my
tastes.

The point being, if you're going to be a purist then you probably
shouldn't bother to read any fan fiction at all as you're not going to
be happy with any of it.  However, if you can accept the idea that fan
fiction is a work by someone who may have different views of the
material than you do and can enjoy a different take on the same
concepts, then fan fiction will probably be right up your alley.  If
you're going to insist on reading fan fiction and then bitching about
the parts you don't agree with then you should expect to get some flack
over it.  However, if you offer up constructive criticism, perhaps the
author will see your point and take it into consideration.  Even as
such, it's still the author's take on a subject and not the real thing
and should be viewed as such.

That's just my 2 cents on the topic.
Your mileage may vary.

Les
The Casual Otaku

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Les Jenkins    | The Casual Otaku (http://www.cris.com/~Dream)
Dream@cris.com | Animecca: The Anime Webzine (http://animecca.com/)


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