Anime culture and D&D

[Corinth]

I dunno if it is. It would be cool to see a prequel though!

For the record, Curse of the Golden Flower is in no way connected to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's a Zhang Yimou film, so it's a tragedy (albeit a pretty and well-done one) and expresses a rather pessimistic point of view. Still worth seeing (I have), even if there isn't much action until the later acts.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

That said, a lot of subtitle purists are a bit to elitist for me. Dubbing has gotten a LOT better, and a lot of the issues they take up are more of a complaint against localization as opposed to accuracy. Heck, I dont understand Japanese in any case, so it's not like I'm getting any of the 'artistic effect' to begin with.

There are a couple of reasons I prefer subtitles.

First, I have never seen a dubbed film that manages to sync a character's performance by the original actor with the dubbed dialogue. I'm not just talking about the movement of the mouths, I'm talking about the whole performance - it's incredibly distracting when the images on screen don't match up with the sounds in my ear.

Second, the majority of dubbed films use fairly inappropriate voices for the characters. This is doubly annoying when the foreign actors have done English-language work but aren't voicing their own characters for the dubs - I'd much rather hear even heavily-accented English from what I know to be Zhang Ziyi's real voice than some English or American chick. I've never seen a dubbed film which even used an actor with (or imitating) the appropriate accent for the character.

Third, even when I don't understand the language in which the actors are speaking, their performance carries over in a combination of their intonation and their physical performance - a combination which is never matched by an Anglophone actor dubbing the character.

Fourth, dubs often involve small or large rewriting or dumbing down of the dialogue and story. Subtitled films aren't immune from this - the Anglophone release of Hero dumbs down some of the political and religious allusions in the dialogue, which I enjoyed in the English subtitles on the Chinese DVD release I borrowed from Hong. Historically speaking, though, it's a much bigger problem with dubbed films.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's it!

The thing I'm wondering is if it is a prequel to Crouchimng Tiger. Ang Lee had suggested that he may do that.

Heh. It's Wuxia with cleavages.

Not that there is anything wrong with it.

 

[BroccoliRage]

Heh. It's Wuxia with cleavages.

Not that there is anything wrong with it.

Zhiang and cleavage. You can't go wrong.

 

[BRP2]

It could have been worse, like reading the Harry Potter collection, or The Night Before Christmas.

Um... both series are very popular among adults ;o.

PS. Why are people bringing up face-faults and bigs eyes in a game which consists entirely of stats on paper and talking?

 

[Moon-Lancer]

The content is what draws most people, though, and I think that's the primary difference for me between Anime and most things we've seen in America. I think it's the primary appeal for Anime as well. Japanese animation, being a respected art form there (and indeed most of the rest of the world; French animation seems to really be catching up to them) instead of a just-for-kids-and-cheap-ads maginalized joke it became in America, uses a lot of themes and strong emotional impacts you don't see in American TV animation unless it comes in the back door so to speak. Thankfully we're startng to see that change, mainly due to the influence and popularity of anime. Once we remove some of the stronger obstacles to such content, we'll have much better animation.

I very much agree with this. and the French really are upping the anti (triplets of bellvew/bellmont?). Hopefully this will lead to animation in America that is well animated AND thought out with Philosophy to boot. I would die if 2d animation like Disney or Dream-works came out in Amarica with content like lain and ghost in the shell, or berserk.

On that topic, i think anime has changed my view of d&d, but not for the worse, but for the better. When i play d&d, i try to imortilize anime like record of loddoss war. That anime reminds me why i love d&d. Sure I have an idea of what D&D was like in the 80s, as i played a few games of somthing similar. But today Record of loddoss war is all were its at. I dont think i would ever play a record of loddoss war rpg, but the feeling i get when i watch the ending of credits of that anime really is the soil for my love of d&d. I dont think i would be playing today if it wasent for that anime, so yeah, anime did change me. I think anime also makes the tumble skill a whole lot funner if you ask me.

 

[Corinth]

Zhiang and cleavage. You can't go wrong.

For the record: Zhang Ziyi isn't in Curse of the Golden Flower. The female lead is Gong Li.

 

[Sound of Azure]

For the record: Zhang Ziyi isn't in Curse of the Golden Flower. The female lead is Gong Li.

This movie just keeps sounding better and better!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Not in the least. I'm all for RPGs that are based around Anime, but D&D is not one of them and doesn't do anime well. So, I won't try to force it.

The problem with this statement is that it's way too wide.

D&D and say, Lodoss Wars are made hand in hand for each other.

D&D and Dragonball Z on the other hand... not quite so much.

Anime is a medium for storytelling and covers pretty much all genres just like 'live actor' movies. I've seen animes that cover cops & robbers, samurai period pieces, fantasy pieces that would fit right into D&D (Berserk anyone? Heroic Legend of Arslan? Lodoss Wars?) as well as lighter materials.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Keeping in mind that I'm mostly talking about dubbed anime here... (Live action dubs are a WHOLE different kettle of fish)

the majority of dubbed films use fairly inappropriate voices for the characters. I've never seen a dubbed film which even used an actor with (or imitating) the appropriate accent for the character.

Most anime series are adapted from manga to begin with, which means that in some cases I dont think the actor portrays the character right in the first place. It might grow on me, but there's been several times that I feel an English Dub voice fits better then the Japanese. Usually, however, it's a case of who I listen to first. Accents are a bit troublesome as there is argument over which English accent approximates the original. Usually dubs try to find one that has similar cultural stereotypes (Which is why we get Osaka accents as 'Out in the boonies' accents so often). In my particular case, I dont know enough about the original language to be able to tell the difference anyways, while watching a subtitle, so the dub helps me pick up an audio cue I might otherwise miss.

Third, even when I don't understand the language in which the actors are speaking, their performance carries over in a combination of their intonation and their physical performance - a combination which is never matched by an Anglophone actor dubbing the character.

That's only a consideration if the original actor was good to begin with. A lot of series dont always use the best actors.

Fourth, dubs often involve small or large rewriting or dumbing down of the dialogue and story.

Dubbing isnt completely about a strict translation. Not only do they have worry about fitting in mouth movements, but general timing. Not to mention that a lot of the rewriting is more localization then trying to rewrite stuff. A lot of jokes dont translate well when converted over into literal English, or they're making allusions to stuff that many wouldnt understand unless they were raised in that culture.