The Japanese fascination with English-speaking fans...
 

Why are Japanese fans so fascinated with what anime fans in the West (or any country outside of Japan) think about anime or its culture?

For those of you who understand a little Japanese and have scoured the Japanese web, you may have stumbled upon one of the following sites or something similar:

http://japancool.sblo.jp/ (Via the dated links at the top.)
http://animeng.blog5.fc2.com/
http://asnyaro.blog129.fc2.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YV4PNVpJCg (From Niconico Douga.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYRAe87L_DI
(Or do a Google search with the kanji "海外の反応".)

What they all seem to do is translate comments of English-speaking users from various sites/forums on the net (Animesuki being one of them), and basically comment on our comments.

I just find it interesting that they would take the time to do something like this, especially since the majority of their topics focus on anime culture. Sad that there aren't many resources that lets the English-speaking world know what the Japanese think of our stuff. :)

It's not nearly as fascinating if you stop to think that we have sites that do just the same. :)

I'm not sure whether the comments or the fact that they translated a joke article, was funnier.

Well, they don't seem to be taking it seriously, at any rate.

Now I want to see if I'm on there. It's the overseas equivalent of Googling myself.

I actually saw a screenshot of one of my posts from this forum on one of those sites a couple years ago. Was pretty surreal. Not sure exactly what the comments about it were but I think it was being used to promote a character in one of those moe tournaments.:heh:

What would be really amusing would be commenting on other peoples comments about your comments.

Really go full circle.

I think we're more interested in what Japanese fans think than what Japanese fans think we think.

Although some of that is admittedly because only shows that do well in Japan get continuations.

This. When were you under the impression Otaku-like fascination couldn't happen the other way around?
We have entered an endless recursion of comments?

Oh my god it really is like googling yourself.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/anime_trans/search?q=animesuki
http://shirouto.seesaa.net/pages/use...e_id=170694346

There are a whole bunch of us on here.

'cause White People have been so obsessed with Japan such that "Japanophile" is a word. As an Asian, I ask: WTF is wrong with you people. Lolololol.

No other country in the world (except America) gets this kind of attention.

Plus, here's the thing. Think about how far anime has gone to becoming a cultural export. And look at the history of discussion - particularly in Sub vs Dub threads.

I remember hearing Japanese otaku developed a mild fascination with the western fanbase of Madoka because we predicted the entire plot up to episode ten almost perfectly. Although in that case, an accurate prediction was often like hitting a bullseye with a shotgun, but whatever. Seeing that they go through the trouble of translating entire conversations on here is pretty surprising whether they take us seriously or not.

I remember 2chan actualy being impressed by 4chan after the runes were translated,then it wen't full circle when 4chaners started translating threads where 2chaners were translating speculations from 4chan :eyespin:

A German anon recognized the Faust quotes in episode 2 from their form, and with that, everything fell into place. 4chan deciphering the runes first was due to the international nature of the board bringing their cultural views. While I'm sure some posters on 2chan or 2ch were familiar with Faust, it would likely be a Japanese translation, not the original German. That would also explain why Japanese fans may take an interest in western fans. We have different cultural views, so we may have a different take on anime or notice what to them are obscure references and they want to see it. Of course I'm sure there are also some that don't care what we think at all.

Really the Madoka threads on 4chan were great for speculation. The main things they got wrong was insisting Homura was the cat in the OP and the Homura teleports/timestops argument. Oh and insisting Charlotte's grief seed was really Mami's soul gem because of the lighting in the scene.

I demand someone translate their translations of us. :heh:

And comments, of course.

LOL they took the AS poll of Hana Saku episode 6. :D And the whole thread, lmao

Wait a second how does my post get translated from:

to
あああああああああ！ふざけんな！
:heh:

Translation of "favorite tsundere" thread
http://blog.livedoor.jp/anime_trans/...s/2679710.html
A bit more fun than usual.

Oh wow. So what do they think of us exactly?

Even with the internationalization of the internet, the language barrier still divides us all.

Also, I have to confess that I don't know of any Japanese fansites other then 2chan, and niconicodouga. For instance, is there an equivalent of ANN, or Animesuki?

I'm well aware they keep track of MyAnimeList's forums, with blogs having entries consisting of translated threads.

Well, looking at the favorite Tsundere thread and their translation, they're quite liberal with 't.
Not saying that the point doesn't get across, but a lot of wording etc. is changed.

Being curious is different from taking someone seriously. But the translations mean they give some importance.

There must be a ton of sites like ANN in Japanese. But they don't need an Animesuki. They already have all the anime passing on TV anyway. :heh:

UGH! My Nichijou mot is there! :eek:

They do use sites like it, at least people outside of Kanto and Kansai regions. Connect to any torrent and mark the high percentage of Japanese users active in the swarm.

Actually, just because Otaku Bobby from New York can hop onto any torrent site and get his fix of The Qwaser of Stigmata, it doesn't necessarily hold true for the anime's accessibility in Japan. There's things like schedule time to the availability of the channel it airs on; random ecchi #9,000 might be airing at 2 in the morning on a really obscure channel for all we know. So being on TV doesn't mean you're going to find it. Hell, I dun even know the listings for House anymore.:heh:

I wonder, are fansubs easier to come by then raws, for Japanese viewers? Would they choose to DL fansubs due their ease of being found?

Does anyone know the general attitude of Japenese fans to western fans, beyond curiosity?

Mixed feelings, I should think, characterized by normal group statistics as well as the few comments that I have seen.

Nothing too horribly negative so far. But, I don't doubt that there are people like that.

The very simple advantage of fansubs over "raws" is file size. A fansub runs between 100-500MB whereas a raw is rarely less than a 1000MB and often 2000 or more.

Most anime is on subscription cable.... if a japanese fan can't afford that and tv recording equipment, then they are unlikely to be able to afford a pile of terabyte hard drives. So they spend their money as frugally as they can and torrent. They might have enough money left over then for swag (figures, books, etc).

As for attitudes ... its all over the map (just like it is for Western fans.... I see some really horrible, hateful, ignorant bullshit on western forums as well). The haters on the Japanese side are usually the same. Otherwise, the attitude is either simply amazement that anyone outside of Japan would like this stuff (the same sort of amazement they have over outsiders liking any of the rest of their culture)... all the way to "yes, any fan adds to our numbers!".

So they do watch fansubs? Interesting. I can see why they'd download over cable obviously. I'd be suprised if they never illegally downloaded anything. Then again, in more fan oriented anime, say Genshiken or OreImo, the most illegal thing they ever mention is doujinshi. Never seen em say anything about the "elephant in the room". Then again, true fans buy everything.

Raws for playback can be simple encodes of transport stream captures, just like fansubs are today. So there's not much difference in filesize between fansubs and raw encodes as there was in the past (fansubs were smaller out of distribution and storage concern, while the Japanese pirate scene was always a very small, technology-oriented community and just didn't care; they had storage and good connections, they just didn't know how to encode well because they lacked the language skills required to learn and use foreign video tools), meaning that's not why fansubs are popular among the Japanese. I'd say it comes down to the English scene making its encodes more readily available than raw encodes. Also, the Japanese may be afraid of using Japanese P2P programs or visiting pirate websites out of fears of being prosecuted.

You know what would totally blow my mind?

If they translated this thread. ;)

They're watching us... waiting ... TO STRIKE!

I remember some time ago I found a japanese site that translated various posts taken from the animesuki thread about Higashi no Eden (so we are talking about more than one year ago!), and mine was among those.

I was really puzzled but I never expected that there were so many of those.

Anyway it seems that animesuki and 4chan are well known by the japanese anime fans.

And then some of us here will tap on what they are saying, and bring back here.... :heh::heh:

Brilliant, i should sign up a patent for this sort of entertainment :D

Wow this truly is interesting, never thought they were interested in us, at least not this much :heh:

Haha, you should. I think the logical conclusion of this translation circle is that whoever is going through all the effort to translate these things back and forth would basically just be acting as an intermediary so that Japanese and English speaking fans could talk directly with each other.

I see myself there and some partially translated posts of mine.....

and I find myself looking over my shoulder in paranoia....

And if this post winds up there then it would really take the cake...

You know people on this site can already read your posts. And any Japanese person who can read English can also read your post regardless if it gets reposted or not.


Also there was a thread similar to this on the MyAnimeList forums some time ago. That thread actually got translated and translated back in that thread. But eventually they had to stop due to trolling of some sort.

It still feels funny nonetheless

Then imagine how Japanese anime fans feel when we non-Japanese fans talk about them as though we know them inside out, just by watching anime. :rolleyes:

Incidentally, I've long noticed such translated threads when I (what else) googled my username in the past (yeah, yeah, I know, it's narcissistic, but I couldn't help myself). Even now, I can find myself in a translated version of wontaek's thread on the depiction of evil in Japanese anime.

Hot damn. If only I were really that fluent in the language. :p (How did the translator know I am male, by the way? :uhoh:)

Wow they actually bother to translate some of the posts here (and even keeping track what people vote on the individual episodes thread) that's amusing. :heh:

It's written within your public profile.

Which is accessible only to accepted "friends". All right, who here has been leaking my private information? :eyebrow:

On a more constructive note, this thread reminds me of a series of "dialogues" between English-language and Japanese-language players of Square-Enix's MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI. The whole thing was community driven, and the questions and answers are archived here.

Since we're all feeling a bit shocked at being "spied upon" by otherworldly entities speaking in moon runes, why not set up an inter-species inter-cultural exchange in this thread?

Like, "We come in peace. How are you doing?", or "Why are you watching us?", or even "Do Japanese men really dig teenage girls in sailor-moon uniforms?" :eyespin:

I don't think the problem is "being spied upon" since as Ash pointed out this is a public forum.

I think we already knew that there are japanese fans too in this forum, it's not shocking.


What is shocking, at least to me, is that someone actually spend his time translating the posts so that other japanese fans not so fluent in english can read them.

To make a comparison. A lot of us also lurk futaba channel and niconico and often report what the japanese fanbase think about a particular anime or what are they their reaction about a particular subject.... but translating whole posts and going as far as specifying the name of the author and their gender (!)? I don't think that ever happened, or at least I've never seen such a thing.