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I have had the chance to watch the first disc of Rouroni Kenshin Samurai X. The style departs from the original series to something more serious and in some ways darker. I like the focus of the story and the cross of history with fiction. There’s not too much for me to say except that I am drawn to interesting tales of mysterious swordsmen.

I did have a good reminder as I watched the dvd: the wonder of dvd is that the viewer can fiddle with language/subtitle settings. I still find myself confused and thrown by the language choice and voice talent choice for anime dubbing. The text is different from the subtitles, and seems to miss some of the subtleties. I may sound like a purist, because I know how annoying it can be to be distracted by reading subtitles, but I have run into this with all the languages I am capable of. Hollywood movies sound a bit absurd in their Spanish dubbing, and they sound equally strange with Chinese dubbing. Chinese movies sound abysmal dubbed into English, and much of the linguistic nuances are lost.

I imagine the same thing happens in trying to translate Shakespeare, for example. There are so many subtleties to the language that have to be tossed out the window for the sake of economy.

So I will state my bias right here: I don’t like it. I want the original “feel” with a key to try and gain my own insight and understanding. Then from there I have more of a chance to make sense of things for myself.

I started watching Get Backers on Anime Network’s On Demand selection, but I’ve tagged that onto my Netflix rental list, because I think I would be more excited by the original voices, and once I get my hands on the dvds I can try that out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 at 12:25 am and is filed under anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.