World of Anime

While this topic has been argued to no end, a recent issue just sparked me to post my thoughts on this.

First off, let me ask you this, will you watch an anime raw, and even go to the extent of blogging it, if you didn’t understand much of what’s being said in the episode(s)? This is not quite a problem with regards to bloggers who openly admit that they don’t understand the raw episode they’re watching, especially for those who put disclaimer in each post like “Feel free to correct me blah blah because I watched this raw”, “From what I understood…”, “I didn’t quite understand… but I think”, and all that, to highlight the lack of certainty. Not to boast (because it’s not really worth boasting about), but I did this when I first started out in blogging, pointing out how confused I was with Touka Gettan, for example, where I even put (?) in parts of the summary I was uncertain about, etc. FYI, that post sucks butt. The problem comes in when the blogger starts stating things in a matter-of-fact tone, when in fact, it’s far from the truth.

Call it being egotistic or what, but I don’t think both my conscience and pride will allow me to blog about something I don’t really understand, and deceive people into believing the ’facts’ that I say. Perhaps there would be times in which you’d think that you understood the episode, when in fact you didn’t, in which cases counter-check will always help (more on this later). Not having a good grasp of Japanese isn’t supposed to be an excuse to just leave things as misunderstood as it is, and to post your thoughts about something you didn’t understand just makes you lose credibility over all. It’s to the detriment of both you and the readers as well…

If you loved the anime so much, wouldn’t you go out of your way and actually find some means to understand it better, or to at least check whether you understood it correctly? If you find it difficult to grasp the episode because you think your Japanese knowledge is not enough, there are a number of ways which can help you in understanding the raw episode. And no, it’s not a matter of taking up formal Japanese classes or attaining a JLPT level or what have you. It can be as easy as accepting that your skills are not enough, and that you need additional help, either from other people or other sources/materials (or better yet, the English subs itself!).

Mind you, despite being JLPT2-certified, I do know for a fact that my Japanese knowledge is more often that not, insufficient for many of the animes I watch. Hence, I rely on Chinese/English subs and other materials from time to time. This is especially the case for mecha animes and complicated sci-fi flicks which I really need subs for. Though Himitsu is quite an exception to this, because the chunk of the stories in this show is actually more on the dramatic emotional/moral side of the story. And I’m diverting from my point!

More on Himitsu in another post, and back to the topic. To the raw watchers/bloggers out there (or potential raw watcher / blogger) who are having difficulty understanding stuff, here are some pointers which might help you out:

1. Rely on your ears, consult a dictionary.

If you’re taking learning Japanese through raw watching seriously, you’d want to have a dictionary in hand. Otherwise there’s also the ever reliable ALC and dictionary.goo.ne.jp for the newer colloquial terms. But of course you’d need ultra sensitive hearing skillz for this, so you might want to skip this and read the next set of tips if you find it too tedious (this will, after all, require that you pause ever so often, and repeat the lines being said, just to understand the dialogues).

I actually consider myself a n00b raw watcher, except when it comes to ‘ordinary’ slice-of-life doramas and romance animes, hence I do this more often than not. When I blogged Kaze no Stigma, for example, I had to watch each episode two or three times (or more? I can’t really remember anymore), then pause in between dialogues to get what they’re saying. I’d like to think that even BADASS raw watchers do this too, on a much lesser scale of course.

2. Make the most out of friendly/lively forums.

In active forums (AnimeSuki forums, among others), there will most likely be a couple of raw watcher members who post their thoughts on the episode(s) right after watching it. Now if they misinterpreted something in the episode, other members in the forum will most likely correct it. You can either lurk and watch all this happen, or you can be more active and actually post questions about what you didn’t understand in the episode! Then, a friendly member will most likely answer, given that there are such people in the forum (or the particular thread).

3. Check out the original source of the anime adaptation, if any.

For animes adapted from an existing manga, novel, game, etc., you might want to check out these original sources to have a better grasp of the anime as a whole, especially if the anime follows the source material quite well. If the anime is popular enough, you’ll most likely find scanlations of the manga. Or if not, get the Japanese or Chinese raws of it. Being able to read the dialogues will definitely help in looking up their meaning, than having to listen to them in the anime itself.

This is probably the main catalyst as to why I resorted to reading the original source(s) for the animes I blog (Seleria also did this for Ookiku Furikabutte, with the same mindset), and what caused me to churn out all those deep frying posts I have. For KnS, I knew well that I will not be able to fully grasp the dialogues in the anime (I barely passed the listening portion of my JLPT2 exam, thank you). I can already foresee that it will be a huge pain in the butt. Hence, I searched for the original novels where it was based from, even before the anime aired. Luckily, the novels were popular enough to be available for download, and I read it hand in hand with the anime (and I bought them all soon afterwards). The novels provided much help in making me have a clear grasp of the episodes that air (on top of the help I get from Chinese subs), considering how much detailed it was compared to the butchered anime. It was a great counter-check tool, so to speak. And from there, the deep frying phenomenon was born! \o/

Perhaps it’s now a force of habit that I find myself doing this before the new anime season starts. Like how I read the Wagaya no Oinari sama manga, the Toshokan Sensou novels and manga (to the extent of buying the actual Toshokan Sensou novels itself), and the Kure-nai novel and manga, months or weeks before the anime air date. I did this for purposes of an in-depth research about what to expect in the anime, and to help out in understanding the anime, as what I’ve also mentioned. Because well, I’m a paranoid person (or a perfectionist), and would want to ascertain that I understood things correctly, as much as possible.

4. Check out other sites who post episode summaries, starting with Japanese blogs.

This is but common sense for raw watchers, but I just like to stress that you might want to check Japanese blogs first, especially if there are few or less to none who actually post episodic summaries in English. There are a number of Japanese bloggers out there who even post bits of the actual dialogues in the episode, so you can just look up the sentences with ease. Just go a search like ??? ??, and you’re sure to stumble upon these blogs.

While it’s common sense to recommend taking a visit to English blogs posting summaries of the episodes, non-native Japanese speakers who blog episodes are pretty much prone to mistakes too. Unless you trust the blogger so much that you’ll go on believing what he/she says, then I’ll leave you with that. If you believe what I say here, for example, then thank you for your trust! Rest assured that I will do my best to not betray that. Or so I hope.

5. Go Totali-ism

And finally, you can also go do the Totali-ism way of raw watching/blogging, which he mentioned in Kabitzin’s interview months back.

Cheers! Blog Integrity FTW \o/

Feel free to add more to this list, please. It’s for the benefit of all of us!

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