Forum - View topicYuYu Hakusho - differences in translation?
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Malign
Posts: 2 |
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Hey guys, I'm just here for a short n' sweet answer to my question regarding the anime YuYu Hakusho.
I love anime and recently I've been going back to my childhood and re-watching anime that I loved as an adolescent. I just finished Sailor Moon (subbed) which has made me question a lot of anime and whether or not they are better watched subtitled, or in english dub. Especially anime meant for children in America. Sooo, I'm wondering, is YuYu Hakusho much different in the subtitled versions, or is it similar dubbed? Thanks in advance! [EDIT: In order to avoid making this a sub/dub debate, I reworded your title to make it a little more specific. -TK] |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7995 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Well, personally the dub is too good for me to ever have actually watched it fully subtitled. I did switch over to the Japanese track though and found that I didn't like a lot of the original voices. I can tell you though that it's not really a kids show per se, it's aimed more twards that older teen crowd, swearing, an increased amount of violence, and is a little more complex and serious. At least it's not something I'd show a kid anyway.
It also depends on which version you watch there's still some "Edited for TV" versions or some such floating arround out there and then there's completely uncut normal versions of the DVDs as well. I'm pretty sure the cut up ones aren't being produced anymore though and the current season sets out now would be uncut. I bought the series long before then though when it was comming out by volume so I couldn't say for sure. (Never did that again though as it was insanely expensive, however, it was a fantastic series and highly worth owning.) |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Depends on what you're looking for.
If you mean a "good dub" as in the translation is close to the Japanese and completely retains the original meaning, Yu Yu Hakusho is the most interpretative uncut anime I've ever seen without bowdlerizing the original. As in, it's not one of those titles that dubs the show into something completely different and ruins it, but at the same time, I defy you to find two lines in the sub and dub versions that match, not counting reaction lines and whatnot. That being said, I've seen both versions, or tried to. Eventually, I was so horribly BORED with the Japanese version that I switched back to English and put the Japanese subtitles on over it to see what was changed. For the most part, no information is lost, but all the lines are completely different, making the show read a lot better in English. Some people hate this, but hey, if the original show was just full of a lot of cliche shonen lines and bland expositionary dialogue, I INFINITELY prefer the English version that sounds conversational and is spiced up with genuinely funny jokes and better transitions and banter. The only places you might consider the completely different scripts a problem is in the dramatic moments, but on that front, the English also one-ups the Japanese, I'm afraid. Again, I did watch both, and the English dub took the writing to more genuine places dramatically every time. One example is during Yusuke's fight with Suzaku. In the Japanese version, the flashbacks and questioning he endures while Suzaku's Seven are torturing him are pretty much focused on his training and showing that he needed to reach some new depth of power in himself through his need to protect others. Okay. That's fine. Kind of a shonen cliche, whatever. In the dub, they did one better. They used that (extremely long) flashback/torture sequence to not only talk about Yusuke's power coming from his need to protect others, but with the extra flaps and some rearranging of the script, they seamlessly slid into Genkai's dialogue some really great stuff about how Yusuke's disrespect for authority leads him to devalue himself and never learn anything or make something out of himself. "You've always given up when the answer wasn't handed to you on a silver platter." "SHUT UP, old lady! You can't tell me what to do! You think you know me! Nobody tells me what to do!" etc. It really made more sense with his character and separated him a bit from the typical shonen ilk. I kinda liked the idea of Yusuke not just "fighting for his friends," a la Ike or something, but having to learn responsibility and respect for authority in order to become a strong leader who could protect people as well. Actually, there's another great example within that same scene. Suzaku tells Yusuke he's being foolish after he's just about killed him and Yusuke continues to get back on his feet. There's a brief flashback to Yusuke's school life and all the crap he's gone through as well as caused. From what I remember, so it's kinda off, but it's fairly close: Japanese Suzaku: "You continue to defy me? You will die." Japanese Yusuke: "Come on, bastard. Let's fight! Hit me!" English Suzaku: "You continue to volunteer suicide? Now you're only living on borrowed time." English Yusuke: "You don't know me very well. My whole life has been borrowed time!" That's just SO much better and more unique and it fit the mood of the conveniently previous flashback perfectly. Basically what I'm saying is that the dub for Yu Yu Hakusho is radically different from the original version, but no information is lost in the shuffle, just radically different dialogue, and that dialogue is about 20 times better in the dub. (And it's the best shonen tourney show ever created PERIOD, but I hadn't said that yet.) |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I could be wrong but this sounds like a tactfully stated opinion of the dub is better or more enjoyable in the dub vs. sub category.
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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^ No, not at all, at least not on the whole. I'm not saying dubs are better than Japanese tracks, and I don't want this thread to derail in that direction.
I'm just saying that the English dub for Yu Yu Hakusho is better than the Japanese track for Yu Yu Hakusho. I don't say that about every show or even that many. I could probably count on one hand dubs that are overwhelmingly better than their Japanese equivalents. In fact, the only two that come to mind right now are Cowboy Bebop and BECK. In most cases they are equal or certain roles are better depending on the language, and less so than that, but still a great number, are cases where the Japanese is overwhelmingly better. Cases where the English is hands-down better are few and far between, and usually, it's not a big difference either way and they're both fine. (Unless you wanna go back 7-10 years or more, as things get nastier and nastier the further you ride the time machine backwards.) |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11492 Location: Frisco, TX |
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I beg to differ. But this thread is about YYH, not Kenshin. Anyway, translating foreign languages is never an exact science. Words in one language can be replaced by any number of synonymous terms/phrases in English because, well, English has a lot of words. And because of the mouth flap thing, I feel it gives script writers somewhat of a double-edged sword in having to both fill in those space gaps, as well as sometimes creating too much extraneous dialogue, which can seriously make or break my experience in a dub. My second language is Lao. I don't speak it much (as I don't see a reason), but I understand around 93% of it. And when I hear people speaking it around me, I don't translate it word for word, I just hear it and understand it, kinda' like self-decoding. When I watch anime subbed or any foreign movie (sometimes with really bad subtitles), I don't necessarily read it word for word. I can read fast enough to where I understand it, and if I actually know a word, I even fill in my own gaps by mixing and mingling my own line. Like if some character says something, but they make it all formal on the subs, I just take the gist of it and understand it. This might just be my own personal quirk since I'm accustomed to hearing another language on a normal basis, but does that make any sense? |
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jsc315
 Posts: 925 |
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This is one of my favorite series and have seen it to the end both dubbed and subbed. I myself prefer my anime subtitled and that is usually how i watch my anime.
With that being said i like many people had first seen it on Cartoon Network being dubbed. Now i had been into anime for years at this point but wasn't a huge fan of anime at this time and had not seen a whole lot. I thought the dub was good and started to buy the series but Funimation at the time decided that it would be a dub only release. Many years later i had still loved the show and decided i need to see this in the way it needed to be, so i got imported box sets and payed a lot for them. I was in love with this show again and was so happy that I had finally gotten the complete collection of one of my favorite all time series. I recently (about 2 years ago) decided to watch it again because i just wanted to again, but this time I watched the dub because CN never completed it. Being older and wiser I could pick up on more things then when i first watched it. Also now watching the subbed version i had something to compare it to. So now to the point of this thread. As someone said before whenever translating from one language to another it is never going to be perfect. The Dubbing of Yu Yu Hakusho is not bad at all compared to many anime I had seen dubbed an especially from when the time it came out. There were so many bad to even awful dubbed anime in the 80's to the mid to late 90's. There are some minor annoyances but nothing where its going to change the plot or not make sense at all. It's one of the few early to mid 90's anime that actually has a great English voice cast and sounds very professionally done. I would put this up there with Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell as one of the best dubbed anime out there to date. |
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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I too share your love for this series (favorite shonen fighting series ever). It's on of my favorites and I'm planing on buying the whole series soon. I loved watching it as a kid and still love it now. Anyways, I have only seen a few of the subs and I have to say that I like the dub more (that may be because I'm use to the voices), and I didn't catch any differences in the story. From what I understand, they did a good job with the dub, and I doubt there's any real differences.
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Malign
Posts: 2 |
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Thank you for your opinions!
From what I gather so far into the series, the dub seems to be well done. The main reason I question subbed vs. dubbed, is because as I said, I just finished watching Sailor Moon; and for those of you who don't know, they edited so much out in the english dub that it's almost nothing like its japanese original. I know that translating word-for-word is nearly impossible, as I speak a little japanese myself, but as long as the anime isn't butchered or doesn't edit out any important storylines (IE; several homosexual characters in SM were edited out in the english dub) then I'm all good with the dub. Especially jsc315s input, you help me out a lot. Thank you! |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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^ Naw, the content's intact.
You bringing up the Sailor Moon homosexuals reminds me of Yu Yu Hakusho too. They really didn't leave anything out in terms of "adult content," in fact it's probably more profane in English because of Yusuke's very colorful vocabulary. Anyhoo, for those of you who remember Itsuki and Karasu, yes, they're still eerily possessive of Sensui and Kurama, respectively, and no, the dub does NOT leave it ambiguous as to why they are, er-hrm, possessive at all. As Kuwabara puts it, "Uh, okay, I don't think my ears are old enough to hear this." 
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jsc315
Posts: 925 |
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Your very welcome Malign. Yea Sailor moon is a huge disappointment dubbed. This happened alot with many anime. It was hit and miss with what was good and what was bad. The anime industry was young and really did not know any better around this time.
Sailor Moon is considered one of the worst dubbed anime that was brought to the U.S. There are some that are even worse but when it comes to popular anime this one is well up there is one of the worst edited and dubbed anime. I hope this doesn't discourage you from watching anime. There are many of good dubbed anime out there. |
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