This is a static copy of In the Rose Garden, which existed as the center of the western Utena fandom for years. Enjoy. :)
I have been watching couple of Reviews for utena on you tube, and most of them reviewing the dubbing version, and have it playing of the background. From the little I heard of the dub, (which is considered a good one from all those reviewing it) the acting doesn't do justice to the characters at all, it seems to me that the reviewers are kind of not aware of the depth of each and every character in the end.
To be honest I don't get why people watch dubs of any kind if the original is available, let alone when they are reviewing something!
Almost to a man, of those reviewing the dub, pronounce the names wrongly, and in the end give the what the frouch did I just watched speech.
The dub pretty much fails to show the correct emotions in the end which ends up as something way more strange that it already is.
Another thing that I noticed is that many of them try to make a "westernized" sense of the anime, which of course leads to a bigger complex than before.
Of course the movie is the king of complex in the WTF scale but for me every little detail and symbolism fits together.
for example(spoilers ahead):
[
the fact that touga appears to be dead (Miki (who is younger than the rest) asks who is that touga guy, and touga is just next to him so Miki isn't able to see him)
Akio also is dead at some point, makes it look like a back and forth in timeline.
Also the scene with Shiori and Touga, I have a slight idea that it was not with touga but with akio.
And Shiori is used as a puppet to trigger a duel.
The academy itself is just a illusion labyrinth and Utena is the first to snap out if it.
The whole car symbolism is that Utena gives the power (car) and Anthy the will to escape
I personally don't find Utena as a whole that much of a complex concept as it seems to be for many in their reviews, it does have some psychological stuff to think about, like child abuse, rape in general, incest and death, but nothing really that extreme that we haven't seen before in other media
]
/spoiler end
so is anyone else with me in that boat? Or I'm the strange one
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I don't think I've watched the movie dub, but I'm with you about the series. The series dub is, honestly, unlistenable for me. Some characters are worse than others. I think Rachael Lillis actually isn't that bad as Utena; her lines "merely" have the slowed-down and forced sound that is common in anime dubs, and don't quite get across the intensity of her character. But Jimmy Zoppi's Miki leaves me wondering whether the person in charge of casting had actually watched the series. The other characters are somewhere in between -- between "not that bad" and "incomprehensibly poor" -- and it's hard to watch that when the Japanese voice actors are all basically perfect. So no, I don't think you're crazy!
Last edited by satyreyes (06-28-2014 01:47:44 PM)
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Some dubs are fantastic, and can be superior to the originals (Tango & Cash in Spanish is fierce). The Utena dubs, though, at least the English ones, are more flaws for me, and fails, than the good bits can justify.
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my argument was not about being good or bad dub but why those reviewing an anime they review the dub and not the original
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Ahh, I see! That's an interesting question. I'm not a reviewer, so I probably haven't thought this through as much as they have, but if you want to appeal to the biggest audience you can, I can see why you might want to use dubs. I like subs better than dubs for anime, but I watch dubbed animation all the time. Avatar: The Last Airbender is dubbed animation. So if I see an anime dub, I'm used to what I'm watching. But dub watchers may not be exposed to subs in the same way. You might find subtitles distracting -- especially if the reviewer is talking over them, saying something completely different -- or you might find the sound of the Japanese language distracting. Dubs are just a little bit more accessible, which is why they had the better end of the dub vs. sub war for years. That's my best guess!
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that's a very interesting point as well.
my country has a very small team of dubbers so no matter what they do is terrible in the end, also most stuff come with subs here so I'm used to it.
only kids programs and elderly programs are dubbed in the end.
When it comes to reviews though I believe that the reviewers has to at least WATCH the original version and decide if the anime is good or not.
Most of the reviewers couldn't even pronounce Utena correctly v_v
it is like going to buy banana's and you end up given papayas because both have 3 a's in them
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satyreyes wrote:
Ahh, I see! That's an interesting question. I'm not a reviewer, so I probably haven't thought this through as much as they have, but if you want to appeal to the biggest audience you can, I can see why you might want to use dubs. I like subs better than dubs for anime, but I watch dubbed animation all the time. Avatar: The Last Airbender is dubbed animation. So if I see an anime dub, I'm used to what I'm watching. But dub watchers may not be exposed to subs in the same way. You might find subtitles distracting -- especially if the reviewer is talking over them, saying something completely different -- or you might find the sound of the Japanese language distracting. Dubs are just a little bit more accessible, which is why they had the better end of the dub vs. sub war for years. That's my best guess!
I don't mean to derail- Satyr I really like your ideas about the manner- but I have to ask, what language you are watching Avatar dubbed in?
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English. Sorry, I was being a little over-arch there. I was making the point that all the American animation we watch -- Avatar, Adventure Time, The Simpsons -- is dubbed in English in the first place, so even fans of subs get exposed to dubbed animation regularly.
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I can only speak to the English dub, but some of it here lately may stem from the availability the English dub via streaming services. I think Hulu has Utena available online as dub only and Manga has distributed the English only dub via YouTube.
I got frustrated a couple of months ago looking for some quick quotes surrounding a few scenes and could only find the dubbed in English versions quickly. Without hunting more than 5-10 minutes,I couldn't find an English subbed version of the couple of episodes I was searching for online using major search engines.
That was just my experience, but perhaps that has affected others as well? Just my 2 cents
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Oh I don't disagree on the availability of the subbed version. (besides the fact that I personally do not like dubs at all ever)
my argument is why those who are up to do a REVIEW of the show do not look harder, we all know there are multiple sites streaming anime, etc.
If someone wants to watch dub, that's their business whatever floats their boats, but when you do a review and especially in the case you criticize the series badly and lacking in understanding the characters because the dub takes that away (as I mention in my first post) then you have to look at the source first. (that's my opinion on reviews) or at the very least try to pronounce the names correctly
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I don't know that they need to pronounce anything correctly, really. To me, that's separate from anything they're reviewing, especially if they're explicitly reviewing a dub/re-dub that may not pronounce things "correctly," or even consistently.
I do think it's important to clarify if you're watching a subbed or dubbed version of something, though, same as it's significant which release or what translation of anything is important to clarify. Nothing sucks like a review that really sways you, and only later (maybe after you spent a ton of money), you find it didn't apply to a version you got or avoided getting.
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Well the reviewers I'm commenting on are those who take their you tube reviews as a job and they are supposed to be good at what they are doing or even making money out of it. When it comes to not pronouncing things right to me it seems that they do not take their "job" seriously when they can not even pronounce the name of the main character (which is also on the title of the series), it annoys me in a way, because it's there job to do and a google search away.
well it's maybe just me, I do have a thing for attention on details I'm weird that way
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To some extent that gets into basic issues of word borrowing. If you haven't studied Japanese, you probably don't pronounce Utena "right," either, because the U sound in Japanese is not the same as the corresponding sound in English -- Japanese doesn't use rounded lips to say that vowel -- and because English reduces the vowels in its unstressed syllables in a way that Japanese does not. But it would be silly to criticize a reviewer or anyone else for saying "OO-tuh-nuh," any more than you would criticize an English speaker for using untrilled R's in the word "burrito:" we're speaking English, not Japanese or Spanish. What if the reviewer says "oo-TAY-nuh?" Well, on one hand, that pronunciation is less faithful to the original Japanese stress pattern, but on the other hand, it is a more natural rhythm for an English word, plus the Japanese pronunciation of "Utena" strikes many English speakers as having second-syllable stress because the vowel is not reduced to a schwa. ("Nanami" and "Saionji" have the same issue. I bet that even very knowledgeable fans pronounce Saionji predominantly with the stress on the second syllable.) How about "oo-TEH-nuh?" Again, it's a question of what is faithful vs. what is natural. "oo-TEH-nuh" sounds very natural in English, like "antenna" or "Vienna," while it's hard to think of common words that sound like "oo-TAY-nuh." All the words I can think of are, uh, arcana.
It genuinely is not obvious what the "best" way to pronounce Utena is in an English-language review. I don't think there's a right answer.
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Karuka wrote:
Oh I don't disagree on the availability of the subbed version. (besides the fact that I personally do not like dubs at all ever)
my argument is why those who are up to do a REVIEW of the show do not look harder, we all know there are multiple sites streaming anime, etc.
If someone wants to watch dub, that's their business whatever floats their boats, but when you do a review and especially in the case you criticize the series badly and lacking in understanding the characters because the dub takes that away (as I mention in my first post) then you have to look at the source first. (that's my opinion on reviews) or at the very least try to pronounce the names correctly
The source doesn't have subtitles either, though. And, was TV broadcast.
But the version they're reviewing likely does have a dubbed English option, because the English language DVDs just have that option. If they're reviewing the dub, in fact, then watching the subbed version and pronouncing names differently than the dub is a disservice to the version they're reviewing., just like it'd be a disservice to say the individual DVD collections all come with a novelty ring, if only some full sets do, or reviewing the Japanese issued DVDs as if they have English or Spanish subs.
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Oh well, maybe it's just me lol
English is not my first language, and my own mother tongue is pretty much a phonetic language like Japanese and for me pronouncing Utena correctly was never an issue .
My original point was more about how the dub takes away from the personalities of the characters and my thoughts on the movie.
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While I agree with you, my experience of certain characters in the dub actually enhanced the general idea of the characters, few as those may be. Not in a sense of being better than the original since that is just plain impossible. It was more like they rounded up the general feel of the character in my head, sort of like a different perspective.
For example, Hikaru Midorikawa's Mikage/Nemuro is deeply troubled and tormented, you can sense the frailty of the character and the depth of his delusions. Dan Green's take on the character, on the other hand, is dripping with confidence, seductive, self-assured. Both takes on the character somehow fit and make him more rounded in my head. This might also work for him specifically, since he's such a dual, split fella.
Shiori's original voice is the picture of innocence she is identified with, but the dub voice highlights her status as an everygirl, a normal kid who desperately wants to be approved of and respected. Anthy's original voice is more mature, her dub voice sugary-sweet - both are facets of her personality. And the performance of Utena's dub actress improved immensely over the course of the series, you could practically hear it getting better in each episode (and that sonovabitch when she slapped Mikage OH MY )
Then again, there were absolute misses: I especially disliked Saionji, Miki, and Mamiya in the dub. Akio was okayish. Note that I am probably biased, since the dub is the first thing I watched due to it being the only version available on YouTube at the time
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ahhaaa that's interesting (not enough to make me watch the dub version but still)
the reason I do not favourite dubs is because no matter how good the voice actor is in the end they will have to follow a direction based on the original voice actors, and if the director understand the original voice acting differently than it should be (due, most of the times, to cultural differences) the result lacks in a way. If the quality is low you end up with crappy dubs like sailor moon us version *brrrr* :s
So in a way if the character is given personality aspects different than the original it still takes away from what the creator wanted to show. Even if the are good enough to add things to the character.
It is like every other adaptation of Romeo and Juliette. Most directors have Tybalt being a pure evil character, which takes away so much from the character as it was written.
*gathers back random romijuri bunnies that escaped from my brain*
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The dub is something I hold close to my heart, because it's the version of Utena that I was introduced to the entire metaseries with. I love MOST of the voices, too. While Rachael Lillis' Utena, Lisa Ortiz's Shiori and Crispin Freeman's Touga all are interpretations of the characters I LOVE, I do have to agree that Mamiya's dub voice was a TOTAL miss. I honestly think it was a great dub for what it is (lol 90s dubs), and I really only have an issue with its mispronunciations/inability to stick with one pronunciation.
(I also have focus issues, so being able to look away from the screen for five seconds while still catching what's being said is a big plus too... and I've seen Utena enough times to not have to worry about, you know, missing too many symbolic visuals.)
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