:confused: :confused: :confused:
Huh? I meant that Lani is a Japanese American and that she would catch such references... Referring to the first part of your post. But since I didn't quote that then I guess I was once again being unclear???
Do I have to qualify each and every post of mine? If so, I need to dust off my Stoup to English dictionary because I haven't used it since MP.
:D

If I was wrong in my assumption then I apologize. I don't think I was but so be it.

But my initial response that there are all kinds of rare exceptions to the generalization stands. Do we need to list them all?

I accept your apology if that's what it was.

We could list them all, I suppose. If that's what you want.

:confused:

I don't want the list of exceptions, but I DO want Lani's (or Alex's) list of over-your-stupid-American-heads mythic Japanese folklore items ... so's I can enjoy Spirited Away even more than I already do.

Well, I don't know that I will ever again be able to distract her from World of Warcraft long enough to actually watch an entire movie.

But she did address some of the untranslated (though not so much the differently translated) elements of the movie in our review of the DVD.

The relevant paragraphs:

I watch animated films as much for the visual art as I do for the story. I like to see the dubbed version at least the first time soI can concentrate on the beautiful art of Ghibli rather than on reading subtitles. On a second viewing, I like to watch the subtitled.

For non-animated films, I only watch subtitled versions. But, I usually have to see the greatly visuals films a couple of times to fully appreciate the film as a whole.

Heheh, I find it amusing that I am oooh-ahhed at the wonderment of character clues in the names of Ghibli creations ... and yet I moan in horror when I find such simplistic claptrap in Harry Potter or Star Wars.

I think it's not simply my cultural reverance for Nipponese, but rather the obviously crafty way it's done in the fine example quoted above from Lani's review of Spirited Away vs. the hammer-headed, retarded-child way it's done by the likes of J.K. Rowling and George Lucas.







* - my praise is for the Thousand Fathoms example only. The other two are just as lametard as the Brit and American style of revelatory names.

I also think it is different in Japanese where the underlying meaning of a name is readily apparent to any literate person.

In English, "Alexander" means "defending men" only because there are scholars of dead languages to tell me so. Whereas in Japanese, Lani is reminded that "Akiko" (her first name) means "autumn child" every time she sees it written. Descriptive names are standard in Japanese whereas in the U.S. they are more a sign of hippie parents (we'd think nothing of it if you had a name that meant rainbow in 4th century Gaelic but actually naming a kid Rainbow is something different) and as with astrology finding meaning in things in Western culture I think the Japanese folklore assumption that your name has power to shape who you become is much stronger.

I wonder if a Japanese person find it lame when reading a translatin of Gibson and says "can you believe he named the main character Hiro Protagonist?"

I had the same reaction. But I wonder if it was because we heard the Japanese characterization first. I imagine we might have just accepted husky Howl if that's how we'd first been introduced to him.

Hooray. I received the book from Amazon today, and I can't wait to find out whether Howl is really an effeminate, adolescent Nipponese boy or a husky-voiced, sexified American mangod.


(Oh, and I screened the film for zapppop over the weekend and he seemed to like it.)