Having just watched some fansubbed episodes of the horrible, horrible Onegai Teacher on Internets TV, I have this to say:
The fact that a song is sung in Japanese instead of English does not make the lyrics more meaningful. And where have I heard this argument that Japanese can express something so much more beautifully than English? From people that don’t know Japanese.
This reminds me on how I told you that Utada Hikaru herself said that when she writes songs, she writes the English ones to sound good, because meaning isn’t necessary, and when she write in Japanese, she must write meaning into it, otherwise it wouldn’t be a successful song. Isn’t that funny?
Yeah… I sorta interpreted it a different way, like it’s the listeners that value Japanese so much higher than English, not the songwriters.
But I’d like to think the same goes for the subs/dubs argument – although the original voice is nice and all, it’s not like something loses meaning if it’s dubbed (unless 4kids gets a hold of it. :P). Besides, I find that almost all Japanese female VAs sound totally the same. I really can’t tell the difference in some animes between people’s voices. All it is is the hair color. So I don’t feel I’m experiencing an anime differently if I’m reading subtitles instead of hearing English.
I think the Japanese language is, in it’s written form, by far the coolest. But I won’t lie; the spoken language sounds really, really silly.
Perhaps they are Japanese spies.
i knew it! spies are everywhere! -_-
Amen.
I just tend to prefer songs without vocals. I guess that’s why I don’t mind the J-stuff since I can’t understand how stupid the lyrics are, it’s just another instrument.
Hey, that reminds me of how fucking bad everything is going to sound when I learn more of the language. So the debate rages…
Blissful Ignorance vs. Foreign Language Get vs. RevenG!
FIGHT!