Ask me anything
Recent Responses
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I would take care not to use them until an urgent need to invoke them arises.
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As the head of a translator group focusing on Sonohana, I feel I have an implicit goal to give all couples fair exposure, simply because I have the knowledge and capability to do just that. Although I do have an obvious preference, I think that explicitly stating that I favor one pair over the others is counter to that goal. The reason I have yet to accomplish it is a lack of time and translators who can expand my current purview.
However, while I am not at liberty to discuss specifics, I can assure you that Music Box of Memories is very likely to correct this shortcoming on my part, as implied by the currently available preview images. -
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Many fans of works in hit-driven industries liberally use hyperbole to describe any high-profile work, be it positively or negatively. Those demonstrably narrow-minded fans who are quick to call any element of a currently-popular work or a work itself to be the best or worst ever, or compare them to entities of great magnitude in unrelated fields (e.g. comparing a character to God or Satan) dilute the value of all other works and entities given the same esteem. This trend has escalated to the point where such bias used tongue-in-cheek is indistinguishable from genuine claims that all works past, present, and future do not compare. To them, objectivity and subjectivity are synonymous, and giving fair treatment to all works, especially from lesser-known regions, becomes even more difficult than without this misconception.
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I admit that I have comparatively less knowledge on these couples as there are fewer translations available for them than the others. To date I've mentioned them only in passing and only speculatively, as I don't have much first-hand knowledge of the complete plots of these stories. What little I've written about them is extrapolated from various second-hand sources who are able to understand the untranslated materials natively. I do have both a rudimentary knowledge of the fundamentals of Japanese and access to decompiled scripts, which helps me to expand this information. While these items are what enable me to serve as an editor, they aren't enough to launch a translation project by myself.
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From what I've seen so far, anime is shifting in the direction of those trends most popular with native audiences without regard for foreign audiences. These themes are not necessarily acceptable with other cultures, except by those who have been watching anime since before this recent movement. For example, the treatment of sexual themes by contemporary anime is, by my measure, a highly polarizing issue within Western audiences and a major sticking point for those outside of the subculture in Western regions. (I cannot speak for the reaction of those themes within Japan.) As long as these themes continue to find prevalence in mainstream anime, the divide it has caused will only deepen on all fronts. The same can be said for moe, zombies, and the occult. Therefore, whether the future of anime is positive or negative ultimately it depends on how long the intended audiences are willing to accept themes which we may not find acceptable. The weight of your own point of view on the most prevalent subject matter depends on your distance from the locale of the content creators and their licensees.
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The death of a popular medium like anime is always declared by those vocal watchers who reject the current popular trends once they reach a certain popularity threshold. Once those trends stop being profitable, they will be replaced with new subject matter that will also be decried by a minority segment of anime fans. This cycle has been observed many times in the history of the business and is only more visible today due to the prevalence of the internet and its ability to amplify the cries of prominent dissenters. Those who dislike the current flavor of mainstream anime/cinema/television/etc. need only endure it until it changes. Popular culture is always evolving and changing, and it's very difficult, if not impossible, to predict where it will land once the audience tires of what is presented to them. As long as it lands somewhere, it will never die completely.
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That is a good question.
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