Fandom Rant: Dub names vs Japanese names

A Rose by Any Other Name...YGO by ~Golden-Dragon-Girl on deviantART

On the virtues of the dub names versus calling everyone their original names:

As readers of this blog may have noticed, those of us working on YnY follow what is best described as a "mixed canon," taking tidbits from not only both the manga and anime but also picking and choosing from the Japanese and English language versions of the anime.

Most significantly, we use the dub names but mostly adhere to the Japanese timeline and ages.

I am aware that many anime purists regard the preferential use of dub names as utter blasphemy, perhaps the highest form of it. I also don't give a damn, because my reasons for using the dub names are as perfectly acceptable as the reason my family uses a slightly different surname than the one we would have used in Denmark.

1. Dub names, when done well, make unusual characters more accessable to a different language audiance. When I say "done well," I mean the characters are renamed things like "Téa" (a slightly exotic but pretty and pronounceable Spanish name) or "Joseph" (a biblical name that doesn't interfere with the wordplay involved with the word Yu-Jyo) instead of the slew of weird, distinctly British names that were given to all the GX characters with American accents (except for Jesse and his southern drawl.)

2. A lot of the names Kazuki Takahashi gave characters were, quite frankly, weird. I'm not even talking about the Japanese characters. Be honest, can you imagine any sane, supposedly "respectable" American businessman naming his son "Pegasus?" "James," certainly. "Maximillion" is still a bit unusual, but it's believable. And it still gives similar connotations to what I suspect Takahashi had been going for in the first place. Don't even get me started on "Cyndia" and "Cadeline." Those are supposed to be "Cynthia" and "Catherine," and you all know it, bastards.

3. No English speakers I know but me have penetrated the deeper meaning of the name "Mai Kujaku." "Mai Valentine" may be punny, but none of us had to look at plant catalogues to get the joke. ("Mai Kujaku," or rather, "Kujaku Mai," refers to a breed of sakura tree, if I remember right. It actually has nothing to do with peacocks at all.)

4. The odd mixture of Japanese and non-Japanese names adds a multi-ethnic flavor to the culture of the series that I happen to like very much.

5. Roger Slifer was a producer of the 80's Transformers series. Anyone who helped bring that monstrosity to the attention of the world at large has earned getting a God Card named after him.

6. Because Duke Devlin just sounds way cooler than Otogi whatever-it-was. And more Irish. You have to love the Irish.

7. Changing names of characters is a time honored tradition that predates the Roman Empire. So is changing names of people when they move somewhere new, and it's a related issue.

8. Because "Honda Hiroto" sounds like a car to American ears. (E.g., to mine.)

9. Because BELIEVE IT OR NOT, they dropped a lot of the original names I hate and kept most of the ones I like. Except Kujaku, because I do like that word. But I deal with it because they needed to keep a joke in there that viewers would understand.

10. Because I'm a prick, that's why.

I admit it: listening to people whine about dub names when they should be complaining about fundamental changes to story or to characters, like making Rebecca more impressive by youthening her or making Kaiba less impressive (and somewhat nonsensical) by aging him, or complaining about inconsistent dubbing, a real problem in YGO, really bores and irritates me.

(Kaiba is made nonsensical by aging because, if he were REALLY eighteen, what's he doing in Yugi-the-fifteen-year-old's homeroom? That would imply that the great CEO of KaibaCorp has been held back in his classes, multiple times, making his status as a high school student and businessman not just unusual but bizarre.)

Incedentally, some interesting tidbits on dub name meanings:

"Téa," so far as I could tell, means "princess." It is also the name of Téa Leoni, who costarred in the movie "Spanglish," which I would say pretty much verifies its authenticity as a name.

"Joseph," as I noted, is biblical, and it means "God will multiply." This has nothing to do with my decision to give him five children, I swear.

I couldn't trace "Tristan" exactly, but it seems to be a form of "Tristram," which means "sorrow" and was the name of a knight in an old story who was torn between two women.

All the surnames of those particular characters are English and refer to occupations, as if they were following a deliberate theme when renaming Yugi's support group.

It's pretty obvious what "Duke" means, but "Devlin" is a Gaelic name that means "fierce." Rocking.

There was a kid named Underwood in my high school. I can't say I ever met him.

"Odion" means "born of twins." There are several Egyptian names that the book I found it in claims mean "born of twins," and no matter how many times I see it, the meaning of the phrase "born of twins" continues to mystify me. (His name was probably changed on account of being too distinctly Arabic.)

"Maximillion" means "the greatest."

"Cecilia" means "blind." 8X

"Alister" apparently refers to a name rather big in the occult-- It is also a form of "Alexander" and means "defender of man." His name was probably changed because the name "Amelda" is stupid. And doesn't mean anything. At all.

"Solomon" is also a biblical name, associated with the wisest mortal found in the Book, and means "peaceful."

"Serenity" and "Shizuka" apparently mean approximately the same thing, which means it was just another example of the dubbers trying to make the series more accessable to an english speaking audience.

"Mai" may be her name in Japanese as well, but it is also a Native American name that means "Coyote," a Scottish form of Margaret (which means "pearl"), and can be taken as a form of "Mary," which means "bitter." In Japanese, "Mai" means "Dance," which means that "Kujaku Mai" translates literally into "Peacock Dance." "Valentine" of course was chosen for its connotations of romance, and the "my valentine" pun, but it's actually a Latin name that means "valiant." Pretty much all of these name meanings can be taken to apply to the character, which is weirdly cool.

Approximately half of the characters in the YGO:DM dub (That's the one most of us Americans think of as Yu-Gi-Oh!) either kept some form of their original names or their dub names refer to their original names. A good majority of the ones that got their names changed have easily divined reasons the names did change. (Lip flap, lingual jokes, accessibility, and the horror of listening to American VAs mispronounce Sogakoru, which I am quite confident I have misspelled.)

In fact, it's easier to explain why the names that got changed got changed than it is to explain why Seto and Mokuba Kaiba's names didn't change! (I figure they kept them because they were cool. And, you know, they couldn't very well change the title character's name without changing the name of the show, and maybe they didn't want poor Yugi to stand alone in the Japanese name department. XD)

Character Study: Yugi Moto

Approximate age: (by the Japanese anime) Fifteen to seventeen.
Character Archetype: The Cute/Little Sidekick, twisted into the hero's role.
Probable Element and Alignment: Dark, Chaotic Good
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: He says "Yup!" a LOT.

Yugi is, as anyone who knows me well enough to hear about my childhood knows, a particularly personal character for me. He is small yet unusual enough to attract attention, shy but incapable of fading into the background, gentle and innocent yet not so naiive as people would believe. He is very smart but doesn't do as well in school as he probably could if he simply applied himself (this is a curiously American trait; one wonders how the Japanese Yugi picked it up.) He has mostly been raised by his mother and grandfather; his father is largely absent due to work obligations. Yugi has developed a healthy respect for the storytelling tradition, as he has grown up metaphorically at his grandfather's knee, listening attentively enough to random dueling advice and stories to be able to recall important tidbits while under pressure. (Exodia)

The story of Yu-Gi-Oh! can be seen as his coming of age story. Atem may act as the Superman to his Clark through much of it, but Yugi first solved the puzzle after standing up for the first time to one of the many bullies that once made his school days a living horror. (Yugi before the Puzzle was rather typical bully fodder: just odd enough to attract attention, an easy target, someone who buried himself in his hobbies and was liveliest at home with familiar people.) By the end of it, no matter what canon you may follow, Yugi had to prove that he was capable of standing on his own two legs before Atem could lay down his sword, and he does. He has gone through plenty of major events, Atem or no Atem, to do so.

One of my absolute favorite things about Yugi is his non-judgmental acceptance of everyone, even after he has delivered them well-deserved kicks to head (or Atem has) so long as they realize what the kick in the head was FOR. Sometimes these "kicks in the head" aren't so much punishments delivered as they are simple displays of mettle: all Joey needed was for Yugi to prove he gave a damn. (Same applies to Tristan.) He's not silly about his acceptance-- when Kaiba does something wrong, Yugi will still call him on it. But no matter what Kaiba does, Yugi will forgive and forget. The matter is dropped. It will not be brought up unless forced. (Yugi's rather Christ-like that way.) He might regard the other person with a certain amount of suspicion the next he sees them, but it's the suspicion afforded a dog known for biting. There is no hatred.

That last paragraph covers what I tend to think Shadi meant when he called Yugi a soul of purity and innocence. This is a common misconception regarding the character, and a common misconception regarding the meaning of purity and innocence.

A person's purity and innocence has nothing to do with their sexuality at all. Being a virgin does not make one pure, it makes one a virgin. I know plenty of people who are or were perverts at the same time as being virgins. (Myself included.) Regardless of what sexuality you may regard Yugi Moto as being, he is a sexual being. He gets territorial about Téa, borrows pornography from Joey, knows exactly what Mai is trying to do when she grabs his hands and is appropriately abashed when pressed into Vivian's chest. (Freaking out over Vivian smashing his face into her mammaries is not the reaction of a sexually naiive person-- it is the reaction of any normal person who is attracted to people with boobs, and possibly any normal person who considers boobs sexual in any way. That scene says more about Vivian than it does about Yugi.) Even losing his virginity in the course of the series probably would not have deprived him of this stellar review on his soul's cleanliness.

Yugi typically has simple desires, despite being a complex person, and it's not difficult for him to achieve personal happiness, a healthy way to be. Unfortunately acheiving his desires is not always easy: His basic, most fundamental desire after hamburgers and strategy games is for the people around him to be happy and healthy.

This desire is probably the root of his willingness to follow destiny when it calls, and to help his friends when they need him. He wants to be relied on, and he knows that someone has to do it, so he steps up. I tend to think that his willingness to be a hero, mostly eschewing the glamorous bits and happily doing the hard parts with only the occasional complaint, is an expression of the boundless love he has for everyone around him.

Yugi has probably one main frustration, and that is that he is constantly underestimated or mistaken for much younger than he really is (this even happens in the fandom, after multiple jokes are made about it and he is shown as being in High School in all the media he's found himself in.) This is also the root of his being an easy target, as he is also typically a shy person at the beginning of the series (gentle souls forced into mixed company often are by nature). If he had been Joey's height, or Tristan's (Tristan is the tallest of the main characters in the series), people probably would have left him alone in the corner after failing to coax some appropriate reaction out of him, and he'd have been described as "creepy" as well as "gloomy." Instead, he got run over. Joey calls him "girly" and many others who underestimate him gravitiate towards calling him wimpy. It is not easy in a teenager's world to be shy AND short.

As a dynamic character, however, Yugi eventually overcomes this obstacle with Atem's help. Rest assured that in the end he will be just as much a master of acting four feet taller than he is in reality as Atem was. (I'm fairly convinced he's more physically developed by the end of the series anyway.)

Yugi is also often underestimated by the fandom because, even when he's not being shy, he's just kind of quiet and lets Joey take the lead in social situations. I just think it's out of his nature to be overbearing, and that he's much more of an anime sidekick-type compared to Joey, who is more like the typical anime hero (more on this in Joey's study, of course.)

Rather obviously, Yugi's something of a nerd. He likes to concern himself with little complicated things that take a lot of concentration, like models or (ahem) puzzles. While his hair might not be a proper indication (considering it seems to be hereditary), he seems to be something of a punk as well, and if he were an American I would suggest he listens to such bands as Black Sabbath and Marilyn Manson. (We shall rely more on the fact that Atem even could find a collar and crazy belts to cover him with at such short notice. That and on the fact that he was described by a fellow wallnerd as "gloomy.") Considering Kazuki Takahashi's favorite American comic is Hellboy (so stated in an interview), and the way rock music has infused itself into the Japanese consciousness, such suggestions for his choice of music are still perfectly feasable.

There is one more important aspect to Yugi's character this essay would be woefully incomplete without: Yugi is an anchor in a storm. If it weren't for Yugi, his friends wouldn't even be friends with each other. Some of them wouldn't be friends with themselves. Once he has developed more confidence in himself, he becomes the friend his friends turn to when they need stability, and that includes Mokuba and Seto Kaiba and yes, Atem himself. Yugi becomes Atem's sanity, in fact, just as Atem becomes his teacher and guiding force. Because of his gentle and accepting nature, Yugi improves the self-worth of people just by interacting with them.

Final Distillation:
Yugi is a friend to all and a kind, loving soul, but he is not a fool.
He does not hate, despite the wounds he's suffered.
He is very easy to underestimate.
He is a dynamic character, changing throughout the story.
He is easy to please.
He is brilliant but not intense.
He does things because they need to be done.
He pulls people together.

Feel free to comment on this and tell me whether you feel I've left something important out, or if you think I'm completely off base, or even if you agree with me. Comments can be made through email or right here, since I do believe anon-comments are enabled.

Character Study: What this is

I would likely not be so bold as to write as extensive fanworks as Yukai no Yugi or Game of Dreams if I did not feel I have a certain level of intimate knowledge into the characters at my disposal. (One can always tell when I've been reading Sherlock Holmes; my writing will probably carry a peculiarly Victorian flavor for the next few hours at least.)

I have never felt the need before to collect my understandings and interpretations of the characters into essay form, as it has always been all in my head. But I've noticed that I really enjoy talking about these aspects of character in forums, and that I enjoy sharing them even more. Invid has something he does called "Character Distillation," in which he strips the character down to his or her most fundamental aspects. I am concerned just as much with silly minutia, however, as I feel that these tiny quirks are what truly give a character personality, serving to humanize these fictional beings as much as possible.

Of course, we all take our own experiences and outlooks to the table, and so my understandings of these people will be different from that of not only the random fangirl or boy of DeviantArt or ff.net, but from their creator. There is nothing wrong with this so long as they come across as being like themselves in the final cut.

And so I give you: GDG's Character Studies.

A few notes on format:

While a character's age does not dicate how they will act, it does influence it, something the people who write Ninja Turtles seem to keep forgetting.

"Character Archetypes" aren't really ones you'll be likely to find in Campbell's studies of the subject, but rather are common anime character types mixed with common "Western" ones. While Japan's megamythical character set overlaps with that of the rest of the world, there are some interesting differences, and Yu-Gi-Oh! freely employs influences from both cultural universes. (It also happily employs characters of certain types in roles they rarely get to occupy.)

"Probable Element and Alignment" is sort of a weirdly mixed marker because the Alignments follow, mostly, D&D rules, while I think the elements tend to follow rules I sort of made up using the card game and the series. XD "Dark" people are more likely to be calm, smooth and collected, "light" people are more intense and hyperactive.

Vocal quirks are important when trying to achieve a character's "voice." See more about this at Invid's blog.

Final Distillation is for anyone too lazy to read the entire essay, but at the end so that hopefully you'll accidentally notice something that interests you. I'll try to keep these brief summaries.

First up, naturally, is Yugi. X3

Magic Light: Page 19-22

In Page 19, Tristan comes to an interesting realization-- and Yugi shows signs of having known the same thing all along.

Like I've said before, I think of Yugi and Joey as being two of the only people in the entire series who understand Kaiba on any level.

Also, I think it's cute that Yugi apologizes for "yelling" at Tristan when most of us would have called it "stern telling off that Tristan needed."

I don't have that much to say about page 20 except that for some reason, adding lines around Serenity made the first panel much more dynamic, and that I like the effect that adding a gradient over the entire page had on the feel of the page.

I love page 21. I think it's the best page in this sequence, because of how well it shows the dynamics between the two characters (and because of how pokeable Yugi is in the first panel.)

Poke him! Poke him I say!

Also, this is the second time I've made a joke about drugs in this fancomic. There must be something wrong with me.

Of course, page 22 is good for interaction too, and I like it in part because it lets Joey's more vulnerable side out (a side of him I don't go into very often).

"Were you aware my sister has a crush on Kaiba?" is Joey's way of changing the subject to Kaiba without seeming like he actually gives a care about Kaiba (even though he does-- as I noted before he pretends to be unconscious whilst Kaiba is apologizing for Kaiba's benefit).

XD Joey thinks Kaiba is funny. Clueless, and funny.

Yugi: "I am the rock!"

(is smacked)