Cherry Tree High Comedy Club

[TrickWithAKnife]

Localisations that keep the Japanese names and then mangle their pronunciations get the worst of both worlds!

(i'm looking at you, suh-KOO-ra.)

This.

It annoys me no end when the English speaking voice actors (why are they always American?) butcher the Japanese names. Do they not have someone who can write the names phonetically for them so they can say it correctly?

And it goes both ways. It's terrible watching a Japanese anime, and the English speaking characters have lines that make no sense at all, and are voiced by people with the strongest Japanese accents ever.
Example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWNx4p6FVRA

[LateWhiteRabbit]

(why are they always American?)

Because we stole the "Best Friend Nation" title with the Japanese from the Dutch when Admiral Perry bullied his way into Tokyo Harbor. We had that rocky period in the relationship when they bombed us and we nuked them, but you know, every friendship has its rough patches. So now they get to mangle English and we get to mangle Japanese. (In a more serious note, it's totally because Americans are often the first English contact with a Japanese product, so American English it is!)

The Returner (awesome movie) had some horrible English in it as well. They have a very nice scene where the future girl is running to get to the time machine the joint U.S. and Japanese survivors of the alien invasion are guarding together, and, well . . . I think those "American" soldiers may have been alien imposters, because they spoke the most stilted English I've ever heard. (Well, until you posted that link - I can't even understand a WORD of that "English". Mush-mouth, much?)

One of my favorite stories is one Peter (who runs J-List) told years ago about not being able to convey his order thru the drive-thru at a KFC in Japan - the girl on the other end couldn't understand him, and he couldn't understand her. Long story short, he was American and she was Chinese, and their thick accented Japanese was insufficient for communication. If I remember correctly, I believe it turned out she spoke better English than Japanese, and that is how they finally communicated.

[papillon]

I can't remember which anime it was, but I know I've seen at least one which had a totally random scene in an american military base (random because none of this ever appeared in the rest of the show again) and it was so confusing hearing the sudden English. It was quite understandable English, too, with the only problem being that the inflection was off. They got people who could speak in English, but not people who could act in English.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

They got people who could speak in English, but not people who could act in English.

That seems to happen quite a bit. It's like they grab the nearest gaijun and shove a microphone in their face. That's how it was in The Returner. The English was perfectly understandable, but it was SO stilted and unnatural sounding, like native English speakers who couldn't act were reading their lines written in Japanese, stumbling over the switch in their brains between the two languages, and the director used the first take. Which, you know, could very well have been the case. EDIT: Also, it was American soldiers in the script, but I believe the English speakers in the movie were British. So I really did want to yell at the screen - "Look out! You've been infiltrated by the aliens! Those can't possibly be real people!"

It was a little sad, because that is the only obviously low budget scene in the movie, the rest is very well done and has some great acting and special effects.

[Sharm]

I think the funniest case of use of English in anime I ever saw was some anime where the main character girl was doing a stirring speach in english to some UN like place. The translation of the subtitles was quite long and eloquent, but what she actually said was more like "It would be very nice if you would please help us!"

[Hijiri]

Just FYI: They released a demo

[Ragtag]

Love this but it would be better if they remove the whole English name altogether.

[kara24601]

Played this recently - ( had a hard time getting good endings in the game before so rage quit a lot ....hahaha )

Hated that I didn't have the option to use my mouse to click on characters and stuff....instead we have to use c button / space bar?! Ugh.

Got a lot farther thanks to looking stuff up on internet and using an online converter to change stupid pdf - ( oh how I hate pdf ) - to html document for the manual thing

Besides the shrine and shrine maiden , there's some other japanese-related stuff in there but not much....for example one of the character's father wears kimono or whatever and the whole "big asian mansion" thing is something I've seen in a lot of manga / anime. And Cherry Tree Hill , from what I understood in the game, is actually a place in America...or an alternate version of America because if I remember correctly the girls would keep bringing up how "this is America" blah blah blah "omg swedish people love America? awesome!" and talking about how the shrine was a gift from Japan....stuff like that. I need to play again to be sure but....

Or maybe it's supposed to be a mix of Japan and America...or like how some places are called "Little China" ect. Cherry Tree Hill or whatever is the "little" Japan of an alternate universe america? I don't know.