localization – Contemporary Japanese Literature

Title: Legends of Localization, Book 1: The Legend of Zelda
Author: Clyde Mandelin
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Fangamer
Pages: 198

Clyde “Mato” Mandelin is a professional translator who is famous on the internet for two things: first, leading the team of fan translators who put together an English patch for Mother 3 (which was never given a commercial release outside of Japan), and second, his website Legends of Localization, on which he posts detailed essays about the changes made to video games as they are prepared for the North American market.

Legends of Localization, Book 1: The Legend of Zelda is an offshoot of this website and the first book in what seems slated to become an ongoing series. As its title suggests, it focuses on the original The Legend of Zelda game from 1986.

The book is divided into six main sections.

The first section, which lists the differences in the game music and sound effects between the Japanese and American versions of the game, is an odd place to start (seeing as how books don’t produce audio – yet!), but the descriptive comparisons are a good introduction to just how far (and deep into the game code) the process of localization can go.

The second chapter, which analyzes the text spoken by the old men and women (and lone Moblin) in the game, explains the linguistic justifications for the bad grammar of the English text. It also bravely attempts to puzzle out what the hints these characters offer the player are actually supposed to indicate.

The third section, which covers the game’s items, explores some interesting cultural differences, including why the “Bible” was called such and why it was changed to the “Book of Magic.”

The fourth section explains the origins of the names of common Zelda enemies, such as Moblins and Like Likes, which are based on Japanese wordplay.

The fifth section, which examines the game manual, is a blast of nostalgia for those of us who treasured the little booklets that came included with game cartridges. This section includes an amazing line-by-line comparison of the introductory story text in Japanese and the English translation (which was surprisingly well executed), as well as several cogent explanations for the mistranslations that litter the remainder of the text.

The final section, “Beyond the Game,” collects information on hardware, promotional materials, television commercials, strategy guides, and spin-off games, including the vastly different Japanese and American board games.

What I especially appreciate about Legends of Localization are its illustrations. In addition to a wealth of screenshots, the book contains high quality scans of various print media, as well as photographs of game consoles, cartridges, and other paraphernalia. All of the images are informatively and appropriately labeled, and many are accompanied by humorous captions. My favorite of these captions are the ones that propose outlandish theories, such as “Link is dead and everyone is directing him to the light.” Because of the book’s uncluttered layout, it’s fun to flip through the pages while letting the pictures and cute captions catch your attention.

Legends of Localization is brilliant, witty, and thoroughly entertaining. Mandelin is a hero of the international gaming community, and this paper-and-ink publication of his work is a treasure. Even if you couldn’t care less about the Zelda games, or video games in general, I still recommend Legends of Localization for its clever insights into both Japanese and American popular culture.

As the cave-dwelling shield merchant should have said (if his dialog had been translated properly), “This is a good value and definitely worth buying.” Don’t keep it a secret to everybody!

The publisher, Fangamer, has put out a number of other gaming books, including the Zelda-themed graphic novel Second Quest and a small guide to navigating The Legend of Zelda in Japanese. They’re good people, and everything they release is golden as the Triforce.

Title: Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade
Author: Jonathan Clements
Publication Year: 2009
Publisher: Titan Books
Pages: 272

Do you love anime? Do you really love anime? Have you lived long enough to catch references to anime titles more than five to ten years old? Do you appreciate dry humor? Do you want to hear some great gossip about the anime industry? If so, you should seriously consider grabbing a copy of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis – or downloading one to your Kindle, which is what I did.

Schoolgirl Milky Crisis has been out for more than two years now, but I had put off reading it because I didn’t think I wanted to read a book “mixing reviews, cultural commentary, insights into classic manga and anime titles, interviews and profiles of Japan’s top creators, and hilarious insider stories from the anime trade.” I assumed such a description was advertising code for “short, unrelated blips of a journalistic nature crammed haphazardly together within an appealing bright yellow cover that will attract potential teenage buyers in the wake of the success of Japanamerica.” In other words, I thought it would be rubbish.

It’s not. Jonathan Clements is a fantastic writer, and the editing and organization of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis is equally well done. The result of this excellent writing and editing is a product that is intelligent and eminently readable. I downloaded the book on a whim during a short train ride yesterday afternoon and ended up doing several loads of laundry just so I would have an excuse to sit on my kitchen floor all night and continue reading it.

The essays in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis can be divided into three main categories. The first and foremost category is insider industry information and gossip. The gossip includes tidbits such as how fan-run conventions fail to respect their guests from Japan and how a famous director with a name suspiciously close to “Ōtomo Katsuhiro” was almost physically kicked out of the company that distributes his films in Britain. The insider industry information contains all the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts that fans often aren’t aware of, such as how property rights are acquired, how difficult it is to get a show on television, and how people end up becoming voice actors (apparently, voice acting is not a job anyone actually wants). The second category concerns information on foreign markets for anime in countries like China, Korea, the United States, and Britain – and also places like Finland and Estonia. I imagine that this category might be genuinely interesting for anime fans (especially those in the States) who see anime as existing only in their own country and Japan (and who aren’t freaks like me who read anime magazines in three different languages). The third category involves extended analytical essays that were originally delivered as public lectures. “Five Girls Named Moe: The Anime Erotic,” for example, is about the porn industry in Japan, and “Highbrow Skills in a Lowbrow Medium” concerns the issue of “translation” versus “localization.” In my opinion, these longer essays in particular make the book worth reading and are well worth the price of admission.

Unfortunately, there were several sections that I found myself quickly clicking through after the first four or five pages. One was the chapter on Chinese animation, which begins with a brief overview and then launches into extended plot summaries of all of the titles mentioned in said overview (none of which could be found on Google). Another was the essay included as the liner notes in the re-release of the 1961 film Mothra, which lists name after name after name of a cast and crew I knew nothing about. Name dropping and plot summaries are rarely interesting, especially when the names are relatively unknown and the plots belong to films that are almost impossible to actually get one’s hands on. Speaking of which, even reviews that were interesting and fun to read could become frustrating, as the anime industry in the West moves quickly (and older titles have a tendency to become rare). For example, I was especially impressed by Clements’s liner notes for the anime series Saikano (released in 2002 in Japan, 2004 in America) but soon found that I couldn’t rent it from Netflix or Tsutaya or watch it on legally streaming sites like Hulu or Crunchyroll. What’s the point of reading about how great an anime is if you can never watch it?

In any case, what keeps the reader going through sometimes tedious and occasionally disjointed material is Clements’s wry and amusing narrative voice and common sense approach to the topic at hand. To illustrate this, I’d like to quote a paragraph from an essay titled “The Measure of Tape: The Lost World of VHS,” in which Clements describes a fantasy he had after witnessing a distributor throw out all the old review copies of VHS tapes he had gone through the trouble of returning:

So I decided that was it. I was going to liberate VHS. I was going to hoard my review copies until my office burst at the seams, and one day a grateful university library would come along and open the Jonathan Clements Wing, packed to the rafters with PAL copies of obscure titles like Ambassador Magma, and errant NTSC dubs of Fatal Fury. Researchers would then come from far and wide to leaf through my collection of ancient Japanese-language Newtypes and make notes for their dissertations. And once every few years, when I needed to check a scene in episode #8 of Ushio and Tora, I would pop back and visit my old tapes, just for the day. That was the plan.

I think this serves as a fitting analogy for Schoolgirl Milky Crisis itself. Sure, some of the titles Clements discusses may be old and obscure, and sure, maybe nobody cares about foreign markets and industry information besides the people actually involved in the process, but the essays in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, when read as a whole, succinctly track the history of anime in Asia and the West, bit by tantalizing bit. The writing style is engaging enough to keep the reader invested in the process all the way until the end. If you’re not an anime fan, you probably won’t have much use for the book; but, if you are a fan and haven’t checked out Schoolgirl Milky Crisis yet, I highly encourage you to do so.