Really, it’s not. It’s a sub vs raw post. “But you can’t- they’re not- You, sir, are a retard.”
Ok, the two aren’t substitutable or even comparable, by the standard of any anime fan who’s not fluent in Japanese. My Japanese is only at a level where I can understand 83% of any written passage even with a dictionary, and my listening is so bad that watching raw is pointless for me. Yet none-the-less, I’ve been doing it lately. The thing is, I watch the raw after the sub.
I started watching raws because I realised that I often get distracted by the subtitles.
I only noticed it very recently, when watching Eve no Jikan. I watched the first two episodes with subs, then went browsing for other people’s opinions on each episode because it is really fucking awesome. Reading through them made me realise that I didn’t notice a lot of the intricacies in the animation and direction. A truly excellent film or anime has a lot of the details placed through-out that the average person would never take note of without having it pointed out for them, but are nonetheless important things that elevate the show above all its contemporaries. A film example would be The Sixth Sense, where there are clues scattered through-out the entire movie pointing to the twist ending, yet most people never notice them on their first watch.
After reading about them, I went back to watch the first two episodes of Eve no Jikan with the subtitles turned off (I really want to thank whoever popularised soft-subs), and I managed to pick up on a lot of the things that were noted in other posts. Of course, I have the benefit of hindsight now, but I also have the benefit of being able to focus my eyes on things that are not words.
Thing is, I suck at multi-tasking. Being a man, my brain is at a natural disadvantage when it comes to processing multiple streams of information, and I’ve never managed to learn to handle multi-tasking. Once I even missed a turn while driving because I was talking to my friend (don’t distract the driver kids!). When I played The World Ends With You on the NDS, I never mastered the skill of managing both front of the battle – generally I spam block on the top screen and have Neku deal all the damage. Similarly, when I have to focus on and process the subtitles, my eyes don’t have time to wander around the rest of the screen picking up the details. I get the big picture, but details tend to go unnoticed. And so, I missed out on a lot of important things.
Ever since I started watching a show twice – once with subtitles and once without – I realised just how much the subtitles get in the way of focusing on the visuals. Little details in animation or background or direction, things that I never really picked up on before, started to become apparent to me. It’s like a whole new world just opened up to me. It’s all really frustrating, because now I feel like I’ve been missing out all these years. Which of the older shows that I didn’t like could’ve benefited from the extra attention that is taken away by the subtitles?
Conclusion of this post: I’d rather watch anime without subtitles, but considering the options available to me are “Watch it twice” or “Dubs”, it’s clear which is the lesser of the two evils.
20 Comments
I favor the fansubs in one point, Japanese is a cold language. Translations add a lot of feeling to the series. For example, Shakugan no Shana, was translated as “Shana of the burning eyes” which is pretty poetic, literally, it would read “burning eye(s) of Shana”.
Aside from knowing Japanese, to watch a series a great knowledge of the culture is needed, with the fansubs we got TS-Notes which help a great deal in many situations.
However, if you can understand raws well enough, then your attention is on the series, and the letters won’t get in the way (on openings and endings specially). The series was made to be watched this way to begin with. If I could understand 83% of the series, I would watch it raw, or disable the subtitles and activate them when a phrase is too hard, one of the marvels of the mkv’s.
I wonder if it makes a difference if you’re used to movies and series being subtitled all your life. I’d like to being able to read subtitles in one ‘glance’, your eye muscles should barely move to read it.
Most subbers take notice of this and use a maximum of 2 lines of text and also don’t make the text stretch across the entire screen. Just because the subs fit widescreen wise, doesn’t mean you should use all the space available!
I also watch raws, but I do it only for a few series and usually because the subs are slow or the series really are nice (and easy to understand for someone who has zero Japanese skills and never taken a formal class in it). I do notice though that what you mention, such as the animation and stuff, tend to be better when I watch the raw. As for comprehension, I try to grab what I can from the anime itself, and understand stuff contextually, and anything I might have no idea about is usually filled from reading other bloggers who saw and understood the whole thing later.
I watch raws first then subs. Even thought i don’t understand Japanese i could still understand what the characters were trying to say. Also i like to watch the anime in dub since i always like to watch anime in a different way (plus i cannot stand cute MOE voices, its irritating…Thank you Shuffle dub for ignoring moe for normalcy)
I watch whatever I can get, For me, some shows a translation isn’t even needed (Gurren Lagann) cuz u can feel what theyre saying (Awesome and More Awesome in TTGL’s case)
But I also do what Lupus does when I watch a subbed series that demands I do not take my eyes off of the action (Macross Frontier, Gundam 00,anything made by Gainax). Sometimes u just gotta go back and soak it all in…
solution:
read faster XD
Weirdly, I’ve never had a problem with subtitles, even though I’m also a guy and therefore supposedly bad at multitasking.
For me, it’s raw then subs, firstly because I can more or less understand it aside from long chunks of dialogue, given that the movements of people and human logic helps to elucidate meanings[not been studying Japanese formally]. Secondly, it’s faster since raws always precede subs.
I only do this to certain shows though, not stuff like vampire knight that don’t have much complexity. I tend to go for chinese sub instead of english since somehow chinese takes up less space and is faster to read too.
I think japanese is not really a ‘cold’ language, but rather that there is a lot of subtleties tied to its use, so it’s not as straightforward as english. The one main reason why I can’t stand dub is also because the way they put things in english often spoil the whole mood and make things sound so juvenile it’s simply hilarious.
I’ve recently switched to watching raws, but for a completely different reason. Yes, appreciating the artwork is nice enough, but also I was frustrated by the fact that there are truly worthy series that nobody is subbing, like Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette and Golgo-13 (all right, I admit it’s not that good of a series, but still . . .) It just opened up a whole new world to me in that regard, too bad there’s no more torrents of Shoujo Cosette though.
@Sjusjun – “I wonder if it makes a difference if you’re used to movies and series being subtitled all your life. I’d like to being able to read subtitles in one ‘glance’, your eye muscles should barely move to read it.”
That’s what I do. Actually, it’s probably not because I’m used to subs, but I do tend to read books fast (say, 500pg in 36 hours, including sleeping, eating, etc?). But sometimes it’s just not fast enough: I watched GitS:SAC dubbed, because I was missing most of the action (OK, I’ll admit that I found the dubbed streams first, and I prefered the Eng VAs).
But I still plan to learn Japanese someday. Makes the wait for new eps shorter, and importing anime & manga is much cheaper than buying the stuff traslated.
I agree with this article wholeheartedly. That’s why subtitles are best when they are low key and barely noticeable, and there aren’t any annoying “translator notes” or animated phrases (attacks, catchphrases, etc). Unfortunately, contemporary fansubbing leans towards the flamboyant, where competing groups constantly try this irritating one-up-manship that has created a standard of fansubbing that skews its original intent: to clearly and most effectively present a japanese anime to an english-speaking audience, so they can appreciate the original product, NOT you.
Shitty karaoke effects ruin anime opening and endings for me as well. We DONT need three lines of lyrics and we don’t need animation effects. Most often, we don’t even need a translation… nowadays many songs only tangentially relate to the show that includes them. Just let us enjoy the melody without cluttering the visuals that the original creators intended us to see.
I’d like to think the editorial writers who churn out insightful entries on various animes rewatch it for a number of times, unless they’re totally genius of course. Rewatch is a good thing, especially for animes like Eve no Jikan, the kind of that you’ll have a newfound appreciation for in each rewatch :3
Being a man, my brain is at a natural disadvantage when it comes to processing multiple streams of information, and I’ve never managed to learn to handle multi-tasking.
Second part is valid, first part is misconception (it was recently proven, also, if this were the case there would be only women fighter-jet [or rocket] pilots, because it is possibly the most demanding multi-task activity humans could be involved in).
When I watch subtitled anime on my computer, because I read fast, I tend to not miss anything on screen. And actually, I tend more to miss the subtitles because I focus on the animation more. But it helps that I can just rewind scenes I think I missed, and watch them all again.
I agree, I mostly can’t watch without subs. My Japanense is at a level where I can read and write really well, but when listening and speaking come in hand I find it hard. Tho my teacher told me when I go to Japan next year it will get better. So I don’t watch twice, and then third time to review. I watch twice with sub and then review. But on my own free time I’ll watch without subs, and even sometimes while watching subs I’ll just cover the subs.
I usually pick up on direction and music more than dialogue when watching subs, mostly due to not taking the translations literally. But there was one recent incident where I noticed something the second time around when watching without subtitles. I saw some of the early episodes of TTGL on fansubs while it was in R1 licesnsing limbo and BUT I didn’t pick up on the simplistic design of the interior Ganmen data interfaces until I was checking out the dub on television.
I agree that subsequent viewings of an anime or, more broadly, a film allow you to be more attentive to cinematography, set direction, musical cues, and other elements since you, as a viewer, have already experienced the main narrative. The same goes for music, theater, and literature – the repetition adds to your overall understanding of a work’s composition. However, I believe you can train yourself to become more aware of those supporting elements the first time you are consuming a particular piece of entertainment. Watching something a distance away from a large screen, if available, can help someone be able to read for comprehension and simultaneously investigate details with your eyes if that is your goal.
If you flip it around, and watch the episode first without subs, you’ll find it doesn’t take that long before you don’t need the subs. Just keep a grammar reference handy. (Most voice actors have really clear diction so it’s pretty easy to look up things you don’t know yet.)
I like ‘em raw! (woots) I watch the raws before the subs ’cause I can’t stand my own damn curiosity. It drives me to bits. But lately, I’ve only been watching the raws ’cause i lack time to watch the subs.
I tried watching my first raw after reading this post, with the little Japanese I understand and its amazing how much more you can appreciate the details… maybe it was because I was looking for details, but i found a lot of animation bugs and I even like the series less… (it was CHAOS;HEAD by the way)
Well, I understand maybe 5% Japanese, so the subs are my lifeline. Otherwise I don’t know what’s going on, and it annoys me. But if the anime is based on a manga, I can watch raws. (then find subs to get the smaller details)
@ Rent
Yea…… you can find that with subs on, but with raws it’s a lot worse. I wish anime didn’t have a budget.
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Lupus on mental bandwidth…
With an editorial at THAT, Lupus joins the raw revolution:
Ever since I started watching a show twice – once with subtitles and once without – I realised just how much the subtitles get in the way of focusing on the visuals. Little details in animatio…
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