December Rant Oh Brave New World, that has such... Pikachu jokes?! (A look at the Beast Wars Metals and the funny things that English-to-Japanese translators do.)

For the unintiated, Beast Wars Metals is the sequel (?!) to Japan's mildly popular Beast Wars franchise. It's basically whatever parts of Season 2 Beast Wars didn't get translated as part of Japan's brief run of Beast Wars Season 1 and a Bit, as well as Season 3 Beast Wars and a few "extra episodes" to make up for the ones already aired as part of the Beast Wars Theatrical releases (which are currently on sale as videos and LDs). It's actually been a while since I've seen Episode 1: We're Back (English Title: The One Where Everyone Gets Transmetallized), so this will be more of a General Impressions of Beast Wars Metals thing. Impression #1 The opening theme is... interesting. Sung by Hironobu Kageyama (a veteran anime-themesong -crooner and best known for his many many Dragon Ball/DBZ themes), it's an interesting departure from the previous attempts to be trendy by incorporating semi-famous Japanese rap artists and semi-famous washed up Japanese pop musicians. The most amusing part for me (aside from the constant references to Love and the Young Men Whose Souls are Soldiers) is a bit where the clips-from-later-episodes make it look like Primal is singing some of the lyrics. Teehee. Lip-syncing is funny. Also funny and rather delightful to me (but painful to others, no doubt) is... Impression #2 Ye GHODS, they sure are self-conscious in this show. And by self-conscious I mean "totally, utterly aware that they're characters in a TV show". To the point where, in any shot where the character is looking straight at the camera, they say something to the effect of "No, wait! Don't change the channel!" or "And now, for some commercials." or "Will our intrepid heroes escape this deathtrap? Find out next week! Same Rat-time, same Rat-channel!" As far as I can tell, this is the translators' attempt to make any cute visual gags that the animators were subtly working in as OBVIOUS AND BLATANT as possible, presumably so that the Little Kiddies will be able to understand. Or not. There's an equal possibility that the voice actors are adlibbing like crazy (there are many scenes where the character was apparently silent in the original version, but says something silly or makes a pop-culture reference in the Japanese version), or that the voice actors and translators are, well, having fun by not taking the whole thing too seriously. As well as the general adlibs, there are some scripted Intentionally Silly Bits that are done as voice-overs by the characters. These occur before the show begins, as part of its "Kids, Always Watch TV in a Well-Lit Room At a Good Distance from the TV" public service announcement, right before some commercial breaks, right before the ending theme, as part of the "Next week, on Beast Wars!" section and right after the show ends. These are spectacular in their silliness and their occasional heart-warmingness, and are somewhat reminiscent of the "outtakes" from "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2" in their "here's what happens behind the scenes!" spirit. They are also available from TV Tokyo's website, so I'm not sure whether it's kosher for me to translate and transcribe them. Any budding lawyers in the audience? Impression #3 *sob* Make the goofy voices stop... Everyone has a goofy voice/speech impediment/speech quirk in this show. Everyone. I guess it's to make the characters sillier and more likeable. I don't know. I don't care. It hurts. I'm now going to give a quick (?) breakdown of the characters and their vocal qualities (i.e., their speech characteristics and what this implies about them in Japanese culture). Primal: No noticeable speech characteristics. He sounds serious, slightly earnest, like a kindly Big Brother. Cheetor: Ends most sentences with "-jan", which technically speaking signifies a question, like "... Don't you think?" or "Y'know?" This implies that he's either a young man, or a man in his twenties desperately clinging onto the vestiges of teenaged "hip"ness. Rhinox: Slightly slow, ponderous speech, ending most sentences with "-dana". Can't remember the literal meaning of that phrase (?) but it implies that he's male (wow. How insightful.) and not young. And probably not very cultured or well-mannered. Personally, I'd translate it as a quintessentially Canadian "... Eh?" tagged onto every sentence. Dinobot: Loud, raucous speech, ending many sentences in "-DAAA!" Which I translate as a Fonzarellian "Ayyyyy!" Basically, he's a tough street-smart raptor who is oddly hyperactive in the Japanese translation. The voice actor seems to get a lot of happy-fun adlibbing in, especially in any scene with Rattrap. Air(r)azor: Male. Thanks to a lack of exposure to English Female Airrazor, I adapted fairly quickly to Malerazor... Whereas other people were traumatized by him. I did notice that in this episode, there's an odd scene in which Malerazor punches out Blackarachnia and then shakes his hand, as if to say "Ow! That smarts!" One wonders why they didn't edit that out, or acknowledge Malerazor's wimpiness, or SOMETHING. Oh, and contrary to previous reports I'd heard he doesn't sound like a "little boy". More of a young man, if that helps any. Tigatron: Basically your average Deeply Honourable Samurai/Retainer To a Young Nobleman. Apparently the lovey-dovey relationship between Air and Tigs was translated into "Young Lord and his Faithful Retainer". OR WAS IT? dum dum DUMMMMM! (see review of Ep 6: Ack! The Flower...?!) Rattrap: Argh. Rattrap sounds like a little boy. And vacillates between childishness and the surprising maturity one would expect from English Gritty Rattrap. Incidentally, the "Is my gearbox hanging out or something?" line was translated into "You're all looking at me like I'm Betsujin 28!" ... a punning reference to Iron Man 28 (?), another robot series, combining that with "betsujin" or "totally different person". As a matter of fact, Beast Wars Metals is full of silly references that will either deepen your understanding of Japanese pop-culture, or make you want to take a sledgehammer to the original translator's head. Such as... the fact that Rattrap makes jokes about "that other electric rat who's so much more popular than me" the fact that Rattrap squeals 'Chuuuuuu!' when going into Vehicle Mode. the fact that half of Inferno's lines are nothing like the English versions. (see below.) Megatron: Appears to be the jolliest villain this side of David Xanatos. He sounds like nothing so much as some horrible jovial uncle who corners you at family gatherings, slaps you on the back, demands that you "pull his finger" and goes into a loud protracted sulk when you refuse to do so. The other characters, particularly Rattrap, Cheetor, and Rhinox, call him "that middle-aged man" or "that old guy". It's terribly cruel and age-ist. Oh, and he refers to himself as "Mega-chan" or "Megsie". Tarantulas: Has the Japanese equivalent of an effeminate lisp. Uses female-language quite often. Occasionally speaks directly to the little kiddies in the audience, saying things like "Now wemember, widdle kiddies, it's impowtant to look both ways befowe cwossing the stweet..." Blackarachnia: Adds "-ssha", a sort of hissing sound, to the end of every sentence. Slightly lower-pitched than Venus Terzo, I think. Terrorsaur: Gah, I don't remember. He really wasn't around for much of this episode. I think he sounded about the same. Scorponoc/k/s: See above. Waspinator: A pretty good approximation of Scott McNeill's Waspy voice, although Japanese really has no way of making "zzz" sounds without totally warping the word itself, so they ended up just tacking "-buuuuun" or "Bzzzz" to the ends of his utterances. Inferno: Bear with me, because this is going to take a while to explain. One of the terribly cute Songs that Children Are Forced To Learn and Recite Because It's Cute in Japan is the song of the Little Ants Who Went to Market. Although it's been a while, the basic gist of it is that two little ants go to market, and as they return from market they run into each other --- Bonk! --- because they can't see over the large Things They Bought at Market that they're carrying. This Bonk! noise is "Gottsunko" in Japanese. And that is Inferno's speech quirk. *sob* He periodically says "Bonk!" for no apparent reason, or inserts "Bonk!" into an otherwise completely sensible statement, or mutters "Bonk. Bonk. Bonk" to himself as he waddles around. Oh, and the "For the Royalty!"-type statements were, depending on the episode and the context, translated into: Megatron Sama, or Lord Megatron (Okay, makes sense...) Jyouou Sama, or "My Queen", to which Megatron replies by adopting a vaguely drag queen/S&M queen-ish speech pattern (Uh... yeah... right...) Koumon Sama, a reference to a period drama about Mito Koumon, an elderly retired Vice Shogun who wanders the landscape of Japan with an entourage consisting of: O-Gin, or Lady Silver, the Kickass Sexy Ninja Lady Yashichi, the Faithful Old Ninja Tobizaru, the fairly Kickass Big Hulking Ninja Suke-san and Kaku-san, the competent young-ish samurai, and The requisite comic relief guy who is the butt of all jokes. Presumably Inferno is comparing the Pred team to the Koumon team, with Black Arachnia as O-Gin, himself as Yashichi, and Waspinator as Comic Relief Guy. Impression #4 Hah! Bet you forgot I was still doing this list of Impressions I got from BW Metals, Episode 1! *cough* Anyhow. The ending for BW Metals is terrifying, painful, and just barely avoids being execrable by dint of me using that word too often. To summarize the agony I go through whenever I hear it, it's a jolly march/chant/don't know much about music so I can't identify its genre, also sung by Mr. Kageyama. I can only assume that it's meant to appeal to the Little Kiddies, as it produces nothing but revulsion in me. It plays over a montage of various characters, their names, and key scenes from the episode. This becomes nothing short of depressing in episodes like Code of Hero and Transmutate, in which touching scenes of heroism and death are accompanied by a cheery "Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa WHOA-whoa, WHOA-whoa" chant. Oh, and the song is called "Bah-bee-boo-beh-Beast Wars" (anglicized spelling for the non-Romaji- l33t). This concludes my protracted introductory ramble to the world of Beast Wars Metals. Hopefully the other episode reviews will not be nearly so long, or painful to write. . . . Characters Gallery Library The Nexus

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