{"id":595,"date":"2011-04-14T12:42:01","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T04:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/?p=595"},"modified":"2011-04-14T15:16:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T07:16:28","slug":"there-are-some-things-meant-only-for-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2011\/04\/14\/there-are-some-things-meant-only-for-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"There are some things meant only for Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

As soon as the new season of the Gintama<\/em> anime started, I noticed a couple of tweets asking whether the Gin Tama<\/em> ((From here then on I will refer to Gintama as the Japanese version while Gin Tama as the VIZ releases)) manga was cancelled since the US Viz release of the 23rd<\/sup> volume was declared as the final volume<\/a>. The manga is still going strong in Japan and when I checked my 23rd<\/sup> volume, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a joke on being the last volume. Hence, I was surprised with the blurb in the same way that I was surprised that this even happened at all. How did one of Japan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most popular titles close its pages in the US? Perhaps I should first ask: how did Gintama<\/em> get translated in the first place?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I do remember what I felt in seeing the first volume of Gin Tama<\/em> (as appropriated by Viz) a long time ago, wondering even why it exists. Having been a fan of the Japanese original, there were two problems I saw with a Gintama <\/em>translation. First, it was deeply entrenched with Japanese concepts, trends, and puns that it would be difficult to translate without having to write tons of footnotes on why that pun was supposed to be funny ((which kind of kills the jokes, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?)). \u00c2\u00a0Second, the manga\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loaded with childish Japanese humor, the stuff that young teenagers refuse to let go of. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about poop jokes, dick jokes, boob jokes, idiot talk, idiot choices, and warped childish logic that are certainly not everybody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cup of tea. At least to my experience, not everyone can ride on that humor. Unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a Japanese kid ((and even that is quite questionable since different kids have different tastes))<\/p>\n

When I browsed through that issue, I found myself appreciating the lengths that Viz had done for the US translation. They chose the path of keeping the humor and the story but they sacrificed a bit, and at times a lot, of the context. Gin Tama<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for a different audience after all. When American teenage boys are hell bent on their action heroes beating people to a pulp, seeing a hero pick their nose might just throw them off. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a bad thing. The comic was still funny even if Gin Tama<\/em> was not Gintama<\/em>. It might sell but as I placed the volume back to the shelf, I had a feeling that kids might not get the \u00e9\u00ad\u201a (tama<\/em> or in english “soul”) in Gintama.<\/p>\n

Gintama<\/em> takes pride in being a series with a lot of soul. The main character, Gintoki believes that as the hero, he upholds the soul and dreams of many boys. This can mean a lot of things but it can go as easy as helping the elderly to doing what you think is right to protecting the people you love. But this is just a part of Gintama<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soul. The entire city of Kabuki-chou, its crazy denizens and its culture, is a microcosm of metropolitan Tokyo. In it there are women who work in cabaret clubs, men in host clubs, brothels, thieves, otaku, perverts and the occasional densha otoko. The characters fall in love with digital girlfriends and they go in online anonymous boards to get advice on love. Gintoki is an avid reader of Shounen Jump and is not afraid to reference it everytime he needs to put his manga into place. This series is not afraid to represent Japanese social reality in its pages that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to divorce Japanese culture from its pages. It captures the vibrant and ever changing soul of Japan hence to appropriate or to even translate the series to another culture or language compromises Gintama<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soul.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Panels from the Viz edition of Gin Tama. Catherine was based from Cat's Eye, another Jump title. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Personally, I understand why Viz even picked up the title. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a funny series, more so, an amazing story. To me, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possibly one of the best titles serialized in the Japanese version of Shounen Jump. Gintama<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also been receiving some following ever since the anime started and fans bear through tons of footnotes and explanations that come out in the fan subtitles of the series ((I must confess, even reading the fansubs of this series is half as good unless you don’t have a deep understanding of the Japanese context)). Some scanlations were emerging and at that time, it felt like the English-speaking fandom might be knowledgeable and mature enough to understand some of the jokes pulled in the series. Unfortunately, if they are indeed pulling Gintama<\/em> off the shelves, then English-speaking world just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t click with Yorozuya.<\/p>\n

If they are pulling off Gin Tama<\/em> off the shelves ((this could be just a joke after all. Gintama<\/em>‘s very fond of such jokes)), then the series is a great reminder of how some things are better left untranslated. As a fan of Gintama<\/em>, I too want the series translated however as someone who understands it in Japanese, I know that it would be impossible to port the series at 100%. A lot of us would like to think that manga has a universal appeal however, the failures of series like Gintama<\/em> is a reminder that sometimes, some manga just don’t have an international audience in mind.<\/p>\n

I’m quite curious if Gintama suffered the same in other international editions. So I’d like some readers (outside of the US) does your country translate Gintama? If they do, how were the translations? Was it successful or did it wrap up like Gin Tama did?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As soon as the new season of the Gintama anime started, I noticed a couple of tweets asking whether the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[297,274,99,180,36],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-hideaki-sorachi","tag-viz","tag-gintama","tag-shounen","tag-shounen-jump"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/gintama-01.jpg?fit=852%2C753","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p26e5y-9B","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":248,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2010\/01\/24\/hooray-for-gintama-on-philippine-tv\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":0},"title":"Hooray for Gintama on Philippine TV","author":"khursten","date":"January 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, it's been a long time hasn't it? I have been busy as of late but never too busy to tell you guys about how fun it is to watch Gintama on our local TV! I think I've been dreaming for years to hear Gintama in our language Tagalog. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fujoshi Life"","block_context":{"text":"Fujoshi Life","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/bscap452-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":21,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2006\/12\/31\/the-year-in-review-w\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":1},"title":"The year in review. (^w^)\/","author":"khursten","date":"December 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Every year, I do a little list of the fun things I've read and seen during the year. And in the spirit of doing lists, I thought I'd make a list of all the things that made my hobby go further down the drain this year. These are anime and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fujoshi Life"","block_context":{"text":"Fujoshi Life","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/bscap1582.jpg?fit=640%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/bscap1582.jpg?fit=640%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/bscap1582.jpg?fit=640%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":816,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2011\/10\/25\/ready-to-taste-sublime\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":2},"title":"Ready to taste SuBLime?","author":"khursten","date":"October 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The US Yaoi-con just wrapped up and while I have never been there to witness the famous slave auctions, this year, there was one announcement that I wanted to catch up on: Viz's BL line, SuBLime. I've been teasing in twitter that Viz doesn't need a dedicated BL line because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/sublime.jpg?fit=600%2C208&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/sublime.jpg?fit=600%2C208&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/sublime.jpg?fit=600%2C208&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":55,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2007\/08\/13\/looking-forward-to-jump-square\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":3},"title":"Looking forward to Jump Square!","author":"khursten","date":"August 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week's highlight for me, other than receiving some great mangas from a friend (and my Touch OST! ;w;) is looking at the line up of Jump Square. To be honest, as much as I owe a lot of my fandom to Shounen Jump, recently, the titles in the magazine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Features"","block_context":{"text":"Features","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/features\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":627,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2011\/04\/18\/natsume-onos-nigeru-otoko-on-sale\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":4},"title":"Natsume Ono’s Nigeru Otoko on Sale","author":"khursten","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I was reading through my feeds this morning and caught on Manga Erotics F announcement on the sale of Natsume Ono's Nigeru Otoko. It's a title that started last year and for the release of its first volume, it seems that they will hold an exhibit for Nigeru Otoko. 18\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/news_large_nigeruotoko.jpg?fit=610%2C865&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/news_large_nigeruotoko.jpg?fit=610%2C865&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/news_large_nigeruotoko.jpg?fit=610%2C865&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":900,"url":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/2012\/01\/21\/on-the-shelf-a-fresh-start\/","url_meta":{"origin":595,"position":5},"title":"On the Shelf: A Fresh Start","author":"khursten","date":"January 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It has somewhat eluded me before but I feel that with the influx of manga in the Philippine market, I think it's best to start thinking on what is being sold on Philippine bookshelves and what we can buy. Filipinos used to have this excuse that particular manga is unavailable\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/The_Kurosagi_Corpse_Delivery_Service-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions\/601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.punkednoodle.com\/champloo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}