So, you want to know what's different between the Japanese and English versions of Gravitation? First, I'll just start off with some of the basic visual differences (majorly exciting, I know, but I felt it's at least worth mentioning :P Don't worry, I'll get to the raving bitch rants eventually....you know that's why you're here!). Below is a side by side comparison image of both versions of Volume 1, with the Japanese on the left and English on the right:
As you can see, the English version is slightly larger than the Japanese version. Also, the English version is a little darker (it's most obvious when comparing the shading). This is true not only for the cover images, but for all of the content throughout the manga. Now let's look at the back image:
Obviously, the image of Shuuichi was shrunk quite a bit in order to fit more text on the page. Also worth noting that, as with most Japanese manga, the images above are printed on a removable dust cover, whereas the English version places the images on the cover of the book itself (this seems to be standard practice for just about every English translation I've seen). This means that any images/messages on the insides of the dust cover (one can be seen seen below) are usually lost:
This image doesn't appear anywhere in the English version, but one of the other dust cover images does....more on that later.
So now let's open up the book:
On the left, you'll see the Japanese version (no, this isn't meant to be a good scan, it's just illustrating the fact that each of the Japanese manga come with a two-page sized foldout poster in the front). In the English version, instead of the poster, you get a black and white version of it on the first page (I scanned them to look the same size, but the Japanese version is twice as big).
Next is the title pages:
While the Japanese version is on the first paper page of the book, in the English version you need to flip past a page of information about available TokyoPop releases. Interesting to note that even though all of the information was in English in the original version, they made a new title page. Perhaps it was so they could put their logo at the bottom.
Now the contents page:
In TokyoPop's version, there's another filler page with publication information before you get to this page. Here, different fonts are used on the text portions and different page numbers are listed (since the English version has a few added pages). The English version lacks the blurb of when the tracks were originally published in magazines (English versions never include these), and includes....a random upsidedown picture of Shuuichi. Huh? I have no idea why they added these, but they do it in every volume.
The Japanese version wasted no time in getting right to the title page for Track 1 on the next page. In the Englsih version, though:
Random picture of Eiri. I'm assuming this was done so they'd have an even number of added pages (there were three before) so that each two page segment you see when you look through the manga will be the same (does that make any sense?).
The differences above are true for all volumes unless otherwise noted.
So now that I'm done talking about stuff that is of interest to none, let's get started. What I'm going to do is list the page number and quote from the TokyoPop version, followed by any or all of the following: The quote in Japanese with my own translation, a description of what's confusing about it, a rant about the stupidity of it, and/or psychotic raving bitching followed by ritual seppuku when I just can't take it anymore ^_^ Also, if there are any readers out there who notice some things I don't mention, feel free to contribute. I'm not looking to mention every non-direct translation; as long as the original intent is retained, I'm satisfied. But if you had any "WTF?!" reactions that I don't mention, let me know! Or if you have a correction/addition to something I mentioned, I want to hear about that, too. Just send a message to sailorspazz@yahoo.com (Let me know if you don't want your name printed).
Track 1
Page 11 - Untranslated sound effect "ban".
This will be something to watch for throughout the manga. TokyoPop is incredibly inconsistent about translating the sound effects. They do some, but not all, which is puzzling. I'd say either do them all or do none, don't pick and choose. Maybe they only did the ones they felt were "relevant" (the untranslated "ban" is the sound of Maiko opening the door), but I still feel some consistency would be nice (one of my biggest beefs with the English version is the lack of consistency....I'm going to put an "inconsistency watch" at the bottom to list all the stuff that only gets translated some of the time).
Page 12 - Random student, talking about Shuuichi and Maiko: "Wow, that sophomore is his sister?"
Originally the student mentions that Maiko is a "ninen" which does translate to second year student, but technically isn't the same thing as a sophomore in the American sense. American high schools generally run from grades 9-12, and so a sophomore usually refers to the 10th grade. Japanese high schools, on the other hand, run from grades 10-12, so a second year student would be an 11th grader. Maiko's age isn't an important point in the Gravitation storyline anyway, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Page 13 - Hiro, on the band's name: "We're called 'Genius Guitarist Hiroshi and His Pervert Servant'".
Originally, there's no mention of "pervert" in the title, just the "servant" part. This isn't a big change, but I'm mentioning it now because there are times later in the manga where random sexual references are added for no reason. Just giving you a taste of bigger things to come ^_^
Page 15 - A random fun note is that the teacher is reading a book called "Help!", which is the name of a doujinshi Murakami-sensei wrote that was a sort of precursor to Gravitation (the story was fairly similar, and a lot of the same character names were used, though many in different roles).
Page 15 - Maiko: "Psycho Killer!" and "Qu'est-ce que c'est?"
The two small bubbles here are supposed to be spoken by Maiko, but the first one sure doesn't sound like something she would say about her brother. I'm not sure how someone screaming really loud makes them a psycho killer in the first place....In the Japanese version, she was just agreeing that, yeah, he was really loud, and in the second small bubble she was agreeing with the second large bubble saying that Shuuichi is really intense. I was really confused that they had her saying "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" in the English version. I had no idea what it even meant until I looked it up....Apparently, it means "What is it?" in French. Huh? First of all, why the random French? Is this little phrase common enough that most readers will understand it? (I certainly didn't!) Next, what is it even referring to? Why would she be saying "What is it?" when there's no "it" they're even talking about? Congratulations to TokyoPop on their first (of many to come) confounding translation. UPDATE (2006.10.02): A reader emailed me and said that "Psycho Killer!" and "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" are actually quotes from a song called "Psycho Killer" by The Talking Heads. So, it wasn't a bizarre translation, it was a random reference. I'll rant more about references later :P
Page 25 - Shuuichi, doing an imitation of an imaginary girlfriend: "Ohhhhhh, this is the sweetest, most fabulous poem I've ever read, Shuichi-kun."
The Japanese version has been using all sorts of honorifics up to this point, and so far none were used in the English version. Now, all of a sudden, one pops up. This is another category for the "inconsistency watch", because throughout the rest of the manga they will use the honorifics occasionally. I would also prefer it if they provided some sort of translation for the ones they do use. I don't expect every fanfic on the Internet to explain the Japanese honorifics system, but I would at least expect official publications to do so, since non-otaku English speakers who might want to give some manga a try probably won't know the terminology.
Page 29 - Eiri: "If I were you, I'd consider learning a reliable trade."
Normally I wouldn't mention something like this, since Eiri's original intent of telling Shuuichi how much he sucks still comes through. In this case, I'm just concerned about how the original line comes up again later on. Here is where says his famous line of "Sainou zero da. Yamechimae." which is "You've got zero talent. Just quit now." The fact that Eiri told Shuuichi he had "zero talent" is brought up again in later volumes, so I guess it just seems kind of weird to reference something that, in the English version, Eiri never actually said. This is one of my reasons for trying to translate things as accurately as possible, since you never know when something might be brought up again later, even if the change doesn't seem too big at the time. A tangenty example of this is in the English Dragonball dub. Early on there's a scene in the Japanese version between young Gokuu and Chichi where Chichi asks Gokuu if he will get married to her when they're older. Gokuu, thinking "married" might be some sort of food, agrees. In the English version, I think there's some stuff about liking each other, but no marriage agreeement is made. So flash forward about 6 years and 100ish episodes. Chichi finds Gokuu at the 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai and she's got marriage on the mind. She reminds Gokuu that he agreed to marry her, and Gokuu has a flashback to the original conversation. It's all fine and dandy in the Japanese version, but in the English it's really weird to see him have a flashback to some random conversation that had nothing to do with marriage and then say "Oh, I remember, I did agree to marry you!" So anyway, yes, accurate translation matters even on seemingly trivial matters *Nod nod*
Page 31 - Female students: "Yes, yes, yes! Of course we will!"
The error here has nothing to do with the translation, it has to do with what looks like a printing problem. Japanese manga often include cutesy symbols like hearts within dialogue bubbles and there's one here that ended up getting kind of behind the words instead of being under or to the side of them. What's weird about it is that it wasn't in the way in the Japanese printing. Observe:
If the heart had stayed where it was originally, it wouldn't have been a problem, but for some reason it got moved. Weird....
Page 31 - Side comment: "It's the end of the world as we know it..."
It actually said "Seikimatsu da naa" or, "It's the end of the century" in the original, and though this is just a random side comment I think they're saying very different things. The scene was where Hiro and Shuuichi said they wanted to sneak off for some private time and the female students started fangirling. Saying that this is "the end of the world" sounds pretty negative, while saying that "it's the end of the century" is saying that gay boys/girls fangirling over gay boys is something that's happening "these days". Maybe I'm looking into this too much ^_^;;
Page 32 - Writing on Hiro's face: "At your service"
I'm pretty sure the "saabisu" written there originally was in reference to "fan service", not any sort of actual service ;P
Page 34 - Hiro: "You need more happy techno, less Depeche Mode."
Let the references begin (OK, so there was one before this, but this was the first one I recognized :P). Maybe some people don't care, but adding pop culture references to English versions of anime/manga really bugs me. Really, what does it add to the story? It might get a few more laughs from people who get them, but not everyone is going to understand (look how confused I was about that "Psycho Killer!" quote). It's not like they try to pretend that these characters are in America instead of Japan, so why would they be talking about all these American things? Sure, American celebrities have some level of recognition in foreign countries, but it still just feels unnatural for the characters to reference them as often as they do in this manga. And, this doesn't apply in this case, but adding references to things that are happening "right now" as is sometimes done in Gravitation can really date the manga to when it was published. At least making references to the 80s or whatever means that you're referencing things that have enough staying power to be remembered 20 years later (though such references may leave the target teen audience a little lost). But who knows if anyone's going to remember the little celebrity spats of today five years from now? I'm not going to mention all of the added references in the manga, since there's no need to rant about it every time. I'll only mention them if they're particularly stupid or scream "this was totally written in 2003!" Just remember that any time you see a non-Japanese pop culture reference, with exactly one exception, it was added in the English version (and I will keep count of these, because numbers are fun!).
Page 37 - Shuuichi: "We're entry #808!"
The original entry number was 3609. Changes like this drive me crazy because there's absolutely no reason to change it. Just because it's unimportant doesn't mean that there's any reason to alter it on a whim.
Page 38 - Shuuichi: "We're gonna sing our school song!"
Acutally the song he and Hiro sang was an old Japanese song called "Furusato" which translates to "My Hometown." You can hear Shuuichi sing a little bit of it in the episode of the anime where Bad Luck is having the press conference to announce that Hiro is leaving the band.
Page 50 - Shuuichi's lyrics: "Destiny is unstoppable. I've tried laughter, I've tried tears, but it always overpowers me."
In the English version, the lyrics printed are the same as the ones we saw back on the first page. The Japanese lyrics, however, contain slight alterations from their first incarnation. In the beginning the Japanese included a lyric about "renai no housoku", or "laws of love", but in the version on this page, it's been changed to "inryoku no housoku", or "laws of gravity". It's the first mention in the manga that's hinting of the "gravity" pulling Eiri and Shuuichi together, since he didn't change the lyric until after he met him.
Page 52 - Shuuichi's date: "It looks real expensive, doesn't it, Shindou honey?
In the Japanese version, Shuuichi's date had been calling him "Shindou-kun" all along, while the English version had her calling him "Shuichi" for a few pages, but now all of a sudden she switches to "Shindou". Consistency is what I crave, why oh why won't TokyoPop deliver?
Track 2
Page 72 - Hiro: "...."
When there's little text outside of the word bubbles (either side comments or sound effects, usually), one of these three things will normally happen: the Japanese text is left there untranslated, the Japanese text has English text alongside it, or the Japanese text is removed and replaced with the English translation. In this case, something different happened: the text was cut and not replaced at all. Perhaps they intended to translate and replace the text, but they ended up just deleting it. Censorship! Because TokyoPop knew people would be highly offended by Hiro pointing out the obvious fact that he brought his guitar with him :P
Page "70" (Real page 74) - Hiro: "You do realize that the Palladium holds three hundred people, don't you?"
The club's name was originally "Pershana". Once again, pointless changes.
At this point, I noticed something weird with the page numbers. I don't know if this is just a problem in the copy that I have, or if it applies to all copies. I mentioned earlier that because of the filler pages, TokyoPop's page numbers are four ahead of the original's in this volume. However, page 70 in the TokyoPop version matches up with page 70 of the Japanese tankoubon. In addition, there was already a page 71 a couple pages back. Flipping forward, the pages stay labeled with the original numbers for a while, but then suddenly the page on the right side is labeled 76 and the left side is switched to the number TokyoPop should be at which is 81. Weird error....
Page "71" (Real page 75)
Another example of cut text: there's originally a little arrow with text that says "ass" pointing at Shuuichi's ass. Until I looked closely, I'd never noticed before that they cut little things like this out. I guess there's another thing I'll have to keep track of :P
Page 102 - Shuuichi: "Seguchi...you mean, that Seguchi? The dude from NRG?"
So, yeah, the name of the company should be NG, not NRG....In the Japanese version, the letters are written with a line between them like N-G, so maybe they thought there was supposed to be a letter in the middle? Still, seems presumptuous to just add one in willy nilly.
Track 3
Page 108 - Shuuichi, thinking: "Eiri...Eiri Yuki?"
This isn't really mistranslation, just the original point is lost and what they replace it with makes no sense. Shuuichi's saying "Eiri Yuki?" here seems to imply that he just realized who they were talking about, but it has already been clearly established two pages before when Touma said the full name "Eiri Yuki." What's really supposed to be surprising to Shuuichi is Touma's use of the honorific -san with Eiri's first name (Shuuichi's original thought: "Eiri-san...Eiri...-san?"). When referring to people you don't know it's customary to use the family name with -san, so Shuuichi seems to be realizing here that Touma knows Eiri since he's using a more familiar form of his name. And the thing is, since they sporadically throw in honorifics in the English version, they could have kept this (Maiko calls Touma "Seguchi-san" on the previous page). But they changed it to Shuuichi realizing something he already knew :P
Page 110 - Maiko: "You were gonna jam with Ryuichi Sakamoto and record with Faye Wong...right?"
The English version actually adds something that was censored here: originally, the name of Sakamoto Ryuuichi was written "Sakamoto (circle)ichi". It's something done in Japanese manga when they want to mention something famous, but for legal reasons can't write (but it's still pretty obvious what they're talking about, since usually only one character will be omitted). Also, originally Sakamoto Ryuuichi was the only artist mentioned, there was nothing about Faye Wong (not something I'd normally deem worthy of pointing out, but since I'm here....)
Page 113 - Hiro: "Weren't they called Nipple Twister?"
Originally, Hiro got the name of the band correct :P Incidentally, the English version is somewhat similar to what my husband calls the band: "Nipple Gripper" ^_^;; Also, while looking for the page number for this one, I noticed that the English version again messed up some of the page numbers: Page 112 is labeled with the Japanese version's page number (108) instead.
Page 115 - Hiro, about Eiri: "It'd be a shame to lose him to another guy."
Hiro wasn't talking about Eiri here; he was talking about how it was disappointing that he would lose Shuuichi to another guy....but he's only kidding, as shown in the following panel (maybe the Pocky licking in the anime made it more obvious that he was trying to act like he was in love with Shuuichi ^o^)
Page 121 - Eiri: "I've been waiting for you Shuichi. He just kept begging me to come. I couldn't say no."
It looks like there was some sort of translation mix-up. Does this sentence make logical sense? If you look on the page before, Eiri just said "I've been waiting for you, Shuichi" in the previous panel. For some reason, this got repeated again in the first bubble of page 121, where originally Eiri was mentioning about how he went to Shuuichi's concert, which is what the "He just kept begging me to come" part is adding on to. LOL, it sounds kind of sexual when it loses the original context ^_^
Still to come: Track 4, plus the "Inconsistency Watch" section for this volume.