#nodubnobuy

[yeonchi]

Dunking on the Undub page one last time

Two years ago, I retired from ranting about English dubs and over a year ago, I unpublished the English Dubbed Game News page (formerly known as English dubs in Japanese games or no buy, aka #NoDubNoBuy) with that same intention of retirement. Though I have since moved on to other ventures, I have recently discovered that the admins of the Undub page (full name I don't buy Japanese games if the audio is only in English) have decided to call it quits. This is my reaction to their announcement.

I really must scoff at them saying that they are “no longer needed in this world”, because aside from EDGN, they were the only page that bothered to collect data on what languages the games are voiced and subtitled in. Maybe some game companies weren’t directly transparent with providing this information ten years ago (which is when they claim they started even though their Spanish and English pages were created in 2012 and 2013 respectively) compared to now, but they bridged the gap when others never thought of it. There is a wiki that lists games that have Japanese voices or dual audio options, but they only list dub-only games on one page instead of on the individual console pages. While I understand that the admins of that page probably have their reasons for quitting their page just as I did, there will still be games that will be released with only English or Japanese voices and without people like us, information wouldn’t have been as easy to find.

For a few years now, the Undub page hasn’t been posting as frequently as they used to because they have been focusing on Own Your Game, a blog where they post about what games are released physically, with voice and text language information included. It’s like the admins of the Undub page started giving up after they discovered how toxic I was on EDGN and my rants. (Own Your Game is still active, so feel free to check out their blog and give them a follow on Twitter.)

In their announcement, they list some IPs that have adopted dual audio over the years, such as Final Fantasy, Nier, Bayonetta, Persona and Kingdom Hearts. They also claim that while there are some games that still only have English dubbing, dual audio is becoming the industry standard. No, you fucking Europoor cucks, that is not it. As a (former) fan of Koei Tecmo’s Warriors games, I know that Japanese game companies will happily forego dubbing a game during localisation if their budget won’t allow it and you along with the NPC sub fans and dub haters would celebrate like you “owned the dub plebs” (we did it, Reddit). I can even name a few more IPs that have gone on this path, such as Atelier, BlazBlue and numerous animes (particularly ones that have received a dub) that have received game adaptations. It’s all in the EDGN post archive (which is still up, by the way). But hey, you’re fans of the original Japanese voices, how was I to know that you only support dual audio in games when it’s the Japanese voices that are missing? So really, at this point, the industry standard is either dual audio or Japanese voices only (if such a standard existed in the first place).

Yes, I know it costs money to dub a game. Yes, I know it costs money to hire voice actors to dub a game. I don’t care if the game has 50 characters or 100, that’s not even an excuse even if it links back to money because it still makes them look lazy. I don’t care if I’ve sounded entitled or snooty, as long as there is a fanbase for dubs, then there is a market for dubs. If the Japanese could do it, why can’t the West do it? (inb4 union bullshit) Oh whatever, I’m too over this bullshit anyway.

Remember when your smoothbrain fans discovered EDGN and called us SJWs, even though looking back it’s more of a right-wing thing even though politics shouldn’t fucking matter in the dub-sub debate? Remember when you admins discovered our page and then decided to not only accuse us of copying your page’s format (even though you should have seen this coming), but also assuming that Admin A (the creator of the page) and I wanted games with English dub only even though we have no problem with Japanese voices, then blaming yourselves for allowing the birth of that “monster” that was EDGN and blocking me from your page? Remember when you unblocked me, claimed that we were fighting when we barely did in the first place and showed me your new project to which I invited you to share my rebranded page to your fans, but then you never did even though I went to the trouble of giving your new project some promotion on one of my posts?

Okay, maybe that last one was a bit personal, but my point is that you claimed that you’ve changed when you barely even did. This is typical of you sub fans - you claim that you’re cool with dual audio but you never have any empathy for dub fans because their preferences don’t align with yours. You never even criticised your own fanbase (enough) for the hate they sent us, which makes you just as complicit in enabling them to do so. You were the inspiration for EDGN and yet, this is how you treat us. This is why I think sub fans like you are the reason why some games (or their sequels) don’t get dubbed.

On a lighter note, even though we agree that dual audio options are good, it’s funny how the Undub page barely made an effort to rebrand themselves to be unbiased in voice preferences. To be fair, I once had plans to rebrand EDGN into Dual Audio Game News and show the voice/text languages under the game covers in the image instead of putting a prohibition symbol on the covers meaning that the game was rejected by our verdict, but I gave up on them when I decided to retire from the page. I wonder if we would have reached more people (and gotten less hate) if we just decided to post about the voice/text language options of games without bias in our names or intent, but I guess we’ll never know.

I know that this fight for dual audio may have been easy for you, being Japanese voice fans, because the original voice track is readily available, but this fight wasn’t easy for us, being English dub fans, because time, effort and money on the part of the gaming companies aside, you people have barely done anything to stand with us when we know that game companies won’t listen to anything we say or the complaints we make.

So in short, I respect the work you admins have done for the Undub page and I wish you all the best, but fuck you and your fans for your attitude towards us at EDGN and all the other English dub fans out there, because in the end, despite your altruistic intentions, you are just a bunch of selfish Europoor cucks, sub fans and dub haters. I came to you with an olive branch and all I got was insults and derision.

I leave you all with this video of Friendlyjordies dunking on an Australian politician of European descent for all the European dunks I’ve made in this post (and possibly once or twice in the past).

Oh, and for posture, here’s a screenshot of their farewell post in case they decide to delete their page:

[cyber-sleuth-trash]

today i was scrolling through facebook and the comment section of the last HM trailer and omfg, I am soo annoyed with people always asking for switch or pc and then that stupid #nodubnobuy like wtf?? what's ya opinion on those stuff?

I actually try avoiding the comment section of anything related to the game because of exactly those things. I’m so tired of seeing this.

Switch

People (I prefer calling them Switchboys) are always saying that it should be on Switch instead of PS4 and that it would be sooo much better on Switch, without even thinking about the fact that the game was probably already in the making before the Switch even came out. Also, just because the Switch is the most hyped thing at the moment doesn’t mean every damn little game has to be on there. And why are they even acting like nobody owns a PS4 anymore these days? It’s just annoying as fuck and I am sooo done with this kind of people.

#nodubnobuy

Or how I like to call it: The #nodubnobuy bullshit. Oh my god, what has the world come to? They complain because there is no english dub and think they have any rights to complain about it but they actually don’t. There are sooo many languages out there in the world so what makes them think their mother tongue is the most important? Because it isn’t. 

Then there is the thing with the money they get for the game. Bandai already said it once somewhere that the Digimon Story series doesn’t have the most money so even having voices at all is probably a big thing for this game, yet there are still people who act like just because the game is made by Bandai, it would have the same money as a Tales Of title or what not.

And then, there is this thing what bucks me the most about this: When you try to explain to those people why there isn’t a dub, you get called a weeb and they come on to you with stuff like “The minority overshadow the majority and that why there is no dub”. Do those people even read what they’re writing? That sentence doesn’t make any fucking sense! First off, the people who are fine with the game just like it is aren’t a minority at all and even if they were, the minority never overshadows the majority. Where the hell do people get this stuff from, seriously.

[yeonchi]

#NoDubNoBuy Page Rebranding

From next year, there will be a change to the English dubs in Japanese games or no buy page, also known as the #NoDubNoBuy page. The page will be known as English Dubbed Game News from January 18, 2018, which coincides with the second anniversary of the page’s launch. The format of the page will not change (for the most part), so we will continue to post news regarding dubbed games and simulcast new Dub Logistics instalments on the page.

This change has been made to make our overall opinion more general so that it may attract more dub fans to the page. The intended target of this page was the English dub community as a whole, but we felt that using a marginalised opinion like #NoDubNoBuy as a backdrop was limiting its potential reach on the English dub fanbase, particularly given our thoughts on the subject.

As a result of this change, however, we will no longer be reposting negative comments in the name-and-shame album as it has now been deleted. The decision was hard for us to make, but we decided to do it as we felt that using the hypocrisy and ignorance of dub haters to further highlight the need for dual audio was going against the intention of the page being a “safe space” for English dub fans. Regardless of this, we still stand by our responses to their comments and condemn the misguided views and actions of dub haters and opinion-neutrals. Therefore, anyone who posts such comments on the page will be banned, or in minor offences, have their comment deleted.

We will continue to accept tip-offs from fans regarding the dub status of upcoming or released games and we will continue to record all our posts and tipoffs on our Google spreadsheet.

Over the past two years, I’ve been tagging the page in my regular anime posts on Facebook so that we can gather followers. This practice has somehow worked, but with very little effect due to various factors (including Facebook’s algorithms limiting the reach of the page’s posts). While I am leaning towards stopping this practice, I would like to encourage my fans to continue liking, commenting and sharing the page’s posts.

We are aware that there are pages and groups on Facebook that post about English dubbed anime and the voice actors behind them. Our page is the first of its kind on the internet - at the time of writing, you won’t find any other page that posts information about the voice languages of localised Japanese games. If you are a part of those pages or groups (as an admin or a fan/member), I strongly encourage you to share our posts on them.

The purpose of this page is not to encourage the boycotting of non-dubbed games, but to allow fans to make informed decisions when choosing to buy them. If you are a fan of a certain game series or company and you want to support them, then you should do so by buying their games.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 19: The gAgging Conclusion

“In order for #NoDubNoBuy to work, supporters should actually reach out to the companies in Japanese.”

When fans ask if there is a dub in a game (or for it if there isn’t), they obviously use English to reach out to the companies. But has our target been wrong all this time?

Sinclair Networks said this during my debate with Gamers Against Greed and their fans:

I’m curious what’s the purpose [sic] of your page. It’s about Japanese games. But (it’s) not in Japanese so developers will never see it.

This was my reply:

My viewpoints are not targeted towards the main sector of the gaming companies themselves. They are directed to their localisation departments and Western divisions.

Additionally, the page I mentioned in the post (the NoDubNoBuy page) is targeted at English dub fans who (play) Japanese games in the West. I never expected developers to notice the page in the first place.

Here is what Sinclair said:

Then you’re wasting time really. If you are not expecting to generate a large following and get it noticed by Japanese developers then it’s a lost cause from the start.

Do you know why I didn’t expect developers to notice the page? It’s because my page is directed at English dub fans who want to know about the dub status of released and upcoming Japanese game localisations so they can make informed decisions as to whether they should buy it or not. I don’t expect game companies to notice #NoDubNoBuy because they’ll just laugh it off like the politicians they are. They don’t care if the fans want dubbed games or not - all they care about is whether they will earn enough money off the games they make.

Also, if a gaming company already has a branch in the West, then why should I have to use Japanese to reach out to them? That absolutely defeats the purpose of localisation, let alone English dubs or #NoDubNoBuy. I’ve seen the Undub page post letters or sign petitions to some gaming companies and not one of them has been written in Japanese.

The corporate heads of the gaming companies don’t care about Western fans getting dubs in their games. Japanese people certainly don’t care either, but they’re not the target audience for my page. So don’t expect me to reach out in Japanese when you know that I’ve done a good enough job in English.

It’s been 4 months now since the debate. The reason why I reached out to Gamers Against Greed in the first place was because of their name. Many dub fans believe that Japanese gaming companies cutting dub from their games to save money is a greedy thing to do, so I came in with that fact in mind. However, once I got into that debate, I realised that convincing them to support English dubs in localised Japanese games was a futile move.

Let’s take a look into the main contributors of the debate and my thoughts on them:

Ibaraki Ben (the admin of the page, also known as Ben Merritt) gave some good points regarding localisation and budgets, but he failed to see the fact that Western localisation exists and a lot of popular game series are dubbed in English. Given the fact that Ben lives in Japan, works for a Japanese language school and claims to work for a Japanese gaming company, I thought that he was coming in from a biased viewpoint. Some of his comments only served to prove that Japanese gaming companies only care about their Japanese fans.

Stephen Payne (CrawlinUK Games) went to the trouble of pointing out some things in my post (and incorrectly assumed the origin of #NoDubNoBuy), yet he was unwilling to do further research about the dub-sub debate when I suggested that he do so.

The admin of Sinclair Networks gave some good points about the costs of voice acting, but they incorrectly stated that English voices for localised games were recorded in Japan with English-speaking voice actors. I didn’t get to mention anything about crowdfunding, but I don’t believe they would have thought of it as a good idea anyway.

Just when I thought I was done with the gAggers, Mika Kibashi (one of the commenters from the debate) shared my page, saying “Is there anything more annoying than expecting everyone to pander to one language rather than accept subtitles?” (My response to her post is here.) Ibaraki Ben commented on her post, describing me as “antisocial, whiny and wanted everything in English”, and as if it wasn’t enough for him, he made fun of me and my page, saying:

His pages have a ton of posts and his free website is hilarious. But no one ever comments or follows what he has been doing since 2014. The owner and the page are a joke.

So just as I thought Ibaraki Ben was just another opinion-neutral person, I found out that he was just another dub hater like the two Sinclair fakers, Jorg Kellar and Steven Reese. I understand that Ben has the right to make criticisms about my page and its viewpoints, but insulting me and calling me a “joke” goes far beyond the realms of constructive criticism. He should be very lucky that I didn’t call him out for his fake news, or the fact that he claims to be (or jokes about being) “a world famous YouTuber” when he really only has about 6,500 subscribers and some of his more popular videos are either about Fallout 4 or Elder Scrolls Online.

To be honest, people who only play Western games, like Ibaraki Ben, should not have the right to comment on things like the dub-sub debate, English dubs or #NoDubNoBuy. They do not really understand these topics like Western anime fans or J-gamers do and they will only serve to know very little (if not nothing) about anime licencing and game localisation.

So, Ben, maybe the next time you want to call me out or insult me for my views, you could take a look at my rants and enlighten yourself before you make any ignorant comments. As Chris Lilley’s character, Ja’mie King, said on Ja’mie: Private School Girl, “No one fucks with me and gets away with it.”

My feud with Ibaraki Ben and his gAggers has already come to an end. They have already escalated it once - let’s hope that there won’t be another. With this, my Gamers Against Greed miniseries has also come to an end. Dub Logistics will continue as normal from the next instalment.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 13: Dual Audio in Mobile Gaming

“If Japanese mobile games are to be localised to the West, they should be localised with dual audio like console games.”

A fan on the NoDubNoBuy page has been asking me about English dubs in Android games. When I tried researching the subject, I found that there was no information on it whatsoever, rightly so.

I’m just going to say this bluntly; I don’t believe mobile games should receive the same localisation treatment as their console counterparts. If a localised mobile game gets dual audio, then good on them, but otherwise, there isn’t really a need for that.

Why is that? In my experience, mobile games don’t usually have spoken dialogue. The reason is because a game with lots of spoken dialogue would take up a lot of space on a phone’s internal memory. Additionally, update patches and other downloadable content (where available) would also take up space.

Now you might be thinking, “Don’t smartphones have lots of memory for use?” Yes, that is true, but this memory can be quickly used up by other applications, bloatware and the data each app needs to store on the phone. When the internal memory gets to a certain point, new applications cannot be installed.

Furthermore, mobile games these days require a lot of RAM and battery power in order to provide the best gaming experience for fans. Some people may find that their phone battery may run out after playing a game for a while. Others may not be able to play the game at all because it isn’t compatible with their phone. In any case, it wouldn’t be the best gaming experience for mobile gaming companies, even if the game is localised with dual audio.

Besides, the #NoDubNoBuy campaign already has a negative reputation as it is and if I start campaigning for dual audio in mobile games, I’d probably sound too snobby and worsen the reputation of the campaign altogether. Therefore, I will fight for dual audio options in Japanese console games and PC games to be localised in the West, but I draw the line at mobile games.

However, if you must know what mobile games have dual audio, then Mobius Final Fantasy is a prominent example. Shadowverse comes with English voices, but players who want to play with Japanese voices will need to import them into the game.

If you haven’t heard already, the #NoDubNoBuy community is undergoing a revitalisation for 2017. This will be the year when English dub fans unite and tell Japanese gaming companies like Koei Tecmo, Bandai Namco, Arc System Works and Capcom that “enough is enough” when it comes to localising important games without English voices. You can find our mission statement here.

If you know any English dub fans or #NoDubNoBuy supporters on other forums or social media platforms, get them to like our official page. Only with your support can #NoDubNoBuy make a mark on the Japanese gaming industry.

[yeonchi]

Over the past 18 months, the #NoDubNoBuy page has posted a lot of information regarding localised Japanese games. As the Internet does not have a definite place for English dub fans to see if their favourite Japanese game has been dubbed, we have decided to take the initiative and publish this list of games that we have posted about in the past. This list will be updated periodically, so feel free to bookmark this spreadsheet or add it to your Google Drive.

You can access the list from this link: https://goo.gl/rMf9vR

In addition to this, there is a separate page where fan tipoffs will be collated until they are posted (usually on or after the game has been released). Tipoffs of past games are also appreciated as they can be queued for future posts on the page.

We hope that this resource helps you find the games that you love with the voice options that you want.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 15: The Existential Crisis of Game Localisation

“Japanese games were never meant to be localised for Western audiences in the first place.”

For this instalment, we’re briefly going back to the style of the Koei Warriors Rant Series. Warning, lots of pent-up frustration lies ahead.

Amongst all the dub fans, nationalists, SJWs, weeaboos and otakus, I forgot about two other groups of people who are part of Japanese gaming culture - Japanese people who can speak English and Westerners who are living in Japan. Their viewpoints are basically different to those of the dub-sub debate and they both interest and befuddle me. In my view, they don’t look like opinion-neutrals, who oppose English dubbing just for the sake of opposing it. Instead, we get a clearer reason of why some Japanese games are not dubbed in English on localisation. However, considering the background of some of those people, there quite a few generalisations were made.

For now, this is the closest thing we can get to an explanation from Koei Tecmo or any other Japanese gaming company, as one of the people I talk to works for one of them. I understand that posting this may backfire on me because of my views, but at least I’m actually doing something rather than not doing anything at all, and I think that’s the important bit.

So recently, I noticed a Facebook page called Gamers Against Greed. They are a group who want “value for money” in their games - meaning no unfinished games, no micro-transactions and better pre-order bonuses and DLC. Seeing as I posted about the levels of localisation and partial dubbing in the past, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce NoDubNoBuy to them. It turned out to be a mistake, but an indeedly worthwhile mistake.

Here’s a simplified version of what the page’s admin said:

Sales of Japanese titles in Western countries are very low

The target audience of the games are Japanese people - they were not intended to be localised in the first place, as with Western games being localised in Japan

Subtitling a game costs a lot of money and adding a voice actor to one role would cost over $4000

Okay, I don’t disagree with what he said there, but he missed the point at the second part - many Japanese games have quite a following outside of Japan. Are you implying that Japanese game companies only set up Western divisions and localise games to the West so that us Western gamers have to pick up after you? Well, no wonder people are saying that Japanese game companies don’t care about them. It’s like a dog controlling where its owner goes!

If the games were only intended for Japanese gamers, then why were they localised to the West? As much as I hate to be “that guy” (having seen many arguments between Chinese, Taiwanese and Hongkongers on Facebook, even though many people don’t actually care about them according to Quora), but if it weren’t for Japanese companies like Nintendo, Sega and Sony, the gaming industry wouldn’t be as developed as it is now.

Pretty soon, my post was flooded with comments from others. Quite a few of them were the same things, which were usually about money or the market for dubs. I found that some people who commented on my post were living in Japan, so that was quite a new perspective to learn about, even if their arguments are basically the same as any other argument I’ve ever encountered. Here are a few highlights:

A British YouTuber living in Japan stated that almost no Western games released in Japan are dubbed. Obviously, that wasn’t the point of my post, but still, it kind of fits. Most companies won’t add Japanese dubs to Western games because “it’s not effective for the expected revenue”.

A game developer/server provider, based in Vienna, works with some “big developers” (like Gearbox Software, Blizzard Entertainment, Bethesda and Bandai Namco) and states that Japanese gamers are “fine with subtitles” and that “they don’t like dubbing in general”.

I think the admin of the Viennese server provider insulted my page for having “no actual following”. He also stated that the developers would never see my page as it’s not in Japanese. At least there are people on my page who actually care, unlike you. I don’t expect the gaming companies themselves to notice my page, but their Western divisions could sure do with some harsh criticism. Even the Undub page complained to Atlus regarding the localisation of Persona 5, but they did it in English and not Japanese. Says a lot about Western fanbases, huh?

Here’s a long one. Another British YouTuber (who seems to be married to a Japanese woman and can speak Japanese) overthought the entire thing and mentioned about having to watch movies like Beautiful Life or Infernal Affairs with English dub. I said to him, “Live-action movies don’t have to be dubbed, but animated movies are a different thing.”

He then went on to analyse my post. By the time I got to his second comment, I started getting tired of replying to every comment in the thread. I didn’t want to bother with explaining the whole point of the new #NoDubNoBuy movement and so, I just stated the main points to him, essentially skipping over half of his comment (which he acknowledged right after).

He then went on to state that my points were all assumptions and that I have “no respect for actual evidence”. Dude, you know that I started getting tired, right? I do quite a bit of research for my rants, but sometimes, I don’t have the time to actually show you that research. Maybe you could have looked at the Koei Warriors Rant Series (which is linked on both my page and the NoDubNoBuy page) yourself instead of calling me ignorant for making a “half-arsed point”.

It was pretty surprising to hear from Western gamers who live and work in Japan. The people who compared English dubbing with Japanese dubbing actually missed the point (in my view), but I’ll let it pass. Instead, I’ll refer you to Part 50 of the Koei Warriors Rant Series. I agree that there are dub haters in Japanese-dubbed media, but the dub-sub preference ratio in Japan is at 50:50, like the West.

Unfortunately, while I was writing this instalment, Gamers Against Greed have blocked me from their page and deleted my post. That is why the link to the post actually links to an album of screenshots I took of the post before they deleted it. However, there was a reply they left on one of the comments before they blocked me. If I knew what they said in their reply, I would have waited a little while before I posted this. Now, it seems that I have no choice.

I thought that you would give me a good perspective on what game localisation looks like from the Japanese companies’ point of view, but it turns out that you’re no better than opinion-neutrals and dub haters. Shame on you.

So anyway, I may or may not have proved that Japanese companies care more about their Japanese fans than their Western fans. There were quite a few more details discussed in the thread that I didn’t want to write here. If you want to see them, they are in the album.

Because of this, it seems that we dub fans can only rely on ourselves if #NoDubNoBuy is to make any impact on the localisation of Japanese games. Our stance is simple - you are either with us or against us. There is no sitting on the fence about it.

[yeonchi]

Thinking about the future of EDGN

I’ve never asked a lot out of my fans over the years, but to some of my close fans (you know who you are), I’d really appreciate some helpful advice because this is an important decision I’m making that will affect both you, the fans, and myself.

To cut a long story short for a tl;dr, I no longer enjoy posting about the voice languages in localised Japanese games because of some recent events and realisations and I want to retire from the English Dubbed Game News page altogether.

It’s been about five years since I started all this with the Koei Warriors Rant Series and since then, everything I’ve done that’s related to English dub has brought me nothing but hate. I know it’s a bit of an exaggeration and some of my close fans may have something to say to the contrary, but I’ve been feeling quite negative lately and because of that, I think it’s a brutally honest summary.

After ending the Dub Logistics series, I thought the one thing I could do to repay my fans for their support over the years was to continue posting on EDGN. Personally, I think I’ve done enough already and also, as I said in a post back in August, I’ve been having doubts about the future of the page and what I want to do with it given my current interests. There are several factors that led to me having these doubts, which I’ll be outlining after the break. (I can’t even put horizontal lines in my posts with the rich text editor now, thanks Tumblr)

1. I was never interested in any game outside of the Koei Warriors series or any game I played in the past (eg. Dissidia Final Fantasy).

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to my fans because in the past, I’ve rarely posted anything outside of the series I was interested in, including the aforementioned series. If I came across something by chance and liked it, then I would do some investigation into it, but these days, the spark just doesn’t want to light up anymore.

I’ve never really taken the chance to buy new games because my family doesn’t believe in buying things that aren’t important and as such, I took that mantra to heart. While I never brought a PS3, I did get a Nintendo Wii, but I traded it in later for a Wii U and not a PS4, which I still regret to this day. I pirated my PSP, DS and PC games (let’s face it, who doesn’t) and played with emulators on my computer. I only got a Steam account to play Team Fortress 2 (laggy though it was on my shitty computer) and I never brought anything from it, which made it difficult for me to add friends on there (not that they really cared in the end).

By extension, this applies to anime as well, which is the reason why I never post anything outside of the same few animes on the Waifu Network or on my Facebook pages. My belief on sexism in anime has also contributed to this disinterest; the only reason why I’m still posting the same few animes is because I’m still somewhat interested in them and I’m grateful for how they inspired some personal projects of mine.

2. Various factors have led me to lose interest in video games, including the Koei Warriors Series.

The reason why I started my dub crusade in the first place was because of Warriors Orochi 3 (Ultimate) and Samurai Warriors 4 not being dubbed. The reason why I decided to jump ship was because of Dynasty Warriors 9 being dubbed, just not with the same cast I had grown to love. I know that there were extenuating circumstances for the latter, but given everything that happened between that time, my hope that the old English voice cast (since Dynasty Warriors 4-6/Warriors Orochi 1-2) would return to voice that game (and other future games) was gone.

In addition to the previous factor, I started to find myself with more commitments than I had in past years, along with some different interests that I picked up along the way. At first, I didn’t feel like playing games because of my commitments, but eventually, it got to the point where I didn’t want to play most video games again because of the disappointment I’ve experienced from Koei Tecmo. Learning about all the things that AAA gaming companies do to reduce expenditure and increase revenue turned me off from video games as well. In my opinion, it wasn’t so much a boycott (per se) than it was a loss of interest.

3. The original group of people who inspired me to start writing these rants are now gone.

I know I’ve had other fans since the start of all this, but the original group had a special place in all this because of it. There were four people in the original group, who I met on Koei’s original Facebook page, and they were as follows:

The first one did comment on my older stuff, but he left quite early, possibly since DW8E’s release. I saw that he deactivated his account some time in 2017.

The second one had a YouTube channel and he was an admin on one of my Facebook pages for some time, but then he left after a period of inactivity without any explanation.

The third one was the more prominent because of his LGBT status and mental health issues. In the middle of 2015, he announced to everyone that he was deactivating his Facebook account because it was a burden on his mental health. He reactivated his account some time later, but he deactivated it again in September 2017 and hasn’t come back since. During that time, I saw a post from him stating that he was going to take a lot of pills and commit suicide. I reported it to Facebook in the hope that it might encourage him to find some help, even though I remember him stating that nothing works for him anymore. When I noticed that he hadn’t come back to Facebook months after he deactivated his account the second time, I assumed the worst.

The fourth one, also known as the family man or “the last one standing”, deactivated his account in June this year. We never really talked much, but as I said in this post, I’m still grateful to him for helping me find the new weapon and Musou information in DW8E when the Koei Wiki didn’t have it yet (because the game was just released at the time).

4. The impact of the feud’s aftermath still haunts me to this day.

When I agreed to end the feud on a mutual understanding a couple of years back, I promised myself that I would quickly move on from the troll behind it and not keep reminding myself of everything that happened. However, I’m a person that’s prone to anxiety when I think of worst-case-scenarios and at times, I found myself thinking about what would have happened had my Facebook account been deleted just because a troll couldn’t take the L when he got owned by someone half his age (compare that to Leafy who made terrible criticisms of people who are older than him, then claimed that he can hide behind the fact that he is younger than them). Him coming back out of nowhere earlier this year didn’t do any favours for anyone either. Regardless of that, I’ve got my bottom ground and I’ll continue to live on it regardless of what anyone else thinks of me.

I’d like to take a moment to digress and talk about cancel culture and political censorship. Because both parties in the feud weren’t exactly that popular (we had our own little fanbases, but that’s it), me and the other party “cancelling” each other (admittedly) didn’t seem to have as much an effect as we had hoped. Other factors that contributed to this could be that cancel culture (an extension to call-out culture) wasn’t that much of a thing two years ago and when the other party tried to cancel me, he made no attempt to spread the word to his fans. It was likely that he was trying to show mercy, but that doesn’t explain why he kept reporting my posts relating to him and current events in Hong Kong, knowing that I would eventually get banned if I didn’t call him out on it. I was as much a victim than I admittedly was an offender of cancel culture.

Following the feud, I’ve become wary of social media censorship because I experienced what it was like for someone to get petty and get people deplatformed by mass reporting them. Other pages like meme pages have suffered the same fate in the past (mostly because people take certain jokes too seriously), but despite my hopes, it didn’t seem like Facebook was going to do anything about the petty mass-reporting of those pages. Recently, however, I’ve been seeing news on tech companies being grilled over the censorship of conservatives and President Trump criticising them for the same thing. I’m not saying that I’m supporting Trump backing the pages that are being censored (conservative, far-right, alt-right, you name it), but I hope that this can hopefully extend to random meme pages being reported for petty reasons.

5. Ever since I decided to stop being toxic, I found myself conflicted when confronted with more toxic comments to the point that I’ve started to become paranoid over negative criticism.

When I decided to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN, I hoped that the hate towards my page would be reduced somewhat, but I never expected that it would be gone entirely. Since then, three people have made negative comments on the page; one was a girl who saw one of my posts being shared on a private group, misunderstood the (new) purpose of the page and despite her attitude, was still somewhat respectful, one was a Europoor dub hater from Spain (from what I’ve seen and learnt, Europeans tend to be sub fans and/or dub haters because of their English comprehension and ability to read subtitles) and one was an Americuck soyboy dub hater who pointed out about “crybaby fans” (”fans” as in the gatekeeping term “fake fans”, never mind my theory that people, especially men, who call other people, especially other men, “crybabies” are actually spreading toxic masculinity) who liked stuff to be Americanised but didn’t acknowledge the Japanese origins.

I’m gonna go off on a tangent and do a bit of an ad-homimem here (but it’s alright because I’m going to rebut his point next) and point out that I called the Americuck a soyboy because he had quite a long beard, but to be honest, if I called everyone who had beards “soyboys”, that would make people like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad “soyboys” as well, so it’d be a pretty slippery slope if I didn’t clarify who I was talking about.

Now, I’m going to move back on another tangent and rebut the soyboy’s point, because I think this is a pretty important point to address. No one is saying outright that they want Japanese games to be Americanised in terms of cultural references (if 4Kids has taught us anything). Saying that Americanisation is responsible for bad dubbing is a bit like blaming video games for causing violence. If someone says that they would like a game to be dubbed into English in localisation, then it is presumed that they want the dialogue to be dubbed in addition to the text being translated (or “dublated”). Any cultural changes made to the game or the dialogue are entirely the responsibility of those who made those changes, like the gaming companies who censor stuff for Western audiences, so if you’re complaining about a Japanese game being too “Americanised”, don’t take it out on dub fans because chances are that they didn’t want the dub to be too “Americanised” either.

Completing the square and going back to the original tangent, I didn’t post any of their comments to the dub hater comments album because I had deleted it after the feud in the hope that I wouldn’t be as toxic as I had been before. You can probably already see how toxic I would probably be if the above responses were posted on the page and directed back at them, which would mean that I’m not upholding myself to the standards I wanted to follow.

6. I’m becoming more and more concerned about current events to worry about things like English dubbing in video games.

If you’re someone who has unironically thought that I was making a big deal over something you thought was minor, then this is going to sound very ironic for you. From all these years of learning and research, I’ve attained an expansive world view and while I have made jokes about current events in the past to lighten the mood or express my anger, deep down I’m actually concerned about these things, particularly in regards to Hong Kong during this politically sensitive time.

For some reason, my desire to make posts has decreased because in addition to the above factors, I’ve been getting more and more worried about current affairs. Granted, the point of things like anime and video games and the Internet is to provide an escape from reality, but in the end, I guess that you have to face it whether you like it or not.

Making the decision to stop posting on EDGN hasn’t been an easy one, but all the factors I described above have gradually made it easier. Like the Undub page did, I had considered changing the focus of my page to merely report on the voice languages of games without saying whether we approve or reject it because it isn’t dubbed in English/Japanese; that is, we report on them with an unbiased viewpoint. Not adding excessively biased pro-dub comments on our posts has made it more neutral, but in the end, it didn’t stop the dub hater cucks. I should point out that one of the reasons why I wanted to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN was so that we could reduce the amount of hate we were getting.

What was the original goal of me starting this dub crusade? If you have read my rants in the past, then you will have picked up my hopes that Japanese games would be localised to the West with full Japanese and English dubbing and that if game companies couldn’t achieve that, then they should apologise and explain why. Would I say that I achieved or failed to achieve this goal? Not really, because over the years, I learnt a lot about the video game and voiceover industries and gradually realised that it’s not as straightforward as I had initially hoped. To be honest, it was kind of stupid of me to hope that gaming companies would say anything straightforward about this, but on the other hand, I learnt that gaming companies are like politicians as well; they say the things they want to say and not the things people want to hear.

To my fans, particularly my close fans, feel free to send me your opinions about my decision, however if you’re trying to change my mind, then I’m not sure if it can be changed so easily. If you think that I haven’t lived up to what you expect from me, then I’m sorry, but in the end, I have to think of myself as well.

If I could say one thing to the dub fanbase, I want to ask why no one else has ever tried to do something like EDGN. You have your groups and pages on social media and yet, it had to take two people pissed off with the dubbing direction of gaming companies to do it. Granted, that was how the Undub page started, with the lack of Japanese voices in localised games, and yet they didn’t get as much hate as my page did.

If there is anyone out there who wants to follow in my footsteps and make a page like EDGN, let me be the first to give you my blessing because I’m not going to be like the Undub page when they discovered us and point fingers for copying their posts when in the end, games are the same to everyone. While transparency regarding voice languages has increased over the years, there was never a place where dub fans could know about what games were dubbed in English. You don’t have to be like me and make a series of rants about why some games aren’t dubbed, because I’ve already done it, but instead, I suggest going the unbiased route as I stated earlier. Of course, you don’t have to follow my advice - it’s your page, after all.

My plan is to retire from EDGN at the end of the year. I have 12 more games in the backlog, all with English voices, and I’m hoping to post them all on the page before then. I probably won’t remove myself as an admin (because I think there’ll be some petty, obsessed cuck who’ll dig out my posts and make a rant series on me or something), but I’ll probably have it so that I can forget about the page as time goes on.

With this, my dub crusade has come to an end. Once again, to the fans, I’m sorry and I thank you for your support. As always, it is your choice as to whether you wish to continue following me, whether on Facebook or Tumblr, after my retirement.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 30: Redemption and Reflection (Retirement Speech Part 2)

“The dub-sub debate and fan base infighting will never end until fans are willing to put aside their differences and unite as one.”

Well everyone, we’ve reached the last instalment of Dub Logistics. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone, but given everything that has happened along the way, I think it’s for the best. Let’s make this final hurrah count.

Before I begin the second part of my retirement speech, I’m going to inform you on what will be happening. Firstly, as I stated in Part 22, I’ll be hiding the links to the Koei Warriors Rant Series and Dub Logistics pages from my Tumblr page at the end of the year; do note that they will still be accessible from the links.

Secondly, The Dub Hater’s Guide to Dual Audio is being discontinued because I want to clean up my cloud drives. Since the guide was just made of arguments and quotes from my rants anyway, I’ve published the arguments from the final version of the guide into Part 25 of the Koei Warriors Rant Series.

Thirdly, I will continue to run the English Dubbed Game News page out of gratitude for the fans I’ve made over the years. Please continue to send me your tipoffs regarding games that have been dubbed or subbed and remember that the page’s post archive is there for your convenient reference.

This year’s Dub Logistics instalments have been a return to the lighter style of discussion (with minimal research) that I intended to make this series since the first few instalments in 2016. Following the events of the debate and feud in 2017, I wanted to end my English dub rants on a lighter note without causing any more dramas.

In Part 29, the first part of my retirement speech, I stated how my experiences with dubbing and subtitles made me a hypocrite. Combined with my reflections of the past few years (in terms of the English dub rants), I’ll be showing my haters and naysayers how their hate, vitriol and trolling was very misguided.

When I started making English dub rants in August 2014, my main focus was on the Koei Warriors games until I started expanding my focus to localised Japanese games and anime in general. Given the reasons that inspired me to start the Koei Warriors Rant Series (see Part 29), some people would assume that I didn’t want to read the subtitles or that I hated the Japanese voices (or some other bullshit reason) when that was entirely not the case; in actuality, I was actually looking forward to hearing the English voice actors reprise their roles in later Koei Warriors games, something that Koei Tecmo has wilfully neglected for a long time now.

My fans have commended me at times for making good points, which is something that I always appreciate. On the other hand, however, I find a majority of the haters and naysayers I’ve encountered are unable to discuss the topic rationally or show compassion for those affected by corporate greed. Some of them have resorted to petty insults to bask in the delusion that they are always right without including evidence to support their points or even trying to make an argument at all.

My views and opinions regarding the dub-sub debate have been shaped over the years through researching articles and weighing the opinions of fans. When writing my posts, I make sure to include links to any site I use for research so that people can see where I got my facts from. If I become aware that something I’ve written is incorrect, then I would acknowledge this and correct it, otherwise I would assume that what I said is correct. If people question the validity of my research, even when it is clearly there, then I suspect that they are just trying to find an excuse to say that I am wrong (see Part 24). I’ve fallen into that trap a couple of times, but now, haters and naysayers need to stop looking for excuses to validate their flawed viewpoints to me and accept that my research is there; you just need to look.

Over the years, I feel that the Dub Logistics series and the #NoDubNoBuy page (also known as English dubs in Japanese games or no buy, now known as English Dubbed Game News) have strayed away from their original purposes. In late-2014, I began screencapping the comments of dub haters and reposting them in an effort to criticise their flawed viewpoints and vitriol, but I guess I met my match when the people on the other side of the feud came along and even then, they were just trolling people who disagreed with them in the name of virtue-signalling. After the feud ended, I realised that I became no better than an SJW or a troll, so I started my plans to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to what it is now (keeping in mind that I had plans to do that a little while before then).

This may surprise some of you, but I was never really a supporter of #NoDubNoBuy despite the page name; in fact, I wrote Parts 33 and 34 of the Koei Warriors Rant Series to criticise the so-called “movement” (and I say so-called because it never really took off) along with its supporters and opposers. Like I said in Part 29 (the first part of the retirement speech), if you have supported me and you consider me a hypocrite because of this, then maybe you weren’t really supporting me at all.

In Part 22 of Dub Logistics, I listed my reasons as to why I wanted to retire my English dub rants. To briefly recap, there was the feud, I lost interest in the fight (along with Koei Warriors games and video games altogether) because of commitments, I started to burn out because I found myself repeating points I made in the past and I started to become out of touch with the current situation (but there is a chance that the haters could be wrong).

Additionally, I’ve learnt a bit about logical fallacies this year and after further research, cognitive biases. I can’t help but think that I’ve likely committed a few of these fallacies and biases (just as my haters and naysayers may have) and as such, I don’t think I can continue talking about dubbing and localisation knowing that I’ll probably commit another one.

My loss of interest in fighting for dubbed games (with dual audio options) mostly stems from the fact that Koei Tecmo have been dubbing less and less games they localise per year (in turn, they have also been publishing and localising more and more games per year). I understand the reasons why this has been happening, but up to now, they have not taken into consideration the dub fans (including myself) who would have liked to hear their favourite Koei Warriors characters in English or my suggestions on how to do so, such as crowdfunding systems (ludicrous though it may be).

I’ve put up with this disgrace for over three years, but Dynasty Warriors 9 was the last straw - when I found out it was dubbed by another studio due to the SAG-AFTRA voice actors’ strike, I felt that the characters in the game were no longer the characters that I remembered and appreciated. Granted, there have been other things that people have criticised in DW9, but given my perspective, the voices were my main concern for this game.

Maybe blaming Insp.Chin, former community manager for Koei Tecmo Europe, entirely for the lack of English dubbing in their localised games was somewhat misguided; I can’t help but think that his role has made him a scapegoat for fan outrage and I took the bait. Other departments are certainly to blame for this and other disgraces to their fans, but until Koei Tecmo properly recognises what harm they have done to their Western fans (particularly dub fans), I wish good luck to the current and future community managers in their jobs - you’re all going to need it.

At this point, I’ve accepted that gaming companies like Koei Tecmo are no better than politicians, so they can do what they want for all I care. If you still believe that they listen to their fans, then you need to wake up to yourself sooner or later because one day, they will do something you won’t like and nothing you say or do will make them change their decision. It’s been happening for a while now with AAA game publishers, so how long will it be until all gaming companies, niche or not, fall into this trap?

Given the increasing prevalence of games being localised without English voices over the years, there are some people who would say that English dubbing is becoming a rarity. Sadly, I would have to disagree. On the English Dubbed Game News page, I usually post about newly released games (with some classics from time to time) and while keeping a constant archive of these posts in the post archive spreadsheet, I’ve been noticing that just over half of the games I’ve posted about have been dubbed. Maybe I’m just cherrypicking or maybe this figure will change in the future, but for the time being, I can agree with the observation that the dubbing of localised games depends on game type, budget, time and scale.

Over the years, there have been a few fans who have inspired me to keep fighting on, but in particular, there were a few people who inspired me to start the Koei Warriors Rant Series back when we were posting on the old Koei Facebook page (I may have mentioned their names previously). Unfortunately, the “original group”, as I like to call them, have dropped out in various ways - a couple of them stopped following me, another one is busy looking after his family and I fear that another one may have committed suicide because of his depression.

With regards to the last one, I’ve had him as a Facebook friend since I started the rants and at times, he would talk about how his life, his family and the world have been causing him stress; he even posted about committing suicide a few times. When he deactivated his account in September 2017, I feared the worst; a few months later, I messaged the remaining person, the “family man”, and he said that he hasn’t even seen him on PSN either. Even one of his other friends made a post recently wondering where he is. Given everything that has happened recently, in real life or on the internet, I think the world was too much for him and at the very least, I hope he is in a better place.

Look, maybe I was wrong to presume that everyone would read or agree with my rants, or that something significant would happen as a result of them, but the fact that I, at the very least, tried to reach out to Koei Tecmo and other Japanese gaming companies along with their fans, cannot be denied. I acknowledge that the first rant only got the attention it did because a few people (with bigger followings than me) shared it and called out the extreme language used in it. While people not caring may not entirely be part of the problem, people actually pointing out that people are not caring are just as much a part of the problem as sub fans and dub haters because this is basically an ad-hominem attack that does not contribute to the argument in any way. The ridicule and virtue-signalling from the feud mostly revolved around this point along with the ignorant generalisation that all localised Japanese games were subbed.

I’ve tried to see myself as a pacifist between dub fans, sub fans and Japanese gaming companies, but over the years, I realised that some people are too ignorant and unenlightened to even let people have their own preferences or civilly disagree with them. For one, the feud could have been prevented if the people on the other side of it either politely declined without saying any more or had bothered to understand the situation more. We should be criticising the gaming companies about how they have let their fans turn against each other instead of fuelling the fire ourselves.

The idea of “entitlement” gets thrown around a lot these days, particularly in gaming. I find that people who call dub fans out for being “entitled” when they complain about their favourite game not being dubbed are just making up excuses to defend the publisher’s decisions or not participate in civilised debate. That could also be applied to other things in gaming fanbases as well. There are two sides to “entitlement” and as far as we are concerned, we should be only worrying about getting a decent product that (hopefully) caters to all; that’s the kind of “entitlement” I’m talking about.

This is kind of a stretch, but I’m going to propose a theory based on this Jonathan Pie video which was released following the 2016 US presidential election:

The theory is that maybe Koei Tecmo and other Japanese gaming companies are only localising games with English subtitles because their fans don’t know how to debate properly. This isn’t surprising given how long the dub-sub debate has gone on for, but maybe if dub fans and sub fans can at least learn how to discuss and debate respectfully, then the companies may start listening to us. To quote Pie’s video, being offended doesn’t work anymore and throwing insults doesn’t work anymore.

To be honest, I’m kind of glad that my rants haven’t been picked up by anyone “important”, like journalists or YouTubers. The arguments and motivations of dub fans are taken out of context and twisted quite often by opinion-neutrals to fit their views; who knows what they would say about me? Besides this, I’ve caused more than enough drama already out of good intentions and if you’ve been following the recent celebrity and internet dramas, you’ll probably know that fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m also kind of glad that I don’t have any white-knights fervently defending me with vitriol because I don’t think that is the way my fans should behave and God knows what would happen if I did actually have white-knights.

There are a lot of people who think they know everything about the dub-sub debate, including why some games or animes aren’t dubbed or subbed. Given this, I would rather hear these reasons coming from a representative of the game developers, specifically someone who is in charge of localisation, translation and dubbing instead of someone who only gets their “facts” from other people’s comments. Granted, I am in this category myself, but at the risk of sounding hypocritical, I’m pretty much the closest person you can get without all the political-style bullshit coming from the developers and publishers. The views and opinions of fans are all that anyone will ever hear about this issue unless someone credible does a “word of God” thing at some point in the future.

So what are my intentions from here on out? Well, for starters, I’m retiring this series and my English dub rants for good (given that nothing major comes up for me to talk about). As for what is going to be happening, refer to the three things I listed at the top of this post.

Following Tumblr’s announcement of their NSFW ban, a lot of people have been inclined to believe that Tumblr is dying. What this will mean for my blogs as a whole is a whole different topic altogether, but for now, what will this mean for my rants?

Well, unfortunately, I regret to announce that in the event that Tumblr closes down (for good), I have no intention to back up my rants or any other post relating to English dubs, video game localisation, Dynasty Warriors or the Koei Warriors series, including any posts from the feud. Ever since I started my rants in 2014, the content of this main blog has mostly been around those things, so if any of my other stuff goes down with them, then so be it.

When some people think of Tumblr, they think of it as an echo chamber for fanboys and fangirls in all the different fandoms, or a safe space for triggered SJWs “representing” various social causes. Given my actions over the years, I’m starting to think that I’m falling into this stereotypical cliché, but again, I’m glad that in the end, I’m not as bad as an SJW. I’m not perfect, but no one else is perfect either.

Up to now, I’m basically the only person who cares about this topic enough to do research for two series of rants; most people get shut down or stop bothering after one post. I don’t want to encourage people to ignorantly follow in my footsteps without understanding everything, particularly because I’ve been beating a dead horse for quite a while now. Whether or not you believe this to be the case, there is a chance that there are still a small number of people who have been inspired by my rants enough to want to imitate my methods. Last year, I used this next video as an interjectory statement for a particular hater who thought they knew everything about me and could take me down with petty actions. This time around, I want this video to be a piece of advice for those wannabes who think they can be like me, because the last few years for me (in terms of these rants) weren’t as easy as they seemed.

The situation I am in is based on compassion and empathy, as I’ve watched and played a lot of dubbed and subtitled works in the past. Even though my current tastes in TV shows basically require me to watch them with subtitles, I can understand why dub fans would want English dubs in some animes and games and vice versa for sub fans. It is rare to find people in the same boat as myself because a majority of commenters I’ve encountered are either ignorant, short-sighted or just unable to understand the bigger picture behind things.

The dub-sub debate has been overblown to the point that it still manages to get overblown now and again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; we don’t need to be arguing about which voice preference is better. Instead, we need to learn to appreciate and respect both sides of the coin while also supporting those who don’t even get an opportunity to choose what voice they want in their favourite game or anime. If an irrational hypocrite like me can feel compassion for both dub fans and sub fans alike, you can too.

If there is anything I may have missed over the years, then let it be known for the record that I would have liked to write more about those things, but it is a shame that various circumstances have led to me making the decision to move on.

Given that these English dub rants have been a major part of my content since late-2014, it is up to you to decide whether you want to continue following me as I continue to post content that fits with my current interests.

This is not a victory for the sub fans, dub haters or opinion-neutral naysayers, nor is it a defeat for dub fans; this is me announcing my retirement. Once again, a big thank you goes to my fans and dedicated fans for their support. As some people would say, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 29: Toxicity and Hypocrisy (Retirement Speech Part 1)

“I may have been a toxic hypocrite, but at least I know who and what I’ve been fighting for.”

I’ve said more than enough about my trolls, haters and naysayers over the years; this time around, I’m going to be talking about myself and the roles I played in the past through my English dub rants.

At the start of this year, I announced my intentions to end the Dub Logistics series and my English dub rant posts with it. Among my reasons, I explained that last year’s feud has contributed to my decision, but it wasn’t the main or only factor. Much as I hate to admit it, the events and aftermath of the feud have affected me more than what I’ve stated; I was understating the effects of the feud in my recounts because I never let my haters dictate my life or what I do with it, whether it be online or in real life. That was true then and this is still true now.

Reeling back from the feud has made me think about how toxic I may have been over the years, particularly while responding to the comments and addressing the hypocrisies of dub haters and opinion-neutrals. More recently, however, I’ve come to realise that my ever-changing views may have made me look like a hypocrite, if anyone hasn’t called me out as such already.

In this special instalment of Dub Logistics, I’ll be reflecting on my toxic hypocrisy and hopefully, setting the record straight for people who may have the wrong idea about me, particularly those who have heard about me from the biased perspectives of my haters and naysayers. It’s going to be long, so you’ll have to bear with me here.

The main point that I realised about my hypocrisy is that I am totally fine with reading subtitles when my rants make me look like I don’t like or want to read subtitles at all. This is a common assumption that many non-dub fans make about dub fans without considering some of the deeper reasoning behind their decision. In actuality, I’ve had my fair share with both dubs and subs myself, so to set the record straight, I’m going to be stating a few anecdotes relating to my experience with subtitles and dubbing, along with my experiences of video games, particularly the Koei Warriors game series. In case you didn’t know already, “Azuma Yeonchi” is a persona I use online, I am from Melbourne, Australia and my family is from Hong Kong. You’ll see how this is relevant as you read on.

In Australia, television stations are required by law to provide closed captioning on their programs, which isn’t really a surprise. We also have a public broadcasting network known as SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) that specialises in multilingual and multicultural programming. In addition to programmes from Australia, the US and the UK, they have also broadcast imported programs from other countries with their own English subtitles. Admittedly, they haven’t been doing this as much as they used to, however I sometimes watch the Japanese game show VS Arashi if it’s on.

In Hong Kong, many programs on TVB’s channels are broadcast with Chinese, while some programmes are additionally broadcast with the option to switch to English subtitles. A lot of non-locally produced programs are dubbed and broadcast with dual audio options, namely Cantonese and whatever language the program was originally made in. In a sense, Hongkongers and by extension, other Chinese people (not to make a political statement) can’t get away from subtitles in their media. Likewise, gamers can’t get away without reading the text and/or subtitles in games, Japanese or not.

I’ve played Koei Warriors games, mostly Dynasty Warriors, on the PSP, PS2 and the PC with English and Japanese voices along with English, Japanese and Chinese subtitles. Hearing that WO3U and SW4 wouldn’t be dubbed (despite the 18-month gap since WO3) inspired me to start the Koei Warriors Rant Series in 2014, but when I discovered that Koei Tecmo had cheapened out on the dubs for Dynasty Warriors 9 (among other things, but granted, it wasn’t entirely their fault given the voice actor strike), all hope I had for them was gone and I decided to stop following them on social media for good. This, combined with other commitments and interests that popped up, have led me to lose interest in video games, including the Koei Warriors series.

I’ve watched a few dubbed and subbed animes, but in 2014, I stopped following new animes, again because of other commitments and interests, but also because of the flagrant (female-centric) sexism I noticed in recent anime works. The only reason why I’m still posting on my Facebook anime pages and the Yui Hirasawa Waifu Network nowadays is out of gratitude because some series have served as inspirations for my personal projects.

The void left by video games and anime was filled by Japanese tokusatsu, which I have started getting into in the past few years. Honestly, I prefer watching live-action works, including tokusatsu, with subtitles since it’s pretty much the only way to watch them. I’ve also been watching some episodes raw (without subtitles) right after they’ve premiered in Japan; I’ve come to loosely understand the plot and dialogue thanks to years of contact with the Japanese language and vice versa. I have watched Power Rangers in the past as a gateway into the world of tokusatsu, but to me, it doesn’t exactly fit under the English dubbed category as it is rather an adaptation, mixing dubbed fight scenes with original footage. I still sometimes watch clips for comparison purposes.

If you’re still hating on me without having read everything up to here, or if you’ve read all this and you still consider me a hypocrite, then congratulations for missing the entire point of my argument. If you’ve supported my views and opinions in the past and you consider me a hypocrite now, then maybe you should have a think about whether you have really supported me at all.

Contrary to what some people may have assumed, I never did all this for myself alone. I can adapt my views and opinions to be fair to everyone because I can understand why some fans have their own preferences for dub or sub. Aside from my fans, it is rare to find people in the same boat as myself because the haters and naysayers I’ve encountered are ignorant, short-sighted or just unable to understand the bigger picture behind things.

Given my position towards subtitles and dubbing, it was never my intention to derail the dub-sub debate and demonise dub fans. From the very beginning, I had high hopes and good intentions for my English dub rants and the fanbases involved or mentioned, but in most cases, I’ve either come short or had the opposite effect to what I wanted.

It has been difficult to talk some sense into the haters and naysayers because aside from being ignorant, many of them have been toxic to me or other dub fans as well. Therefore, the only way I was able to do that was by being toxic back at them. I’m not saying that any of these attempts backfired on me, but most of the time, those people just don’t seem to listen because they are unable to listen to the opinions of others without being offended themselves.

It was in that vein that my warped sense of self-justice led me to name-and-shame dub haters by screenshotting their comments and reposting them. This started following the announcement of DW8E being localised without English voices, after it was erroneously announced that it would be localised with dual audio. This practice spread to the #NoDubNoBuy page (now English Dubbed Game News) and it wasn’t until late last year that I realised that it was going against the spirit I wanted to create for the page, so I deleted the name-and-shame album after I ended the feud.

Looking back, I think the events of the feud brought out the worst in me and the other party behind it. During the initial debate, I tried to convince him and his fake sock-puppet accounts that he was missing the point about dubbing and localisation, but he later claimed to his fans/white knights (in an act of virtue-signalling) that I ignored his points completely when that was not entirely the case. And let’s not forget that time when he spread that hoax about that one game under the name of a fake company. Even though the hoax became true in the end (as he claimed), it didn’t excuse his actions on social media.

The turning point for the feud, I believe, was when I did the parodies of iDubbbz’s Content Cop and Content Deputy in an effort to expose him as a lolcow. This was an escalation on my part, and he retaliated by pettily editing the Sea Princesses Wiki and reporting my posts on him along with other unrelated posts (I’ll go into this in the 2018 review post in late December), leading me to be postblocked on Facebook three times. Yes, I effectively copied someone else’s criticism format (while missing the point of it as well) in the hope that it would start a witchhunt, but in the end, I think we both got off lucky since not a lot of people read the posts and nothing major happened as a result.

While I have long moved on from the feud, I must admit that I still feel some guilt over my part in it a year on. The only way that I’ve been coping with it is to convince myself that while I may not always be right, wrong or perfect, nobody else is either and that I should not let this hater affect me any more than he already did (and I never have). As far as I care or know, the feud is over, the page where the debate started was deleted (which was ironically karmic to see) and we have both moved on to other endeavours (though like Keemstar or RiceGum, I doubt that he really learned anything from this).

When we ended the feud, we agreed that while we would never mention each other by name again, we would be allowed to maintain our own views and opinions on it and that any posts that have not been taken down or deleted already will be kept up or deleted at our own discretions. This applies to my Content Cop and Content Deputy posts as well, because I want him to remember that he is not immune from criticism regardless of what he thinks.

There was another feud I had with the Undub page, but it was never really a feud with the page directly; it was more like the childish prattling of their ignorant fans/white knights who associated English dubbing and its fans to politics, political correctness and SJWs, which were totally irrelevant to the topic. When the Undub page first noticed us, they accused us of copying their posts, which in reflection, I believe is bullshit because of reasons which I outlined in a post at the start of the year. However, they came to accept us at the start of 2018, particularly following the rebranding of the #NoDubNoBuy page to English Dubbed Game News.

Speaking of SJWs, I’ve never considered myself to be one of them, but after reflecting on everything that has happened, I came to realise that I was no better than an SJW in denial. In regards to other political references, I’ve been called a “nationalist”, a “Trump supporter”, or even an “alt-right” when I don’t identify with those groups. These are merely buzzwords that people learn from the news and on the internet to insult people they don’t like, but then again, I’ve called dub haters and opinion-neutrals “cucks” twice this year. But hey, why don’t we go out with a bang by forcing a meme to associate people with!

You know how opinion-neutrals always tell dub fans that they are entitled and that they should be grateful to the producers for localising the games in the first place (among other things)? Yeah, in my opinion, these are the traits of an NPC and if you think that’s dehumanising, then you have missed the point behind my argument and you are part of the problem. Even if you try to deny that you’re being like an NPC, then you’re just making up excuses to defend the publisher’s decisions or not participate in civilised debate (like a cuck).

I have unironically advocated suicide to some parties in some of my older rants. I understand that suicide is a problem and wishing harm on others is wrong, but I just can’t respect people who make no effort to understand why people think the way they think. Luckily though, I decided to stop doing that at the start of 2018 following the Logan Paul suicide forest incident because regardless of how much respect I have for people, I wouldn’t want someone like Logan Paul laughing at your corpse either.

If you have ever thought anything negative of me because of my posts and rants, you are part of the problem as well. I’m not going to apologise to the haters and naysayers (or their white knights) I may have offended because I think it will only validate their flawed opinions or vitriolic insults. The onus is on them to enlighten themselves and learn that there are people who disagree with themselves or the status quo. Luckily however, I’m going to be nice and give you a few tips about how to do that, which I will cover in the next and final instalment. Our negative criticism should be directed at the gaming companies for letting their fans turn against each other instead of fuelling the fire ourselves. If you’re looking for an apology (or maybe even forgiveness), then the best thing to do is to forget about me and move on, knowing that I will do the same for you as well.

In Part 22 of Dub Logistics, I used this quote from The Dark Knight to refer to gaming companies in general - “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Portions of the past few years have been downward spirals for me and in thinking about everything I’ve done during that time, I must admit that this quote is starting to apply to me as well, though I wish my haters and naysayers (and maybe their white knights as well) could feel the same way about themselves. Aside from that, this is my way of atoning for all the drama I’ve caused and leaving with my head held high in the knowledge that my fans will remember me for my efforts.

If you have heard about me from the negative opinions of others, then I recommend that you take their words with a few grains of salt and see for yourself how I have been trying to help Japanese anime and video game fanbases get over such a trivial and prolonged problem. If you then find yourself agreeing with those negative people, then you should realise that you are becoming part of the problem. Or, like I said, you could just let go of your animosity towards me, because I’m a busy person myself and I don’t want to have to deal with anyone’s bullshit, let alone be the target of a petty witchhunt.

This was a particularly deep instalment for me to write, but I’m kind of glad that it’s nearly over. The second part of my retirement speech will be in the next and final instalment of Dub Logistics.

[yeonchi]

The end of another “feud” (Undub page)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to turn over a new leaf for the former NoDubNoBuy page, renaming it English Dubbed Game News. The Undub page has followed a similar suit (following a prolonged hiatus), deciding to expand outside of Facebook with two different blogs relating to their passions (which I’ll elaborate on in a bit). However, the thing was that they decided to unban everyone that they had banned from the page (including me) and when they did so, they posted on our page, “I hope this will end our war.”

Now, I can’t say that for some of their fans, but when the hell were we ever fighting? Even if we were, then everything is pretty much in the past because they’ve decided to leave us be, unlike some other people who won’t enlighten themselves to dual audio (I think the Undub page may have been following some part of the other feud and seen how scary I might have been during it).

The two new blogs include Own Your Game and Dual Gamers. The former talks about games that are released physically in different regions, while the latter is basically the same as the Undub page, only in a more organised format. With the latter, they state that even though they will continue to support the original voice acting in games, they want to make the site welcome to people regardless of dub preference.

Even if the Undub page admin’s grammar isn’t the best, I commend his efforts since he and I both believe that dual audio is the way to go. Let’s face it, with a name like “I don't buy Japanese games if the audio is only in English”, he should really have been expecting someone to make a page (like mine) representing the opposite opinion. And does it really matter if I copied some of his posts when I started the page? After all, Japanese games are the same to their fans and everyone deserves to get value for their money and voice preferences. I could say the same about text languages, but that’s something extra that the Undub page has taken on.

Right now, I have no intention to make any more changes to my page now that I’ve already changed it for the better. The fact is that the two pages are there for people to read up on information about their favourite Japanese games and the voice languages that they are released in. Since the audience of our pages are mainly people on either side of the dub-sub debate, people who support the other side will have to read between the lines and not take our posts at face value to prevent misunderstandings.

I would also like to point out that our pages and fans have been called greedy and entitled just because we want game companies to add things onto games that should be simple and straightforward. Sometimes, we can understand why they don’t want to do it, but without official explanations (or similar), arguments and fights flare up in the fanbase and people who just tell us to accept the game company’s decisions are not helping the situation at all. We are allowed to have opinions on things, regardless of what status-quo cucks or corporate shills think.

Also, for someone to complain about Western game companies being greedy and want better value for their games in regards to microtransactions, DLCs and season passes while being against English dubs or complaining about “greedy gamers” complaining about voice languages in Japanese games is pretty hypocritical in retrospect because by your logic, you’re already being greedy. If you want to complain about Western gaming companies making “unfinished video games”, then you should be ready to complain about Japanese gaming companies neglecting their dub or sub fans by releasing games without complete localisations. If you don’t want to talk about it because your opinions on the subject just happen to be different to ours, or if your rationale doesn’t include Japanese games, then your best bet is to just stay silent on the subject.

Well, this is the end of “the feud that wasn’t”. Depending on your stance regarding dub preferences (or even physical games), just feel free to support either one of our pages, or maybe both if you’re not that biased. Like the Undub page, we at English Dubbed Game News don’t intend to discriminate anyone based on voice preference, but there’s no telling what will happen if you get on our bad sides. Basically, it’s just business as usual for the both of us.

UPDATE - 1 May 2021: Three years after the writing of this post, the admins of the Undub page have decided to call it quits. Here’s a screenshot of the comment they sent me in case they decide to delete their page:

[yeonchi]

2017 In Review

It’s been a very eventful and turbulent year, with quite a few things, both good and bad, happening all over the network.

Over on the Waifu Network, I’ve restarted Waifu Pros and Cons with the intention of hopefully posting at least one entry per month. The posts on the Waifu Network are pretty much linked to my anime posting on Facebook, so I needn’t make original posts for every page, which makes my life very easier.

We’ve introduced Ritsu’s brother and Azusa’s boyfriend, Satoshi Tainaka, as a new poster on the Waifu Network this year. This was a tie-in to the series A Month of Summer Azusas and its mini-series The Missing Pics on the Ecchi Waifu Network, which (despite delays) went off without a hitch. Anime Tiddie Check was also intended to be a series that estimated the breast sizes of the Waifu Network girls and compared various artists’ (official and fanart) interpretations and portrayals of them. However, it was made a one-off instalment for the K-On girls because there was a lack of viable nude group fanart for the other series we’ve featured.

I’d like to take a moment to pay tribute to three people who inspired me to begin the Koei Warriors Rant Series, namely Matthew Barth, Nathan Kennedy and Mansour Abdulla. Matthew became an admin on the Fans of Anime page for a little bit, but he was a staunch proponent of English voices in Koei Warriors games. Nathan was fighting with depression for a long time (as far as I knew), so I was particularly concerned for him. He deactivated his account in September this year and I haven’t heard from him since. Mansour became disillusioned with Koei Tecmo omitting English voices from their games and gave up on them a while back, even when I transitioned to discussing Japanese game localisation in the West. An honourable mention also goes to Scooter McDowell for helping me out with compiling the EX and Musou attack list for the characters in Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires, which was a big help for me at the time (it’s been a few years, so you should be able to find that information on wikis already).

The #NoDubNoBuy page will be changing its name to English Dubbed Game News from January 18, 2018 and we will no longer be reposting negative comments in the name-and-shame album as it has now been deleted. I will not confirm or deny the fact that recent events have influenced this decision, but regardless of this, I stand by what I said about the comments and the people who wrote them. More information can be found in this post.

The Undub page has strangely gone dead recently as their last update (at the time of writing) was posted on September 9. In the months before this, they have been promoting a website known as Own Your Game, which provides information on games that have physical releases, whether Western or Japanese. They have even gone to great lengths to show the text and voice languages that the game has, which fits with their standard of games being released with dual audio and as many text languages as possible. (UPDATE: 3 January 2018 - Apparantly, the Undub page is not dead. Thanks for clearing that up.)

Over the past three years, you may have seen me comment about English dubs on some posts on the Koei Tecmo Facebook page. I’ve decided to drop that because I feel that my time and efforts are wasted trying to convince a bunch of sheep to support dual audio when Koei Tecmo doesn’t make any effort towards dubbing their games. I’ll admit that I’ve lost interest in Dynasty Warriors and other Koei Warriors games recently because of this and other commitments. I’ve expanded to talking about English dub in general over the past few years, but right now, I just feel like posting news about games that have been dubbed or not. If that helps the English dub fanbase, then I’m happy with it.

I had plans to revive the Sea Princesses cartoon in order to complete the Sea Princesses Wiki, but I’ve decided to put that on hiatus because I’ve heard nothing regarding reruns or fansubs over the past year. I was going to post details about my proposed fansub project, but I’ve decided to put that on hold as well because I’ve been very busy (and not because no one would be interested in it, in case people are pointing that out). The vandalism of pages on the wiki is also continuing, but I’ve decided that it would be a waste of time to continue undoing random changes made by stupid people who have no idea about the cartoon (and rightly so).

Obviously, we’ve had a few conflicts with some people over the years and out of all of them, I think we’ve only had one or two that have escalated. Despite everything that has happened, I think that the main reason as to why the Network has continued to survive to this day is because we stood tall and maintained the high ground in the face of adversity. People have tried to discredit us over the years, but they failed because of various factors - they may have made points that were missing the point, they may not fully understand the topic in question, or they were just being petty (because I already proved that they were morally worse than me). I’m actually tempted to generalise all my naysayers in a negative light, but in the end, all I can count on is the satisfaction of being on the moral high ground. If you want to win an argument with me, your best bet is to just have a polite and civilised discussion, otherwise, it’ll just end up in a conflict with stupid people fighting stupid with stupid.

I’ve stopped actively looking for people to admin my Facebook pages as I’ve found that there hasn’t been a lot of interest in it over the past few years. It’s really sad when you’ve already hired admins to post on your pages and they don’t do anything, which makes you think that they probably shouldn’t have applied to be an admin in the first place. Personally, I think the way I’m running my pages is going good so far, even if the growth is a bit slow because I don’t use dishonest methods to promote my pages.

Speaking of pages, the rumour about non-business pages being deleted is still going on. Even though the timing of the rumour coincides with recent events that caused me to be postblocked three times in a month, I still think that it is bullshit. I won’t elaborate any further on this, but I hope that the people responsible for the reports thinks about the irreversible damage they have caused just for being petty on social media.

Rumours have been spread about me being an “attention-seeking dork with no friends” in relation to the #NoDubNoBuy page and the Dub Logistics series, or me using my niche status on the internet to promote hate and harassment in relation to the political posts on Hong Kong news that a page related to the Network has posted. Firstly, I like to keep my personal life separate from my online life, so what right have you to make judgements about me based on my opinions? Secondly, I’m not the type of person who wants to be perceived that way (in fact, who does?). I like to see myself as an insightful person who likes to speak their mind about things. Obviously, I’ve kept myself informed regarding current affairs in Hong Kong and Mainland China and like other people, I have negative opinions regarding the current situation over there, particularly when it comes to governance and law enforcement (criminal activities). Granted, some offensive language may have been used, but chances are that other people have the same thoughts I have, even if they would have worded it differently.

(UPDATE: 3 January 2018 - Looking back, I’m not even sure what effect the other party was trying to achieve with the events of the feud. Him ‘flexing’ over my posts being reported was definitely a ruse to attract my attention, but it didn’t work well because I didn’t hear about it until three weeks after the first post was reported. As I mentioned, some of his actions did nothing to redeem himself, yet it didn’t seem to mean much to other people since they didn’t pay much attention to it. Personally, I still think that he is either trolling or being paranoid about his reputation. He can say that I’ve been wrong about him and I can say that he’s been wrong about me, but I think that both of us should be grateful in at least one aspect, including the fact that the feud hasn’t escalated to drama the likes of YouTube, 4chan, Reddit, or even Encyclopedia Dramatica, where other people could start taking sides and blowing things way out of proportion. I’d like to reiterate that all views and opinions of the feud have been left to each party’s own interpretation - this is just my side of it. Both of us have moved on from all this, so hopefully in time, it’ll all become a forgotten afterimage.)

Given that I’ve kept the Hong Kong page separate from the rest of the Network, the thing I’m trying to say here is “don’t believe the rumours”. I can only say this because I have a niche fanbase; if I was famous like Keemstar, Leafy or RiceGum, that statement wouldn’t stick with everyone. This is my way of telling you all to focus on the positives and not the negatives.

So, despite what others may say about my fanbase, I’d like to thank my fans for their continued support. You don’t need to be flattered or anything because I know who you are. I wish you all the best for 2018.

[yeonchi]

2019 In Review

This year marked the start (or rather, a continuation) of my transition into society. It kind of sounds weird when I put it that way, but the truth is that I have much to learn about how society works and that despite all my time on the Internet, I’m gonna have to face up to reality sooner or later. I’ve never really created a name for myself outside of my anime posts, English dub rants, or even my work on preserving the Sea Princesses series, but I still hope to continue posting online at times.

Where previous reviews were released on New Year’s Eve, this year’s review will be released a bit earlier for reasons that I’ll elaborate on in this post. Let’s begin after the break.

Sea Princesses

2019 has been a big year for Sea Princesses. During the first half of the year, I worked on transcribing the episodes and writing plot details for the wiki, since not a lot of work was put into them since the other admin, Liggliluff, joined the wiki in 2015 and gave provision for them. In the second half of the year, I renovated the character pages, adding infoboxes and story involvement (highlights for the major characters) to them. I also created pages for the (named) animals that appeared in the series. Since the wiki is pretty much complete at this point with the addition of transcripts and episode plots, any further work on the wiki from me (in regards to the animated series) is up to whether I feel like doing any.

After six months of seeing no further uploads on the Mr Bean and Friends channel, I caved and decided to shell out some money on a premium account to download the Amazon Prime episodes someone had uploaded to a website. Six months after that, I found that someone had downloaded the episodes themselves and uploaded them to KimCartoon. I know this was way after everything I had done, but better late than never, I suppose. The sad thing was that a few weeks after that, someone reached out to me on the Lost Media Archive saying that they had ripped some of the episodes from ABC iView and put a link to their MEGA folder on 4chan /trash/ and not /co/, which led to me not realising it until he told me about it. Regardless, the split English episodes and Spanish Disney Channel raws are still in my cloud drive folder.

While working on the transcripts for the wiki, I also wrote a review of the series. After watching it, I found that there were quite a few disappointments here and there, but the series wasn’t as bad as I had remembered it. Also, from July to October this year, artist Princess Rainbow Channel did some amazing fanart of each character in the series (including background characters) that trumps everything I had seen before and possibly after. Feel free to check it out here along with my reaction and her response.

Public opinion of the series depends on where you are; in Brazil, people are still bringing it up in their childhood memories on Twitter (usually in response to the question “what were some cartoons you remember from when you were young”), while in Australia, you barely get anyone talking about the series and even if you did, quite a few of them would be people trashing it. I’d seen a couple of Americans who had apparently seen the series as well; aside from the Latin American Spanish version, I have no idea which channel the English version was broadcast or where, otherwise I’d have known by now.

So like I said, the wiki is pretty much complete in terms of the TV series. As for the Princesas do Mar books, I am hoping to cover them in the long term when I have the money and capacity to do so. If you want information about them now, then I’m hoping that someone (mostly from Brazil) will be kind enough to provide transcripts and/or snapshots of them. There won’t be anything about the books on the wiki (with the exception of Marcela and the titles of the books) until I get that information, whether it be from a kind volunteer or by myself, so the entire thing’s pretty much on hold until then.

One thing I realised - the author, Fabio Yabu, recently published the first volume of the Combo Rangers graphic novel for free on WEBTOON. No doubt about it, Sea Princesses would have been more popular if it had received as much love as Combo Rangers. Maybe it’s time that Yabu showed some love to the series after nearly a decade since the last Princesas do Mar book published by Panda Books - I wouldn’t mind seeing rereleases, a graphic novel, ebooks or a compendium of the ten books published by Panda Books (those are the titles that I’m hoping to focus on for the wiki, everything else is irrelevant). With my current situation right now, if I can’t get transcripts or screenshots, then I’d be more happy to spend my money buying ebooks than printed books from Brazil.

Doctor Who

Right at the start of the month, the release date for Doctor Who Series 12 was announced to be on New Year’s Day with subsequent episodes to air on Sundays. Like with Series 11, I’ll be continuing the Thirteenth Doctor reviews after the episode airs. The prelude post will come out later with more details. In fact, it’s because of this that I decided to release this post earlier instead of on New Year’s Eve. That’s pretty much the only reason.

English Dubbed Game News and English dub rants

In case you guys missed it, I’m fully moving on from talking about English dubbed games. I don’t know if anyone ever saw this coming since the end of the feud a couple of years back, but I guess my promise to stand tall back at the end of 2017 must sound ironic now.

As I explained back in September, I’ve lost interest in video games altogether and had conflicting thoughts on how to deal with the occasional toxic comments on my pages. I didn’t mention this back then, but in case you were wondering, no, all the Vic Mignogna stuff did not play a factor in my decision. I’ve never been a fan of him so I don’t care and to be fair, innocent or guilty, he is really only one voice actor. In terms of Koei Tecmo games, he only voiced two characters in Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8 (Jia Xu/Xiahou Ba) along with two characters in Samurai Warriors 3 (Mitsuhide Akechi/Yoshimoto Imagawa), which, I should remind you, never made it onto a Warriors Orochi game. If Koei Tecmo wanted to replace him when the allegations came out, they would have done it already. Ironically however, they did just that with Dynasty Warriors 9, but with the whole cast because of the voice actor strike.

Speaking of the voice actor strike, I’ve noticed something that I never did back when I was writing the rants; a lot of voice actors are part of SAG-AFTRA and I’ve deduced that Japanese game companies are being cheap and cutting corners in localisation (specifically, dubbing) because they don’t want to hire union actors because of the cost (presumably). Additionally, I’ve also read that union actors can’t openly do non-union work, which leads to them being uncredited officially. I know I’ve supported the union during the voice actor strike, but I can’t help but think that I should have criticised them at some point during my rants because their rules for union actors kind of play a factor in this whole debacle of video game dubbing.

I’ve suggested crowdfunding as a way to raise funds to hire (union) voice actors, but in recent years, I’ve seen them go the way of Western game companies and put out season passes and neverending DLC packs. Anyone who defends game companies for being cheap and not dubbing their games has no right to complain about them being greedy in other areas. I kind of saw it coming myself, which didn’t come as a surprise to me. As far as I’ve heard, there aren’t any loot boxes or pay-to-win gimmicks in Japanese games, so I guess I’m still relieved.

As for my opinion on all of this or Japanese game companies, including Koei Tecmo, they haven’t changed much, although I’ve become more and more apathetic towards them given my declining interest in video games. Much as I hate to admit, I’ve gotten back into playing older Warriors games I still have for nostalgia and because I was bored and wanted to procrastinate. This shows that regardless of my thoughts, I’m still grateful towards Koei Tecmo for the games that inspired me in certain aspects of my life.

I’m going to burn a few bridges here and say some fuck yous to a few groups. First of all is a big fuck you to the haters, namely the dub haters, sub purists and opinion-neutrals (that much is obvious). Next up is a fuck you to Japanese game companies for being cheap in localisation (and by extension, even cheaper in DLCs), then a smaller, belated and ironic fuck you to voice actor unions like SAG-AFTRA for making the rules that lead to Japanese game companies being cheap in the first place and enabling them to keep doing it. Finally, a really ironic fuck you goes to my fans and all other fans of English dubbing - the fact that nobody else had made something like EDGN by this point, let alone before I found and joined the page, is really telling of what little you do to promote dub advocacy, let alone not being aware that things like said page or #NoDubNoBuy exist or supporting them by liking or sharing my posts.

Anyway, the current plan is to finish posting whatever games I’ve got in the backlog before New Year’s Eve and then unpublish the page sometime after. I’m not going to delete the page out of respect to its creator, who despite still being an admin on the page, has never posted anything since I joined it. The games list will be kept up through this link for reference. Despite the fuck you I just gave my fans (particularly the 230-so followers on EDGN), I want to thank everyone for the support you gave over the years and invite you to continue following me on my Facebook and Tumblr pages.

The state of social media

I felt that I should address something given YouTube’s new measures regarding COPPA, not forgetting that they literally said that they have no obligation to host content. At the start of last year’s review, I stated that there was always something that managed to affect my Internet life in stupid ways. I haven’t been affected directly this year, but YouTube’s measures have led me to think about what would happen if Facebook were to follow suit, particularly because Tumblr already banned NSFW content at the end of last year and Twitter looks like it’s about to follow suit themselves.

Sure enough, YouTube suddenly updated their harassment policy, which resulted in the Leafy Content Cop being removed as a result of retroactive enforcement. I’ve got nothing much to say about this except that it just proves what we’ve been suspecting all along. To be honest, around the time of the NSFW ban on Tumblr, I was kind of expecting that the parody I did would get flagged ironically, but I guess it never got near the radar, not that there would be any justifiable grounds for it.

Anyone who celebrates censorship or deplatforming with the same argument that “private companies can do whatever they want” should really look at themselves in the mirror because if any of this has proved anything, it’s that anyone can be censored or deplatformed with or without reason whether they’re following the rules or not. You’re all just sitting ducks and you don’t even know it even though you play by their rules in the hope that you won’t be next.

On a more lighter note, I wonder if I should use paragraph gaps instead of horizontal rules in future posts, given that Tumblr removed functionality for the latter in the rich text editor. Sure, I could manually add them in the HTML editor, but it would mean that they would disappear when I switched back to the rich text editor, regardless of whether I saved or not, and it would absolutely kill me to put them back in the exact same spots when I’ve changed something there.

In regards to Hong Kong

Back in August, I made a post about how I nearly got deplatformed from Facebook by the guy behind the feud because of what I said in my repostings of Hong Kong news. I really want to look back and laugh at it now not only because him doing so made him look like a pro-Beijing supporter, but because a pro-Beijing politician he scapegoated as a dub hater in a parody post to evade my criticism of him as such lost his seat in the district council to a pro-democracy newcomer.

In that post, I admitted that I did use some racial slurs in some of my repostings. Given the escalating violence (on both sides, police and protesters) since the start of the protests in June, I’m just gonna come right out and say it - if I could use one word to describe it and the negative reaction from those against the protesters (around the world), it would be the hard-r n-word. I used that word against said pro-Beijing politician because like many other people, I don’t think he’s a good person in any way. He’s advocated violence against pro-democracy supporters, has suspected links to the triads and commended old men in white shirts attacking people in black shirts at a train station following a protest some distance away. If that third thing doesn’t remind you of white (shirt) supremacy, then I don’t know what will. Let’s not forget that at the time, I reposted some news about him not being admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales, making him a “fake lawyer n-word”.

In case there are people who disagree with my (former) use of the slur, I want to acknowledge something here. I know I’m using the slur towards Chinese people instead of its historical target, namely people of African origin, but if it helps move the focus away from the latter, then so be it. If I could find another (preferably stronger) word to describe it, then I would, but at this point, I should be lucky that I’m able to control my anger and not use the actual word itself. If you don’t like how I used the n-word at all, then fuck you, you missed the point, but of course, you’re free to leave.

I don’t want to talk about the finer details or criticisms of any party involved in the protests, but I’m quite amazed with the pro-democracy protesters’ motto of not splitting their movement, not condemning the violence from the radical side and not ratting anyone out. In my interpretation, the radical protesters know that their so-called “violence” is illegal, but the other protesters can’t condemn them because words have barely had any effect on the government and they know that the radical protesters are the only people who have a chance of making the government cave into their demands or expose the true sides of Hong Kong and China’s governments to the international community, because their failure to do so five years ago was because they failed to keep their movement together. I probably don’t know as much about this compared to Hong Kong locals or immigrants, but I wager that at least some of my interpretation is spot on.

Two years ago, I said on my personal Facebook page, “I hope that the future of Hong Kong and its politics will improve for the benefit of the people, especially the younger generations, given everything that has happened up to now”. I know it may seem ironic right now, but I believe that the future will continue to improve for the better, but if it turns to the worst, then I hope that due justice may be served.

At the start of this post, I said that I was undergoing a transition into society. I’ll be finishing my university course and graduating at the end of next year, so at this point, I’m currently out looking for work. A lot of people make it look easy, but in truth, it’s been quite excruciating for me; because of some government benefit thing I signed up for, I have a quota of job applications that I need to send per month. It sounds easy, but after a while, it becomes so hard when you look at a job you think you’ll like and realise that you don’t have the necessary skills or experience for it. All I can say for myself is that I’ll keep praying for guidance and hope that I can find something that fits with my timetable, at least until I graduate.

See you all on the other side in 2020.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 21: “English entitlement” is absolute bullshit

“The theory of ‘English entitlement’ is absolute bullshit. Dub fans are NOT ‘English entitled idiots’.”

It’s been a while since the last Dub Logistics, so I just want to say a quick apology to the fans because I had a lot on my plate recently, including being postblocked on Facebook because of some posts that were reported for “not following the Community Standards”. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it’s time for us to move on from Ibaraki Ben and his gAggers for good. This feud has gone on for too long and it has become obvious that he isn’t going to change his ways, so I’d rather leave him to sink or swim than risk getting my accounts deleted.

The content of this instalment is taken directly from the Ibaraki Ben Content Deputy. If you haven’t heard the full story yet, do check out the Ibaraki Ben Content Cop, but do keep in mind that a lot of links are broken because some things were deleted.

Since August 2017, Ben has been writing definitions on Urban Dictionary. A couple of his definitions include “fart shaming” (calling out a person who passed gas in order to embarrass them or notify others of their act) and “Momokun” (I’m sure you know what’s going on there). However, I saw that he wrote a definition for “English entitlement”, which looks something like this:

Let’s take a look at the definition from top to bottom.

Firstly, even an idiot would understand that there are many languages other than English and that not everyone around the world speaks English. There are many places in cities around the world that have signs in other languages, including English. Understandably, tourism isn’t prevalent in remote rural areas, so unless those areas were to be popular with tourists and tour groups, there wouldn’t be anything in English there.

Secondly, saying that someone has “English entitlement” just because they like dubbed games or anime is very ignorant and missing the point - in fact, this example blows the stereotype of dub fans way out of proportion. Not all dub fans are “English entitled idiots” and even if they are (which I must admit, I’ve seen a few), I have to make the disclaimer that they do not represent the rest of the dub community as a whole.

A smart dub fan supports dual voice language options (Japanese and English) in localised Japanese games where possible and doesn’t complain about things not being (dubbed) in English. Likewise, a smart sub fan respects other dub fans for their preferences and doesn’t harass people over them. People may think #NoDubNoBuy is obnoxious and while I don’t necessarily agree with it, I still think people have the right to know about what games are dubbed and to support dual audio in localised games (again, where possible).

As for the “foreign music” example, that has taken your argument too far. Yes, there have been songs that have been covered in different languages, but I have never heard anyone complaining about a song not being in English because chances are that they wouldn’t have heard about or understood the song in the first place. I know it’s Urban Dictionary, but this goes far beyond the realms of “stupid” - in fact, it’s actually more like “retarded”.

Looking at the quotes now and for the first one, you would think that someone would have at least taken the time to at least learn a couple of phrases in the local language. Even if someone is unable to express their thanks in the local language, people should be understanding about it because they’re just tourists. I live in Australia and on the street, Chinese tourists or migrants may sometimes ask me for directions in Chinese. Since I know how to speak Chinese, I am able to answer their questions, even if their English isn’t good.

Also, “local language entitlement” is more or less the same as “English entitlement”. Expecting every tourist to speak the local language while calling someone out for being “English entitled” is very hypocritical and stupid, to say the least. Not everyone will be able to speak the local language proficiently, even if they try their best because like I said, they’re just tourists.

We live in a multicultural society where people of all nationalities and languages are welcome to speak their own languages in their own communities. Come on, Ben, you should know this, given that you work at a language school that takes in students from all around the world. Even if there is a rule at your school that says students (and by extension, staff) must speak Japanese during class time (many of you who have studied at weekend language schools will know this), you need to know that people can speak whatever language they want outside of these times.

As for the second quote, I’ve addressed that point a couple of paragraphs up.

I won’t talk about the hashtags, but the GIF of Ralph that you have there is completely irrelevant to the entire entry. The context behind the scene is that he is getting an academic alert from Principal Skinner stating that he was “failing English”. That implies that they wouldn’t have had a good grasp on the English language in the first place, making the GIF’s effectiveness in this entry moot. However, the use of the GIF in your other entry, “Monglish”, is more appropriate because the definition fits the context better.

I’ll say this again, Ben - all I’ve seen you play and talk about on your YouTube channel and Facebook pages are Western games. Unless you have actually played a localised Japanese game or watched a dubbed anime, you have no right to talk about things like this.

It’s been a depressing time for us over at the Yeonchi Network because the feud has obviously impacted both of us. Both sides pulled no punches over the past few months, but I think the situation would only get worse if it were to go on any further. Better to throw one last punch and end it for good, regardless of what happens.

I’ve been writing less and less rants about English dubbing over the past few months and making more content revolving around more of my newer interests, such as tokusatsu and current affairs. I’ll admit, I’ve somehow lost interest in video games over the past few years, particularly Dynasty Warriors or Koei Tecmo games, but I’ll keep a lookout for updates on the dubbing status of localised Japanese games and post them on the #NoDubNoBuy page. It’s the least I can keep doing if I decide to stop calling out dub haters and opinion-neutrals.

[yeonchi]

Throwback: The “SJW dub fans” guy

If you’ve been following my rants closely, you may recall that I had some debates with someone named Henk de Vries. He made some points about how dub fans are the same as SJWs, English dubs make people think that English is the only language in the world and that if someone watches a dubbed anime in their own country, then they would automatically assume that the anime was made there.

Like Ibaraki Ben, Henk ranks on the list of the stupidest dub haters I’ve ever encountered, though Henk is somewhat better than Ben in some way because even though his account appeared to be fake, he didn’t use multiple accounts at the same time to make his point.

According to my observations, Henk lives in the Netherlands and he seemed to be a very depressed guy who had a lot of problems in his life, particularly at work. Since I started the NoDubNoBuy page, Henk has changed accounts and continued to make posts, particularly on the topic of SJWs. The ironic thing about it is that he posts very frequently, yet the only friend he has on Facebook is Hartoyo Purnomo, the other person who accused me of being an SJW last year.

Honestly, I feel very sorry for Henk given what he went through and I can understand his bitterness toward his life, political correctness and SJWs, since he likes to vent on Facebook. However, that doesn’t excuse his disrespect towards dub fans because no matter what he says, they will probably deny the fact that English dubs are an SJW thing.

I have it very easy in Australia because I don’t tend to share my views and opinions very often. However, I can see how Europe is becoming a shithole thanks to SJWs and left wing supporters.

It’s one thing to be against political correctness, but it’s another thing to be bitter about it at the same time. To me, Henk just comes off as a bitter person who hates his life. I just wish somehow that he had more people who agreed with him so he wouldn’t have to be so depressed about everything.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 20: (Actual) Reading Difficulties

“People with (actual) reading difficulties should not be forced to read subtitles.”

In the eyes of people other than dub fans, there is no excuse for not reading subtitles. A lot of people will tell dub fans to “learn to read” when chances are that they already know how to do so. In the most extreme cases, dub fans can be seen by others as “entitled” (not in the sense that they want an anime or game to be dubbed, but in the sense that they are not willing to read subtitles). These non-dub fans are part of the group that I like to call “opinion-neutrals”, or if they have said hateful comments against English dubbing, “dub haters”.

A fan on the NoDubNoBuy page has made a few analyses about dub haters and opinion-neutrals in the comments of my posts. Some of his comments may not be exactly on-topic (in the context of this instalment), but I think they are relevant to dub-sub debate in general. The common viewpoint observed from people other than dub fans is that “dub fans should be smart enough to read subtitles”. This is in contrast to the common viewpoint of vocal dub fans, which is to be fairly represented in (popular) localised Japanese games by including English voices in them. Here are some of his comments:

They're pretty much hypocrites in that when a Japanese game is released sub only they tell us to shut up, but when dual audio comes in or dub only they whine like toddlers.

A lot of sub people tend to shit on dub fans for "being unable to comprehend a culture/language they know nothing about" when they themselves know nothing about Japanese culture. Those that apparently claim so, simply rehash random phrases from anime. Of course, there are exceptions.

If anyone's acting entitled, it's them. They're the ones creating segregation and further the language and cultural barriers. Rather preferring to keep the market niche, all for themselves and their fragile ego. The way they act like they speak for the rest of the world. Which is funny because English isn't the only dubbing language in the world. They act like they're anti-corporate rebel heroes while refusing the support to very industry that provides them with the product.

Man, these guys are just so full of themselves. They parade around in self righteousness while spewing complete nonsensical hypocrisy. Especially when some of them are gaijins in Japan, so they have absolutely no idea how the rest of the world perceives dubbing.

These comments right there are pretty much a summary description of the zealous sub fans, or dub haters.

If you’re a dub fan, ask yourself, “Why do I like dubs?” My guess for your response would be that you just prefer them (ease of immersion), or you can’t focus on two things at the same time (the subtitles and the action on the screen). These reasons are perfectly understandable if you’re talking to me or any other dub fan, but not to anyone else.

If you’re watching a subbed anime or tokusatsu drama, then reading subtitles while watching is a no-brainer if you’re good at it, but for some people, it can become a distraction which can affect the experience. Take that logic and apply it to a hack-and-slash game like Dynasty Warriors or other games that have real-time messages popping up on the screen (game statuses and the like). In these types of games, you would need to pay attention to your character and their situation while also paying attention to the messages. Again, if you’re good at it, then it’s a no-brainer, but keep in mind that the inexperienced of players may find themselves in a difficult situation if they are too focused on the messages instead of the character, particularly if they are playing on higher difficulties.

So, if you’re a normal person, you have the ability to read and you’ve received a decent education, then reading subtitles is a no-brainer and there is no excuse for not doing so... is something I would say if I didn’t care. But what about the people with actual reading disorders, like dyslexia, or those who may take a little longer to process information, like people with autism or Asperger’s? Unlike people who can read normally, they actually have an excuse for not being able to read subtitles fast enough, or at all. These are the people that many others don’t take into consideration when they tell others to “learn to read”.

When it comes to reading, most people can piece a sentence together from skimming a few key words, but for people with Asperger’s (as I paraphrase from a comment I found a while ago), they have to see the entire sentence in order to understand it. They can try to improve their reading skills if they want, but there will still be people who will be in a similar situation to them.

Some fault also lies with the game developers and localisers as well, as they are responsible for setting the font face and size of the subtitles, along with subtitle duration and speed. These are also factors that influence the player’s interest, because if they are not properly set, the player may find it hard to read the subtitles.

It’s at times like this that we need to think of equality versus equity. I’ll go further into this in another instalment, but the bottom line is that dual audio is fair for all. In the dub-sub debate, gaming companies and anime licencing companies have as much a stake in it compared to dub fans and sub fans. In a way, they have started this debate and continued to fan the flames over many years while doing nothing in the way of damage control. The only way that they can reduce the amount of damage they continue to inflict is by implementing dual audio. It’s just that easy.