Fan Complaint About 'Nagatoro' Subs Goes From 0 To 100 At Lightning Speed
A Twitter user and fan of the romance anime Please Don't Tease Me, Nagatoro took umbrage with Crunchyroll's translation of the series over the weekend, arguing that having the title character use several modern slang terms like "sus" did the original work a disservice. What seemed like a minor quibble turned into one of the most astounding meltdowns on Twitter in recent memory.
The thread started innocently enough. Now-suspended user @locksneedfartin tweeted his displeasure with the localization of Nagatoro, arguing that having Nagatoro use the modern time slang words "sus," "scrub" and "derp" ruined the character:
Thread on what @Crunchyroll is doing to #nagatoro, one of the hottest shows out of japan is unforgivable. Their translations are not just lazy. They are deliberately shitty and cringe. Adapted by soy bug gamer people to appeal to soy bug gamer people and nobody else. Translations are a very simple concept. You take a word and translate it DIRECTLY into another languages word. Sometimes there is no direct translation. So you engage in whats called "localization". However doing this in a sloppy way can RUIN a character, show, and feeling. Exibit A on why the people subbing this show should be fired. "sus" is not a word. Its not real. its meme from a videogame that quite literally just became popular in the past year. In 10 years. nobody will know what the fuck they are saying here. This is lazy.
The tweets were strongly worded, but hardly noteworthy in the context of Twitter users complaining about things. What made the thread noteworthy was how @locksneedfartin responded to the criticism. After a few users made counter-arguments, @locksneedfartin typed, "If you are a black/LGBT weeb i dont care what you think. black fighting game fans in my mentions blowing a george floyd sized gasket over 'scrub' right now."
Though the posts referencing the Death of George Floyd offended many, anime fans being offensive on Twitter isn't all that unusual, but @locksneedfartin, seemingly determined to get suspended from the platform, escalated his thread to a wild degree.
Over the course of a massive thread, @locksneedfartin mocked trans users arguing with him in his mentions, spewed transphobic and racist rhetoric, posted a picture of Donald Trump defecating on the trans pride flag, argued one of the good things Nazis did was burn books on transgenderism and posted lots of highly graphic pictures of trans genitalia before finally getting suspended.
The thread caused Nagatoro to trend on Twitter, but users clicking the trend to see discussion about the latest episode were sorely disappointed.
Coincidentally, and perhaps poetically, Nagatoro used "sus" again the night after @locksneedfartin's meltdown.
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HowDoILogIn
The hero we needed.
Revic
"soy bug gamer people"
What?
katakis
Time to bring the ol' reliable back
katakis
Hm, might be hard to read for mobile users. Should I link instead?
Phhase
"King me" Why does that strike me as insanely funny? We should use the phrase "King me" more, context nothin'.
katakis
Duwang cannot be explained.
啊!
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Kaaarm
I've just heard of this character and already she fills me with an indescribable amount of violent rage. I know no one cares but I literally made a KYM account just so I could spout into the void that I absolutely despise this being. I hate her rosy cheeks. I hate her expressions. I hate her demeanor. I wish I never looked at KYM today.
Adam
then ive done my job
Dracorex
Based newfag.
VeteranAdventureHobo
… Its kind of buried in the article, so I'm putting it here.
This dude literally said that the nazis had the right idea about trans people and posted several pictures of genitalia. He's a nutjob
AL2009man
The best summary of the whole fiasco essentially boils down to:
Crystal Geyser
I mean, to be fair, I understand where the dude is coming from.
If I'm watching a sub, I want to experience something the way it was meant to be experienced by the original creators, not with memes some random translator with thought was funny at the time.
Even if a phrase doesn't translate 100% to western concepts (aka Onigiri to Jelly doughnuts), I think translating it as-is is better since it exposes the viewer to concepts they might not be familiar to and exposes them more to the culture.
I think injecting western phrases and concepts that are outside the original script is disrespectful to the people that created a given show. Obviously I'm not talking about this show only, but localization and translation as a whole.
Crystal Geyser
That, and I hate all this new "zoomer slang". It's all just stupid.
coreymon77
Except, consider for the moment, if you would, that rendering it as "sus" is actually experiencing it as it was meant by the original creators.
Newsflash: Japanese has slang too and Nagatoro is speaking in it.
She, as a character speaks extremely informal, slangy Japanese. If she was speaking English she would 100% be someone who would say "sus" in that context. So translating it as "sus" in this case is actually more respectful to the original creation than to not as simply rendering it as "suspicious" would completely remove the fact that she is speaking so informally. You would be losing an entire aspect of the original experience if the subtitles were written that way.
Also, please stop using "jelly doughnuts" as your example. The fact that you need to go back 20 years for it should indicate to you how that never happens anymore.
Sai
You said everything I feel.
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Panuru
Reminds me of when Funimation dropped a Gamergate reference into Prison School.
hexcaster
I find this far less egregious. Much like World of Warcraft changed the word "Epic" from a relatively obscure literary term into an adjective in the lexicons of people that don't even play video games, the shorting of the word Suspicious into Sus is getting a ton of use from the zoomers and could very well stick around beyond the relevance of it's origin.
The meltdown over it is almost as ridiculous a that one time people threw a shit fit because NOA's localization team snuck a doge reference in a book on a shelf in a silly co-op Zelda game about a bunch of Link wannabes hurring and durring through dungeons while dressing like cactus' and cheer leaders to save a princess from the curse of being unstylish.
Revic
"Sus" as an abbreviation of "suspicious" doesn't originate with Among Us. It's become heavily associated that but predates it considerably. Not trying to contradict your point (if anything this strengthens it, as the term does have a life outside its memetic status), just expanding on it a bit.