Any time’s there’s a language barrier in a story, you’ve got to accept a conceit or two and often maintain some distance outside of the story. Like here, you’ve got a couple Japanese dudes strolling around Texas. Obviously, you’re not going to fault the show for having everybody speak Japanese on screen even though, more realistically, it’d just be the two of them. There’s no problem with that - - we’re all quite familiar with what happens when the proverbial shoe’s on the other foot for English shows, of course.
However, this episode stumbles a little with the conceit. It takes a couple moments to draw attention to how these characters are speaking different languages in the (so to speak) reality of the plot, even though they’re all speaking the same language on screen. For instance, when they’re recounting Mutta’s spectacular takedown of the fire extinguisher bandit, and they make a point of how he startles the bad guy by shouting something in Japanese at him.
That makes plenty of sense, sure… except the bandit’s speaking Japanese the whole time, too.
This is an awfully specific thing to harp on, I know - - I feel a little Mutta for getting thrown off track by such a detail - - but I couldn’t stop thinking about it because the screenwriters specifically chose to point it out. Unless there’s some clever rephrasing in the inevitable dub, I imagine it’s going to get even weirder once you have all these characters speaking in English while we’re supposed to understand some of them as still speaking in Japanese.
Oh, the peculiarities of the dub and sub...!
Watch this episode, "Smoky Heaven” here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here. Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
