I fear being flamed.

[estirise]

So, I'm just going to post my thoughts on a particular Hana Yori Dango fanfic here. Maybe I'll get up the courage to post the review to the Pit. (With some useful constructive criticism, of course.)

I'll post the link to the story up in a few hours.


1. Akira's name is Mimasaka. Not Mimisaki. You can't just declare it to be Mimisaki.
2. The random Japanese is not useful. I don't mind honorifics, but peppering your dialogue with "ne", "hontou" "Ouji-san" instead of things like "really" and "Grandfather". A little Japanese flavor is fine, but random Japanese is not.
3. There would be no way in heck that Kaede wouldn't know that Tsukushi came from a rich family. It would have been mentioned somewhere.
4. Spellcheck, proofread.
5. Develop your OCs. I don't care about them right now.

(Oh, and I bet the arranged marriage is between Akira and Tsukushi.)

The story, incidentally, is here.

Comments

[nihongofrancais.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in your reasoning for #2. How do you mean "random"?

[estirose.livejournal.com]

Here's some of the ones I found:

“Who did you piss of this time?” Nishikado asked, only half-joking, drawing her eyes back to him.

“Ah, nanda mo nai” She assured him with a large fake smile, shaking her hands in a dismissing manner. “He is my grandfather.”

“Ojii-sama?” He repeated, looking back at the man, who hadn’t moved an inch, confused.

“Hai.” She nodded uncomfortably. “I have to go, it seems like he wants to talk to me. Gomen.” She apologised, soon there after disappearing into the car, along with the stern looking stranger. After having walked towards him with a grace Nishikado had seen many times in his life, growing up in high society, but never imagined Makino posses.

--

“Don’t act like Ojii-sama’s damn dog, nii-san. I have no intention of going through with an arranged marriage, with anyone.”

“I heard that he already arranged one.” He said, not too surprised by her harsh statement. He had heard it often whenever he tried to tell her something the old man had said.
“Shin!” She hissed warningly in response.

“Gomen.”

“I don’t care if, I can’t marry before I’m legal and as soon as I become that I have every intention of leaving, no matter what Ojii-sama wants. The only reason I’m with him now is because oka-san was worried. If you are here to convince me to stay away from boys and agree to the marriage you might as well leave.”

--

“I wasn’t there, Akira and Soujiro told me.”

“Soka.” She said with a small smile before a comfortable silence invaded the staircase.

“Nii-san said Ojii-sama already has arranged a marriage for me.” She said after a few minutes.

--

“You can always find a way out of an engagement, especially since, as far as I know, the Matsuda Group isn’t in any trouble. So far I have been engaged twice, Tsukasa too, Rui three and Akira is currently engaged to someone he doesn’t even know the name of. But none of us are married, so don’t worry about it.”

“Honto?”

“Ah, until you are actually married it’s nothing to worry about. As for the Matsuda family, I know for a fact that your grandfather always knew where you were and how you were doing. When he is drunk I heard him talks about his mysterious granddaughter once. Complained about how she hates him, refuses to accept her position and rather lives in the gutter with her mother, working in lowly shops and so on. She always had me intrigued.”

---

To keep me from writing an entire essay on the subject, I am distracted from the story whenever I have to go and mentally translate the Japanese. (The spelling and punctuation don't help, but the Japanese keeps distracting me.) You don't want to do that in a story, even if a lot of Jdrama fans pick up the basics.

Or it may be me being nitpicky.

[nihongofrancais.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's a problem with using pronouns (such as Okaa-san) if you spell them right, which this person seems to not be able too. Aside from the pronouns, the use of Japanese does seem random I agree. However, as a person who does use Japanese in her fanfic, I have to say that sometimes English is not effective in conveying cultural nuances in Japanese. Then again, I'm quite comfortable in Japanese, so stuff like that doesn't bother me as much as someone who doesn't speak it as well.

[estirose.livejournal.com]

(Note: General, not specific, you)

I have no problem seeing Japanese (or any other language) used if it fits the story. The problem I'm having with this author, I think, is that the Japanese seems random and fangirlish; someone more familiar with the language would have some idea of how to use it to enrich the story, instead of throwing the reader out of it.

In other words, it's how you use it. Using it because the English doesn't convey things well is fine, but you have to not make it seem just inserted in there for the sake of having it inserted in there, which is what this person seems to be doing. If it kills the flow, you're doing it wrong.

(This is, incidentally, what I mean by random Japanese. Random Japanese is sticking Japanese words in because you want to show off your knowledge of Japanese, not because they fit the story.)

[estirose.livejournal.com]

As a sidenote: perhaps I should be saying "gratuitous Japanese"?