"Lost and Found in Translation"

[estirise]

While I'd have preferred something a little closer to my crossover, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. In fact, it was pretty good.


This was episode 10 or so of AbaRanger, Abarekiller (Mikoto, Trent's equivalent) doesn't show up until 17 or 18, so no Abarekiller. Too bad they used the monster from #21 in "Leader of the Whack", I'd have liked an American audience to see Yatsudenwani, but that would mean having to dub Mikoto.

That being said, I was cracking up pretty much the entire episode. Some people on both the PR and Sentai messageboards didn't get that the dubbing was *supposed* to be bad. Really bad. And the dub names? Probably a dig at the renaming of characters from Japanese to English in certain animes.

(All in all, I think I appreciated this episode because I was familiar with both Abaranger and PRDT. While I may not have seen episode 10, I knew enough about the Abaranger characters to enjoy the 'dub', especially the dub dialogue for Yukito and "Mikey"... er, Asuka. The only dub characters that I winced at were Jannu and Rije. The writers did better with the good guys and the bear-ATM-mushroom Toronoid than they did with the Evorian regulars.)

Really, the episode worked on two levels: the simple level of "different cultures doesn't mean everything is different, or that one culture is better than the other" and the second level, which was the metaphor of the Sentai vs. PR debates. And it worked well. What an episode about tolerance and keeping an open mind! And a nice birthday present, too.

Comments

[cmar-wingnut.livejournal.com]

I really liked this episode, too, partly because I'd never seen any Sentai before. It was more humorous than I expected, although from what you say part of that was the purposely bad dubbing.

I liked Connor's comment of, "What do they know about Power Rangers in Japan?"