Post #2: Video Watching Blog Post #1
For my choice of exploring culture I chose to explore a scene from one of my favorite anime, One Piece. The reason I chose this scene specifically is because of the huge emotional impact it had on me during my One Piece watch.
It's these four minutes that always hit me in the feels no matter when I watch the series.
One of the things I noticed is that the way the language is spoken in this video is dramatic, and I think one of the reasons why it is this way is because of the way Japanese sounds, in particular the constant to dramatically changing pitch of the voices along with the pauses and rhythm found within the voices that make it sound much different from the English dub or just English in general. I think the pitch works well with the crying of the characters in the scene, and the rhythm and pauses makes the scene very dramatic and emotional. Another thing I noticed is the other climax of the scene, Usopp's shooting down of the flag signifies an important theme in the way the Japanese see fights (this is a generalization of course). What I have noticed is that while on the whole America focuses on the grit aspect of fighting and taking blow for blow and never giving up, many very impactful action anime focus on the one big attack that is a catalyst for further fights or ends the fight on its own. However, this is not to say the two cultures are exclusive from each other, in fact, there are many times where the two cultures intermingle and share the same themes in terms of drama and action.
I also like the way the sound design plays into adding emotion and drama to the scene and I think it all comes together to make a scene that is moving regardless of whether you're watching this in 2006 or 2024.
For any One Piece fans out there, let me know how this scene made you feel and for anyone who wants to discuss One Piece i'm all ears (or eyes if you're on the blog) :)
I've never seen One Piece, but there seems to be a lot of distinct characters. The pacing of the language seem different from what you would see in an English fight seen as well. There were lots of phrases/sentences with silence around them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, similarly to Korean, the verb goes at the end of the sentence in Japanese. A lot of the time, when things are translated, you know something before someone only watching in Korean or Japanese would. For example, the negation or affirmation go at the end of a sentence so someone saying "I want to live" would be "I live want" in Japanese and Korean word order. Having the verb at the end of a sentence creates a suspense that I feel the English captions can't capture.