Comments on: Japanese in Heroes – Part IV

By: Deas

Deas — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:50:51 +0000

Hey Mike, and thanks for the comment. I agree with your grievance against Hollywood for making the entirety of Asia one big monolithic cultural entity. I’m going to write a post about it soon, actually. Thanks.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:45:29 +0000

As far as the Japanese goes, I’m impressed with the non Asian actors they have on Heroes. The language coaches have done a great job. I remember cringing at Sean Connor’s horrific attempt at Japanese in the (equally horrific) movie, Rising Sun. I thought, “How can somebody being paid millions of dollars not bother to even try to hide his Scottish brogue when speaking in Japanese.” But these Heroes guys have it down great.

What DOES bother me is this continuing Hollywood problem of hiring Asian people to play the part of Japanese people when there are 130 million Japanese people sitting over here all waiting for their big break. Ok, I’m just kidding about the big break — but you can’t tell me that the director was NOT aware that Ando was Korean before forcing him into the role. He sounds like all of the Korean exchange student we have studying Japanese at our university here. I just wish Hollywood would finally get a modicum of International Politically Correctness (is that a word?) and stop assuming that all Asians are essentially the same culture.

At least Commander Sulu of the Starship Enterprise does a good job of the Japanese as Hero’s dad. Beam me up, Scotty!

Mike’s last blog post: Japanese banks: Reinventing the wheel

By: Aileen

Aileen — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:06:24 +0000

has been fun reading these, but I do have one thing to add.

isn’t the poor level of Japanese the fault of not only the actors but the director/producer/whoever is responsible for these types of things, for not ensuring, with the help of some real live Japanese people, that the accents/pronounciation/intonation/etc was accurate before filming?! I mean, especially for those who have very few lines (and who incidentally scored least well on the Deas Richardson Japanese-o-meter) wouldn’t it have been good just to drill it into them. It surely doesn’t take long to teach one person the correct way to pronounce “chichi no hi omedetou”. thats 4 words!!! 4 words!

an oversight on the part of the production team perhaps….if you’re bothered by things like this….

By: Daily J » Topic » Connections everywhere I look - and what would you love to see on the J-web?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:03 +0000

[...] RockingInHakata <–>Jamaipanese<–>KeepingPaceInJapan (talked about Heroes in his interview) [...]

By: Deas

Deas — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:23:08 +0000

Ha ha ha – you hear that, Mr. Coleman? Elle says your Japanese is even lousier than a 0.2! Harsh. Ha ha. Elle, would you still rate him higher than Mr. Greenquist from Part II of this series? He’s still, in my opinion, the worst.

By: Elle

Elle — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:18:36 +0000

the Japanese was just AWFUL, giving a 0.2 was too forgiving rofl

By: Deas

Deas — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:55:01 +0000

Hi there, Ita. Anytime! I look forward to it!

By: ita

ita — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:58:22 +0000

Hi, I’m the one who wrote the “promissing result”.
Thanks for the link and encouragement An entry for S2E02 is in progress now.

By: Deas

Deas — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:20:20 +0000

Thanks Clay.

By: claytonian

claytonian — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:33:40 +0000

Actually I see Asian commercials on youtube and other sites where the commentors rarely can guess the language. They often say, “cn somene translate the Chineze plz?” Don’t underestimate the ignorance of people.

As for that scene, I think the actors that could understand Japanese were having a laugh behind the scenes.