Anime Localization and Property Rights

On this episode of Misbehaved Liberty we discuss anime localization, narcissistic localizers, property rights, and why this all matters. 

Transcript

MISBEHAVED LIBERTY
Episode 1 Anime Localization

BOB (intro)

On tonight’s show we stand up to the patriarchy by altering Japanese cartoons. Welcome to the zany world of Jamie Marchi, anime localization, and good ol’ progressive imperialism.

INTRO MUSIC STARTS

BOB (CONT’D) Localization is the process of

translating and adapting a foreign IP for a domestic audience.

More than just a literal translation, localization needs to maintain the tone, characterizations, and emotions of the original work while making it relatable for a new audience, and don’t even get me started on adapting idioms.

Sounds straightforward enough, but its 2024 and nothing is ever this easy, not with the alphabet soup crowd screaming about preferred pronouns in the hallway.

The concern with localization is where does interpretation end and alteration begin? It’s absurd we have to have this conversation, but we live in a world where those who wish they could create feel the need to change the words, themes, and characterizations of those who do create in order to to force all media to fit the progressive narrative.

INTRO MUSIC ENDS

BOB (CONT’D)
You know who I’m talking about.

White, liberal, handful of zannies in the purse and a battalion of empty wine bottles on the counter.

Our girl boss hero is going to save the world one brunch conversation about inclusion and representation at a time because nothing screams inclusion like crab Benedict and bottomless mimosas.

BOB (CONT’D)
That’s the cue for our hero’s grand

entrance, Jamie Marchi. Her likes include standing up to the patriarchy, calling critics misogynist nazis, and progressive imperialism. After all, someone has to protect delicate domestic audiences from problematic Japanese authors.

For those who don’t know, Jamie Marchi is an American voice actress, ADR director, and script writer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in. Theatre from the University of Tennessee and one has to assume that’s where she first encountered the philosophies swirling around textual interpretation, literary criticism, and specifically for our discussion, Cultural Marxism.

I can feel the eye rolls from here, I can almost hear the angry keyboard warriors dashing to the comments section, fingers crashing violently onto abused keyboards, raining down a veritable monsoon of misspelled, poorly capitalized diatribes, incensed refutations of my use of Cultural Marxism. “It doesn’t exist,” they exclaim with all the righteous indignation their BA in gender studies and casual perusal of the New York Times opinion page allows for.

To be sure, the American right has made something of a bugbear out of Cultural Marxism, using it as a generic, catch all phrase for ideologies, political movements, and philosophies spanning the leftist spectrum from third wave feminism, political correctness, and identity politics, to fetishism, materialism, and white privilege.

The list of what is shoved under the Cultural Marxism umbrella seems to grow exponentially, expanding with practically every news cycle. This creates so much noise around the term it becomes difficult to nail down a specific meaning, and with no specific meaning it is that much more difficult to articulate what it is and why it matters.

Cultural Marxism has its origins in literary theory and can be inadequately, but functionally, summed up as the relationship of culture to class, power, and race.

Often that relationship plays out as adversarial. The theory itself is just an analytical tool, but the application of the theory is what most concerns the everyman, even if they don’t realize it.

Cultural Marxism, as applied by your average leftist, seeks to recast all of society into an us verses them mentality. They seek to tear down, discredit, alter, or otherwise change society through casting it as those with power versus those without.

If you have any sort of success you’re privileged and part of the system of oppression while if you are unable to succeed you’re being kept down by a system that discredits your undoubtedly important contributions because of race, gender, sexual orientation, et all.

Instead of striving for excellence,

we’re being conditioned to settle for mediocrity. You’re in the middle class? Well, that’s only because you oppress the working class. You’re wealthy? Well that’s only because you’re a racist white male capitalist pig. You’re working class? Well, that’s not your fault, you deserve more just for being you, you deserve what other’s have worked for because that’s equitable justice. You’re a victim of the system, the fact you have no marketable skills or talents is immaterial to your victimhood. It’s not your fault, its the white colonial patriarchal power structure that’s keeping you down.

What does a discussion of Cultural Marxism have to do with manga and anime localization? Nothing happens in a vacuum. The fight over translation and localization has been going on for years, and is garnering attention now because of a perfect storm between youtube creators, the purposeful distortions made by some localizers, the rise and use of AI in translating manga, the growing audience that Japanese manga and anime reaches, and, of course, the revenue generated.

Manga and anime has been growing, year over year, in popularity with American audiences. It was only fifteen or twenty years ago where the majority of anime available in the United States was subbed instead of dubbed, but by dubbing the dialogue anime reaches a much wider audience. That’s caused consternation for some.

Manga and anime are Japanese art forms and, as a result, conform to Japanese culture and societal norms, norms that many in the west dislike and, in some cases, outright disdain.

The growth in popularity created an

opening for liberal localizers to imprint their own political beliefs on a foreign art form.

Jamie Marchi, in particular, is unapologetic about her material alterations of the source material, source material she does not own and did not create. Source material written to reflect a foreign culture. A culture that she apparently cares little for.

She’s the great white savior, bringing altered foreign art to American audiences, she's a crusader, standing up to misogynists, nazis, and the patriarchy in order to stand up for her fandom, not that is is her fandom, she doesn’t create any of it, but things like intellectual property, ownership rights, and creation are details she won’t be bothered with. Let’s listen to how she addressed concerns about mistakes and alterations in English dubbs from a panel discussion at Sacanime during the summer of 2018.

PLAY JAMIE AUDIO

And there you have it, folks, in

her own words, what she thinks about criticism and critics. Not only did she deflect and fail to answer the question but she felt the burning need to bring up that she has a vagina, and that her critics are all misyognists and nazis. Surprise surprise.

But notice how in that clip no one else jumped in to address the question? Five presumably well know representatives of their industry and they all sit by and let Jamie deflect and attack rather than attempting to address what was a serious question. Are any of them concerned?

Well, we’ll never know because

their Queen Bee answered for them.

Why does she sound like a teen ager, though? We were listening to the same clip, I doubt I was the only one who noticed her voice inflection, choice of words, cadence, etc. All sounded like she is about fourteen or fifteen years old. Yet back in 2018 she would have been 40 or 41.

This is the Queen Bee of the high school theatre department. We all know the type, theatre hot, couldn’t quite cut it as a cheer leader but fits right in surrounded by simps and sycophants, the type of obnoxious girl you find singing show tunes at Denny’s at two in the morning in any college town in America.

Not that there’s anything wrong with theatre girls, I could do an entire episode on theatre girls but I’ll just quickly say this, if you like theatre girls get yourself a nice crew girl, maybe someone who does lights or sound. Less drama, doesn’t need to be the center of attention all the time, more emotionally stable, and probably more interesting, as well.

Ah, but that clip. Clearly Jamie feels the need to be the center of attention. She needs to be validated, she needs you to know that she’s hotter, smarter, and better than you. If you don’t believe it? Eh, it’s because you’re a nazi, or an incel, or you hate women. Or, better yet, all three! It’s no surprise localization is such a mess with people like this in charge of the job. It also shouldn’t come as a shock that someone who sounds like a narcissist also acts like a narcissist.

Think about what she’s really

saying. Not only does she know what her audience wants, not only does she know her critics are wrong, but she also knows that the original intent of the Japanese authors, predominantly men by the way, is not only problematic but deserving of change.

They’re not her characters. She didn’t create them, she didn’t write their stories, she didn’t ink their images, she played no part in their creation. Yet she’s the one who’s going to fix them for a modern audience, for her audience. She has a role to play, she’s going to correct foreign art, she’s going to make it conform to her world view. She doesn’t care she doesn’t own it. Ownership? What’s that other than the patriarchacal means of keeping women, minorities, indigenous peoples, and anyone who isn’t cis-normative oppressed? The inconvenient fact that the characters and media in question is created by Japanese authors and artists is no inconvenience at all. Not when there’s a crusade to fight.

These liberal localizers don’t respect the source material, they never have. It’s a job, but not one they have to do well, or correctly. Rather, it’s an opportunity to change what they believe is problematic for what they see to be correct.

When Jamie inserts her own beliefs into a work she’s localizing she is acting as a censor. She is altering the original work to reflect what she wants society to be. She’s showing her audience a vision for the future where censors alter artistic works to reflect policy. That is why we should all be concerned with localizers altering the original work.

Jamie is attacking the very concept

of free expression and speech. And she’ doing it from a position of assumed authority. She’s quick to attack her critics though, there’s not a question she can’t deflect, a straw man she can’t draw. I hope we aren’t too far off from the day AI replaces these people.

The right to property is the primordial right from which all other rights are derived. A basic, fundamental right to our own thoughts and words. A right that includes our ability to express our thoughts, to create, to tell a story that’s uniquely our own, using our words, experiences, and imaginations. These localizers, through their actions in altering someone else’s work are assaulting an individual’s right to property.

Now, you won’t hear them talk about it in these terms. No, they’re correcting past mistakes, they’re updating the work for a modern audience, they’re making the work more inclusive, more reflective of modern times. But never do they say what they’re actually doing. They’re stealing. They’re violating someone else’s intellectual property rights. They’re demonstrating their utter disdain for the creators who invented the stories they profess to love.

It’s not about the stories, though, same as it isn’t about anime localization, or manga translation, or race swapping characters from classical literature. These are all symptoms of the same disease, and, like any disease, you have to identify the symptoms before you can start treating the patient.

This is another front in the leftist assault on property.

Here, they are altering the

creative works of others, but it’s no different than attacking the landlord for raising rent, or the business owner for not paying employees more, or the gun owner for wanting the ability to protect herself. They are all Marxist assaults on private property.

The assault on private property is a necessary step in remaking the world. Society at large needs to be convinced that ownership is a societal negative and collectivism is a societal positive. The mantra you oft hear repeated is no one does it alone. A flashy sound bite, for sure, but look at what it really says. It’s an assault on property and an assault on property is an assault on the most basic and primordial of human rights, a right to the self. They’re coming for your thoughts, as sure as they already came for your entertainment. Draw a line. Yield no more.

I hope you enjoyed today’s show and I look forward to our next show where we’ll be discussing fundamental rights. I’ll be going on vacation for a week so look for me during the first week of February. Until then, stay ungovernable and misbehave.