#P.S. Do not watch this show if you can't speak at least some Japanese. The English subtitles are machine-translated and they are IMPOSSIBLE

[deadsince1973]

I've just finished episode 5 of Vivant, and I have to say, I really love and appreciate the mix of languages on this show. You just KNOW that if this show were American, all the "Balkan"/Mongolian characters would be speaking English with a foreign accent for the convenience of the audience. So I absolutely love this show's choice to have huge chunks of the show's dialogue delivered in Mongolian, including lines by the Japanese main characters, and to simply subtitle it in Japanese. No handwaving about how the main characters' foreign contacts just happen to speak Japanese with no expectation that the main characters might also speak Mongolian. No, instead, all the main characters speak Mongolian and English (and Arabic maybe, in Nogi's case?) in addition to Japanese, none of the Americans speak Japanese, only the Balkan/Mongolian characters for whom it makes sense that they would speak Japanese speak Japanese, and the language of the scene is chosen based on what language would most likely be used in that situation in real life. Convenience for the audience is simply not a consideration. And I love it!

#Vivant #original #P.S. Do not watch this show if you can't speak at least some Japanese. The English subtitles are machine-translated and they are IMPOSSIBLE #to understand! And they don't even translate the parts that are subtitled in Japanese so if you can't read the Japanese subtitles you'll #miss like 20% of the story! Not that my Japanese is good enough to understand every word or anything but I can at least get the gist. And #the horrible subtitles are at least able to supply some important words I otherwise wouldn't know. #Anyway. I wish Japanese dramas were more popular in the U.S. so we could get more of them available with English subtitles! #Good professional English subtitles I mean. #As it is I think it's pretty much just whatever Netflix produces in-house and whatever Viki has isn't it? And Viki seems to have their #biggest focus on Korean dramas. I mean they do have dramas from a lot of Asian countries and they have subtitles available in a lot of #languages and that they have that learning mode that lets you watch a show with native-language subtitles with a built-in dictionary which #is awesome. But I am not at this point in my life interested in dramas that don't come from China or Japan so I wish it was easier to watch #Japanese TV in America!