#bubrants

DISCLAIMER: though i'm fluent in japanese it is my second language so i might be a little bit off with some of the nuances that native speakers would pick up on + it's been about a month since i watched the dub! so take this as some light-hearted fun that i noticed and not as gospel i could just be too marty pilled and get things wrong whoops :333 i love being whimsical!

additionally, japan has about ~4 seperate dubs for bttf, so just for clarification i'll be talking about the 2025 40th anniversary cinema dubbing!

okay so the movie itself. in 4DX. bro. i cried multiple times. the chairs moved in conjunction with when marty was on his skateboard + driving the delorean and it was so awesome!!! they shot pressurized air behind you for every gunshot; they flashed lights and turned on the fans during the storm scene. i was so like. bro. oh my goobness. when marty goes back to 1955? don't even get me started. they flung us around so hard i swear i was in that car bro.

they also? splashed water at you? when marty spit out the booze?? why would you spit that all over me man. i was eating popcorn.

okay now to the juicy stuff (dialogue differences) + why i am a firm believer that specifically in the japanese versions of back to the future marty is wasian.

for your consideration here are some broad things i noticed:

marty uses masculine/rougher japanese, while doc uses formal/doctor-esque(technical words etc.) japanese! (the mispronunciation of gigawatt is kept as is) george and lorraine use standard japanese, with lorraine using very feminine language (ですわ, etc.) biff (1955) speaks simililarly but slightly more formal than marty; twin pine 1985 biff keeps this speech pattern, but lone pine speaks extremely formal japanese, referring to george as "Mister. (Lord of the House) McFly" and marty using the word for like. a noble son of the class above you.

this comes with any foreign-language dub but whenever there was english text on the screen without marty's face, marty would read out that english in japanese. for example, on the shot of the phone sign at lou's, marty said ("looks like there's a phone there i could use") okay adventure game protagonist

other than that everything was kind of the same/nothing notable :3 now here's some localization stuff!!!

biff/strickland refer to george/marty using their first name; mcfly is used maybe once or twice - this is probably just a culture difference; surnames are used in polite situations and a first name would be used when trying to be rude. the cafe scene where biff first comes in, he calls "mcfly" to allow both marty and george to turn around, but for the rest of the scene and film he refers to george by george. unfortunately this does take away from that first scene a little since george is referred to as george DIRECTLY after mcfly so we as the viewer/marty never comes to that conclusion himself

the localisation of 'don't be such a square' - this isn't that big but i'm gonna bring it up later!! in japanese the phrase "don't say such rigid(strict) things!" is used instead of this!

marty is just darth vader - he never follows up with "i am from the planet vulcan" he just says "i am an alien from outer space named darth vader". gonna guess this is prob just cause star trek wasn't that huge in japan i guess?

butthead is never said - they just do not substitute butthead and instead have biff ask "why are you looking at me like i'm an idiot?"

all the songs are kept in their original english recording - power of love is kept in english, that's fine, normal even. what really got me is the fact that earth angel and johnny b goode used their original english recordings. i nearly spat out my drink laughing hearing fluent japenese for the past like hour to be suddenly greeted by a complete 180 into perfect american english that ONLY appeared for the songs. they are dubbed in the japanese version of the musical so i thought that'd carry over but it was still awesome!!!!

good morning wasian marty truthers - bttf uses a lot of 80s/50s slang that's used as a language barrier between marty and the other characters. unfortunately japan doesn't have a direct translation for this, so the joke is now that marty mixes english in with his japanese. for example, he will say ヘビー(heavy written in katakana) instead of 重い(おもい) (jp word for heavy) and doc will say "what is 'ヘビー'; do you mean 重い? why is everything so heavy in the future is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?" -- this is why i headcanon JP BTTF marty to be wasian / learns english from doc (gigawatt is kept in english)

^ this joke is also done in the cafe scene, where marty will ask for a タブ(tab in katakana) and a pepsi フリー(free in katakana) to which lou will correct for the japanese words for the bill/free

NOW THE BIG ONE. THAT MOVED ME TO TEARS. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT.

alright i'm sure we're all familiar with the lone pine scene where marty comes back and cries over doc dying again in front of him. the dialogue exchange between doc and marty when doc gets back up is like. completely changed. why did they do this.

from my memory (and 7 million texts i sent to my friends after the film) this is the rough translation from the point the dialogue deviates:

-- Doc pulls out the ripped-up letter, weathered and taped back together. He hands it to Marty as the latter reads over in disbelief.

"This is bad, Doc! What about all that talk you told me about changing the future? The space-time continuum? This could get us in a lot of trouble! You could have put yourself in more danger!"

(what about all that talk about the space-time continuum etc.)

"Oh, don't be such a square." -- (aforementioned usage of 'strict language' which would be localized into don't be such a square)

(i thought, what the hell)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU SERIOUS. GOD. THEIR FRIENDSHIP IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME.

there are other really minor dialogue deviations i noticed but i would genuinely be here for a few hours if i did a deep dive into every line they changed/interesting localizations so i will leave it at that!!