#uzukun

From what I understand, onkeikun has actually done a full retranslation of 02. This is a good thing; even PositronCannon's subs were based off a really bad disaster translation that was used on Crunchyroll in around 2008. The Positron version cleaned it up so that it would go from "utter disaster" to "acceptable" (and I 100% appreciate it very very much!), but fundamentally speaking, it's still based on something that was absolutely awful. It's the translation used as a base for the version currently on Crunchyroll too, and now that every other Digimon series is on it (!!), the fact it's "a somewhat cleaned-up version of a terrible translation" and not one properly redone from scratch makes it by far the worst translation in CR's Digimon lineup.

[Rogue operates a communication lacrima.]

Rogue: Hi, I’d like to order a large pizza for delivery with mushrooms, sausages, pepperonis, pineapples, Canadian bacon, anchovies, and green peppers.

Sting: That sounds delicious, Rogue. But, aren’t you going to have anything?

Lector: If Sting-kun eats it all…(puffs his cheeks)

Frosch: (laughs)

Sting: There’s not an ounce of fat below my neck!

Rogue: Now, you’re going to deliver that pizza to Sabertooth guild, right? Well, would you mind doing me a favor and pick us up on the way?

Sting: Tell them to forget the whole thing. I’m in the mood for Chinese.

Rogue: (angrily yells at Sting) Shut up! (goes back to the lacrima) Oh, no. I said “Line up”. We’ll line up by the side of this road with a sign so we’re easy to spot.

Rufus: (makes a sign) I see you’ve done this before.

Rogue: They’ll be here in two minutes or it’s free.

Frosch: Rogue, you’re smart.

Sting: Well, it was mostly my idea.

Rogue: Great. Then, you’re buying the pizza.

Sting: Huh?

[The pizza deliverer comes.]

Yukino: Everyone, come on. Let us go.

Sting: Why do I have to be the one who pays for it?

Rogue: Hey, it’s your pie. You buy. Don’t open your big mouth, unless it’s to eat pizza.

Sting: (leans behind back of the cart) All right. If I’m paying for it, I get the first half and then I get the second half too.

Rogue, Frosch, and Lector: Huh?

Sting: Now that’s settled. I guess we’re ready to go (laughs in strange manner). Oooh! (falls down as the pizza delivery cart leaves)

Orga: (in the cart) We’ll tell you how the pizza tasted.

A vaguely related anecdote: apparently when Park Romi first saw what kind of character the Kaiser was like, she was really worried if she could do a role like a cruel villain using a whip. (This is a statement that sounds absolutely unfathomable to anyone who knows what kind of roles Park Romi is famous for now, and especially when you've seen things like this, but keep in mind that at the time, Ken was only her second major role in her entire voice acting career -- at the time the only one before that was Loran from Turn A Gundam, who is a very nice kid.)

Oh, it was absolutely controversial, and it still is now (at least in the mainstream; I feel most people in the hardcore fanbase tend to be a bit tired of it being a dead horse, regardless of what side of the argument they're on). In regards to the episode itself, I think some of it might have simply been pragmatic -- Yamato, being one of the most openly friendly of the Adventure group, would be able to form a good relationship with Ken, whereas Sora was supposed to be a Crest mentor of sorts to Miyako but didn't really get to interact with her a lot in practice (especially since even Sora's own debut episode in 02 had her say vocally that Miyako reminded her more of Mimi). But, of course, I've personally loved to derive humor from the fact poor Yamato and Sora had to get dragged around the world doing Chosen Child work when they'd just started a relationship one day prior...

American English dub writer Jeff Nimoy openly stated later on that he was a Tai/Sora and Joe/Mimi shipper, and I have no doubt that's why the subtext for both got played up. Now, that being said, while this isn't a particularly well-known fact for people who haven't seen the American English dub, said dub actually goes harder on Matt/Sora the moment they hook up in-series, so I think it's less so Nimoy wanting to force his shipping preferences into the narrative and more so that romance is a crowd-pleaser in general, and he and the rest of the dub team thought it would be fun to play that up. Adventure and 02 were dubbed while the Japanese series was still being produced, so I honestly would be willing to believe they weren't informed the actual endgame would be Yamato/Sora in advance, let alone there being an epilogue; more likely they weren't expecting an endgame at all and figured subtext would stay subtext.

The thing is that even in the Japanese fandom, there's agreement that the spat between Taichi and Sora was meant to have romantic implications. Of course, when you look at the events merely as events in-universe, none of it is sufficiently solid evidence of romantic feelings between them, but it's pretty much drenched in what you'd call "flags" (scenes and tropes that probably wouldn't be written unless they were deliberately intended to make you think of romance). For instance, Taichi hitting his elbow against the heart key, or the fight between Taichi and Sora being obviously written to resemble a lover's spat, and especially with Sora being portrayed as the "irrational woman" trope. (This is something that I honestly suspect is more Hosoda than the usual Digimon Adventure staff; he has an infamous problem with doing this kind of thing with female characters, and I have seen at least one Japanese fan criticize the storyline as "outdated", more literal wording "Showa-era style", on the grounds that it's obviously written under the old sitcom mentality that the man shouldn't be responsible for anything while the woman is obligated to forgive him for it.) So the whole controversy over the idea that Our War Game! allegedly hinted Taichi/Sora romance before the series actually went for Yamato/Sora instead exists in Japan too, and the only substantial difference in the American English dub is that everything is less subtle in every direction.

Well, to be clear -- the idea that Takeru and Hikari and the other 02 kids (sans Ken) were somehow lacking in character development is not entirely exclusive to Western fandom, and I've seen at least one Japanese wiki article that claimed Hikari didn't have much of a character in 02 because they already went into her in Adventure. I do feel like Adventure and 02 unfortunately do have that kind of mixed-signal writing where what it's going for is often unclear or unexpected, and you have to read between the lines to see the intended detail. So that means that kind of viewpoint is going to happen a lot, especially among people who have no interest in viewing 02 charitably or who only saw it once without paying close attention, regardless of language. (And I do think Adventure worship has a bit of a role in it, too; it's much easier to think Hikari's character arc was only meant for Adventure and not for 02 when you're not thinking of it in terms of the fact 02 was already greenlighted by the time Hikari joined the team in Adventure, meaning they were well aware they'd have a second series to do more with her and Takeru in. There's a reason I insist that contrary to popular belief, Takeru and Hikari's character arcs actually ended on a massively unresolved note in Adventure.)

The thing is that Japanese commentary on 02 between people who have actually spent time sitting down and thinking very hard about the series (especially fan creators) usually tends to be fairly consistent, because anyone who sat down with the series has generally caught all of the signals buried in there. A certain doujinshi's analysis pages are fairly close to what I've written on this blog, but I don't know the person who made it personally, and I didn't even know about this website until long after I'd already come to my own conclusions, but we (and tons of other 02 fans out there) managed to roughly reach those same conclusions because it was there in the series, just buried. And while the nuances of the 02 kids' characterization are subtle, I would say the majority of people I've seen who watched 02 in Japanese as an adult and were willing to give it a chance (i.e. aren't going in expecting to just hate it more) could see very clearly what was going on with the characters and how they were being delved into, it just wasn't as easy to spot on first glance, especially when you're a kid watching it.

But in the case of the American English dub, all of the between-the-lines readings you can get from the Japanese version become outright impossible to derive. Daisuke's character arc doesn't track without his natural amiability and pure-heartedness; Miyako and Iori's virtues and vices and general endearing qualities aren't as clear when their lines are constantly devoid of their extreme personality nuances; Hikari and Takeru's character arcs heavily revolving around "not being honest with their feelings" don't work anymore when all of their lines are changed to add honest bluntness. Ken's character arc largely survives mainly because it's so tied to the core plot and therefore has impossible-to-deny things visually happening on screen (which is probably why the Adventure character arcs, which were more prominently "on screen" like that, survived the dubbing process better, but even then you have mishaps like Mimi's handling). You either have to make really huge reaches or you have to just make up stuff wholesale to make it make sense, and because the dub's influence has such a death grip on Western fandom, English-speaking discourse even for other language versions ends up inevitably impacted by it.