If/When consuming material not originally produced in a language you are fluent in, how do you access it? (e.g., dubs, scanlations, muddle through the raws and just enjoy the pretty people/art/voices, etc.)
I either get the dubs, if it’s “official” material and I don’t have the choice, or the subs/scanlations, which I much prefer. I have tried watching Japanese things without subs on occasion, but I really didn’t enjoy it. The only exception to this is the anime “El Hazard” and the British arts&crafts show for kids I used to watch on the Turkish broadcasting station in Germany (which was dubbed in Turkish, obviously), when I was a child.
Are there any culture’s materials you particularly avoid or seek out? (e.g. you avoid anything Japanese, be it anime, manga, video games, etc.; you love anything British, TV, books, etc.)If so, why?
There aren’t many cultures I actively avoid or try to seek out. When there are things from a certain culture that I enjoy (like anime/manga, or British humour, or largely American-influenced fantasy/science fiction novels), I tend to look for other stuff I might enjoy in that culture, of course (i.e. finding one anime and looking for other anime with similar themes), but this hasn’t got much to do with the culture itself and more with the fact that, when I hear about something, usually it’s a rather well-established thing in its culture already (like the “yaoi” culture), which means that looking in that specific culture, I’m far more likely to find something else to enjoy, than anywhere else. The only cultures that I actively avoid are those that deal with pain and humiliation, like the S/M and bondage culture, or certain war-glorification cultures.
It gets a little bit more complicated when the question pertains to a certain country’s material, because obviously, some of the cultures I like couldn’t have developed in any country but the one they come from (like the Otaku culture, for example, or the Gyaaru culture), which means that in the end I am actively seeking out this country’s material; but I wouldn’t seek out something because it’s “from Japan” or from any one country, so I don’t think this really counts either.
The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ?
Yes, definitely! Since most of the movies shown in Germany are either Hollywood movies or German movies that closely follow Hollywood narration, it was quite a cultural shock for me when I first watched a Japanese movie and realized that the whole “DRAMATIC CLIMAX RIGHT BEFORE END” thing was not the only way to make a movie that, in fact, a movie could completely lack any kind of big dramatic moments and still be a very good movie.
A lot of anime has cultural connotations, as well, which can’t be understood without a deeper knowledge of the Japanese (mainstream) culture. This is something especially noticeable in fansubs, but also in some of the officially printed manga in Germany, which both have little footnotes in the margins (or at the top of the screens), explaining certain cultural references that the viewer/reader wouldn’t understand otherwise.
The first times I came across a Japanese game / variety show, I had a very hard time adjusting to the sense of humour in it. To be quite honest, this hasn’t changed completely: I still don’t quite understand Japanese humour, not the way other people do.
Part 2 (which took a while, because my internet is strange)
I either get the dubs, if it’s “official” material and I don’t have the choice, or the subs/scanlations, which I much prefer. I have tried watching Japanese things without subs on occasion, but I really didn’t enjoy it. The only exception to this is the anime “El Hazard” and the British arts&crafts show for kids I used to watch on the Turkish broadcasting station in Germany (which was dubbed in Turkish, obviously), when I was a child.
Are there any culture’s materials you particularly avoid or seek out? (e.g. you avoid anything Japanese, be it anime, manga, video games, etc.; you love anything British, TV, books, etc.)If so, why?
There aren’t many cultures I actively avoid or try to seek out. When there are things from a certain culture that I enjoy (like anime/manga, or British humour, or largely American-influenced fantasy/science fiction novels), I tend to look for other stuff I might enjoy in that culture, of course (i.e. finding one anime and looking for other anime with similar themes), but this hasn’t got much to do with the culture itself and more with the fact that, when I hear about something, usually it’s a rather well-established thing in its culture already (like the “yaoi” culture), which means that looking in that specific culture, I’m far more likely to find something else to enjoy, than anywhere else.
The only cultures that I actively avoid are those that deal with pain and humiliation, like the S/M and bondage culture, or certain war-glorification cultures.
It gets a little bit more complicated when the question pertains to a certain country’s material, because obviously, some of the cultures I like couldn’t have developed in any country but the one they come from (like the Otaku culture, for example, or the Gyaaru culture), which means that in the end I am actively seeking out this country’s material; but I wouldn’t seek out something because it’s “from Japan” or from any one country, so I don’t think this really counts either.
The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ?
Yes, definitely! Since most of the movies shown in Germany are either Hollywood movies or German movies that closely follow Hollywood narration, it was quite a cultural shock for me when I first watched a Japanese movie and realized that the whole “DRAMATIC CLIMAX RIGHT BEFORE END” thing was not the only way to make a movie that, in fact, a movie could completely lack any kind of big dramatic moments and still be a very good movie.
A lot of anime has cultural connotations, as well, which can’t be understood without a deeper knowledge of the Japanese (mainstream) culture. This is something especially noticeable in fansubs, but also in some of the officially printed manga in Germany, which both have little footnotes in the margins (or at the top of the screens), explaining certain cultural references that the viewer/reader wouldn’t understand otherwise.
The first times I came across a Japanese game / variety show, I had a very hard time adjusting to the sense of humour in it. To be quite honest, this hasn’t changed completely: I still don’t quite understand Japanese humour, not the way other people do.