Inspired by a broader conversation I had yesterday with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moonvoice and the blog of the original translator of Hakuoki into English who turned out to be a somewhat bro-ish straight dude who made the game "more accessible" by making the protagonist Chizuru less passive and submissive.
Something moonvoice and I were discussing was all the people (often but not always men) who act like they can ~improve romance/dating sims with their New And Smarter Take, and end up missing all the things that make romance actually enjoyable to those of us who enjoy it, and often have as many sexist/racist etc tropes as the stuff they're "subverting".
At the same time, the romance genre does have Issues with homophobia etc, and it's reasonable for people to dislike it, or want to create something they can enjoy more. Moonvoice and I are both romance writers trying to avoid the issues that have bothered us in other romances. But I feel like either you do love something in the romance genre and try to write something sincere that works for you, or if you don't like romance genre at all then that's fine but leave it to those who do.
And now we come to the Hakuoki translation! Translation is different to writing something original, and it's not reasonbale to expect people to be fans of everything they translate. But I do think they need to try to engage with it for what it is.
From an interview:
Now on the one hand, afaict in the more recent versions of Hakuoki the Japanese writers responded to similar criticisms and made the protagonist more active. On the other hand: it was already a super popular game in Japan before that. And I feel really weird about a straight dude deciding "nobody" would like a passive, submissive heroine. Because that is a thing a lot of people like, specifically women who play otome games (more in Japan, but also in the US and other English speaking countries).
But...it's not something I like, and I have to wonder how much of my enjoyment of Hakuoki is a result of it being a Japanese straight woman's self insert fantasy filtered through a Western male perspective, and whether I'd enjoy a more accurate translation as much. I mean I have enjoyed a lot of shoujo with pretty direct translations, so idk. I've watched some of the anime, which has less leeway to change things in the translation, and did find her writing a bit weak, but that was partly the lack of any internal monologue at all, and the focus being more spread out instead of focussing on her perspective.
Chizuru's character is a topic of some discussion in Hakuoki fandom, since a lot of (presumably mostly American female) fans find her annoyingly passive and wish she was more badass. Unfortunately my experience with "badass" female characters in Western romance is them being feisty but ultimately submissive to an even more badass and dominant dude, which in some ways I find more alienating: if a woman is always invested in being polite and submissive, then it's less jarring if her happy ending involves being that way.
Also: A lot of Western Feminist critique of Japanese media tends to be really shallow and miss the possibility of there being more than one way to write a character who's feminist/enjoyable to women/subversive, or that what counts as those things depends a lot on the cultural context. So I have encountered a lot of Annoying Takes on shoujo/otome by and for Japanese women, but also...I am western, and my tastes overall do tend to align more with your average Western Feminist.
But yeah I have messy feelings about m/f romance aimed at women. Because a lot of it is kind of alienating, but it's what those women are into, and I do think women should get to have the fantasies that make them happy, even if they're ~problematic. And the stuff I enjoy isn't always especially progressive or subversive, it just hits my particular buttons better. And this all gets multiplied once you start bringing cultural differences into it.
moonvoice and the blog of the original translator of Hakuoki into English who turned out to be a somewhat bro-ish straight dude who made the game "more accessible" by making the protagonist Chizuru less passive and submissive. Something moonvoice and I were discussing was all the people (often but not always men) who act like they can ~improve romance/dating sims with their New And Smarter Take, and end up missing all the things that make romance actually enjoyable to those of us who enjoy it, and often have as many sexist/racist etc tropes as the stuff they're "subverting".
At the same time, the romance genre does have Issues with homophobia etc, and it's reasonable for people to dislike it, or want to create something they can enjoy more. Moonvoice and I are both romance writers trying to avoid the issues that have bothered us in other romances. But I feel like either you do love something in the romance genre and try to write something sincere that works for you, or if you don't like romance genre at all then that's fine but leave it to those who do.
And now we come to the Hakuoki translation! Translation is different to writing something original, and it's not reasonbale to expect people to be fans of everything they translate. But I do think they need to try to engage with it for what it is.
From an interview:
I have to admit something: I’ve probably changed Chizuru quite a bit. Not what she does, obviously, or even necessarily what she says, but what she thinks is somewhat different. Chizuru was difficult to write because she was frequently doing one—or all!—of the following things:
1. Being less than clever
2. Responding to everything with insane, noodley-arm-waving terror
3. Unwittingly describing her romantic encounters as if they were some kind of assault
4. Repeating every. Single. Thing.
Some of these (especially 3 and 4) are just because of how Japanese works, how things translate, and how the Japanese talk about love and romance. For instance, I’m quite sure that the authors didn’t intend for her to make a kiss sound like she was being attacked, but when you translate it that’s how it sounds, for both cultural and semantic reasons.
The others are... I don’t know, to be honest. But she wasn’t a sympathetic character. She wasn’t even really a likable character, unless you like wide-eyed doormats. Clearly something had to be done.
Now on the one hand, afaict in the more recent versions of Hakuoki the Japanese writers responded to similar criticisms and made the protagonist more active. On the other hand: it was already a super popular game in Japan before that. And I feel really weird about a straight dude deciding "nobody" would like a passive, submissive heroine. Because that is a thing a lot of people like, specifically women who play otome games (more in Japan, but also in the US and other English speaking countries).
But...it's not something I like, and I have to wonder how much of my enjoyment of Hakuoki is a result of it being a Japanese straight woman's self insert fantasy filtered through a Western male perspective, and whether I'd enjoy a more accurate translation as much. I mean I have enjoyed a lot of shoujo with pretty direct translations, so idk. I've watched some of the anime, which has less leeway to change things in the translation, and did find her writing a bit weak, but that was partly the lack of any internal monologue at all, and the focus being more spread out instead of focussing on her perspective.
Chizuru's character is a topic of some discussion in Hakuoki fandom, since a lot of (presumably mostly American female) fans find her annoyingly passive and wish she was more badass. Unfortunately my experience with "badass" female characters in Western romance is them being feisty but ultimately submissive to an even more badass and dominant dude, which in some ways I find more alienating: if a woman is always invested in being polite and submissive, then it's less jarring if her happy ending involves being that way.
Also: A lot of Western Feminist critique of Japanese media tends to be really shallow and miss the possibility of there being more than one way to write a character who's feminist/enjoyable to women/subversive, or that what counts as those things depends a lot on the cultural context. So I have encountered a lot of Annoying Takes on shoujo/otome by and for Japanese women, but also...I am western, and my tastes overall do tend to align more with your average Western Feminist.
But yeah I have messy feelings about m/f romance aimed at women. Because a lot of it is kind of alienating, but it's what those women are into, and I do think women should get to have the fantasies that make them happy, even if they're ~problematic. And the stuff I enjoy isn't always especially progressive or subversive, it just hits my particular buttons better. And this all gets multiplied once you start bringing cultural differences into it.
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:)