It aired last night, so I'm just waiting for the video to resynch. I greatly preferred Kakizawa's version on the CDs, but Urai's did grow on me in watching; his voice seemed more restrained, but seeing it visually he's a great actor who got Light's ego and dignity down while putting on a great decomposition into insanity. He wasn't afraid to get vulnerable and "messy" with the character.
I'm really excited to see Kakizawa visually. I've only heard the CD version of his, but he's got the really passionate, insane rendition of that last song, so I'm excited to see all of his acting at work.
I tend to prefer Japanese terms in translations in general. Most of my translations are otaku style (this journal is primarily a translation journal). Some things don't have a perfect translation and some things just sound weird in English; for example, we don't call our relatives by their title in lieu of their names, aside from parents/grandparents--if it's going to feel a bit strange, may as well keep the Japanese in place along with all the more subtle o/-chan/-san connotations. While Shinigami translates perfectly well into Death God or God of Death, keeping it in Japanese, at least to me, helps keep that feel that the Japanese have a cultural concept of them that we don't (however different from the canon representation they may be). The closest the West probably has is reapers--and I've seen it translated that way sometimes.
And most importantly, I tend to assume people who watch anime/read manga are familiar enough (or interested enough to become familiar) with the originating culture for such things to stay untranslated. The common argument for a full translation is "if you leave it you're not TRANSLATING." But there's a difference between the audience needing to know a few dozen words and needing to know an entire grammatical structure.
But at any rate with this one, I went with all English terms first because Death Note is popular enough even outside of the anime/manga fan community that people not otherwise interested in Japanese media as a whole could be watching.
....You can tell by my long winded answer I'm just happy to talk to even an anonymous a little more about the musical. If you have a blog or a Tumblr where you've written about the performances you saw, I'd love to go read it!
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I'm really excited to see Kakizawa visually. I've only heard the CD version of his, but he's got the really passionate, insane rendition of that last song, so I'm excited to see all of his acting at work.
I tend to prefer Japanese terms in translations in general. Most of my translations are otaku style (this journal is primarily a translation journal). Some things don't have a perfect translation and some things just sound weird in English; for example, we don't call our relatives by their title in lieu of their names, aside from parents/grandparents--if it's going to feel a bit strange, may as well keep the Japanese in place along with all the more subtle o/-chan/-san connotations. While Shinigami translates perfectly well into Death God or God of Death, keeping it in Japanese, at least to me, helps keep that feel that the Japanese have a cultural concept of them that we don't (however different from the canon representation they may be). The closest the West probably has is reapers--and I've seen it translated that way sometimes.
And most importantly, I tend to assume people who watch anime/read manga are familiar enough (or interested enough to become familiar) with the originating culture for such things to stay untranslated. The common argument for a full translation is "if you leave it you're not TRANSLATING." But there's a difference between the audience needing to know a few dozen words and needing to know an entire grammatical structure.
But at any rate with this one, I went with all English terms first because Death Note is popular enough even outside of the anime/manga fan community that people not otherwise interested in Japanese media as a whole could be watching.
....You can tell by my long winded answer I'm just happy to talk to even an anonymous a little more about the musical. If you have a blog or a Tumblr where you've written about the performances you saw, I'd love to go read it!