A weekly look into American otaku culture

Now I don’t usually go off into rant mode over something I’m dissatisfied with. I don’t want to end up like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons and declaring to everyone “The worst episode ever!” But I am truly disappointed with Del Rey’s English adaption of the “Train Man” (Densha Otoko) novel, and I need to tell you all not to buy it.

I have been a devoted fan of the Train Man phenomena since the media boom began years ago, and I had high hopes for its success in America. I’ve been a big fan of the TV Show, movie, and various manga adaptations. But the one form of media that I wanted the most was the original novel compilation. I wanted to read the real story that has been dramatized so many time, and I wanted to look at all the pretty ASCII art that never seems to work on my computer.

At an anime convention in New Jersey last year, I spoke with the reps from Del Rey and asked them if they had any plans for bringing the novel to America. When they said that they were working on it, I was thrilled. Del Rey has been a fantastic company for the US manga industry. They put out quality titles, and so much good production value goes into every one of their books. So you can imagine my complete disappointment when I finally picked up the “Train Man” novel last week and started reading it.

The story is a compilation of message board posts from the Japanese website 2-Channel. And like any massage board in the world, there are certain internet words and terminology that only exist within that culture. So while it might be difficult to translate these words, one can surely add in an “lol” or “omg!” to make it seem somewhat like an internet conversation, right? I mean, some other anime companies seem to understand American internet culture.

This is not the case at all with Del Rey’s adaption. The only sign that this is an internet conversation and not actually prose is the occasional misspelling of the word or a lack of capitalization. It’s as if the translator didn’t want to put [sic] so much in her first draft, so she just made them all write in proper English. This in no way resembles a real internet conversation, and takes away from the feeling you get with reading the original material.

What’s worst is that the adaption is not even in American English, it’s in British English!!! This includes spelling words like “colour” and using British slang like “anorak“, which not a single American knows what it means. All prices are given in British pounds, not American dollars or even Japanese yen! And the conversation occasionally goes into some fake American “ghetto talk” sounding just like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character.

Densha should not be speaking with a British accent! It’s difficult enough reading any book translated from Japanese, let alone translated form Japanese and written in British. I can understand reading British English in something like Harry Potter, but not Train Man!

… and hell, even Harry Potter was Americanized in its US release…

There are also posts completely missing from this adaption. Since I do not have the original novel with me, I cannot confirm if these cuts were made during the publication of the Japanese novel or in the English novel. But either way, there is significantly less material in this book then in the original posts online (which you can read at this website).

There are also mistakes made in the formating of the book. One post not written by Densha is highlighted as if it was. Also, each post is separated by a line, but sometimes these lines go out of control! More then once this line goes right through a line of text, making it appear to be “strike-out” from the rest of the story. And you also have multiple lines placed together for no reason. These are inexcusable mistakes that should have been picked up by the editor.

But there are still a couple of good points to this released that shouldn’t be overlooked. Like I mentioned before, all the ASCII Art is properly formated so you can fully enjoy them. The story is filled with a lot of funny references to various anime and other aspects of otaku culture. And most of all, you get to find out what really happened in the Train Man story instead of the over-dramatization you’ll find in the TV show or movie.

But still, this is a horrible release from such a fantastic manga company. This book was clearly not translated for the American audience, and I even question if the British audience could enjoy it. The book is put together sloppily with many embarrassing format mistakes. I am completely disappointed with this adaption, and I hope the Del Rey never does anything like this again.