# Things I learned from watching Anime **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 20, 2005, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450 "2005-03-20T18:26:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Earthworm\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@Earthworm\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthworm_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/21 "2005-03-21T17:24:53Z")
> [@Scott\_plaid](#): > > I think the reason for this is that it is what real people often do during times of stress. > > Me, during a job interview: I was qualified for the xp90 sytem and the…um…errr…type 40. You misunderstand. See, you have some actual discernable dialogue there. There is a point to your noise making, interspersed with “um” & “err”. I’m talking about the phenomena where a character just shudders and says “uhhhh” a lot, without any point. A kind of anime seizure, if you will. Happens far too often. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/22 "2005-03-21T17:49:08Z")
> [@vibrotronica](#): > > Everything’s better with giant robots. Sure, but that’s true for _everything,_ not just anime. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/23 "2005-03-21T18:12:06Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#): > > The explanation I was given was that people get nosebleeds when they’re turned on or attracted to someone else. It’s more a sign of excitement and nervousness. Presumably the elevated blood pressure causes nosebleeds. Often the implication is that the guy is naive and “pure”, and whatever is happening is enough to get him excited. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/24 "2005-03-21T18:27:58Z")
The most efficient fighting form for any human sized robot is an extremely curvy female body type with high heels. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/25 "2005-03-21T18:59:21Z")
12 year olds can be sent from home, unsupervised, on a journey to develop the best fighting pets. And no one thinks it is strange. Nor does anyone seem to care that the pets are raised solely to fight one another. Card games can be really deadly. You can substitute cards for tops or any of several other toys. [audiobottle\*\*, it should read "extremely curvy\*, sparsely dressed\* female body type with high heels ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/26 "2005-03-21T19:31:21Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > **audiobottle** , it should read "extremely curvy\*, sparsely dressed\* female body type with high heels > corrected by Bosda And Bunny Ears. Don’t forget the Bunny Ears. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/27 "2005-03-21T20:08:29Z")
> [@](#): > > What’s the reason for this anyway? It’s the second most annoying thing about anime for me The English dub, if not done well, has dialogue shortened considerably, which means tyhere are blank spaces in the text, which gets pulled over like “uhhh”. Aside from that, Japanese has an exceptional amount of pointless filler. In fact, pointless filler makes up a significant portion of the spoken words. Some Japanese go through and end every debamned sentence with “but…”, because to Japanese this sounds very weak and soft. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/28 "2005-03-21T20:16:17Z")
One of my coworkers in Japan once got a nosebleed in the office. The poor woman was subjected to plenty of giggles and “Oh, what were _you_ thinking about?” from the rest of the staff. (It wasn’t a serious or heavy nosebleed, so this lack of concern isn’t as bad as it might seem.) As the Office Bad Girl explained to me, when people are thinking about sex and getting excited their heart starts pumping faster, their face gets flushed, and that same rush of blood to the head may produce a nosebleed. This, she said, is also why adolescents tend to get nosebleeds more often than adults. So that’s one Japanese woman’s explanation of the phenomenon. I haven’t seen a lot of anime, but I’d guess that if people are noticing a lot of “uh” and “um” in the English-dubbed dialogue that isn’t present in the Japanese then it’s due to clumsy translation. It should be a relatively easy matter for a translator express the sense of the dialogue in another language, but trying to do that while at the same time approximating the length of the original speech is more difficult. An easy workaround would be padding the translated dialogue with a bunch of meaningless vocalizations. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > I would also like to make some comments: > > 1. Not everything made in Japan is released internationally > 2. In Hollywood 90% of everything released is drivel based on scantily clad women. Anime is the same and has the same amount of variety as Hollywood in terms of number of genres and quality of what is released > 3. Things that are made in Japan and are released internationally are the things that SELL outside Japan. You see a lot more big eyes and tentacle sex in the US than Japan, just because it is more foreign and the whiteys all like to show off how funky it is. Thank you! I’m always telling people the same thing. Remember, folks – there are people outside the US who think they know what life is like for ordinary American teenagers because they’ve seen **Beverly Hills 90210** and **American Pie**! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/29 "2005-03-21T20:25:28Z")
Whoops, kind of simulposted with **smiling bandit** there on the “uh…um…” issue. But it’s nice to have some consensus. 😉 I don’t know if I’d say that a lot of Japanese is really “pointless filler”, but then again my Japanese is quite, quite poor. There is certainly a lot of stuff thrown in for the sake of politeness that has no real English equivelant, though. It would sound ridiculous (and possibly offensive) to have characters constantly saying “Honorable this” and “Honorable that” like the stereotypical old movie Asians, and it would probably still screw up the timing since “honorable” takes longer to say than the Japanese prefix “o-”. So I can see how just sticking in extra hemming and hawing would appeal to the translator. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/30 "2005-03-21T20:40:40Z")
But, but… that is what life is like for teenagers! And Melrose Place is a good guideline for when you become a little bit older! ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2005, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450/31 "2005-03-21T22:29:52Z")
The end of the world is always incredibly complicated, and takes place in Tokyo. Tokyo will get destroyed. Deal with it. When Tokyo is destroyed, its major landmarks will go first. Bye bye Tokyo Tower. Any 14-year-old girl can save the world if she’s sufficiently chipper. Teachers with “unusual methods” will never be called to account. No one can effectively pilot a giant robot once they hit puberty. A queer couple can usually only find true love on another planet, or in 18th-century France. Otherwise, it’ll probably end tragically. The Japanese taxpayers are paying for psychic princesses, cabals of sorcerers, and an entire organization designed to bring spirits of the reluctant dead back to be judged in the afterlife. All of these operate in secret rooms below the Diet buildings. Wherever there is sex, there will be moths. Robotic fighting machines of the future will have cannons that shoot out of their asses. Every single Japanese citizens knows every martial art ever practiced on the islands. A sensible modern renegade eschews guns, and goes for samurai swords. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-i-learned-from-watching-anime/295450.md?page=1)