What do you get when your story about a race runs from race? Steel Ball Run’s English dub. Badumtss.
Okay, I̶’̶l̶l̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶p̶.
In the anime’s pilot, some critical flashbacks are skipped. Chief among them is Sandman’s motive for participating in the Steel Ball Run, being a Native American driven to reclaim his people’s land.
Strike one.
Sandman is ostracized by his tribe, then chased off for reading “The white man’s books”. He travels to participate in the race, seeing the prize as a shortcut to his goal.
He’s then told by the bookie that they only take payments “With the white man’s money”, until an offer of an emerald in lieu of the fee shuts him up pretty quick.
In the subtitled script, the skipped backstory is somewhat compensated for by Sandman spelling things out right after the exchange: “All I need is the white man’s money”.
Now, let’s look at the exchange in the dubbed script: “You need to pay. With legal American tender.” “To get that prize money, I’ll beat them at their own game.”
• A direct show of hostility is softened. • Racial tensions are now only alluded to. • Sandman’s entire motive was left ambiguous.
Strike two.
The charitable read would be assuming that the script adapter(s) made creative choices to avoid spelling out something that would be obvious to Americans.
I would argue that relegating that info to subtext is a terrible choice.
Japanese is indeed repetitive, and that doesn’t translate well to the natural flow a dub’s script requires, but repetition is the point of that scene.
• Sandman’s charged reply is supposed to mirror the hostility his people face. • Hammering down the point is necessary because the backstory was skipped.
The less charitable read, looking at the current US political climate and Netflix’s own proclivities when it comes to JoJo, isn’t as great.
While a lot of fans assumed the best of intentions when Stone Ocean’s story-critical KKK lynching scene was censored, there wasn’t much of an uproar.
Despite Netflix’s involvement starting in that part, the decision seemed to have been made on a production level by the animation studio.
However, there aren’t many charitable ways to read their SBR’s combo of production + adaptation censorship. Those are a lot of “coincidences”.
And we’re at strike three.
I’ve always loathed Netflix’s performative, corpo flavor of woke.
The way they’ve been treating JoJo’s rather mild social commentary since Part 6 would raise eyebrows if it surprised me. Instead, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
And if we read this as a continuation of a pattern, Netflix is out.
By Seif Chaib.
Originally posted on Linkedin.