

Marvelous USA (a.k.a. XSEED) is one of the only localization companies I trust nowadays when it comes to Japanese video games. I particularly commend them for respecting the target audience of the niche games they bring over and paying no heed to our western culture’s increasingly incessant need for political correctness.

Their localization of Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed was far from perfect (considering the use of internet slang/memes in Potsuri/Pitter, the game’s parody of 2ch, it’s understandable), but it’s good at getting the point across for the most part. When the game was released in NA during the later part of 2014, many overly-sensitive Politically Correct Babies criticized one Pitter user’s use of the word “trap”, which was used in place of the Japanese version’s use of the slang “nekama”net okama, which is essentially a guy pretending to be a girl online. I swear, humanity as a species of primates are losing their backbones just as we lost our tails – if fictional insults (if even considered one, really) used by a fictional internet asshole are to become a source of massive controversy and offense, I’m worried about where millennials will take our society next. We already had that one asswipe causing a shitstorm over a white woman’s hand being featured on Super Mario Maker. Freakin’ putrid.

It’s a fictional depiction of the internet, which is not a nice place in real life either. If people are easily offended by words in fiction without processing the context, intent, and tone of the usage, and confusing it with outright slander, they’re better off staying under the shelter of their parents’ roofs for everyone’s own good (eh, maybe not their parents’ own good).

It’s gotten to the point where it seems people value Politically Correct censorship over an accurate translation, which to be honest, the trap translation is. They could have also used something worse that actually is intentionally transphobic, like “tranny” or something. Although, it’s not like the babies will stop complaining either way. Anyways, the only big problem I had with XSEED’s localization (besides the horrid English dub that’s nullified with dual audio anyway) was this:

English version

The term “weaboo” is my least favorite internet buzzword, even more-so when it’s used in the wrong context. Weaboo, originating from a webcomic where it meant literally nothing, started its life as a 4chan meme when the board owner decided to use it as a word filter for wapanese (or Japanophile, I forget). So whenever a poster wanted to write “wapanese/Japanophile”, they would type “weaboo” instead because the word would have been filtered anyway. Then like every other 4chan meme, it eventually left the board and quickly became cancer.

If the word has any meaning at all, it would be a person who tries to be Japanese. A wannabe Asian.

Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed TAKES PLACE IN JAPAN. Why the hell would a Japanese person call another Japanese person a “weeb”… in Japan?! That’s like West African natives calling each other wiggers (white people trying to be black). “Weaboo” is overused to the point where it no longer makes sense when people use it as an insult, it’s misused and looks idiotic to everyone who doesn’t go apeshit whenever they encounter someone that likes anything remotely Japanese.

Way to make the word seem broader than it actually is to the English Only Peasants, XSEED-sama. The word should not be used in a Japanese setting among Japanese characters, period.

Japanese version

In the Japanese version, the Potsuri user Eriko used 萌え豚ども. She’s calling the other Posturi users that are looking forward to Rin’s concert moe pigs. A literal translation or even a simple Americanized “Have fun, moefags” (which is very 4chan) would have sufficed instead of using a word that makes NO SENSE in context of the setting.

Uncharacteristically, XSEED chose to go with a Localization Decision for Literal Dummies in this one instance. Everything else is pretty average in terms of translation, not anywhere near as cringey as the word weeb being used in Japan. Definitely nowhere near remotely as cringey as the infantile controversy surrounding the slang “trap” being used, which really wasn’t Marvelous USA’s fault. Sorry, children.

(btw, I’m kind of a moefag and therefore off to be asshurt and offended, muh feelz)

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