#GTF Vesperia Localization Woes

[goldentigerfestival]

Since I'd been talking a lot about JP Vesperia (primarily Yuri and Flynn and the heavy changes that surround them, and because I'm highly passionate about them in their original context), I wanted to compile some more jarring if not outright glaring mistakes in the localization (or what were likely intentional changes, because I can't look at some of these and just call them "mistakes"). I'm not going to mention every little change throughout the game, so smaller things I'll mostly be leaving out (namely things that don't really affect characters or context). I primarily just wanted to give some insight on some of the bigger parts.

Some of the changes seem to have been mistakes in translation itself (not just localization, but misunderstanding what was being said in general; such as, there's an instance I mention of that between Patty and Don), so I've got some mentions hanging around for clarity purposes as some scenes didn't make much sense, likely because of this.

Vocal tone with Yuri was the most prominent issue that got me making this, and the context that was changed being right after if not equally next to that (most often also with Yuri but also Flynn).

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and I've been wanting to share this stuff with people interested in seeing the game with its original context. Generally speaking, the plot and story themselves are on point. The majority of the differences surround Yuri and Flynn respectively, so there's going to be a lot of mention of them throughout.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and the heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

Note because people have vagueposted about me since making these: Do not start "dub versus sub hurr hurr" arguments with me or imply that's what I'm doing with these. Firstly, Japanese is a language, not your English subtitles. Secondly, these posts are not in main tags and I am not bothering anyone by making posts of my feelings on my own blog related to these facts. If you have time to vaguepost and whine about my untagged opinions after hatereading (or not even reading it at all and making stupid assumptions), you have time to be nice to people and find something fun to do. Lastly, I've said many times that the entire loc/dub in this game is not bad. There are specific things I take issue with. It does not mean I'm anti dub and hate all dubs. It does not mean I go out of my way to find dub fans and start shit with them.

Update: Went back through to correct the way I used "dub" and "localization" interchangeably. I don't do that anymore bc "dub" obviously refers to the dubbing of foreign media, and dubbing is a part of the localization process. Lines themselves are not the dubbing, and the dubbing is the vocals. Thus, I edited cases where I really didn't think about that while writing these and changed mistaken "dub" mentions as needed.

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I'd like to preface this by mentioning the chief director and producer of the game itself has also spoken about localization inaccuracy issues, so that's something to keep in mind (it's in Japanese, but you should be able to use the offered post translator).

I'd also like to preface this by mentioning that in the original, Yuri is more playful and relaxed/casual (generally but including with Flynn, which the dub pretty much entirely changed until arc 3), but also gentler and softer. He has a very large variety of tonal behaviors/tonal "moods" that were pretty much nuked from the dub.

Basically, to get a better experience for this Yuri, I can only really recommend playing the game in JP audio. Obviously you won't get the actual context because all you'll have is the loc context, but that's also partly why I'm making these posts - to cover the contextual changes while the video clips cover some of the tonal changes (because lbh I don't expect anyone to actually go watch the entire game in JP with subtitles unless you're as insanely dedicated as I am, and I'm largely doing it out of my love for the original Yuri and Flynn and my disdain for how the localization treated them).

As a heads up, there won't be many skits in here because I'm going through a specific YT playthrough for these screenshots. Specific skits won't always come up in the playthrough in question, and I can't find a whole list of skits in JP anywhere online. I don't have all skits unlocked in my own save either yet (you can unlock all skits with Grade which I have yet to do in the DE), so I can't use that to compare all skits right now.

There are plenty of small changes here and there that I won't be including in these posts because there are some sentence changes that aren't impactful but do exist. I just don't want to be here for a year covering the random changes that don't matter much. I'm also not going to include details of a lot of honorifics because I'd be here all day, but there is one one major instance that I mention later on.

For reference if anything wants to actually watch the game in JP with the subs (it goes until just after Hypionia), most of the references come from here. Since in some cases the subber just reused localized text even when the context wasn't the same, I did bring some of those up in these posts too. These were subbed before the DE version came out. I used screenshots with subs where possible to make it easier to follow along.

I have a lot of passion for JP Yuri and I hope I can pass on some of that passion to others. 🙏

Apologies in advance if some of these sound cranky. If I sound cranky about some specific changes, it's probably because I am.

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Since I talked about the whole, Raven being shady and Yuri therefore not being grateful to him incident that the localization for some reason butchered and made Yuri sound like a generally ungrateful or just outright dumb person who doesn't understand gratitude, I'll summarize that one again here:

Yuri has a skit with Estelle originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing him how to sneak out of the castle. Basically, Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes). The loc just kinda... makes him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. It doesn't really sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically but more that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game. Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from (and I imagine a weird peppy guy in jail is good cause to be skeptical).

We start off we a classic "Yuri, you idiot!" that was changed to "come on already!".

Yuri's response to Estelle mentioning he'd been in the knights doesn't actually give a time frame for how long he'd been there (the loc made up three months, but there was never originally even a time frame given).

Here when Yuri asks Estelle why she can't just leave, her response indicates she actually does know why. The loc made it more ambiguous, which could be easily misinterpreted as she really doesn't know, so I'm dropping this one here.

For some reason the localization seemed to have Estelle responding to Karol directly about the ace always performing their attack last ("I don't think so"). What she was referring to was the tiny monster that walked by, asking for confirmation that that monster was not the eggbear they were looking for (I wasn't gonna fight with the video to get a better screenshot without the annoying YT red bar in the way so the monster is in the corner mid-movement lol). Not sure if that was a genuine mistake, but it was an odd one.

(Also, side note and not putting an image here because it's more general, but Yuri refers to Karol as "Karol-sensei" which was translated in the localization to "Captain Karol". Basically, Yuri calls him "sensei" because that's a teacher/professor, and he's making a play on Karol's knowledge and being their "teacher" about monsters/maps/etc.)

I'd say this is more along the lines of overexaggerating and not overreacting, but this line was literally changed to "haha" in the loc. The whole point wasn't that Yuri just brushed her comment off or found it funny. At this point he still literally thinks she's exaggerating about her lack of knowledge out in the world, her excitement, etc.

Not the only instance you'll find of the loc just changing entire sentences to something meaningless as if they ??? didn't know what it meant (they actually changed Patty saying an entire sentence to "aye"). In some cases they added entire sentences that weren't even there...

Even though I can kind of see where they went with the loc here, the point was supposed to be that Flynn actively thought he would be happy for Yuri to go outside the barrier and see the world.

The loc changed this to Flynn saying that he, in the now, is happy that Yuri is outside the barrier, but then says he got a little less happy when he saw the wanted poster, indicating he was previously happy but got less happy, yet says in that moment that he is happy.

It's a weird case of (past/present) tense usage for the most part, but they also removed the fact that Flynn is literally saying "I thought I would be happy" (thus expressing he'd been wanting Yuri to see the world outside the barrier and would've been happy to find out he did). The reason he's not finding himself happy is because of the wanted poster and the crimes listed on it, following up that his honest happiness for Yuri (ultimately because of the poster) was a lie.

This also means they removed Flynn expressing the honesty of his happiness for a positive concept for Yuri, which, given all the changes toward Flynn in the loc/dub, already now takes away from the fact that he'd been actively hoping for good things for someone and we're left with this more sarcastic take on him being "happy" (his line is more like, "but I lost my sense of genuine happiness when I saw this!").

Obviously his happiness wasn't really a lie because most of the crimes were falsified (primarily the ones that would make him actually mad, because Flynn has had to have been aware this whole time that Yuri has committed small time crimes for the past few years now), but at the time, the focus on this conversation is that Flynn thought he'd be happy at a time that Yuri left the barrier; meaning he'd been hoping for it prior to it happening.

I'm also mentioning it because it's the very first in a whole line of changes the loc/dub made to their relationship (and it's their first in game interaction ffs) and to Flynn himself as he's perceived as a character. The original is much more expressive of how important they are to each other in a lot of various ways.

Inserting the JP audio version of the following scene with Flynn here.

And... the following one from there.

This was changed to "damn, we if lose our balance...". I know they did it because Yuri had just fallen over, but I'm including this one because the context isn't... really the same thing to me?

This loc change is a bit odd to me. They had him saying something along the lines of "she is a princess after all" in the loc, regarding the council backing her.

The original context is more like, the council is backing her and he's hearing it directly from Ioder and he probably doubts Ioder would lie like that or about that, cementing that yes, she truly is, like he suspected, a princess, but it's almost still a bit odd to know. It's sort of like, he knew/had suspicions but hearing it directly from Ioder just confirms it for certain.

The loc just made it sound like well yeah, it's obvious they'd want to back her, she's a princess... but Ioder is a prince, so that doesn't explain why they're not backing him. She is a princess after all, so of course they'd back her... but what's stopping them from backing the prince?

Another weird one for me. In the loc Yuri says that "even the Commandant was a little in over his head", when he actually... really wasn't? All he did was step in. Things got bad enough that he had to, but he wasn't in over his head. Not sure how or why the loc ended up with that.

An example of the loc having a habit of just adding in random lines that didn't actually exist (and in this case the one added didn't even contextually make sense. This was no thank you from him, this was literally him making Yuri do something for him because he was going to ask Flynn for a favor and ended up with Yuri in the cell instead).

Another super weird one in the loc. They had Yuri saying Flynn was "too" late, implying he hadn't made it in time, but he did. He made it just before the battle started, but the original context only says he's late, not too late (which makes sense given that they were ready to fight but hadn't started yet).

This was changed to Yuri just mentioning there was one way they could get out of there without actually saying what it was, and Judith saying if he thinks it might work what's the harm in trying it out. Not sure why they changed Yuri literally telling her his plan, so... again, a super weird change that I don't get why they didn't just keep the context the way it was.

Third image was changed to "someone get me away from this psycho", which... I also don't get why they put that there unless they just wanted so much flavor text that they wanted to change the whole "they're in a fight and he's telling her not to come over here because he's pissed at her because they're fighting" part of the fake fight they had going on.

Not one I have a huge problem with, but definitely good examples of them going out of their way to change just... perfectly normal stuff that literally has no reason to be changed? Some of it is flavor text and some of it feels over the top for me. Stuff that makes me like... why would you change that when there was no reason to? Could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like unnecessary changes when there was nothing wrong or odd about the original text and doesn't at all come off odd in English. Unfortunately Vesperia got littered with those.

I didn't feel like getting a whole video for this, but basically Judith gives a little laugh instead of just the more upset/distressed(?) sound she made in the dub. Feels more fitting imo to keep up the "lie" Yuri started for her. The dub makes it seem more like she feels guilty, versus here she's giving a little forced giggle to go along with it. Again, a change I'm not sure why they put in.

Ngl I get completely different vibes from these. The JP comes across more as concern, rather than... treating them like they're some mob on the loose...?

Once again, this gives off negative vibes toward Flynn as a character imo.

Here Judith gives more of a reason for coming with them, which they changed in the loc to "with the circumstances being what they are, this is just how things turned out". Reasonably, she didn't have to stick around after they ran from Dahngrest, but here she gives a quick "reason".

The loc changed this to "I'll bet he is". They were just told he's the current magistrate in Heliord, and all Yuri says here expresses he's letting it sink in and realizing exactly why all this is happening here. It's not a huge story beat or anything that gets changed, but it's an example of changing things that don't need to be changed as if trying to play things up in a way that... doesn't feel necessary to me? In this case the situation is kind of dawning on Yuri as he realizes how bad this situation could be/why it's like it is, but in the loc it comes across as more just unimpressed and "of course he'd do that".

An unfortunate, classic moment of them changing how much Yuri believes in and trusts Flynn. They changed this to "gotta run, Flynn!" and he just... leaves. I'm sorry but in what universe does "leave the rest to you" equal "gotta run"???

This one is one of those cases where the localization text was super awkward and wonky, and worse, they actually voiced it that way (like "we have guild's job to deal with". Yes, they actually voiced it that way too on top of everything else grammatically wonky with the entire conversation that they didn't bother fixing when the DE came out).

Also here, they changed what Yuri says about Cumore and Flynn. "I don't know how I could explain this to Flynn" doesn't, at least to me, carry the same weight as Yuri actually feeling ashamed (in the loc he says "what a shame", but does not express shame, versus him saying "how pathetic" and expressing shame in feeling pathetic) and saying he can't even face Flynn because Cumore got away. The thing is, Yuri does tend to posture, so when he fails at something, it hits him pretty hard.

And let's be honest, this just hits way harder than "he will get what he deserves".

Interestingly, Yuri could also fall into the category of viewing himself as sinful later on, which I talk about in my favorites post and the usage of "crime" and "sin" within the JP context.

Not particularly important, but just another (more mild) case and example of how the loc just randomly changed tone/mood/wording for no reason.

Another case of Yuri being more aggressive in the dub than he actually was. Here, all he says is just a plain statement. In the dub, he has an attitude about it and says it in a tone that's more insulting that Ioder didn't know about Heracles.

This isn't the only case of dub Yuri acting aggressively toward Ioder when he wasn't supposed to be and we'll get to that, but Ioder is another similar case of the dub making Yuri unnecessarily vocally rude (despite that Ioder is very polite toward Yuri).

(I left out the subtitles because all they did was copy the Eng localization, which kinda defeats the point of this post LOL. This will be the case going forward for any same circumstances.)

This one's a more interesting tidbit to me and less of a harmful change (i.e. I find that a lot of if not most changes relative to Flynn do more harm than good when compared with the original context). Basically it's saying "sweet mask and sharp eyes", implying Flynn's sweet face is a mask and saying it contrasts with his sharp eyes. I could get into a whole rant about why I love that in relation to some side material, but even in the game itself, there's the knight Flynn with his sweet, polite side and his real side that only shows when he's around Yuri (basically, who Flynn has to be for his job and who he actually is as a person, which he only gets to be around someone who knows the real him).

I'd guess this got changed in the loc because they weren't sure how to word it, though there's no mention of "heartthrob" here at all and instead actually says "sweet mask" as if, again, to say his sweetness is just a mask. It's actually a very interestingly accurate representation of his character - how he tends to not be himself when he's being "knight Flynn", and how that sweet face is contrasted by the look in his eyes (which they say, you know, eyes are the windows to the soul, so this would imply the sweet face is the mask and the eyes are the real Flynn. And of course, this Flynn is implied to show himself in his sparring with Yuri in Aurnion, where sword fighting is the best way to express himself. This isn't to say Flynn being a nice person in and of itself is a lie, but that his overly polite, respectful, kind knight side is a sweet mask contrasted to the man who loves to fight and has a sharp look in his eyes)

For now, we'll be back at Mantaic in the next post (due to image per post limit).

[goldentigerfestival]

seeing some of y'all talking about/have talked to some of y'all who have said to me how y'all feel like the dub forced (western especially) masculinity into Yuri, and

yeah.

I left that out of the actual posts themselves because it felt too opinionated for the actual posts (even though you know it's my blog I can do what I want, but I don't want people discrediting me over shit like that), but yeah.

it feels a lot to me like they wanted Yuri to be some cool masculine edgy dude instead of a silly, playful, dorky, emotional, caring man. as if his silliness and emotional side is something to shy away from and isn't "cool enough" for a main character.

it's sad to me because he's such a different person between versions - enough that if I'm interacting with someone who only knows dub Yuri, it genuinely just doesn't feel like we're even talking about the same character sometimes. I want to be talking about the same character, but since some people only know the dub, they only know what the dub made him out to be.

I've seen a variety of things - art, writing, memes, whatever - where there are times I'm genuinely able to be like... that's such a dub Yuri specific thing. like, the way he gets portrayed is something I'm able to look at and be like "that's literally something only dub Yuri would say/do". it's not the fault of people who don't know the original context, but that's why it frustrates me so much - because that's all some people can know contextually (listening to the audio alone gives you a pretty clear indication of how much tone isn't the same between versions, but obviously some people will still be missing context), and the dub changed the experience (and went out of its way to do so) completely for those people. again - not the fault of the people who played the game. it's the fault of the people who were in charge of context/tone and took advantage of that and changed things and made him literally behave differently (because there's... take what's in front of you and translate that, and then there's going out of your way to change what's right there so the context/behavior is no longer the same).

it especially shows to me in interactions with Flynn between the western and JP fandom. the way Yuri behaves interacting with him in fan created media is sometimes vastly different from my experience between both fandoms. again, it's not people's faults who don't know Yuri's original personality, but it is the dub's fault for portraying him that way.

for me it's heartbreaking to see how dub Yuri treats Flynn and how the dub itself narratively treats Flynn. I love the relationship they have in JP and I love them both as characters in JP. like I've said, sometimes I want to punch dub Yuri for the shit he says and the way he behaves. I've never felt that way about Yuri in his original context. I've felt worse for dub Flynn than JP Flynn because I feel like JP Flynn is better cared for by the narrative/characters, but god, poor dub Flynn??? jesus.

the thing is, this comes from a place of strong love for Yuri (and Flynn!) so I hate that they changed things. I always stand by media in its original, purest form, no matter where in the world that media came from. localization absolutely should fix things caused by language barriers and tweak oddly sounding things - sometimes there's no choice! but it's not there to create a newly existing piece of media. it's not there to create a new character plastered on the face of an existing character or to fulfill the loc team's opinion of what that character should be.

it can be difficult - usually impossible - for me to be experiencing JP exclusive content and trying to imagine dub Yuri in those situations (think like, the drama CDs or Rays' content). I know I'm not the only person who feels this way and is extremely bothered by it.

obviously I'm not the be all end all - I'm one person with feelings and opinions, but I just feel very strongly about this kind of thing and I want to share how wonderful of a character Yuri is in his original form. a lot of the clips I posted I posted because I love his silly or caring attitude. I could blab to you about him forever. so, I hope more people will give this man a chance and experience him the way I know him.

[goldentigerfestival]

We are now on part 3 of the differences in the original Vesperia context (and tone!) and the localization's! Due to Tumblr's image limit, these had to be cut into parts.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

Yuri just mentions they're not nervous at all here. The loc changed this to "let's have some decency here". Again, super random change that I'm not sure why they put there. They just really have a weird thing for changing really random context.

I NEED to put these ones side by side because this one is completely ridiculous. They had Alexei not only say "urgh!" instead of "hmph", but he sounds like he's getting stabbed. I genuinely do question what on earth they were doing with this game sometimes, but I can also tell they didn't quality check like, anything... if the grammar and awkward sounding English in some places is anything to go by (a lot of NPC/sidequest dialogue in the loc ended up really wonky, and they didn't even go back to fix any of it when the DE came out). Like. What happened here LMAO.

no but really this is just here because i find "lend me your face" very funny because that's what this literally says. it technically does mean "we need to talk/can we talk/etc", i just need some amusement before getting into loc/dub yuri again.

Yuri's tone shifts more to catching his breath and calming down here. Again, as usual, it's a lot less aggressive than the dub makes it out to be. He was yelling this time, but he wasn't yelling the whole way through it like dub Yuri almost always does with Flynn before late arc 2.

I'm not gonna put pictures of all the times there's more vocal nuance (pauses, deep breaths, etc), but just know they're everywhere in the original audio. Really nice touch imo.

Flynn never says anything about "like a good knight". The way the loc uses it with him, and at this point? feels very derogatory, especially having him say it about himself.

This is really just "geez...", but the loc (you guessed it: more aggressively) put "damn it, Flynn...".

Here, Yuri was saying more of just "here we go again with Flynn putting all the responsibility onto himself". Once again, the dub has him angrily yell at Flynn and changes the context to make him angrier.

Flynn didn't tell Yuri what to do. He just said he was going to go after Estelle because it was his responsibility, and that his brigade will focus on Ioder. Again, the loc just makes shit up to put Flynn down (yes, you can probably realize I'm getting annoyed with this fact by now).

Yuri continues his thought by saying "anyway, the ones who will recuse Estelle is us, Brave Vesperia", i.e. he's basically saying "there you go again trying to take responsibility, but we're the ones who will be doing that". Dub Yuri continues his thought, angrily, saying Brave Vesperia's going to rescue Estelle (i.e. he's saying don't tell me what to do, we're going to do this", not "anyway, we'll be the ones to rescue Estelle" in response to Flynn trying to bear that burden.

At this point Yuri has dropped his anger in the original and is more back to his usual self with Flynn. Flynn's response is slightly vocally changed, seeming more shocked-surprised in the dub, but in the original it's more grateful-surprised. Kinda hard for me to explain without a video, so I'll have one in my clips.

Sodia doesn't say she'll return when she can. She's asking that Flynn gets back when he can (which makes more sense in context since she didn't want him staying here and not being with Ioder in the first place). The loc does this sometimes where they get the speaker and person spoken to/about mixed up, like with Aifred and Patty and Don earlier.

Flynn's thanks toward Yuri in the original is much more genuine/heartfelt. Yuri's response is infinitely more relieved, relaxed and grateful, spoken softly (the dub again really flattened his tone).

Here's the clip for this scene.

I really enjoy the original context of this scene because Rita tells Estelle to wake up, Alexei's response is "very well" and he wakes her up with her power, so he's using a taunting power move. In the loc he says "no matter". I guess he means waking her up is no matter? But that feels a bit easy to misinterpret imo? I just feel like "very well" makes more sense given the context.

I'm... NOT sure what happened here in the loc. He says "take us there" and just walks off. Take them... where? Sodia is asking him to return to Ioder, and Flynn is saying he wants to go after Alexei while ordering his brigade to go protect Ioder. Where would they take them? All he's supposed to be asking here is for Sodia to please let him go (after Alexei).

Not gonna make a whole video for this one clip, but Yuri's tone is a lot gentler here and a lot more understanding. As... as usual with Flynn and the dub and the original.

In the loc he says "that's enough", but here he's basically expressing how he's getting sick of various individuals insisting the world's crisis is all because of one person (Estelle).

The loc changed this to "what the hell?!". Personally I find Yuri yelling at him and calling him an idiot to make more sense in the context/fit more in line with his personality.

The loc changed this to saying Yuri can really be a downer sometimes. Once again, a case where I think the original line makes more sense. I'm not saying that just to knife the loc here - I genuinely just think the loc had some really whacky word choices and unnecessary changes, aside from the weird mistakes in the context (again, see the "take us there" and "please" scene).

Also have a video clip of this scene (and the Schwann stuff before it), because while the tone was pretty strongly different for parts of the Schwann scenes, this one was inarguably the worst contender. Yuri in the dub is shouting rudely at Leblanc and his knights. Here, Yuri is just solemnly asking for them to please not get in their way (he uses "tanomu", which is essentially "please"/asking for a favor, etc. It's significantly more considerate than the unnecessary shouting from the dub (and lack of polite wording) despite that they're all in an immense amount of emotional pain right now, and it shows deeply in Yuri's voice here).

As usual, Yuri treats all the knights worse in the loc/dub than he actually really does in the original.

A small change, but figured I'd drop it off here nonetheless. Just Yuri teasing Rita lol.

For the first one, didn't want to make a whole clip for it, but his voice is very soft and sad.

Second one, he says he prays that day never comes, versus the loc's "earnestly".

Yuri doesn't say anything about "showing off" (he specifically calls Flynn reckless) and as usual he's just very casual, relaxed and lighthearted about it. I also have a video clip of this one.

(Flynn doesn't even show off! He's just saving Zaphias! How is that showing off?!)

Yuri doesn't say "look out", which... makes more sense, because the monster isn't attacking yet. He's just realizing the danger and getting Karol out.

Also, Yuri in the original actually says in desperation that he's begging Karol to run. He doesn't say "I told you to get out of here", he's literally begging Karol to run away (again, uses "tanomu" here). Has much more emotional weight in the original and Yuri is very clearly panicked (the dub once again just makes him sound angry and less filled with desperation of getting Karol out of there).

This is another one I have a video clip for.

He's not saying anything about "taking the fun out of it", but rather that the situation is discouraging (the current state of outside), but that they're thriving (thanks to Ioder). Another change I'm... not sure the reason for?

Sometimes they have very understandable changes, but some of them are like this where I just can't pinpoint the reason for it; or if it was a translation mistake, how they made that specific translation mistake.

Slight change, but sounds less sarcastic to me in the original. Given the loc/dub's history with Yuri and Flynn though, I'm not surprised I feel that way...

Buddy I try to be as reasonable as I can be with this loc/dub, but sometimes I gotta draw a line. The way they tried to make Yuri sound cool and edgy by having him straight up threaten Ioder for literally no reason (Ioder isn't even saying anything bad, he's just asking what's going to happen to Estelle and mentioning that Yuri is trying to shoulder the burden of killing her alone) is not something I am getting over lol.

Ioder says maybe Yuri's the one the sword was waiting for, and Yuri mostly playfully just says he'll punch him. He did not threaten him and by all things holy did not threaten to use a weapon against him in a dark, eerie tone like he hated this guy. Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't like the implication of "maybe you should be emperor", but he's not threatening Ioder and Ioder has literally never done anything to deserve being threatened by Yuri. He's very fond of Yuri and extremely considerate to him given that he doesn't have to answer jack shit of Yuri's questions but tells him everything, always, anyway.

Also have a video clip for this one.

The difference here is Flynn is using quotations, implying he understands that "save" may also mean kill, which was completely left out of the loc.

Karol wonders if Khroma wants them to stop Alexei. For some reason the loc changed Yuri's response to "it would add up", but in the original he doesn't bother thinking about it nor considering that it's a possibility (which I imagine is the game's way of hinting to you that she's not referring to Alexei).

The Sword Stair arc has a bunch of small changes littered throughout it, but none of them are too significant so I'm going to skip going through most of this arc as far as those changes go. Generally speaking the sidequests (in the whole game in general, with a few having some minor changes as usual) and Zaude are about the same, so I'll also be mostly skipping those. Video clips are more for tonal differences (or just my personal favorite scenes in JP), so for these particular posts I'll be skipping the majority of those.

Worth mentioning that overall the plot is left alone in translation, and a lot of things are actually pretty much spot on. The majority of the alterations and changes, as you may have noticed at this point, relate primarily to Yuri and Flynn respectively (often treating Flynn poorly or making him sound like a hardheaded law enforcer, which is not the case at all but that is another post entirely for another time).

Once again due to the image limit we'll be moving on to another post!

[goldentigerfestival]

Due to Tumblr's image per post limit, this is the continuation of my localization changes in Vesperia post.

Part 1.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

In the loc this was changed to "I guess I'll have to play by own rules", but this is actually supposed to be Yuri repeating what he told Flynn before he killed Ragou (of course since it has to do with Flynn in some manner they changed it 🤪). Basically, they changed him reflecting on his own words which I just really don't get why they'd change that since it's literally a callback.

(Side note: This dialogue is more Yuri reflecting, sort of like "I'll do things my own way, huh...", realizing it's time for him to follow through on that. He's reflecting on his previous words here.)

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A break here because it's less directly a translation note and more a very large grievance of mine. I am also terrible at explaining things in only a bit of text, so... yeah.

See how much plot I skipped over here because nothing was heavily changed? This is what I mean when I say a LOT of it has to do with Flynn. A lot of the time when he's not around/saying anything/being talked to or about, the translation itself (barring Yuri's vocal tone, and Raven and Karol are much more lively in JP) is mostly on point with very few alterations (there are definitely some, but nothing really important in a lot of cases).

We go this long with things being pretty much fine (minimal changes and nothing important or glaring), but right as Flynn is brought back into the picture, things start going haywire with Yuri's loc/dub again, only to eventually end up at the Nordopolica port scene that was completely botched and torn apart.

The thing is, I can understand why a person might not notice it if they've only played/heard the loc/dub. Coming off of JP audio/context though, (at least for me) it comes off as "why did they make these changes that often paint him in a worse light", i.e. the tonal/contextual changes perceive him more negatively than the original, which I can't fathom why a loc team would do that unless it was intentional, which is a whole can of worms in itself (and again, especially when chunks of the translation are perfectly fine when he's not involved).

Whether or not it changed your personal perception of Flynn when dealing with him (at any point in the story) I don't know, but coming off the JP side, it feels like there was an intention/motivation to make Flynn be perceived more negatively (again, due to both tone/context). It's like Yuri was used as the vessel in the loc/dub to create this negative vibe around Flynn as a character (or, in a sense, to make the player view him negatively through Yuri as the lens - the main character we're supposed to be rooting for), which also sucks doubly because they're supposed to be closer than that.

Again, I don't know what went on in that loc room, but I do know the original did not treat Flynn this harshly. Again! You may not notice it just from the loc/dub by itself, or you may. What I'm saying is that, looking at all the original context and hearing the original audio, Flynn is treated completely differently (I'm not just talking about Yuri himself, but this sort of pull for the audience that the loc/dub seems to have), and everything comes across for him as worse from the get go upon meeting him.

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As previously mentioned in the last post, if the subtitles just copied the exact same thing the loc said, I left them out as it defeats the purpose of these posts.

Would also like to preface this by saying this particular conversation was not particularly off the rails in what got changed. It's mainly just interesting things worth noting between the two versions.

I'd like to get a little more literal with this one. The loc kinda stuck flair into it (that imo takes away from how heavy the plain original sentence is), but Yuri more specifically says the law is always on the side of those in power. This is a bit different than saying the laws are tools of whoever happens to hold all the chips. I wouldn't say the localization here is necessarily wrong, but I find that it's more powerful to say the law is just an ally of people in power, because that's the truth of what they're going through.

Saying "all the chips" implies more that it's one person at the top (Alexei in this case). Not everyone in power can have "all the chips". The law can, though, be used to aid anyone in enough power to twist things.

That said, again, I don't think the loc's version is necessarily an incorrect thing to say (especially since Alexei does hold all the chips technically and is manipulating everything, but in the more literal JP sense it's not what's being said here), but I find that the implication of (current) law only existing to aid powerful people means more. It gives more of a variety to me in its meaning, and basically more properly conveys that laws are made by the powerful for the powerful. Hence, in this case, why Yuri isn't taking to the law. The current laws were not made for people like him, nor to defend people like him or the innocent civilians.

So this one is a bit trickier to translate into English, but essentially, what Yuri is saying here isn't about dying ("sorry you have to die today"), but rather sort of the inverse. He's basically saying, you would save their life only to tell them to just bear it (the suffering) for now and that [Flynn] will someday rectify the issue causing them to suffer.

In other words, he's basically telling Flynn he can't watch as people continue to get trampled over while [Flynn] works to fix things. Sort of like, you'll save their life but leave them to continue to bear/put up with the suffering in the meantime until things get better. You'll save their life, but they'll still continue to suffer while you're working to fix things.

For me this one holds more weight than the loc. "Go on hurting people" is a lot less extreme than hurting people until they die, which is what was at risk of happening in Mantaic. Yeah, of course he cares about the repetitive harm, but them being pushed around until they die is even worse, and he knows that's exactly how far this has all gone (and he saw it happen at Heliord, also with Cumore. Basically, Ragou and Cumore both saw others as nothing but playthings to be used until they die, which can further emphasize Yuri's decision to decide they needed to die because all they would ever do is continue causing innocent people to die).

Not too much of a change, but Yuri is mentioning how people will be oppressed by such villains, rather than victimized. Bit of a different meaning! You can be a victim, but it doesn't mean you're necessarily being oppressed.

This is Flynn's response to Yuri telling him, "I'm not choosing. I've already chosen" (to dirty his hands).

This is basically along the lines of "so this is how you do it?" This is a callback to Yuri saying he'll do things his own way (and this turning out to be his way). With the existing context I'd translate this to something like, "so this is your way of doing things?"

First one, just to note, is him just saying "you", which obviously sounds stupid in English, but it's more reflective of saying "you..." in response to Estelle saying she won't go back to the castle. It's sort of like saying "you... (won't even after this?)". They changed this to "hey...", which I'm guessing is because they weren't sure how to translate just "you". Personally, I'd just translate this to "you..." as a trailed off sentence (i.e. adding ellipses for proper language tone).

Second one is actually a really unfortunate loss that is trickier in translation. This is the same thing she says and does to him after they fight Zagi off at the castle (which is not the case in the loc between these two scenes).

Unfortunately this is partially because the term can technically be translated various ways (it doesn't literally mean "nice to meet you" as there's a completely different phrase for that, but this is often translated to that which is what happened in the loc). She was basically telling him at Zaphias to please take care of her (i.e. she was in his care to get out of the castle). He asked what she was holding her hand out for, to which she says "it means, please take care of me". More literally, it's asking for a favor (sometimes you'll see this translated as something like "looking forward to working with you" and so on. Again, various ways to translate it).

Here, she does the exact same thing she did back then when she tells him she won't be returning to the castle. She's telling him "it" (what she's doing, holding her hand out) means "please take care of me", i.e. she's once again in his care (or, again, also "looking forward to working with you" as in I plan to continue to work with you despite this), i.e. she will be continuing to travel with him, cementing that she truly means she's not going back and that him killing Ragou and Cumore isn't coloring her opinion on him. By telling him the exact thing she told when they were leaving the castle, she's telling him she's still entrusting her safety to him (despite knowing he's "a killer" now, in difference to that he wasn't back then).

Again, the loc changed this term when they met to "it means, nice to meet you". Not that I don't get why they did it and it still realistically makes sense (but Estelle in JP does not say はじめまして, i.e. hajimemashite, which is literally "nice to meet you", so the intention behind it was different and was possibly written with the intention of the later callback, which is meant to say Estelle is still entrusting her safety to someone who views himself as a killer and has actually killed. It's supposed to have more impact/weight to it, which is unfortunately lost in the loc).

I'd say it's more common that that phrase is translated that way, if only because in English, we don't usually use phrases like "please take care of me"/"I'm in your care/looking forward to working with you". In this case the loc change does make sense, and it's primarily an unfortunate loss of difference in language. She's basically telling Yuri that she still trusts him and the statement is (likely) meant to make him feel better.

Yuri uses slightly harsher language here, basically calling the decision to cut off the route unlikable, bad or even disgusting (versus who do they think they are).

As some of you know I've already made the Nordopolica port scene its own entire post because the loc/dub was that fucking bad. It completely skewed the perspective of Yuri's real emotions and how hard the whole thing was hitting him. If you want to give it a read, I've detailed everything already so I won't be doing that in this post as well and am just linking it here.

For this post I just put what I found to be the most jarring, unnecessary and conversation-tone changing part in this scene contextually (as I obviously can't use vocal tone here, but that's why I linked the video!). To put it simply for this post, Yuri wants Flynn to answer him and is expressing that. He's not treating this conversation like he's got all the answers. He's not shoving it in Flynn's face that he isn't answering back. He wants him to. This isn't a one sided smackdown conversation. It's Yuri trying to get answers but also to get Flynn to see and understand that he can't be doing this. Meanwhile, Yuri's voice is cracking the longer he goes on talking (and his voice only cracks a few times in the whole game, but when it does, he's extremely emotional).

Here, Rita is fully siding with Yuri and expressing that basically, she doesn't think people would blame him/have a problem with it. It comes across a bit differently than her loc counterpart, which seems more detached and only based with reasoning. Like Estelle earlier, she's kind of sticking in a means of making Yuri feel better in her own way and expressing her trust in his decisions.

In the loc she says, "though the severity of the crime may differ, there's no such thing as someone suspected without cause". It doesn't hold the same weight imo, and I'm not sure why they added "severity of the crime", when Ragou and Cumore's crimes were both horrendous and murderous (they were just done in different ways, but they both would've resulted in death if Cumore's plans hadn't been stopped both times. Ragou's actions had already gotten people killed by the time he was found out).

Suspected with cause, sure, puts Yuri in the right, and I don't think this one is extremely out there or anything, but I definitely feel that the emotional attachment/trust aspect of it between Rita to Yuri was lost. Her wording here is more of a Rita way of trying to make him feel better.

The loc mentions Flynn using extreme measures, whereas here Yuri is calling it unlikable/unwanted/unpleasant/etc. It adds to how he's feeling about the situation, and how he's seeing Flynn progressively worsen his tactics and expressing that he doesn't like it. "Using extreme measures" doesn't have any emotional attachment or any personal opinion attached to it, which imo is partially the point here with the original text.

The loc goofed here. They had Patty ask if Don met him/Aifread somewhere recently, but they all know Aifread is "dead" and has been. She was supposed to be asking if she herself had met Don before, which is a hint to her being Aifread and having personally met Don before, hence her having this feeling she's already met him.

Don can't tell because she's a child now because of the curse (and it's possible if he thinks Aifread is a man that he never directly met Patty, instead having met Seifer, but Patty may have been there and saw Don herself at some point). This is why Don isn't sure if he's ever actually seen Patty before and can't say, versus the extremely odd "can't rightly say (if I've seen Aifread recently who we all know is and has been dead)".

Not sure why the loc changed this to him going after Karol when he specifically mentions going to where Don is, but... yeah, that happened.

Loc changed this too slightly. Not sure why other than they thought it sounded weird, but... it doesn't lol.

Raven calling Harry an idiot was changed to "like hell you are", and him saying goodbye was changed to "it's been fun". Minor changing, but I figured since a lot of this scene got altered in some way that I'd add these.

THIS one is the one I hate the most in this scene right next to them changing Yuri's dialogue. The loc changed this to him saying "Whitehorse", indicating a distance in their relationship and a power dynamic that still exists between them on Raven's end even in Don's final moments despite how close they are.

In the original they're on a first name basis in Don's final moments, and Don clearly doesn't care or feel offended by this, indicating closeness between them. Raven doesn't just respect Don, but sees him as a friend and a companion and is letting that be known so Don can at least hear that before he dies.

No idea why the loc changed that. Changing which name Raven uses here really changes the entire vibe of their dynamic, and not for the better.

All Yuri literally says is here "I'll do it" when Don asks for a second. He says nothing about honor in being the one to slice off Don's head, and saying that very much conflicts with how he feels after doing it. I get the feeling the loc was trying to go with the idea that it was honorable to help Don in his final moments, but I'm not so sure it's honorable to slice off the head of the most respected man in Dahngrest, and much less when it's weighing Yuri down afterward.

Yuri also gives a kind of resigned "I'll do it because nobody else is stepping up" voice. I get the feeling the loc wanted to try to make him sound cool here (and that really seems to be the general idea of what they were doing overall with Yuri), but if nothing else the scene itself was... very much opposite of cool.

This entire line got left out of the loc (or just replaced outright with the line about Patty) in the DE version and I'm not sure if that was a bug or not because it was present in the 360 version ("but what about Karol...?"), but basically in the loc Estelle goes from talking about Rita and Patty to Yuri saying "I said he'll be fine". Not really a translation issue, but I think it's possibly a bug/glitch in the loc that yeeted a line so I figured I'd add it here while passing by it.

Another case of the loc just adding random lines in for no reason. Really don't know why they did that here. She never said anything about that being weird and is only asking it in a "why would you say that" sense.

This is actually more along the lines of calling someone an idiot/a fool, but the loc just slapped on a "geez" and moved along, as it does (honestly not sure why the subtitler put that line here).

Here Yuri doesn't say her answer will "decide her fate". He just says depending on her answers that they may not be able to forgive her.

"Not very honest" was changed to "you're a slippery one" in the loc. Another instance of I'm not sure why they changed it, because at least to me they don't really mean the same thing? I guess in a sense they could, but it's still a weird change to me.

While this is a bit of a smaller case, it's little things like these that add up with Yuri. Here he's not saying he doesn't want to disappoint Phaeroh if he wants to fight, he's just saying if he's going to do it (fight them), then it can't be helped (implying they will fight back). The dub tends to stick in a lot more aggressive attitude with Yuri and make him way more pushy than he is.

Part of this also sort of includes my opinion but this is also my blog and I want to talk about it.

Here Karol was saying Yuri needs to be punished too for the guild. The loc pointedly leaves his awkward agreement out and just has him say "well..." as if he doesn't agree with it and/or is just going along with it not to argue. Here, Yuri is basically saying "w-well, yeah" or "w-well yeah, I guess". In other words, he understands Karol's reasoning and sees why Karol thinks he should be punished with himself and Judith. He may not like it, but he can see where he's coming from.

Leaving out his agreement just makes it sounds like he's no good at taking responsibility or understanding someone's reasons for him needing to be punished (which is now a running theme for him, since in the original he also was understanding about Flynn's response at Nor to his smalltime crimes, which the dub also made him sound annoyed about instead of understanding). It comes across as part of this aggressive, attitude driven demeanor he has in the dub, as if it makes no sense to punish him when he's done things for the good of others (which does not fit his character all and he's willing to take responsibility for everything he's done, but in the loc/dub, suddenly not this? When it's about their guild?)... when Judith was doing exactly the same thing, and yet he was saying earlier to Karol that even though she did that, she did break their guild laws, i.e. it was for the good of others, but she still did it so they need to figure out what to do with her. Both of them were doing things for the sakes of others and not telling anyone about it, and Karol is punishing them equally for it.

Simply having "well..." gives off this vibe of "well I don't agree but I don't want to argue either", but imo the tone also gives off this vibe of "but also I kinda do want to argue it", versus his actual admittance/acceptance done in a way that's actually fitting to his character.

Yuri doesn't say Karol is full of surprises, he outright calls him amazing.

You could also read this as "this is kind of a strange place, isn't it". The loc, uh, changed this to "Man... this is amazing!". Yeah. I don't fuckin' know, guys.

Continuing in the next part due to the image limit!

[goldentigerfestival]

so I finally found a subbed version of PS3 Vesperia recently (what the DE was ported from), and that means I am now properly enabled to further make my arguments LOL. basically since the DE text is still in English and there are no subs for what's actually being spoken in the JP audio, it's harder for me to make some points since sometimes people will just listen to audio in JP but not really understand what's going on and have to rely on the English text (which again is localized and not genuinely translated, and in a lot of major cases with Vesperia, it's pretty egregiously bad).

idk how many posts I'll end up making about the bigger changes but I do want to cover some of the things that rubbed me the wrong way with unnecessary and even harmful to Yuri's character changes.

for instance, Yuri has a skit with Estelle that was heavily altered in the dub, originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing them how to sneak out of the castle. his reasoning is basically that Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he knows the guy feels somewhat shady from meeting him and isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes).

in the dub they just kinda... make him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. the dub skit doesn't make it sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically and that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game.

Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from - and let's face it, getting that info from a guy in jail who had to be taken out by the commandant himself wouldn't look good in the eyes of an average citizen.

the dub really hurt Yuri's character in a lot of ways, but ever since I'd first played the game on the 360 yeaaars ago, that dubbed skit rubbed me the wrong way even before I knew the JP audio and now that I can show others the full JP context (again, can't really do that with the western release because the dialogue is still written in English so some people can hear the audio but if they don't understand it, the message they take away from it is still whatever is written in the localization) I really want to talk about some of the more damaging changes (in particular about Yuri because he got the absolute worst brunt of it). the skit is one example of a lot of weird changes that make no sense and unfortunately one of many that changed the entire meaning behind something Yuri meant/was doing.

there are a lot of weird cases of them just adding in entire sentences for no reason that don't really make sense or fit, but I probably won't cover those or at least in much detail. it's some of the bigger things I want to talk about because I feel like there's a huge disconnect in a lot of cases between western fandom Yuri and actual Yuri, and western fandom Yuri is partially if not mostly a result of the dub just yeeting entire aspects of his character out the window at the speed of light because dear heavens we simply can't have a cool adult man show a range of emotion evidently.

...on that note it's very wild to me how often they remove all traces of people calling Yuri an idiot. Karol had multiple but only got like one in in the dub. yeah.

[goldentigerfestival]

honestly the basic way I can say it about Vesperia's dub is that like... it doesn't sound that bad when it's all you know for context, but then when you just hear it in the original context (not even also having the original context, but hearing it), you realize just how much tone they changed.

it all makes sense in the dub because of the context they changed to make the tone fit with it, but when you hear the original tone, suddenly the dub context starts losing its foundation. basically the only way, in some cases, the vocal tones work in the dub is because they changed the context itself, and changing context/meaning/the message of what's being said is just a HUGE no-no for me.

I've probably mentioned this before but most of the contextual changing happened with Yuri. in a lot of cases for me like with Raven and Karol I much prefer the original delivery and that's a preference, and in some cases there were little to no changes (primarily the first and second visit to Dahngrest were mostly the same). a lot of them just center around Yuri and given that he's my baby boy, I'm just naturally set off by it lol.

[goldentigerfestival]

Made myself a little collective list of some favorite screenshots from the JP version of Vesperia along with some stray thoughts along the way. This post is part of my "the loc changed this stuff" post group, but I've separated these scenes as more of personal "I love these little scenes" scenes versus actual plot scenes that got altered.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

My preference of the JP version also isn't just because of translation, but also the wording tone and vocal tone. I find it more fun/appealing/emotional/etc.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

This dunk on Flynn is everything to me (as in, Flynn does taste test... it just doesn't save anyone else).

I swear that was the exact moment Yuri's "may have to adopt this child, gotta test it" radar turned on.

Mind you Yuri is also a lonely depressed mess and you can't even pry that from my cold dead hands. Karol slipping up right there was aaaall Yuri needed to protect that boy.

Also posted this in video form because the way Flynn uses the exact same term (abandon) that Yuri used in the prison just gets me. Don doesn't even know Yuri used that wording before and Flynn says it anyway. Don doesn't know Yuri used that wording and Yuri doesn't even hear Flynn say this, but Flynn uses the exact term anyway. It's literally his way of saying to Yuri without telling him directly, "I would not abandon you".

This one wasn't really changed in the loc, but I don't feel like making a video just for this. Basically I just love the way Toriumi made him sound so sleepy-annoyed, and then when he stands up he sounds tired-annoyed, like, I am so sick of this guy tired.

I just think. this is adorable.

"How about you try knocking?" " 'Kay."

I love the way this is phrased. He has so much faith in Yuri and knows if Yuri was in the knights that he could do so much. Like, not just, you could do this. Just. If it's you, then...

I just LOVE the delivery here.

You could also translate this as Yuri saying it's a mess here/Flynn looks like a mess. Peak compliments, peak compliments.

i lov heem.

(Changed in the loc to, "Y'know, I've never been good at taking orders". Not the same energy to me LOL)

I don't actually remember what this was in the loc but I love this scene because of Yuri's reaction to what Raven said. Raven wasn't with them in Heliord when all that happened, implying to Yuri he was there though. But why? Why would he be in Heliord? Yes, we know Schwann was, but Raven never showed his face to them there. Yuri getting another accidental tip off that Raven is in fact very fishy for really real!

Not an important change on the loc's end, but I like this version more because it kind of shows how far gone Zagi is. Obviously the blastia is not defying him and has no will of its own, but ye boi isn't really worried about that!

Again, not really important, but the loc changed this to "the kids are alright", which is one of the very very very few changes I prefer. It adds to his character, whereas this is just good ol' Raven. It doesn't take away from anything and does actually show that he's rooting for them in a way (in a joking way since they're all in the desert and y'all know how he acts at this part). The loc comes across more as trying to alleviate Yuri of some of the burden by telling him the others are okay and implying not to worry so much.

That said, I ofc don't like when they change things and I do like the line he uses in the loc, but I'm not sure why they changed it...?

Just Raven being a silly little guy!

An interesting thing to note is that you can interpret this both as "a crime" and as "a sin". Basically, you could say Yuri's committed the act of a sinner, rather than just plainly saying they're crimes. Yuri follows up using the same word, which can be seen as admitting he believes he's committed acts of a sinner (so not just that murder is a crime, but that it's a sin and that he's a sinner for it).

Adds a bit more depth to how Yuri views himself/his actions imo, while Flynn is currently still in his "law is black and white" phase - something that is part of Flynn's own character arc and growth that he learns from and changes from.

A fun thing to also note is that Link, the gacha game, had a Yuri unit sporting the title "Sin Bearer", which fits perfectly in line with this and was likely a direct reference to this (note that it doesn't use "crime" in the title, but "sin", something that also relates back to Yuri in the gacha game Crestoria).

(Basically, the term used here is literally "tsumi", which can be used to mean both and in Yuri's case can be used interchangeably while meaning both at the same time. He's committed a crime and is a sinner because of it - though as mentioned above, Namco seems to prefer the continuation of the "sin" side of it in other official Yuri content)

Full scene is here, but I just wanted to talk about this one particular part of the delivery.

Flynn's tone is very soft. He's literally just wondering where Yuri already disappeared to, and the anger in his voice is completely gone. It's pretty interesting to me because it almost feels like him confronting Yuri at the very end of the argument was like a formality as a knight, and him just being worked up about the law.

As soon as he switches his mindset and tone back to talking to Sodia about the barricade, it's like the tension in his mind was switched off and he's already lost the pressure of the moment. It actually almost sounds innocent, as if wondering why Yuri walked away. Obviously we can determine why Yuri walked away, but in a way here with Flynn, it actually almost sounds like he's confused. The dub had it be more of "oh, where'd he go", but to me the original delivery sounds genuinely confused about why he took off.

I obviously can't confirm what the intention was behind the delivery in this case without literally asking the JP director lol which tough shit because we know that's never gonna happen, but it almost feels like some crazy degree of Flynn's own internal/mental struggles.

Sort of like, wanting to uphold the law but still trying to be a friend to Yuri and having trouble because he can't separate the two from himself (i.e. yes he wants to uphold the law but not at Yuri's expense and is thus affected by bias. Obviously I can't confirm if just the way he says Yuri's name in this scene is an indicator that he's confused and it's causing his black and white view to crack, but it's an interesting thing to consider).

Just a fun tidbit that got changed in the loc. They probably figured most players wouldn't actually know what he meant here and so just changed it to what the term actually means. Basically, it means they're the ones traveling/not in their home territory and thus don't have the advantage.

i love you yuri lowell

i stan a man and we're all just gonna have to live with that.

Can also be translated as Flynn wanting to settle things with the him who believed in Alexei.

I genuinely don't even actually know what the loc uses for Flynn's line here, but I love this line so I'm including it here.

This is literally just Yuri saying "thank you, thank you", but in English then in Japanese. I love this dork.

[goldentigerfestival]

honestly tho i will never get over my RAGE in the absolute WAY the dub had yuri threaten ioder with an actual weapon in a very mean tone

and not just

you know

"i'll punch you" in this joking tone where it REALLY wasn't that serious

[goldentigerfestival]

Yes, it does! I also find it very jarring to deal with Yuri's voice changing throughout the game, let alone mid conversation. Tbch, I only played Vesperia one time dubbed on Steam and switched to JP audio from then on. For me it's super noticeable (probably also because I played the 360 version a lot of times back in the day), and then on top of realizing how much more emotional JP Vesperia is, I just kinda... never looked back LOL.

There used to be a fan translation for the PS3 version, but it was taken down due to the DE official release, and it also used the official 360 dialogue for anything already in the game, so the only actually translated stuff was anything new that was exclusive or changed for the PS3 version.

The actually translated YT videos I referred to in my original post can be found in a playlist here (so it's not playable but you can watch most of the game in JP with it actually translated and not localized. It's also just barely not the full game and does translate skits and some battle quotes, and the video quality does get better). It's what I plan to use for some examples I've wanted to talk about (the Nordopolica port scene is especially a massive gut punch with how much they changed it and I'm never going to not be pissed about it LOL).

It's just really unfortunate that one of the most well known and popular titles ended up having so many alterations. I just want people to know The Real Yuri Lowell goddammit lol.

It's been a hot minute since I've looked at the steam version, does it have dual audio options? Because I may very well play it with the Japanese audio as you suggested! It's very jarring to have Yuri's extra content voiced by a different VA in English. I wonder if I could get my paws on a fan translation but I imagine that would be a massive undertaking.

I can definitely see what you mean by "anime rival" type characters, it really does seem like that narrative was pushed in the dub. It doesn't fit their characters at all!

[goldentigerfestival]

I think the BEST way to explain it would be just to watch the scene because it explains itself best (I can message it to you if you're interested in/okay with that!), but basically... the context itself was altered in the dub to make Yuri sound aggressive and more like "I'm right and I know it". He presses Flynn about it as if Flynn is in the wrong and he's right. I feel personally that there are a lot of cases where Yuri just sounds rudely presumptuous toward Flynn when he's not supposed to be, but Nordopolica was the chaotic worst of it.

In JP Yuri is speaking in a more pleading tone that gives off vibes of "please tell me this ISN'T what I think it is", and the whole "cat got your tongue" was actually a desperate, pleading "say something", because Yuri wanted Flynn to say something to let him know he wasn't right or at least be able to defend what he was doing. He didn't want to be right. His voice starts shaking and he reminds Flynn that what Flynn is doing is what they used to hate. The whole thing was Yuri effectively pleading with Flynn and hoping he'd see reason if it turned out that yes, Yuri was right. He wasn't solely angry, just... deeply upset and struggling to understand how Flynn would be doing this.

The dub just kinda... yeeted that out the window because they for some reason have severe cases of Yuri acting like he has a stick up his dubbed ass, so he ends up more angry and aggressive (especially toward Flynn in several cases, when he's either completely relaxed and not at all angry in the original context, he's heartbroken, or he just wants Flynn to take responsibility for his errors and eases up immediately when he does). Their relationship is a lot more nuanced in the original context and Yuri is really not angry at him even half as much as the dub for some reason wants him to be.

What happens during this scene?!

No really its been a decade since I've played the game past the Blade Drifts and I keep meaning to go back but I have a problem with leaving games unfinished - anyway. I don't remember. I can picture the scene in my head and it probably isn't too far off but I've lost context for the story beat.

[goldentigerfestival]

Thanks for the input!

This got pretty stupid long, sorry about that if you choose to read this! 🙏

I had seen someone else mention this about Troy (after I posted these), which is unfortunate if he's the one who made a lot of these decisions. It sounds like neither he nor Sam really understood the character they were playing. I would by no means describe Flynn as complicated and irritable. I would describe his circumstances as complicated, but not he himself, and he is certainly not irritable. He's a bit of a worrywart, but not irritable.

I'm wondering if this came from the fact that Flynn starts out irritable because of the situation he's in when you first meet him, but beyond that he's not really irritable. He's very gentle and caring, and I feel like the dub tried to frame him via the viewpoint of Yuri that he's not just basically a sweetheart, bias aside (because I do love Flynn, but the dub by no means got his soft worrier side. In the scene where Flynn talks to Yuri at Aurnion before their battle, dub Flynn comes across as upset saying "do you think I can't take the burden?". Original Flynn is much softer, sad, and clearly has it in his voice that he wishes Yuri would lean on him and rely on him).

As for the novel, it's definitely noteworthy that Flynn is irritable as a child because this is just after his father died and he's getting relentlessly bullied. He starts to warm up throughout the first half of the novel, so I think even that's a stretch (him being an irritable person as a child, I mean). By the teen arc, he's very gentle and extremely soft. His voiced lines in the e-novel make it even more, very very clear that he's just confused, stressed and uncertain about what to do in hard situations. But at his core, he's gentle and loving (actually outright expressed by Yuri at the very beginning of the game with the line "世話好きのフレンが いんだろ？"), and that was expressed during the childhood arc too (basically expressing how the open and caring Flynn was the "real" Flynn more or less, and he got better until his mother died. Just like with his father, he shut down almost completely after that, but obviously by the teen arc he had recovered enough to go back to normal, even if the moral dilemma trauma stuck with him).

That said, I would think Sam's impression of Flynn should have come from the game itself (not a prequel movie that would've been voiced after the game, where Sam would've had the full context of his arc/story), because Mamoru seems to have understood Flynn quite well from the game alone (because I'm not basing Mamoru's take on Flynn from the gachas regarding Vesperia in particular. I'm basing all this on Vesperia alone). I do also believe it's likely voice direction had a hand in this whole thing with the dub, so I don't place blame solely on either VA.

I do think Sam did a better job keeping to Flynn than Troy did with Yuri, because Yuri is so far off the mark that I am very, very heavily side eying the fact that Troy apparently said he was "trying to pay homage to Toriumi's portrayal", because that just simply isn't possible. It reads to me like a PR move, because the game was released as a global release, so I don't think Troy really would have had time to study Toriumi's portrayal... and if he had, there's no way he would've played Yuri the way he did (in the event he actually wanted to be faithful to it).

When I consider that, I feel like it's kind of an insult to Toriumi to say that and play Yuri off as he did... especially given that from what I was told, Toriumi personally coached Tsubasa in the Vesperia stageplay, and the behavior Tsubasa's Yuri showed Flynn in particular was on the opposite end of Troy's Yuri. Of course, I don't think a stageplay alone would say a lot, but the idea here is just that Toriumi himself's influence results in a vastly different portrayal of Yuri than "trying to pay homage" to Toriumi's Yuri and yet being completely off the mark. How can one side say they're paying homage to someone's portrayal, but when that person coaches another person in understanding the character, the two still come out completely different?

Regarding your examples of victory quotes, yeah, those are big ones. Yuri is very silly and likes to have fun and act goofy in a lot of his victory quotes. Dub Yuri is played off as "moody and cool", like nothing bothers him (which is still a stark contrast to the original Yuri and how he was written in the first place). His victory quotes in particular give a lot of weight to his silly personality. I'd even say that Yuri occasionally acts a bit childish, which if you consider the novel, is a nice thing to think about in hindsight. He grew up having to be more of an adult than he should've been, and now that he is an adult, he just acts like a goof, but one that knows when to be serious and genuine.

And yeah, you're correct about the Heliord scene. It's one of the reasons why I express that I truly believe they were trying to make Yuri and Flynn seem less close than they are, because almost every sincere case of Yuri trusting Flynn gets altered not just in tone, but sometimes they outright change the original wording. I've had people suggest to me that maybe the dub didn't have access to the voice acting in JP, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they were clearly good translators who often had spot on translations, and yet when it came to Yuri (and anything from him to Flynn), they specifically changed his dialogue and made it match with this... version of a character they plastered onto Yuri (and by "they" I mean whoever made the ultimate decision to change Yuri's personality).

I can't look at a guy saying "keep talking and I'll try it out on you" while threatening a soft, kindhearted emperor with a real weapon... and say he feels like the same character who playfully says "I'll punch you" (something he regularly says in JP so it's not a one off case) and think he was intended to be the same character. Normally I don't say things like "I think they made these changes on purpose", unless... I look at the original dialogue and everything else is really good, but then there's this one character or two characters that things look like they weren't even translating dialogue, but just making things up to match whatever they wanted the portrayal of that character to be.

That's one of my main grievances with dub Vesperia tbh, because while I do adore the JP cast and prefer them, the dub/loc aside from Yuri and Flynn is actually mostly really good. The performances were good and the translations were good (sometimes they were even pretty direct/literal translations. Some cases were SUPER wonky changes and I have no idea why they did those things unrelated to Yuri, but for the most part the translations were contextually correct). It's just... they looked at Yuri and for some reason decided this silly, sweet guy wasn't good enough and took it away. ;n;

As for Heliord, here's Yuri's exact line: ここの後始末は任せた！, which they would essentially just translate to "I'll leave the rest to you" if they were keeping to the original context (I'd personally lean closer tot he original because that's just how I am with translation, so I'd be more likely to put "I'll leave the cleanup to you", but I think a localization would be more likely to just use "the rest"). There's no variation of "see ya" or "gotta go". So this is one of the cases I mean when I say they have the text in front of them, just like everything else they accurately translate, and they choose to ignore it and make something up anyway. Thaaaat's one of the biggest issues I have with loc Yuri, because it's, regardless of intention, very purposeful. Another major case I mentioned in these posts was なんとか言えよ, ("say something", spoken with hard emphasis), and yet they went for the complete opposite "cat got your tongue"? It makes my mind spin how absolutely opposite they wrote Yuri to be in the dub.

Rest is under the cut because it's a liiiitle tangenty about my personal experience (in relation to assorted media you mentioned) through the journey of realization.

It's funny because my first interaction with JP Yuri was the movie, and back then there wasn't a dub for it (think like, back when the only copies you could find of it were subbed fake copies on eBay because there was no official English release). I was confused wondering if this was just because this was Yuri a few years ago and that's why he felt so different.

Enter gacha games and other JP exclusive content on YouTube before I started playing Tales gacha myself, and I realized I reeeeally liked this Yuri... and eventually I watched a chunk of a PS3 Vesperia playthrough (that I don't think I finished, which I can't remember why by now but I probably just got bored of Vesperia on the whole, because as you may or may not have come across in other posts of mine, it's not really one of my favorite games. I just happen to REALLY love Yuri and not so much Vesperia itself).

I wasn't in the fandom back then and just consumed content on my own, so I didn't make posts like these back then... but eventually DE came out, eventually I played it in both languages, and everything was more obvious (especially since my JP was better by then). Eventually I came into the fandom for real, since I'd always just consumed content from the outside and didn't interact with people... and the more I thought about how much I loved JP Yuri, the unfortunately angrier I got as I realized wait, I can't really even interact with people in the west fandom about him because the Yuri I wanna talk about, most of these people probably don't know. I wanted to share the Yuri I knew and hoped for people to come to love him too. It made me more upset because I felt lied to about the character I knew when I was younger, but now I adored this original version of him and didn't have many people to talk about him to. Eventually, well, it all led me here to these posts LOL.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts! Unfortunately my brain goes through the motions of thinking about this a lot more than I'd like it to, so at this point I'm invested LOL (and I swear the more I look at Yuri's lines in my uh, "mission" of counting his repetitive term usage in JP, the worse it gets). Also thank you if you made it this far! I'm sorry it's so long and rambly, I just... have so many feelings on this topic.

Since I'd been talking a lot about JP Vesperia (primarily Yuri and Flynn and the heavy changes that surround them, and because I'm highly passionate about them in their original context), I wanted to compile some more jarring if not outright glaring mistakes in the localization (or what were likely intentional changes, because I can't look at some of these and just call them "mistakes"). I'm not going to mention every little change throughout the game, so smaller things I'll mostly be leaving out (namely things that don't really affect characters or context). I primarily just wanted to give some insight on some of the bigger parts.

Some of the changes seem to have been mistakes in translation itself (not just localization, but misunderstanding what was being said in general; such as, there's an instance I mention of that between Patty and Don), so I've got some mentions hanging around for clarity purposes as some scenes didn't make much sense, likely because of this.

Vocal tone with Yuri was the most prominent issue that got me making this, and the context that was changed being right after if not equally next to that (most often also with Yuri but also Flynn).

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and I've been wanting to share this stuff with people interested in seeing the game with its original context. Generally speaking, the plot and story themselves are on point. The majority of the differences surround Yuri and Flynn respectively, so there's going to be a lot of mention of them throughout.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and the heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

I'd like to preface this by mentioning the chief director and producer of the game itself has also spoken about localization inaccuracy issues, so that's something to keep in mind (it's in Japanese, but you should be able to use the offered post translator).

I'd also like to preface this by mentioning that in the original, Yuri is more playful and relaxed/casual (generally but including with Flynn, which the dub pretty much entirely changed until arc 3), but also gentler and softer. He has a very large variety of tonal behaviors/tonal "moods" that were pretty much nuked from the dub.

Basically, to get the full experience for Yuri, I can only really recommend playing the game in JP audio. Obviously you won't get the actual context because all you'll have is the dub context, but that's also partly why I'm making these posts - to cover the contextual changes while the video clips cover some of the tonal changes (because lbh I don't expect anyone to actually go watch the entire game in JP with subtitles unless you're as insanely dedicated as I am, and I'm largely doing it out of my love for the original Yuri and Flynn and my disdain for how the localization treated them).

As a heads up, there won't be many skits in here because I'm going through a specific YT playthrough for these screenshots. Specific skits won't always come up in the playthrough in question, and I can't find a whole list of skits in JP anywhere online. I don't have all skits unlocked in my own save either yet (you can unlock all skits with Grade which I have yet to do in the DE), so I can't use that to compare all skits right now.

There are plenty of small changes here and there that I won't be including in these posts because there are some sentence changes that aren't impactful but do exist. I just don't want to be here for a year covering the random changes that don't matter much. I'm also not going to include details of a lot of honorifics because I'd be here all day, but there is one one major instance that I mention later on.

For reference if anything wants to actually watch the game in JP with the subs (it goes until just after Hypionia), most of the references come from here. Since in some cases the subber just reused localized text even when the context wasn't the same, I did bring some of those up in these posts too. These were subbed before the DE version came out. I used screenshots with subs where possible to make it easier to follow along.

I have a lot of passion for JP Yuri and I hope I can pass on some of that passion to others. 🙏

Apologies in advance if some of these sound cranky. If I sound cranky about some specific changes, it's probably because I am.

---

Since I talked about the whole, Raven being shady and Yuri therefore not being grateful to him incident that the localization for some reason butchered and made Yuri sound like a generally ungrateful or just outright dumb person who doesn't understand gratitude, I'll summarize that one again here:

Yuri has a skit with Estelle originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing him how to sneak out of the castle. Basically, Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes). The dub just kinda... makes him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. It doesn't really sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically but more that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game. Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from (and I imagine a weird peppy guy in jail is good cause to be skeptical).

We start off we a classic "Yuri, you idiot!" that was changed to "come on already!".

Yuri's response to Estelle mentioning he'd been in the knights doesn't actually give a time frame for how long he'd been there (the dub made up three months, but there was never originally even a time frame given).

Here when Yuri asks Estelle why she can't just leave, her response indicates she actually does know why. The dub made it more ambiguous, which could be easily misinterpreted as she really doesn't know, so I'm dropping this one here.

For some reason the localization seemed to have Estelle responding to Karol directly about the ace always performing their attack last ("I don't think so"). What she was referring to was the tiny monster that walked by, asking for confirmation that that monster was not the eggbear they were looking for (I wasn't gonna fight with the video to get a better screenshot without the annoying YT red bar in the way so the monster is in the corner mid-movement lol). Not sure if that was a genuine mistake, but it was an odd one.

(Also, side note and not putting an image here because it's more general, but Yuri refers to Karol as "Karol-sensei" which was translated in the localization to "Captain Karol". Basically, Yuri calls him "sensei" because that's a teacher/professor, and he's making a play on Karol's knowledge and being their "teacher" about monsters/maps/etc.)

I'd say this is more along the lines of overexaggerating and not overreacting, but this line was literally changed to "haha" in the dub. The whole point wasn't that Yuri just brushed her comment off or found it funny. At this point he still literally thinks she's exaggerating about her lack of knowledge out in the world, her excitement, etc.

Not the only instance you'll find of the dub just changing entire sentences to something meaningless as if they ??? didn't know what it meant (they actually changed Patty saying an entire sentence to "aye"). In some cases they added entire sentences that weren't even there...

Even though I can kind of see where they went with the dub here, the point was supposed to be that Flynn actively thought he would be happy for Yuri to go outside the barrier and see the world.

The dub changed this to Flynn saying that he, in the now, is happy that Yuri is outside the barrier, but then says he got a little less happy when he saw the wanted poster, indicating he was previously happy but got less happy, yet says in that moment that he is happy.

It's a weird case of (past/present) tense usage for the most part, but they also removed the fact that Flynn is literally saying "I thought I would be happy" (thus expressing he'd been wanting Yuri to see the world outside the barrier and would've been happy to find out he did). The reason he's not finding himself happy is because of the wanted poster and the crimes listed on it, following up that his honest happiness for Yuri (ultimately because of the poster) was a lie.

This also means they removed Flynn expressing the honesty of his happiness for a positive concept for Yuri, which, given all the changes toward Flynn in the dub, already now takes away from the fact that he'd been actively hoping for good things for someone and we're left with this more sarcastic take on him being "happy".

Obviously his happiness wasn't really a lie because most of the crimes were falsified (primarily the ones that would make him actually mad, because Flynn has had to have been aware this whole time that Yuri has committed small time crimes for the past few years now), but at the time, the focus on this conversation is that Flynn thought he'd be happy at a time that Yuri left the barrier; meaning he'd been hoping for it prior to it happening.

I'm also mentioning it because it's the very first in a whole line of changes the dub made to their relationship (and it's their first in game interaction ffs) and to Flynn himself as he's perceived as a character. The original is much more expressive of how important they are to each other in a lot of various ways.

Inserting the JP audio version of the following scene with Flynn here.

And... the following one from there.

This was changed to "damn, we if lose our balance...". I know they did it because Yuri had just fallen over, but I'm including this one because the context isn't... really the same thing?

This dub change is a bit odd to me. They had him saying something along the lines of "she is a princess after all" in the dub, regarding the council backing her.

The original context is more like, the council is backing her and he's hearing it directly from Ioder and he probably doubts Ioder would lie like that or about that, cementing that yes, she truly is, like he suspected, a princess, but it's almost still a bit odd to know. It's sort of like, he knew/had suspicions but hearing it directly from Ioder just confirms it for certain.

The dub just made it sound like well yeah, it's obvious they'd want to back her, she's a princess... but Ioder is a prince, so that doesn't explain why they're not backing him. She is a princess after all, so of course they'd back her... but what's stopping them from backing the prince?

Another weird one for me. In the dub Yuri says that "even the Commandant was a little in over his head", when he actually... really wasn't? All he did was step in. Things got bad enough that he had to, but he wasn't in over his head. Not sure how or why the dub ended up with that.

An example of the dub having a habit of just adding in random lines that didn't actually exist (and in this case the one added didn't even contextually make sense. This was no thank you from him, this was literally him making Yuri do something for him because he was going to ask Flynn for a favor and ended up with Yuri in the cell instead).

Another super weird one in the dub. They had Yuri saying Flynn was "too" late, implying he hadn't made it in time, but he did. He made it just before the battle started, but the original context only says he's late, not too late (which makes sense given that they were ready to fight but hadn't started yet).

This was changed to Yuri just mentioning there was one way they could get out of there without actually saying what it was, and Judith saying if he thinks it might work what's the harm in trying it out. Not sure why they changed Yuri literally telling her his plan, so... again, a super weird change that I don't get why they didn't just keep the context the way it was.

Third image was changed to "someone get me away from this psycho", which... I also don't get why they put that there unless they just wanted so much flavor text that they wanted to change the whole "they're in a fight and he's telling her not to come over here because he's pissed at her because they're fighting" part of the fake fight they had going on.

Not one I have a huge problem with, but definitely good examples of them going out of their way to change just... perfectly normal stuff that literally has no reason to be changed? Some of it is flavor text and some of it feels over the top for me. Stuff that makes me like... why would you change that when there was no reason to? Could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like unnecessary changes when there was nothing wrong or odd about the original text and doesn't at all come off odd in English. Unfortunately Vesperia got littered with those.

I didn't feel like getting a whole video for this, but basically Judith gives a little laugh instead of just the more upset/distressed(?) sound she made in the dub. Feels more fitting imo to keep up the "lie" Yuri started for her. The dub makes it seem more like she feels guilty, versus here she's giving a little forced giggle to go along with it. Again, a change I'm not sure why they put in.

Ngl I get completely different vibes from these. The JP comes across more as concern, rather than... treating them like they're some mob on the loose...?

Once again, this gives off negative vibes toward Flynn as a character imo.

Here Judith gives more of a reason for coming with them, which they changed in the dub to "with the circumstances being what they are, this is just how things turned out". Reasonably, she didn't have to stick around after they ran from Dahngrest, but here she gives a quick "reason".

The dub changed this to "I'll bet he is". They were just told he's the current magistrate in Heliord, and all Yuri says here expresses he's letting it sink in and realizing exactly why all this is happening here. It's not a huge story beat or anything that gets changed, but it's an example of changing things that don't need to be changed as if trying to play things up in a way that... doesn't feel necessary to me? In this case the situation is kind of dawning on Yuri as he realizes how bad this situation could be/why it's like it is, but in the dub it comes across as more just unimpressed and "of course he'd do that".

An unfortunate, classic moment of them changing how much Yuri believes in and trusts Flynn. They changed this to "gotta run, Flynn!" and he just... leaves. I'm sorry but in what universe does "leave the rest to you" equal "gotta run"???

This one is one of those cases where the localization text was super awkward and wonky, and worse, they actually voiced it that way (like "we have guild's job to deal with". Yes, they actually voiced it that way too on top of everything else grammatically wonky with the entire conversation that they didn't bother fixing when the DE came out).

Also here, they changed what Yuri says about Cumore and Flynn. "I don't know how I could explain this to Flynn" doesn't, at least to me, carry the same weight as Yuri actually feeling ashamed (in the dub he says "what a shame", but does not express shame, versus him saying "how pathetic" and expressing shame in feeling pathetic) and saying he can't even face Flynn because Cumore got away. The thing is, Yuri does tend to posture, so when he fails at something, it hits him pretty hard.

And let's be honest, this just hits way harder than "he will get what he deserves".

Interestingly, Yuri could also fall into the category of viewing himself as sinful later on, which I talk about in my favorites post and the usage of "crime" and "sin" within the JP context.

Not particularly important, but just another (more mild) case and example of how the dub just randomly changed tone/mood/wording for no reason.

Another case of Yuri being more aggressive in the dub than he actually was. Here, all he says is just a plain statement. In the dub, he has an attitude about it and says it in a tone that's more insulting that Ioder didn't know about Heracles.

This isn't the only case of dub Yuri acting aggressively toward Ioder when he wasn't supposed to be and we'll get to that, but Ioder is another similar case of the dub making Yuri unnecessarily vocally rude (despite that Ioder is very polite toward Yuri).

(I left out the subtitles because all they did was copy the dub's localization, which kinda defeats the point of this post LOL. This will be the case going forward for any same circumstances.)

This one's a more interesting tidbit to me and less of a harmful change (i.e. I find that a lot of if not most changes relative to Flynn do more harm than good when compared with the original context). Basically it's saying "sweet mask and sharp eyes", implying Flynn's sweet face is a mask and saying it contrasts with his sharp eyes. I could get into a whole rant about why I love that in relation to some side material, but even in the game itself, there's the knight Flynn with his sweet, polite side and his real side that only shows when he's around Yuri (basically, who Flynn has to be for his job and who he actually is as a person, which he only gets to be around someone who knows the real him).

I'd guess this got changed in the dub because they weren't sure how to word it, though there's no mention of "heartthrob" here at all and instead actually says "sweet mask" as if, again, to say his sweetness is just a mask. It's actually a very interestingly accurate representation of his character - how he tends to not be himself when he's being "knight Flynn", and how that sweet face is contrasted by the look in his eyes (which they say, you know, eyes are the windows to the soul, so this would imply the sweet face is the mask and the eyes are the real Flynn. And of course, this Flynn is implied to show himself in his sparring with Yuri in Aurnion, where sword fighting is the best way to express himself. This isn't to say Flynn being a nice person in and of itself is a lie, but that his overly polite, respectful, kind knight side is a sweet mask contrasted to the man who loves to fight and has a sharp look in his eyes)

For now, we'll be back at Mantaic in the next post (due to image per post limit).

[goldentigerfestival]

I totally understand that, because yeah, for me too, it was a huge bummer when I first started to find out how much the dub changed things and how much context was totally off. It wasn't just Yuri that things got changed with, but he's the one with what I'd say is the most damage done to his character.

Regarding your tags, Yuri is very much not cold toward Flynn in JP. Actually, it's mostly the other way around at first when Flynn is stressed out initially at Nor, with Yuri having the more relaxed tone compared to Flynn's snippy responses. I have no idea why the dub added that tone for Yuri and tried to create extra rockiness that just didn't exist (because Yuri just kinda sighed and waved it off with Flynn. He didn't get mad because he understood why Flynn was so aggravated). In the dub, they seemed to try to push the "anime rival" narrative, while in JP it was more that you could tell they did really care about each other through and through.

For instance, and I can start posting videos on this stuff from my own DE playthrough (I've been saving some favorite scenes of mine in my current run), when Yuri tells Flynn to stop treating him like a kid, he says it very relaxed and playfully. He's not mad at all. He also asks for Flynn's understanding very relaxed and just looking for him to listen to his side of the story, without the aggravation. Most of the "tension" you heard in Yuri's voice in the dub just... doesn't... exist in the original audio, and I hate that they tried to create friction that wasn't there.

I do fully recommend doing a playthrough in JP even if you only have the English text, because even that is worlds better than nothing at all imo. Obviously with the examples I want to use with the PS3 version I mentioned there will be full context for me to go over, but just with the audio alone you can hear totally different tones. It's just most noticeable in Yuri. I still melt whenever I hear how utterly soft he goes for Karol when he's convincing Karol to not give up on saving Halure's tree.

In general Yuri has this weird chip on his shoulder in the dub. He's more playful and fun in JP. He's also just in general, like you said, warmer. I've suspected, as have some others evidently that I've met, that they wanted a "cool edgy adult character" in the dub. Thing is, that's how Karol saw Yuri when they first met, but that's not how Yuri really is and Karol learned about him quite well by the end. I'd say in general the JP version of Yuri is very much a deconstruction of the idea of the dark, cool and edgy adult trope.

So yeah, my suggestion is... try the game out in JP lol. Toriumi's acting for Yuri is stellar and while I have no hate for Troy or his acting (his acting with what he had to work with was good), Toriumi is on another level imo. There's just a way he does his acting that's very "this is Yuri Lowell" and not just 'this is voice acting", you know?

so I finally found a subbed version of PS3 Vesperia recently (what the DE was ported from), and that means I am now properly enabled to further make my arguments LOL. basically since the DE text is still in English and there are no subs for what's actually being spoken in the JP audio, it's harder for me to make some points since sometimes people will just listen to audio in JP but not really understand what's going on and have to rely on the English text (which again is localized and not genuinely translated, and in a lot of major cases with Vesperia, it's pretty egregiously bad).

idk how many posts I'll end up making about the bigger changes but I do want to cover some of the things that rubbed me the wrong way with unnecessary and even harmful to Yuri's character changes.

for instance, Yuri has a skit with Estelle that was heavily altered in the dub, originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing them how to sneak out of the castle. his reasoning is basically that Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he knows the guy feels somewhat shady from meeting him and isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes).

in the dub they just kinda... make him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. the dub skit doesn't make it sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically and that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game.

Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from - and let's face it, getting that info from a guy in jail who had to be taken out by the commandant himself wouldn't look good in the eyes of an average citizen.

the dub really hurt Yuri's character in a lot of ways, but ever since I'd first played the game on the 360 yeaaars ago, that dubbed skit rubbed me the wrong way even before I knew the JP audio and now that I can show others the full JP context (again, can't really do that with the western release because the dialogue is still written in English so some people can hear the audio but if they don't understand it, the message they take away from it is still whatever is written in the localization) I really want to talk about some of the more damaging changes (in particular about Yuri because he got the absolute worst brunt of it). the skit is one example of a lot of weird changes that make no sense and unfortunately one of many that changed the entire meaning behind something Yuri meant/was doing.

there are a lot of weird cases of them just adding in entire sentences for no reason that don't really make sense or fit, but I probably won't cover those or at least in much detail. it's some of the bigger things I want to talk about because I feel like there's a huge disconnect in a lot of cases between western fandom Yuri and actual Yuri, and western fandom Yuri is partially if not mostly a result of the dub just yeeting entire aspects of his character out the window at the speed of light because dear heavens we simply can't have a cool adult man show a range of emotion evidently.

...on that note it's very wild to me how often they remove all traces of people calling Yuri an idiot. Karol had multiple but only got like one in in the dub. yeah.