Does anybody else not read manga because they don't know Japanese?

I mean, isn't it the same with subtitles in anime? You'll never get the full experience either way.

You're really missing out if you are just not giving manga a chance over stupid misniformed culture war bs.

These days, Viz is a really great publisher, but it definitely took some growing pains to get where they are today. Some of their earlier work is a bit rough with quite a few major errors and changes that don't really hold up compared to their modern work. The Dragon Ball manga (split into DB and DBZ in America) has lots of weird line changes from the Japanese version, and while using the Japanese names for most characters and attacks, there's a few that are different for no reason, or are more directly translated when kept untranslated in other localizations. Examples include Kaio-Sama being translated to "Lord of the Worlds" instead of Kaio or King Kai like in the anime, the Makankossappo attack being called the "Light of Death", Saibaimen being called "Cultivars", Majin Buu being called "Djinn Buu", and Vegito being called "Vegerot" to name a few choices of odd or different translation choices compared to the other iterations of the series. Early chapters of One Piece also have quite a few weird holdovers from the 4Kids dub, such as pirate slang being used but that was phased out over time. The only real remnant of 4Kids in Viz's One Piece localization are Roronoa Zoro being called Zolo, and the Going Merry being called the Merry Go like in the 4Kids dub for consistency. Sure, certain mistakes exist such as the island of "Raftel" instead of "Laugh Tale" but a lot of them are due to context for the names not being provided when they were originally translated, so it can't really be the fault of the localization team. Viz's localizations of the original Yu-Gi-Oh series is generally pretty good, albeit with a few mistakes on card names early on, or instances where Viz localized cards that were at the time only present in the manga differently than what Konami would eventually end up going with when these cards were added to the card game. Most characters in the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga do keep their names in Viz's version unlike the 4Kids dub, but one of the few exceptions is Pegasus, whose name was changed from Pegasus J Crawford like in the Japanese version to Maximillian J Pegasus like in the 4Kids dub. For some reason though, for the GX and 5D's Viz decided to use the 4Kids names for the characters which does create a bit of weird inconsistency in the manga's naming schemes in English. For Viz's more modern stuff, its generally really good. Viz's One Punch Man manga localization is so accurate to the point that the dub is almost word for word with the manga from what I have seen of the dub (I watched the show in Japanese more). The Dr. Stone manga is much more faithful to the Japanese version than the Crunchyroll subtitles for the anime adaptation, with character speech patterns and catchphrases being more consistent and accurately recreated than the subtitled version. The English dub's script takes quite a bit more from Viz's manga in terms of how it translated character speech patterns than the subtitles which led to the dub being the vastly superior way to watch the show for English speakers. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has a really solid localization from Viz in both the anime and manga, but it is rather infamous for having to remove references to copyrighted music to avoid legal issues. That being said the copyright free Stand names are so funny that they're kinda beloved among Jojo fans. While Viz may have had a rocky track record early on, they're a great company when it comes to the quality of their English manga these days, and they have major ties to the Japanese publishers being jointly owned by Shogakukan and Shueisha, some of Japan's biggest publishers of many titles that people know and love. Thats why pretty much all the Shonen Jump licenses are done by Viz, since they share a parent company.

Kodansha USA's English manga volumes are really good too but offer something really fun that I haven't seen other companies do. Kodansha tends to include a section in the back of each volume about how certain choices were made in the localization and the challenges that came along with translating certain tricky lines. These sections may also provide additional cultural context for certain things that may be different between Japan and English-speaking countries if they come up in the story. Since these are in the back of the book, they don't break up the pace either like translator notes do in bootleg subtitle tracks for Japanese anime, and they direct you to the exact page that is being referred to. It's a very great resource if you want to better understand some of the process behind translating some titles that you like if they're published by Kodansha. I've seen notes like this in their Sailor Moon and Shaman King releases so they're highly recommended. Kodansha USA is directly owned by their Japanese parent company and have quite a decent selection of manga they publish over here

Ablaze Manga is probably the worst publisher of manga in English by far. They haven't done too much of note, but their quality is genuinely awful. Their translated version of Centaurs genuinely has to be one of the biggest disasters I have seen when it comes to translating a work of fiction into a new language. Ablaze decided to cheap out and use Generative AI to localize this manga into English and it was a huge disaster that proves why human translators are absolutely necessary. Their release of Centaurs was full of grammatical errors, major instances where character names are butchered beyond belief because the AI used the wrong reading of Kanji in a way that a human wouldn't (how the fuck do you get "Sokugyou" from "Hayame"), instances of just plain wrong words being used (such as calling a baby horse a calf instead of a foal/filly), and just a mountain of other errors that would be way less likely to happen under a human translatio and localization team. The fact they charged for this garbage is insulting and this company doesn't deserve anybody's money.

You're really missing out if you are just not giving manga a chance over stupid misniformed culture war bs.

These days, Viz is a really great publisher, but it definitely took some growing pains to get where they are today. Some of their earlier work is a bit rough with quite a few major errors and changes that don't really hold up compared to their modern work. The Dragon Ball manga (split into DB and DBZ in America) has lots of weird line changes from the Japanese version, and while using the Japanese names for most characters and attacks, there's a few that are different for no reason, or are more directly translated when kept untranslated in other localizations. Examples include Kaio-Sama being translated to "Lord of the Worlds" instead of Kaio or King Kai like in the anime, the Makankossappo attack being called the "Light of Death", Saibaimen being called "Cultivars", Majin Buu being called "Djinn Buu", and Vegito being called "Vegerot" to name a few choices of odd or different translation choices compared to the other iterations of the series. Early chapters of One Piece also have quite a few weird holdovers from the 4Kids dub, such as pirate slang being used but that was phased out over time. The only real remnant of 4Kids in Viz's One Piece localization are Roronoa Zoro being called Zolo, and the Going Merry being called the Merry Go like in the 4Kids dub for consistency. Sure, certain mistakes exist such as the island of "Raftel" instead of "Laugh Tale" but a lot of them are due to context for the names not being provided when they were originally translated, so it can't really be the fault of the localization team. Viz's localizations of the original Yu-Gi-Oh series is generally pretty good, albeit with a few mistakes on card names early on, or instances where Viz localized cards that were at the time only present in the manga differently than what Konami would eventually end up going with when these cards were added to the card game. Most characters in the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga do keep their names in Viz's version unlike the 4Kids dub, but one of the few exceptions is Pegasus, whose name was changed from Pegasus J Crawford like in the Japanese version to Maximillian J Pegasus like in the 4Kids dub. For some reason though, for the GX and 5D's Viz decided to use the 4Kids names for the characters which does create a bit of weird inconsistency in the manga's naming schemes in English. For Viz's more modern stuff, its generally really good. Viz's One Punch Man manga localization is so accurate to the point that the dub is almost word for word with the manga from what I have seen of the dub (I watched the show in Japanese more). The Dr. Stone manga is much more faithful to the Japanese version than the Crunchyroll subtitles for the anime adaptation, with character speech patterns and catchphrases being more consistent and accurately recreated than the subtitled version. The English dub's script takes quite a bit more from Viz's manga in terms of how it translated character speech patterns than the subtitles which led to the dub being the vastly superior way to watch the show for English speakers. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has a really solid localization from Viz in both the anime and manga, but it is rather infamous for having to remove references to copyrighted music to avoid legal issues. That being said the copyright free Stand names are so funny that they're kinda beloved among Jojo fans. While Viz may have had a rocky track record early on, they're a great company when it comes to the quality of their English manga these days, and they have major ties to the Japanese publishers being jointly owned by Shogakukan and Shueisha, some of Japan's biggest publishers of many titles that people know and love. Thats why pretty much all the Shonen Jump licenses are done by Viz, since they share a parent company.

Kodansha USA's English manga volumes are really good too but offer something really fun that I haven't seen other companies do. Kodansha tends to include a section in the back of each volume about how certain choices were made in the localization and the challenges that came along with translating certain tricky lines. These sections may also provide additional cultural context for certain things that may be different between Japan and English-speaking countries if they come up in the story. Since these are in the back of the book, they don't break up the pace either like translator notes do in bootleg subtitle tracks for Japanese anime, and they direct you to the exact page that is being referred to. It's a very great resource if you want to better understand some of the process behind translating some titles that you like if they're published by Kodansha. I've seen notes like this in their Sailor Moon and Shaman King releases so they're highly recommended. Kodansha USA is directly owned by their Japanese parent company and have quite a decent selection of manga they publish over here

Ablaze Manga is probably the worst publisher of manga in English by far. They haven't done too much of note, but their quality is genuinely awful. Their translated version of Centaurs genuinely has to be one of the biggest disasters I have seen when it comes to translating a work of fiction into a new language. Ablaze decided to cheap out and use Generative AI to localize this manga into English and it was a huge disaster that proves why human translators are absolutely necessary. Their release of Centaurs was full of grammatical errors, major instances where character names are butchered beyond belief because the AI used the wrong reading of Kanji in a way that a human wouldn't (how the fuck do you get "Sokugyou" from "Hayame"), instances of just plain wrong words being used (such as calling a baby horse a calf instead of a foal/filly), and just a mountain of other errors that would be way less likely to happen under a human translatio and localization team. The fact they charged for this garbage is insulting and this company doesn't deserve anybody's money.

I do understand some Japanese words, and can sometimes hear when the subtitles are incorrect. The same is not true for English translated manga.
This has nothing to do with any culture war.

@ForgotEyeWasHere

The anti-localization sentiment has become a culture war talking point so whether you recognize it or not, it kinda does have stuff to do with it

I understand the sentiment, but unless you actually learn it so you can read there’s no point in not reading the translation.

@Rally- If you have no qualms ordering from crunchyroll they appear to have the whole series in stock

They sometimes use translator notes explaining puns or make an equivalent i would think. I think it more bothers me is they sometimes mirror the art in official stuff due to how the reverse read and page order from western material but that isnt inherently a big deal but can be some cases. I still read manga online but i would like physical copies and would prefer if i could read Japanese. I heard some do have bilingual copies where they show Japanese with English translation on the side.

Where did you find light novels in a dumpster? Do you dumpster dive?



Is that really that rare? I mean outside of people born and raised in Japan. Since the spoken part of the language doesnt seem that complicated since the low number of phonemes and the pitch accent is not super hard like Mandarin even though I heard Japanese people use it without knowing they do it. But someone trying to learn thousands of kanji just doesnt seem that high up there on ease. I could understand your point if Japanese was only kana writing since you could sound out words if it were like that.

They were at the top of the trash. There was also a K-On! poster in there, but sadly, it was too far down to reach.