As if recent months had not made it already very apparent that the Western Japanese-to-English localization scene needs a massive reform, a former localizer for Discotek’s dub of Lovely Complex has admitted that the changing of creators’ original works for ideological reasons is not just a common phenomena, but one that is openly allowed by industry higher-ups.
This confirmation of the industry’s worst habit was provided to the public by YouTuber Brendan ‘JelloApocalypse’ Blaber, who recently lost his position as a Discotek localizer after he publicly admitted – via a lengthy and self-aggrandizing Patreon post – to butchering Lovely Complex‘s English dub simply because he did not like the source material.
Asked by a reader in response to his admission, “Was there ever any pushback in terms of ‘accurately’ portraying the characters? Like, were you beholden to anyone to retain the integrity of Lovely Complex? Or was it more of a ‘oh yes please excise as much transphobia as you can from this thank you’,” Blaber proudly declared, “The Discotek guys mostly let Lenti do what she wanted.”
It helps that most of the ‘accurate character portrayal’ in the sub is comprised of weird, inconsistent character tics that never amount to anything,” he explained. “Take Nobuko’s anti-trans radar, for example. That comes up maybe three times, she seemingly hates Seiko for no reason, never explains why, and then Seiko walks up to her and says ‘Nice bracelet!’ After that Nobuko decides to be friends with her.”
“The original character trait never amounted to anything, never made sense, never came up again, and wasn’t funny in the first place,” argued Blaber. “So changing it to an equally baffling ‘I hate my fashion rival. Oh, never mind, I like her now because she complimented my bracelet’ is just a lateral move, really.”
Further, he revealed, “Another ‘change’ we made is the bet Otani and Risa make.”
“In early episodes the ‘main plot’ centers around the two of them trying to get a boy/girlfriend before the other,” the localizer detailed. “This bet is the driving force behind episodes… 2 and 3, I believe. But after that the plot thread is dropped entirely even though nobody won. We added a few more mentions of that bet several episodes later and had them refer back to it to make the story flow a little more smoothly.”
Continuing in his revelations, Blaber then informed the public, “Of note, most anime distributors do tend to ask that you don’t advertise changes like making things less transphobic.”
“This is because large swaths of the anime community are racist/sexist/trasphobic/etc and will descend upon a company’s social media page for weeks for the strangest things,” he asserted. “Discotek added a content warning on one of their discs and got flak for that, so they’re understandably a little skittish now. Funi/Crunchy works like this too.”
“Tl;dr, most anime distributors don’t care if you make things nicer or more gay or add more representation,” he said. “They just ask that you don’t flaunt the changes or use buzzwords. You’re genuinely not allowed to say hot button words like ‘sexism’ or ‘patriarchy’ anymore in most Funi dubs unless its already in the subtitles because those are words that braindead weebs get mad about and share on their various image boards.”
“However,” Blaber clarified, “you CAN say things like ‘chauvinist’ because that isn’t on the buzzword list.”
“You just need to use words they aren’t pre-programmed to hate,” he concluded. “The people who get mad about this don’t actually have thoughts about these things or know why they hate them. They’ve just been told to hate specific words because those are The SJW words. It’s very embarrassing, lmao.”
Later proving that his butchering was motivated, at least in (large) part, out of spite, when pressed by a separate reader, “I wonder how long it’ll take for all the ‘its not true to the original’ f*ckers to come out of the wood work to be like ‘woke translators ruining my anime?'”, Blaber proudly proclaimed, “As for ‘Not true to the original f*ckers’, I don’t care what they think.”
“Idiots who assume all dubs are bad and all subs are good (or vice versa) don’t actually have any analytical skills and their opinion simply does not matter,” the localizer turned up his nose. “They’ve decided they’re going to hate our work no matter what.”
“We actually already saw a post from some dumbass praising the original subtitles from EP1 when it says ‘Big or small, if you’ve got a dick you’re a man, right?!’ because he read that as anti-trans and was happy the localization team didn’t Dragon Maid the line,” he continued to condescend, this particular swing referring to the Dragon Maid dub controversy. “Lots of sweaty racist nerd boys got mad about that one because they didn’t want woke politics in their titty show, even though that dialogue was literally the character going ‘Here’s why I like to dress with my tits out’.”
“Very, very funny that person praised ‘anti-trans’ rhetoric in one of the most famous examples of early trans rep in anime with the most trans dub of all time,” he ultimately concluded. “Whoops. Dummy should’ve watched the rest of the show first before showing his whole a-s.”