this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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I learned a ton of Japanese from anime. I also took two semesters in college, but anime was a huge portion. I signed on as a translation cleanup guy for a fansub group back in the day. We had a guy in Japan who could write broken English for the dialogue in anime episodes, and then I was the guy who was excellent with English but only had a basic grasp of Japanese (grade school level). Between us, we could get a script.
I learned more from cleaning up his scripts than I EVER did in two semesters of college.
Nowadays, I am not sure what the word for it is, but I can understand spoken Japanese at a high level but I cannot speak back very fluently. My spoken word is full of pauses as I try to think of the right word. But if you speak to me in Japanese, I understand very well.
So... is the meme accurate? I guess partially. It's not like I would ever call myself fluent. I can just watch anime without subtitles now.
I learned a lot of the English language watching cartoons. You even can get a basic understanding of culture through them.
However the crusty nerd Japanese simp is someone using pop culture to try and become Japanese. It's as silly as coming to America and dress as John Wayne and expect Texans to accept you a one of their own.
It's not about language at all it's about culture and a feeling of belonging. There's nothing wrong with it in essence. Say a Japanese dude dressing as cowboy going to a bar will probably have a good time and get entertained by texan people loving their weird fascination.
However, should they go live there and expect to be considered a true texan, they will find out that it doesn't really work that way...