Just wondering how many of you watch raw anime versus subbed. I'd watch raw, but my Japanese hasn't gotten to that point yet.
If you do watch raw, how much studying did it take for you to be able to do so? Unless you are Japanese, then it probably wouldn't take much studying...
I watched a few eps of Strawberry Panic raw and it was pretty easy to understand what was going on. But here we're talking about the lamest of lame scripts. The only studying I've really done is watching anime. After a while the sorts of things the stupid characters in stupid anime become easy for stupid people like me to understand! ^_^
I have been on subs for about 5 years, but I am hoping to move on to raws sometime in the next few months or so as I move into the more complex vocabulary and stuff. I will probably start with an anime with some... you know... simpler scripts. Haha. I've only been studying Japanese hardcore for the past 6 months or so, but I am a quick learner.
I'm currently experimenting by watching Saiunkoku Monogatari raw. It's very interesting, I can understand what's going on, but I have no idea what people say.
It would be such a great accomplishment to be able to watch the raws and comprehend the dialogue, but as now I'd only be staring at the screen trying to guess what the characters are saying. So for now, it's purely subs for me.
I watch subs, because even while I'm beginning to understand basic conversational stuff, that's only half the episode in most of the stuff I watch. And that doesn't even include all the nuances I might be missing.
I started watching Initial D in raw at about halfway through the fourth stage, and I found I was able to follow the plot really well without subs. But then, besides knowing from the past seasons the generic terminology, almost all the car-talk in I:D is either straight english words or very close loanwords. I suspect I could watch a good bit of the series I watch in raw in a pinch and then catch up when the subs come out (this also is nice because it's harder to screencap subbed episodes than raws), but it's easier to just watch the subs the first time around than watch it twice.
>>but it's easier to just watch the subs the first time around than watch it twice.
Yeah... at my rate of anime consumption I definitely can't afford to watch the average episode twice.
One of the things that I'd noticed that drove me to want to be able to pick up on the raws properly, was that I started noticing how much stuff I was missing in particularly wordy shows. I mean, sure, you take in the picture, but I sort of realized that I missed of a lot of stuff when drowning in subtitles. Well, that's how I felt, especially moving from an English language show, on to a subtitled show, anime or not. So that's what got me started trying in earnest.
I watch stictly subbed because I can't understand Japanese. I would love to watch raws considering its easier to get raws, plus more series are done in raw than subbed.
If I could watch raws, I would have moved to Japan a long time ago and started up a loan shark company or something in Tokyo. Lot of money to be made there. But yeah, as my love for anime and my love for Japan are linked, I would definitely be in Japan right now if I could watch raws...
>>Well, that's how I felt, especially moving from an English language show, on to a subtitled show, anime or not.
Huh. For me, actually, after watching subbed anime for two+ years without any non-subtitled visual stuff, I kind of stopped being able to watch non-subtitled stuff. Especially English. Like, I simply can't watch live action American TV anymore. It's super weird. I guess it's all about conditioning.
Depends on the shows. I watch shows raw when I really really like the show and not only can't wait for the subs, but like the show enough that I'll want to watch each episode a few times.
And I've found that while I can watch school life shows raw and get like 90% of the dialogue, that gets flipped around with mecha shows, where I'll be like "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, now wonder that didn't make any sense. I thought that they said 'port quantum cannon' and that's why I couldn't figure out why the beam was coming out of the right side of the battleship."
Oh, and I can't watch Haruhi raw because everything will be fine and then Nagato will start talking and I'll just have to give up and wait for the subs.
It took me probably a good year and a half of college Japanese before I felt comfortable watching raws. In total I've had 4 semesters of college Japanese so far and while I'm not taking any right now (it's not covered under my Masters program but hopefully will be under my Ph.D. program), I've also been watching/reading mostly raw anime, Japanese-language mangas, and playing the occasional Japanese-language ADV game (like the Sakura Taisen and Muv-Luv games) for the past year so I've been expanding my vocabulary (and kanji!) and keeping my comprehension skills sharp.
Mostly subs. But if the show is very interesting and is subbed far too slowly, I'd watch it raw first and then watch the subs later.
The only shows I am watching raw now are Saiunkoku Monogatari and Ouran, the first being to far behind in terms of subs and the second is just a favourite and can't resist the temptation to grab the first raw I can find.
I manage to get about 50% of the talk and that is I guess enough to keep track what is really going on.
My experience with Japanese is two years of evening courses twice a week (we moved very slowly, so I am pretty much unable to talk and read, but at least I know some basics). Funninest thing i that I picked up Japanese not because of anime, since I didn't know such thing existed at that point of time, but because of my fascination with Japan in general.
I wish I could continue but where I currently live there's no such opportunity and I hate studying on myself.
Oh, and if it's something like Pretty Cure that's meant for little kids (and pedophiles), I can understand like every single thing that they say in the raw.
