When the seminal mid-'90s anime
Neon Genesis Evangelion dropped on Netflix last week, some of the changes to the new translation left longtime fans of the show accusing the show's translator of diminishing the significance of the queer relationship depicted in the show. Now, after revelations about the translator's past work—including opposition to a ban on fictional child pornography—fans are further calling his intentions into question.
When it was
announced in late November of 2018 that
Evangelion was coming to Netflix, many people were excited to finally have the classic show accessible again. Both a deconstruction of the popular mecha genre and an intense psychological drama,
Evangelion's influence on culture is hard to overstate. In spite of this, it hasn't been distributed in English since 2011. Excitement became more cautious as
talk began circulating of a new dub that explicitly avoided including any of the original voice actors.
Evangelion became available on Netflix on June 21, with some longtime fans skeptical of how the new dub would live up to the original. Some worries were assuaged: The show still had the iconic original theme, and Casey Mongillo did an excellent job voicing the main character, Shinji Ikari.
But the iconic ending credits song, a cover of "Fly Me to the Moon," was gone. While its absence was felt at the end of the very first episode, there was a different change, near the end of the series, that angered queer fans specifically. The entire show was retranslated for Netflix's new dub, and while some argued the translation is aptly more literal, others said the emotional weight of certain lines was lost.
Dan Kanemitsu, who's credited with the translation for Netflix's version of
Evangelion, tweeted he tried his best to be "faithful to the original source material" but also
said that "leaving room for interpretation [makes] things exciting." For example, there is an argument to be made that the Japanese word "suki" can be literally translated as "like," although it doesn't accurately reflect the depth of feeling implied by that word.
His defense of a more "literal" translation is under further scrutiny by people who
noticed that every instance of "terrorist" was replaced with "leftist" or "left-wing terrorist."
In episode 24, Shinji Ikari, the anxious 14-year-old pilot antagonist, meets Kaworu Nagisa, the mysterious new Eva pilot whose forward nature frequently makes Shinji blush. He's only there for one episode, but he makes an enormous mark on Shinji's psyche. After they take a shower together, Kaworu says in the original English subtitles, "You have my regard." When Shinji is confused, he clarifies by saying "It means I love you." In Netflix's version, he instead says "You're worthy of my grace" and "I'm saying I like you."
As people watched the new dub and discovered changes to the queer context, many longtime fans grew upset. Some turned their anger over what they felt was queer erasure into art, celebrating the relationship or making fun of the trope of poorly veiled queerness.
