As this show continues the Black Lagoon vibes only get stronger but this episode did present an issue. Namely the supernaturally strong dog tag soldiers which can jump ten feet into the air and pull out road signs. In a series that at least started fairly set in reality these elements are somewhat odd though at least still feasible. Anime has always had a rather lax grip on the laws of physics so this isn’t anything new. But when the little girl mentioned these people referred to twilight’s it was a cause for concern. Gangsta has things going for it because it’s a fairly gritty show set within a somewhat realistic setting but if it starts bringing super soldier experiments into the mix that illusion is lost. Another cause for concern is that Mangalobe has skipped ahead in the manga. It’s possible they might come back to it and really what they skipped wasn’t really important but this could be a problem in future episodes if they continue to do this. Mangalobe is fairly liberal with its adaptations and when they start adding their own quirks it’s usually not for the better but instead the worse. The World God only knows anime for instance is where they attempted to stretch two episode arcs into four episode arcs with little success. So the question is whether Mangalobe can stop themselves from changing the story too much.
The fight in this episode was well animated and managed to keep things interesting but something small just broke immersion somewhat. It’s a little thing but Gangsta, much like Black Lagoon, just seems off to be watched in Japanese. It’s no fault of the Japanese voice actors but when you have a American man mocking someone for being from the orient in fluent Japanese something is just wrong. Gangsta just seems like an anime better experienced in English as with the large amount of non Japanese people would likely be speaking English more than Japanese. Subtitle only watchers, sometimes it’s just the better in English. I know that’s hard to accept but its true and I don’t care how many times you try to justify it, Goku’s voice in Japanese is just wrong.(Off topic, I know. But seriously I can’t see Goku’s Japanese voice as anything but bad.) Though I am curious as to how they will handle Nicolas’s voice in English because I think it would be interesting to keep his voice in Japanese for the English dub. Seeing as he speaks very little, requires subtitles to be understood and is from Japan it would be an interesting way of showing his character. On a last note I find it quite amusing that the moral heart of the show happens to be a prostitute, I mean a member of one of the lowest rungs of society happens to be one of the few genuinely morally upstanding people on the show. Though that looks to be changing as she helps the handymen and much like the little girl in this episode she too might become accustomed to wrongdoing.
I suppose it’s always depending on where you’re coming from, since Goku in latin spanish is the best dub. :p
Even in western media it’s kind of hard wanting to decide on foreign accents since several times the director isn’t even aware if their actors are doing it right or not, when they’re not from said country.
An example that comes in mind is Asuka since she has a german sort of accent but it goes over my head if she has that in the original japanese.
Actually most of (if not all of) the non japanese characters would be speaking italian, since it is the culture that most likely inspired the context of this series.
Even the name of the city, Ergastulum, was a type of building in ancient Rome(it makes a lot of sense when you look it up).
If a person doesn’t speak a word of japanese it might just be better to watch the thing dubbed, yea, but if the person actually understands japanese I think its always better to watch the original, since theres no risk of losing anything in the translation, even when the context is completely outside of the japanese culture, as weird as it sounds.
I can’t see Goku’s English voice as anything but bad. And I’m far from the only person who thinks that. There are many people on both sides of the fence here. That’s why both the english and japanese versions of Dragon Ball continue to be so successful.