The Price is Wrong

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I was in the post office sending off a translated script, when the man behind the counter said: “We can’t just send it to America Small Packet Rate, we have to know how much it’s worth.”

“That depends,” I said. “The Writers’ Guild say it’s worth £18,000, the Institute of Translators and Interpreters say £12,000, in France it’s a thousand pounds a throw, and The Company That Shall Remain Nameless won’t pay for it at all because they’ve got someone who does it for 50p and a bunch of grapes.”
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Soundalikes

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Since so many English-language programmes are dubbed in Japan, the voice-acting industry is much better established than in the UK. This has led to an international variant on stunt casting, whereby certain actors can trade off the reputation of the Hollywood stars whose voices they replace. NHK has done a superb job of translating British sci-fi caper Doctor Who into Japanese, with former Fellowship of the Rings translator Katsushige Hirata handling the script, alongside a string of notables from the voice-acting world.
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The Tiger’s Tail

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It has always struck me as strange that the stories of Robin Hood should crop up in Europe at the same time as stories of the heroes of the Water Margin in China and of Yoshitsune in Japan. What is it about the late 12th century that suddenly favours stories of noble outlaws opposing dastardly governments? Why is it that for every story of Robin Hood facing Little John on a log across a stream, there is an analogue in the East, like that of Yoshitsune fighting Benkei on the Gojo Bridge?
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Iron Man

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The lavishly illustrated Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto not only examines the maverick director’s films, but his formative years, fighting with his little brother (who he would eventually shove into a boxing ring in Tokyo Fist), watching anime and Gamera movies. A life of salaried drudgery beckons, until Tsukamoto strikes it lucky with an ultra-violent tale of metallic possession – Tetsuo.
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The Silver Age

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While everyone is comparing careers and counting grey hairs at the high school reunion, two people stand strangely apart. One is Michiko, the one-time straight-A student who dropped out and now works as a lowly shop assistant. The other is Kenji, an average salaryman, who’s trying to put a brave face on his wife’s death in a Philippines car crash. Former childhood sweethearts, they resume their relationship, but this time their kids bring complications. Her teenage son Masahiko is a tearaway biker who shows her no respect. His son Kazuma is a latchkey kid, isolated by his father’s new-found love interest, beaten up at school because his mother never comes to pick him up. One day, as Kazuma walks home alone, he is hit by a car.
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The Pirate King

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Yesterday was a hot holiday Monday in London, so naturally I was standing in front of a galleon on the South Bank, talking about Chinese pirates. There’s a film crew in town making a documentary about Coxinga, the pirate king of Taiwan, who led the resistance against the Manchu occupation in the 1600s. The director wanted pictures of me doing quintessentially London things, so I suggested playing tinny music from my cellphone out loud on the train until someone punched me. Instead, he plumped for walking beside the Thames, until we were moved along by Tower of London security.

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Due Diligence

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In Japan, where the concept was first invented, they were called the Money Tigers. In Finland they are the Lions. In Israel, the Sharks. We call them the Dragons, and their job is to audit the plans of would-be entrepreneurs in the Dragons’ Den. If Judge Judy isn’t on, I’m there, watching the way they pierce to the heart of bad ideas. And sometimes, for fun, I imagine what it would be like if someone tried to attract the Dragons to invest in the anime industry.
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Settling Down

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In Hotman, a former gang member tries to put his life in order to raise his four younger siblings – no surprise that the leading role of Enzo Takaya is taken by Takashi Sorimachi, still widely known for his role as a gangster-made-good in GTO. But Enzo doesn’t merely have to teach classes in fine art and chase around after his surrogate family, he also opens his door to find five-year-old Nanami (Nana Yamauchi). Her absent mother has left a note informing Enzo that he is the father. Enzo now has to contend with a fifth hungry mouth to feed, and one with a series of allergies and intolerances that force him to become an instant expert on organic produce and health food. It could only be based on a manga…
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Game On

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Nothing describes the Chinese transition into capitalism quite as well as the Beijing Olympic mascots. Five little critters swarm all over the Beijing merchandise, in a move that guarantees a Pokémon style supermarket sweep for any parents at the games. Oh yes, you’ll have to catch ’em all, and since there are five of them, that’s five times the foreign currency for Beijing. Behind the scenes, the multiple mascots might have been intended to prevent any single Chinese region from speaking for the whole. You can’t have just a panda, as that only means Sichuan to the Chinese. Can’t have just a swallow, as that’s the symbolic bird of the Beijing region. A fish is too Shanghainese. What about a big red personification of the Olympic flame? What about a politically-sensitive Tibetan antelope? What about all of the above, darting across the merchandise like a squad of colour-coded Power Rangers.
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