Tag Archives: angry video game nerd

My Challenges Writing About VTubers (It’s Not Just About VTubers)

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I’ve been struggling a bit with the blog lately.

I decided to re-read some of my posts from the last year or so, and I noticed that my writing has been lacking in certain areas. In particular, I think I could do a better job with VTubers, and that what I write can sound a bit too uncritical. There’s nothing inherently wrong with saying “I liked this,” but it’s not being executed well.

A few months ago, Youtuber Dan Olsen released a new video essay called “I Don’t Know James Rolfe.” It’s difficult to describe succinctly, but it’s essentially a look at how Rolfe, aka the Angry Video Game Nerd, occupies a position where people project onto him their desires for what a veteran internet celebrity should be. The essay is also introspective, as Olsen struggles with the fact that Rolfe the creator seems to be both an ingenious pioneer of online media and someone whose knowledge of the filmmaking process is a little half-baked, only for Olsen to point the lens at himself and reveal his own insecurities about not being a “real filmmaker either.”

I watched AVGN almost from the start. I remember visiting the Cinemassacre site over the more unreliable YouTube of the late 2000s. One of my most popular posts ever was finding a reference cameo of him in an anime. For years, I kept up with every release and update, so I am very familiar with the character. But the video is less about the biography of Rolfe and more designed for the viewer to bring themselves into it. And in this instance, I had my baggage in tow: my concerns over where I am as a writer, the difficulty of writing about creative people in a world increasingly full of extreme opinions, and a growing concern for media literacy. As a blogger for over 16 years now, I feel a connection to Olsen and Rolfe as creators, but also to Olsen and Rolfe’s followers as commentators.

To put it differently, I realized that I’m walking on eggshells a bit when it comes to VTuber commentary, and it’s because, like Rolfe, their fans and anti-fans can be rather intense. You go from effusive praise to just toxic hatred that veers into both misogyny and misanthropy via bizarre conspiracy theories. If I want to do a comparison or say something came across as weaker than I expected, I don’t want to give ammo to the caustic haters even if it only amounts to a single tossed pebble (and not the fun Biboo kind) in the grand scheme of things. The parasocial aspect is even stronger with VTubers, and it can be worrying, even if I think there are lot of positive aspects to that community.

Adding to all that is a constant worry that I’m stagnating as a writer, that I overly rely on the same basic structures and phrases. I definitely think I’ve improved in some respects over the years, but I’ve never dedicated myself to improving this as a craft, and I think it shows. And because VTubers are such a new topic, I feel myself under-equipped to discuss them, especially compared with how much I’ve dedicated my time to anime and manga. 

I think I just want a space where discussion of VTubers (or any other topic) can be somewhere in the middle between the two extremes of obsessive love and all-consuming hate.

The Natsukashisa Critic

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With the Angry Video Game Nerd reaching some degree of popularity on Nico Nico Douga, it was only inevitable that his crossover fight would end up exposing the Japanese online community to the  Nostalgia Critic. There’s only one review up so far, but just like the AVGN videos there’s Japanese subtitles to help those with a less-than-ideal grasp of English along.

Humorously found under the title “AVGN Rival,” the first instance of the Nostalgia Critic on nicovideo is his review of Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue. Now what’s even more difficult about translating this review than doing one of the AVGN reviews is that a lot of these “big-name cartoons” at the time are not known too well in Japan. Sure there’s “Mutant Turtles,” and “Looney Tunes” and “Pooh,” but I get the feeling that Muppet Babies never made it across the Pacific. Please correct me if I’m wrong. In that respect, it’s a worthy endeavor, and if you just assume that these shows are something, then it all works out.

Also, apparently there is no good translation for “Brawny Man.” Alas. I wonder then how that Simpsons episode with the Burly Man turned out in Japan, if at all.

He’s the Angry Video Game Otaku

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In a previous post I talked about how someone has had the courtesy of translating episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series into Japanese and uploading them to Nico Nico Douga for the Japanese to enjoy. It turns out someone else has been doing the same with James Rolfe‘s most well-known internet phenomenon, the Angry Video Game Nerd (formerly known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd).

And just like with Yugioh Abridged, the fun comes from seeing how the Nico Nico Douga viewers respond to it (they love it), as well as seeing how his very American style of talking translates to a language which just doesn’t have the slang and syntax that English does. So how do you translate James’ expletive-ridden mouth into a language which simply doesn’t have the same take and history in regards to verbal obscenities? The answer is that you don’t.

Whoever the translator is, he’s opted for the spirit and not the letter. “Fuck” gets frequently translated to “kuso.” When there’s a long string of curses, the goal of the translation usually seems to be to convey his anger and not necessarily his exact language and often doesn’t even try to match the number of swears. And in some cases, certain puns or instances of wordplay don’t get translated at all to keep the subtitles simple and easy to read.

So sit back and take it up the ass in a foreign language, courtesy of Nico Nico Douga and Cinemassacre.