Japanese TV Discovers Heroes & Hiro Nakamura

Yesterday morning, FTV’s Mezamashi TV introduced the American drama Heroes to Japanese television audiences. Here’s the clip:

They focus on actor Masi Oka, who plays Hiro Nakamura in the series. Oka, who immigrated to America when he was six and has since become an American citizen, is described a a very popular “Japanese” actor in America, possibly more popular than Ken Watanabe. They also mention that his character speaks Japanese on the show. [There is no mention of his Japanese sounding strange or not native.]

15 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 27, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Categories: Celebrity News, Japanese TV Tags:

Bruce

As they say 「相当高い声」。In Heroes he speaks Japanese in a very strange high squeaky voice. As a consequence his character seems like a weirdo. This may or may not be intentional.
WizarDru

It’s intentional, as far as I can tell. Hiro is supposed to be a pretty nerdy otaku, after all. His dark future version certainly is nothing like him (where he uses a much deeper voice). Hiro is, in many ways, the heart and soul of the show.
Jaydee

If anything, the Japanese will defiantly comment of Jason Kyson Lee’s Japanese in the show…
Erika

I didn’t notice the clock with the kanji on it on the show (‘s in that clip). Japanese people don’t use clocks like that -_-
Anyway, Heroes and the whole Masi Oka thing simultaneously pisses me off and makes me a little bit happier that there are OMG ASIAN-AMERICANS ON TV. Of course, those Asian-Ams play Asian characters who can’t speak proper English, but yeah.
Hebi-kai

I wonder what they’ll think when they see the office that both men work at which is supposed to be in Japan. Both men work in American style cubicles — things you’d NEVER see in Japan. Kinda odd.
T Dog

The thing that stuck out the most for me from the series were the “in japan” scenes where the little things were off. Like in the train station people were on every which side of the escalator. In reality everyone standing would be on the right side, single file.

revil

left side… unless you are in some strange place like osaka.

mashumk

He definitely has a strong, foreign accent to his Japanese. Nothing to do with the pitch of his voice. My American self and Japanese wife immediately noticed the very first time we saw the show. She couldn’t even understand everything he said.
I don’t watch the show so I don’t know why he’s popular but from the first and only episode I saw, it seemed to present Japan from a foreigner’s perspective without the due diligence (though no surprise there).
RYO

Hiro, Ando, and Hiro’s dad all have foreign accents to varying degrees. But this doesn’t bug me at all. The show is just too fun to let the small things get to you. (Hiro’s sister, however, appeared to be a native speaker.)

I agree that the scenes set in Japan looked obviously fake, but I get the sense that the same could be said about the scenes set in India. Keep in mind too that these scenes often showed up in the beginning of season 1 when there was no guarantee the show would be a hit and worth the extra money that would have to be spent to focus on making settings look authentic.
wes

aw why didn’t they show mirai hiro? they just showed like the same 5 seconds from the very beginning of the season over and over. it’s not like it would be some huge spoiler
John

I disagree, the way Maki speaks isn’t that off, he just doesn’t say some words with a strong enough accent. His Japanese is closer to how old Japanese speak it…if they were used to the softer pronunciation of English and had that squeaky voice. If your wife can’t understand mashunk, she’s either lived most her time in the countryside or is actually Chinese with Japanese name (and I’m not trying to be offensive with the latter or anything, it’s just that I’ve met quite a few Chinese people who speak modern Japanese well but have a hard time with varying dialects).
http://myspace.com/truthson D-san

My fiance (Japanese) says Hiro’s Japanese is good, but She says Ando is not Japanese.
She can’t understand him half the time.
Loserbait

Wait till the Japanese viewers listen to the god-awful job the non-Japanese actors did… I mean, I thought Charlie was bad… then I listened to Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man… I wanted to kill someone after that…
Trevor Hill

Hiro’s japanese is pretty authentic. I don’t think I noticed any accent. Ando is obvious though – I figured was korean after he spoke enough lines, although I haven’t tried to confirm that.
Katie

I would imagine (but don’t know) that Japanese viewers are used to this language-bending in foreign shows/movies in the same way I am with Japanese films that feature English dialogue. The writers have to keep the spoken English in such a way that they can subtitle it back to Japanese viewers intelligibly, but it definitely garbles up a bit.

It’s funny though, I’ve completely gotten used to it. I showed my sister (who’s lived in NYC for 5 years) a clip of ‘Renai Shashin’ and she had no idea what was going on in the English bits

Japanese TV Discovers Heroes & Hiro Nakamura

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