I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

I'M SORRY...

...but, yesterday, I was watching an episode of Las Guerreras Magicas, the Mexican Spanish-dubbed version of the action-oriented "magical girl" fantasy anime series Magic Knight Rayearth, and I find the Spanish version of the theme song unintentionally hilarious.

I mean, I'm not a good judge of Spanish-language dubs, since, as someone who grew up in the province of Quebec and who had a hard enough time learning French, I don't really know any Spanish beyond what little I picked up from watching American Sesame Street, but the acting in the dub itself sounds fine as far as I can tell.

It's just the opening theme song, which follows the melody of the Japanese theme song, "Yuzurenai Negai" ("Unyielding Wish") using the same opening animation (other than eliminating the nude transformation shots of when Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are Barbie-doll naked and are surrounded by the color-coded mists), uses deep-voiced male singers. Rayearth, which is based on the manga produced by the all-female comic artist team CLAMP, isn't exactly the most "girly-girl" of all the varied mahou shoujo anime out there, it's actually fairly progressive, with female characters being just as powerful as the guys, but it's still very jarring hearing men with sub-baritone bass voices singing a song I've never heard anyone with a penis perform before. Excluding me in the shower. When I first heard it, it sounded like I was hearing a bunch of angry dogs barking in the distance. Or maybe even one of those "bear" death metal guys singing just a tiny bit more normal.

It's not like the English theme song from the Media Blasters/Anime Works version, where they did a pretty good job finding a singer whose a fairly close match for the Japanese one (and they get the gist of the meaning of the Japanese lyrics right too).

As it stands, as hard as it is to believe, I find the Mexican version of the theme song to be even more unintentionally hilarious than even the R&B-ish take on "Yuzurenai Negai" heard in the opening to the English-dubbed version of the Sega Saturn game (whose dub has nothing to do with the Media Blasters dub of the anime).

Also on YouTube, I found this Dutch version of the opening song, but I think it's just a joke recorded by some guy with his little $10 computer microphone.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 10:12 PM