Today’s distraction: Little Nemo. (The boy, not the fish.)
I first saw this movie (in English) when I was a kid, and it’s remained a favorite of mine.
Some number of years ago, I learned that it was worked on by studios in multiple countries, including Japan. The Japanese dubbed release actually appeared in theaters in Japan before the English theater release in the United States.
I had found there was a Japanese DVD release, and bought it, thinking at the time, “This will be my first Japanese material with subtitles!”
This was still back when I had failed to make any progress in learning Japanese with any method I used. Grammar was fun to read about, but hard to comprehend in isolation, and thus easily forgotten. Reading native material was impossible, because I had to look up nine out of ten words, and by the time I looked up the fifth word, I’d forgotten the first three.
But this! This was a film I knew well in English, something that had a Japanese dub, and it also included Japanese subtitles!
Had I made it far enough in, I would have soon been discouraged by kanji. But something else halted my plans first.
The audio track and the subtitles…didn’t match. And apparently that’s true for the English DVD, as well!
I imagine the English DVD subtitles are based on the original Closed Captioning. This would explain why a lot of the English subtitles are simplified versions of what characters say, including shortening lines. Although, sometimes they’re completely different:
- Dialogue: “Maybe he left because we’re late?”
- Subtitle: “They’re gone.”
The dialogue is about why the king was not present when Nemo arrived. The subtitle refers to the guards having just left (to find the king).
(It’s also possible the script had last-minute changes during recording, and the closed caption hints at the original lines. I suppose I’ll never know.)
As for the Japanese release, the same thing happens where the subtitles don’t match the dialogue, but it’s also variable whether they’ll match the English dub or the English subtitles!
From the same scene:
- Dialogue: 「あ〜あ、行っちゃった」
- Subtitle: 「遅刻で起こったかな」
Here, the dialogue is about the guards having just left (to find the king), while the subtitle is about why the king isn’t there.
At the time, I did watch through the movie in Japanese, and enjoyed it very much (even if I feeling dispirited at my plan to finally learn Japanese for real having been dashed).
Last year, I passively listened to the Japanese audio track. I found could definitely understand bits and pieces, but a lack of attentive listening practice of Japanese dialogue likely kept me from catching a lot of words I know.
As I transition into listening practice (especially in 2022, my 2021 focus being on manga reading), Little Nemo is definitely going to be a barometer for me.
It’s said that one shouldn’t watched dubbed material for immersion, which makes sense. This movie was written with an English language script, composed by native English script writers, who were raised in a Western culture, adapting material from an American comic artist. A Japanese dub can’t escape that.
As one point of measuring my progress, however, I expect it to work out very well. (Maybe.)
Edit: Looking into it further, it seems the English subtitles file I have isn’t from the English DVD. (The English DVD doesn’t have subtitles.) Now I’m even less certain of where the English subtitles come from. They seem to match the Japanese dialogue, so many a fansub?
And glad to have inspired you to make them. I hope they serve you well in your studies! 
