A good policy. In the case of anime, it's not just the translations that tend to be bad, but the voice acting is usually terrible.
Voice acting is a highly respectable profession in Japan (see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiy%C5%AB)). It's an ultimate goal for actors to aspire to in that country, while anime in the U.S. tends to be handled by the same couple Canadian companies whose small cadre of actors tend to give almost toneless performances with trite affectations. There's really a world of difference.
There's even an episode of a series called Excel Saga where one of the characters makes fun of his English voice actor counterpart. In that case, the English version had so completely misinterpreted what was funny about the character as to give him a completely inappropriate voice.
I've read some of both of those in their manga incarnation; I've never seen the anime. Are there great differences between the two?
Urusai Yatsura had some deviations from the manga, but mostly they were approved by Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 was a very different story.
Ranma 1/2 came after a hugely successful anime series based on Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku. The Maison Ikkoku anime was almost precisely like the manga, so it was decided, for the first season of Ranma 1/2, to do the same. Unfortunately, the series wasn't nearly as successful as anticipated, so subsequent seasons have progressively bad animation and deviate further and further from the manga to move into the realm of crap (in my opinion).
no subject
A good policy. In the case of anime, it's not just the translations that tend to be bad, but the voice acting is usually terrible.
Voice acting is a highly respectable profession in Japan (see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiy%C5%AB)). It's an ultimate goal for actors to aspire to in that country, while anime in the U.S. tends to be handled by the same couple Canadian companies whose small cadre of actors tend to give almost toneless performances with trite affectations. There's really a world of difference.
There's even an episode of a series called Excel Saga where one of the characters makes fun of his English voice actor counterpart. In that case, the English version had so completely misinterpreted what was funny about the character as to give him a completely inappropriate voice.
I've read some of both of those in their manga incarnation; I've never seen the anime. Are there great differences between the two?
Urusai Yatsura had some deviations from the manga, but mostly they were approved by Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 was a very different story.
Ranma 1/2 came after a hugely successful anime series based on Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku. The Maison Ikkoku anime was almost precisely like the manga, so it was decided, for the first season of Ranma 1/2, to do the same. Unfortunately, the series wasn't nearly as successful as anticipated, so subsequent seasons have progressively bad animation and deviate further and further from the manga to move into the realm of crap (in my opinion).