Yakuza’s selective English dubbing reminds me of going home

digitaltrends.com:

When Sega announced in 2018 that Yakuza spinoff title Judgment would receive an English dub, I was pretty excited. While I really enjoyed 2017’s Yakuza 0 and its original Japanese voice track, I’m the type of person who prefers listening to English dubs when watching anime or playing Japanese RPGs. When Judgment launched in Western territories on June 25, 2019, I was thrilled to hear Greg Chun’s charming voice come through my TV speakers as he portrayed the game’s protagonist, Takayuki Yagami.

But Judgment’s English voice track doesn’t cover the entire game. Key dialogue pertaining to the game’s critical path is in English and some of the important side characters speak it too, but not everything was dubbed over. As a result, while Yagami goes around speaking English, everyone else in the city of Kamurocho sticks with Japanese.

While Sega of America implemented the English dub track in this manner for logistical reasons, the game unexpectedly reminded me of my own experiences going back to my home country of China.

In Judgment and its sequel, Lost Judgment, there’s one particular interaction in the games that I relate to the most. It’s when Yagami orders food at a restaurant and he says “thank you” in English while the cashier says in response, “arigato gozaimashita” — meaning “thank you very much” in Japanese.

That particular interaction calls back to a familiar,real-life experience whenever I’d venture outdoors in China. My own Mandarin Chinese speaking skills aren’t very good, and sometimes I’d even forget that I was not in the United States! I often found myself saying “thank you” in English to my server who brought over my food. However, all of the servers knew what I meant anyway since English is a globally popular