Oh I am so happy I am starting to find my people about this. 🫶
I’ve been a donghua fan since like 2017 or 2018 and God the amount of sinophobic comments you could find in any comment section is so annoying. So I get why a lot of Chinese marketing teams will be less clear about Chinese voice-acting or even cover up the fact something has Chinese people working on it (eg even though Genshin Impact celebrates Chinese culture, it’s still got a Japanese name—and even if we were to assume it has the Japanese name because it’s easier to pronounce than Chinese, that doesn’t change the fact the English Twitter only promotes the English and Japanese dub VAs).
But this doesn’t change the fact I am sick and tired of Chinese things getting their Chinese-ness erased just to appeal to global audiences, and that because of it and the sinophobia we’re not addressing by catering to them, global audiences also continue to erase the Chinese-ness of Chinese things.
It’s like a shitty-ass never-ending cycle of “let’s not market this Chinese thing as Chinese because then global audiences won’t like it and won’t want to check it out and then global audiences pretend the Chinese thing isn’t Chinese which confuses new audience members.”
Like tell me why the fuck is it so hard to find Chinese clips of Chinese shows online???
Hell, I’ve said this before but I’m petty so I’ll say it again: why do Genshin Impact dub compilations always put the Chinese as the second-last or even last language showcased? What right do Japanese and English have to be first?
I could get putting English first since most of the compilers are English speakers, but why should Japanese go before Chinese, the original language? If we wanted to be more objective and go by alphabetical order, Chinese should still be first!
Even the fact it’s highly scarce for Chinese voice-acted clips of Chinese media to be uploaded online honestly kind of upsets me, even though I get that for games it’s preferable to play in your own language. But that doesn’t change the fact it’s still easier for me to find the Japanese dub of Hoyoverse games or Love and Deepspace or Arknights etc than the Chinese one.
Other examples of this include the fact it takes me forever to find a clip from Scissor Seven in Chinese, and the anime dude-bros who watch it then claim that the English dub is better because “Chinese VAs don’t emote that much.”
You don’t even understand or speak Chinese—what do you think you know shit about how emotion is expressed in Chinese????
Sometimes I actually wish I barely understood Chinese to know what these people hear when they listen to Chinese, because apparently it’s such an emotionless and fast-paced and cacophonous and ugly language, according to many of them.
Also my main reason for advocating for calling donghua donghua instead of anime or even Chinese anime will always be rooted in this:
Calling a donghua a donghua is the easiest way to 1) root out sinophobes and 2) avoid confusion.
The fact so many people think To Be Hero X is an anime is a case-in-point.
“But it’s a Japanese and Chinese collab,” some people argue back, and that’s another case-in-point: so many people hear that it’s a collab and automatically assume some of this amazing animation must have been done in Japan, because only Japan can make such awesome animation! Even if China had a hand in it, surely the main force must have been Japan, right?
The answer is no!! As behind-the-scenes videos have shown, the entire show was animated in China! The collaboration part comes from them inviting a Japanese music artist and Aniplex being a co-producer alongside Bilibili.
So what does it say about people that they assume Japan must have helped China make something this cool??
And you know how we can avoid it? By acknowledging donghua as donghua!
Especially when a shitty company like Crunchyroll has to fucking label the Japanese dub as the “original” because they don’t, and never have, given two shits about respecting donghua (God, I sound so bitter but I’m so tired of this).
Like here’s a compilation of all the reasons I dislike Crunchyroll’s treatment of donghua, besides them now labelling the Japanese dub of To Be Hero X as the original language:
izzy806
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
2087
vaporwave
annaxmalina
