Mamma mia, here we go again.
Ffs why can’t you stop looking down on Kyo, especially when it comes to Japanese, his mother tongue, while you still rely on AI to understand what he says (which I don’t find a bad thing, it’s the opposite as it makes information accessible without the need of self proclaimed translators)? Pleaso do me a favour record yourself speaking your flawlessly pronounced, grammatically correct Japanese on native speaker level. I challenge you kindly.
Not only the other members didn’t say Kyo has “*mispronounced* stuff” (Kyo sometimes uses a certain kanji and picks another, for example a similar meaning, most known is 理由 which is read “riyū” but in this case the title is pronounced “wake” (訳) instead, both mean “reason” with slightly different connotations), d for z and vice versa has nothing to do with pronunciation issues as you implied by putting them in context.
To make it short: the answer lies in so called yotsugana. And that’s not that easy and calling it “mispronunciation” is simply unfair.
People need to move away from the idea of Japanese can be transcribed into their own language without difficulty. The constant laughter Japanese people receive for the L/R matter (“Engrish”, the term alone makes me aggressive) while they cannot really change it, is pure ignorance from people who think their native language is the centre of the universe and the standard in this world.
E.g. Japanese <ふ> is not pronounced like an English or German <fu>; it’s kind of in between “hu” and “fu”, it’s called voiceless bilabial fricative, it’s more or less a simplification for us to transcribe and pronounce Japanese words. There are more of those.
So, claiming Kyo “mispronounces stuff” is far fetched. In songs, and that’s not only him doing so, standard (we just drop he’s from Kyoto here) Japanese pronunciation is changed to fit in, Kyo’s habit of naturally expressing himself while singing also leads him to “omit syllables”. As for the syllables to be understood there is an unnatural pronunciation needed (people who take vocal classes learn it, that is why when fans doubted Kyo’s statements of him not taking singing lessons was easy to disprove). But that’s not a bastardised way of anything, especially if he uses a foreign language.
I’ve never seen his not entirely correct pronunciation of <Seele> as “certainly not my German” (wtf?!) but an artistic approach of pairing it with <Zelle> in this cluster of spirit, soul, will, cell. I even go that far he knew it’s not pronounced that way (as Geist, Wille, Zelle and eins, zwei, drei, vier are pretty much native speaker level) but made it fitting into the song, he’s treating words a lot like sounds in melodies rather than caring for the actual pronunciation, mostly seen in the English parts of his lyrics (while he sang “Bring Them To Light” with Apocalyptica in almost perfect English) but also with Japanese words.
Altogether yes, Kyo when he’s singing might be hard to understand linguistically sometimes but as he doesn’t strive for it but wants to be understood with one’s heart, it doesn’t really matter…
And yes, native Japanese speakers do agree he sometimes has an unusual way to express himself with words, to me it’s a reflection of how he’s perceiving his environment which is quite far from the norm. 🖤
(I don’t elaborate the fact that being a native speaker doesn’t make you flawlessly proficient in your mother tongue but Kyo at least is very skilled using words, not necessarily linguistically perfect which is again not what he strives for. Your scorn is uncalled for either way!)
