ZEKE AND PANDORIA: THE WORLD'S FIRST CONFIRMED CASE OF "HETWASHING"
i got asked about this earlier and only just remembered to, like, go get the necessary materials lmao but one of the xenoblade 2 localization's weirder decisions is them actively downplaying zeke and pandoria's romantic relationship in ways i genuinely don't see the point of. this is something i only know about because of twitter user feathermetsu posting about it years ago, but like. their account is private now lmao i just don't wanna go around pretending i'm the genius who found this out, it's someone else.
ANYWAY take a look at this post-battle conversation
which, on the surface, doesn't seem too objectionable because it's zeke being kind of chuuni about their epic awesome bond etc, but then, Perplexingly, here's the japanese version with the jank-ass google translation
so first of all, the inherent roughness/stiffness of direct machine translation aside, honestly i think this one is way better conceptually because zeke being a dipshit talking about their awesome epic ONE MILLION YEARS together adds that classic chuuni flair to him while also being a joke. i don't know why they just dropped this gag, considering it's both funny and in-character. second hey see that kanji i highlighted. wanna know what it means
ZEKE VON GENBU SEZ: ONE MILLION YEARS OF AWESOME MARRIAGE TO MY AWESOME WIFE.
like i guessss you could argue there's something lost in translation here but i think given how panzeke act like, all the time, it's not unfair to assume the intent really was that zeke was being weirdly loud and annoying about having an elf girlfriend for ONE MILLION YEARS, which, again, is really funny and fitting for him. i genuinely don't get this decision, because it's not like the localization totally annihilates all of panzeke's romantic aura. they just randomly toned this one down while removing a pretty good joke. weird localization man. good in some places. bizarre in others.
I still love how Zeke, Pandoria and Turters are parodies of Team Rocket appearances from the Pokemon anime. I've always loved these scenes in Xenoblade 2.
