Does anyone know where to watch ATLA in Japanese? Obviously without English subtitles. Japanese subs are optional. I loved the series and now that I’m learning Japanese I’d love to watch the Japanese version.
Why do you want to watch American stuff dubbed into Japanese?
You might be able to find it on streaming using a VPN, though I’m not sure how great the JP dub is, since it’s going to have been translated from English
Flashbacks to middle school me assuming that anything that looked vaguely like anime must be Japanese and being very confused why I couldn’t find Avatar subbed on megavideo
But last I checked Japanese Netflix had Avatar with Japanese dub (this was a couple years ago though so could be out of date). So if you have a VPN that’s an option. I do remember Japanese dubbing in general being pretty terrible though. Like the voices didn’t match the mouth movements at all. I don’t remember if that applied to Avatar, but I think it might of
Edit: got curious so just checked. Avatar’s still on Japanese Netflix. They have Japanese audio but not Japanese subs (neither CC nor subs for the English audio) which is just weird. Also the dub quality’s fine, so that’s a relief
Netflix JP has it, so Netflix + VPN might work (though I’ve always found it to be a bit iffy). Can’t find any Japanese subs though.
With that said, I’d say that ATLA is absolutely not a good series for practice. It’s the classic square-peg-in-round-hole problem, where Japanese is being used to roughly mimic a series that was originally done in and based on English. Even checking the opening narration, there’s already something off; the Air Nomads are referred to as 気の民, which means ‘the *people* of air’.
I expect this replacement of words to be a theme; don’t expect that just because you know the original series, that the Japanese will line up with that and be easier to learn. This is a common mistake among people who opt to read translated properties, and isn’t entirely true. ‘Nomad’, and other words like it, are more familiar for westerners than Japanese people, so for the sake of localisation, they may well get replaced. Think ‘[jelly-filled donut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGNcAkXj4Pc)’ in reverse. (On the other hand, stuff like ‘bender’, which doesn’t have an equivalent term, is left entirely untranslated, just approximated as ベンダー)
Avatar in particular is something that a lot of people expect to be good in Japanese because ‘it’s based on eastern philosophy’. The problem is, it’s only based on a westerner’s *loose* understanding of eastern philosophy. For example, the showrunners clearly knew the Chinese had a concept of the elements, so they used the classical air, earth, water, and fire. Except that these are the classical *Greek* four elements. The classical [*Chinese* **five** elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)) are ‘**wood**, fire, earth, **metal**, and water’. The [Japanese Godai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godai_(Japanese_philosophy)) are closer, but again, it’s a five-element model, not four, and it uses wind (風), not air (空気, with the ATLA translation using 気), as well as a void/sky element.
TL;DR: ATLA is not based on Eastern philosophy, but a westerner’s interpretation of eastern philosophy, so it’s not really any better for learning Japanese than any other translated IP, nor is it better *in* Japanese. I’m not saying ‘don’t watch it’ (I wouldn’t have mentioned a source if that was the case), just be aware of this going in.
In Netflix, if you open your [https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount](https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount), expand the profile, click “Change” next to “Language”, and you will be able to enable additional languages for “Shows & Movies Languages”.
If you don’t do that, it will only pick the ones that are common in your region, even if available.
I don’t know if Avatar has Japanese, but this would enable it for all shows that do.
I too was looking for it just a few weeks ago, some private torrent sites have it, I don’t know how easy it is to acquire it on public ones though (probably outright impossible I’d guess), like others have said it is apparently on Netflix JP, if you wanna go through the trouble of that + VPN.
6 comments
Why do you want to watch American stuff dubbed into Japanese?
You might be able to find it on streaming using a VPN, though I’m not sure how great the JP dub is, since it’s going to have been translated from English
Flashbacks to middle school me assuming that anything that looked vaguely like anime must be Japanese and being very confused why I couldn’t find Avatar subbed on megavideo
But last I checked Japanese Netflix had Avatar with Japanese dub (this was a couple years ago though so could be out of date). So if you have a VPN that’s an option. I do remember Japanese dubbing in general being pretty terrible though. Like the voices didn’t match the mouth movements at all. I don’t remember if that applied to Avatar, but I think it might of
Edit: got curious so just checked. Avatar’s still on Japanese Netflix. They have Japanese audio but not Japanese subs (neither CC nor subs for the English audio) which is just weird. Also the dub quality’s fine, so that’s a relief
Netflix JP has it, so Netflix + VPN might work (though I’ve always found it to be a bit iffy). Can’t find any Japanese subs though.
With that said, I’d say that ATLA is absolutely not a good series for practice. It’s the classic square-peg-in-round-hole problem, where Japanese is being used to roughly mimic a series that was originally done in and based on English. Even checking the opening narration, there’s already something off; the Air Nomads are referred to as 気の民, which means ‘the *people* of air’.
I expect this replacement of words to be a theme; don’t expect that just because you know the original series, that the Japanese will line up with that and be easier to learn. This is a common mistake among people who opt to read translated properties, and isn’t entirely true. ‘Nomad’, and other words like it, are more familiar for westerners than Japanese people, so for the sake of localisation, they may well get replaced. Think ‘[jelly-filled donut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGNcAkXj4Pc)’ in reverse. (On the other hand, stuff like ‘bender’, which doesn’t have an equivalent term, is left entirely untranslated, just approximated as ベンダー)
Avatar in particular is something that a lot of people expect to be good in Japanese because ‘it’s based on eastern philosophy’. The problem is, it’s only based on a westerner’s *loose* understanding of eastern philosophy. For example, the showrunners clearly knew the Chinese had a concept of the elements, so they used the classical air, earth, water, and fire. Except that these are the classical *Greek* four elements. The classical [*Chinese* **five** elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)) are ‘**wood**, fire, earth, **metal**, and water’. The [Japanese Godai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godai_(Japanese_philosophy)) are closer, but again, it’s a five-element model, not four, and it uses wind (風), not air (空気, with the ATLA translation using 気), as well as a void/sky element.
TL;DR: ATLA is not based on Eastern philosophy, but a westerner’s interpretation of eastern philosophy, so it’s not really any better for learning Japanese than any other translated IP, nor is it better *in* Japanese. I’m not saying ‘don’t watch it’ (I wouldn’t have mentioned a source if that was the case), just be aware of this going in.
In Netflix, if you open your [https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount](https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount), expand the profile, click “Change” next to “Language”, and you will be able to enable additional languages for “Shows & Movies Languages”.
If you don’t do that, it will only pick the ones that are common in your region, even if available.
I don’t know if Avatar has Japanese, but this would enable it for all shows that do.
I too was looking for it just a few weeks ago, some private torrent sites have it, I don’t know how easy it is to acquire it on public ones though (probably outright impossible I’d guess), like others have said it is apparently on Netflix JP, if you wanna go through the trouble of that + VPN.