Chainsaw Man‘s finale is just around the corner and with it comes a new character, Future Devil. Aki, one of Chainsaw Man‘s protagonists, encountered the Future Devil in episode 11. The Future Devil has a seemingly boisterous personality, exclaiming this line: “The future is the best!”.
However, this particular line sparked controversy among the Brazilian audience due to an apparent local translation.
This is because this seemingly simple line got taken out of context due to the fan mistranslations in the past. It was “Future é pica”, (The future is awesome) and became a meme in the Brazilian Chainsaw Man fandom as it uses a slang. However, the meme started to include derogatory remarks that are homophobic, transphobic, and even misogynistic. This led to a lot of people believing this to be an actual translation even though it is only fan-made.
Lately, this was clarified by a Twitter netizen that the meme is actually not the accurate translation of Future Devil’s line. Instead of “Future é pica (The future is awesome)”, it is “O futuro, é top” which translates to “The future is great”. This then debunks the authenticity of the translations in the meme.
The tweet above translates to:
“The future wasn’t ‘awesome’… The future wasn’t ‘awesome’… The future wasn’t ‘awesome’
Chainsaw Man fans will cry over Brazil.”
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The Responses
The responses on this confirmation show that a lot of netizens opposed the “Future é pica” meme. This is because of how it became problematic due to the derogatory translations created by fans.
The tweet above translates to: “You mean the fans of anti-Semitic, misogynistic and transphobic scan must be crying over the lack of lame joke”. This validates how the meme evolved into something unpleasant.
The tweet above translates to: “…the future is awesome since this translation came from an anti-Semitic scan (and if I’m not mistaken, there was even a transphobic joke). in the physical manga it is “the future is great!”, so I found the adaptation to be “[O futuro é] top!” more than great”.
The tweet above translates to: “Well, cry more, it’s boring as f*ck.” This refers to how they viewed the pica meme and that it was never funny.
Crunchyroll’s Alleged Reference to the Meme
A netizen also noticed that Crunchyroll apparently has referenced the pica meme in its subtitle coding. Some netizens happen to dig deeper into Crunchyroll’s Portuguese subtitles through a website called Inspect Element. Among the codes of the subtitles, there is a “Future é pica” line. This sparked a divisive reaction among fans. There are some who liked the reference, but there are some who expressed their distaste of it.
This also sparked a debate online about the translation practices among manga and anime. The discussion of accurate translations come to light, and this is not something new. There is an article from Culture Trip that talks about how Japanese anime gets lost in translation; as well as a CBR article explaining how translations are never going to be 100% accurate.
What do you think of the translations of anime and manga? Do you think they will ever be accurate?
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