One thing to note is that just because one season of a show has subs, that doesn’t necessarily mean that any other seasons do. Some shows do have sequel seasons, but this is rare. Most Japanese dramas run for a single 10-12 episode season of 3 months this makes it so the good shows end before ever jumping the shark, and the bad shows, well, end. So here is a sample email you might send them: But, just to make even more sure, you might want to check with the vendor in question, especially since at least one major vendor (Amazon.jp) has a naughty habit of not listing any info at all about whether there are subs or not. I am quite certain that these shows have exact subs - I checked every single one at my local video store. 3年B組金八先生 (exploitative, tearjerking Confucian propaganda at its worst (love and respect for the sensei), but…whatever).電車男 (infinitely re-watchable dramedy geek love story.based on a supposedly true series of Internet forum posts).クロサギ (cool plot set-up, but the worst acting ever…even the subs couldn’t redeem this show for me).タイガー＆ドラゴン (plus the special extra episode「三枚起請の回」 - a 2-hour prequel that fills in a lot of details that are alluded to later in the show it’s really essential to a full understanding of the series (and was in fact made before the rest of the series, rather than later like some kind of starwarsian afterthought), so I highly recommend getting it and watching it first).Here are the ones I know about from my pavement-pounding research (I seriously went in the flesh, because the information on the web was on the unreliable side). Which is all well and good, but that kind of thing can tend to leave an avid learner like you or me…cold.īut there is hope! For there are some Japanese shows that do have exact Japanese subs right down to the pauses and bridges (the equivalents of “um”). Subtitles on foreign movies are not merely intended to repeat dialogue, but to convey, clarify and expound on dialogue - in other words, to pick up perceived slack in the audio translation.Hearing-impaired people can go in the general direction of heck.Nakamura told me that the thinking in Japan’s movie industry has typically followed two distinct lines: Why are the subs so often inexact or nonexistent?”.

And I said to him, I said: “Mr Nakamura, Double-U. So I went to my local video rental store, and asked to speak to the manager. Foreign/Hollywood movies dubbed into Japanese generally do have subs, but these are almost never exact dialogue transcripts (at least, I have never seen one), rather they are a rewording or a paraphrasing.īut why? I needed answers. As many of you are painfully aware, most Japanese-language movies, TV dramas and animes still have no subs on the DVDs.

Japanese movies with english subtitles