No one who has been in American/overseas anime fandom has escaped the subs vs. dubs debate. (For the non-nerds: this is the question of if you watch anime in Japanese with subtitles or if you watch it dubbed in English.) Of course, I was team subs. In many ways, my whole life trajectory—learning Japanese, going to graduate school in Japanese media studies, becoming a professor—was decided by my childhood allegiance to watching anime in the original language.

So imagine my surprise in 2019 when the English dub of the anime movie Promare trended on Japanese Twitter. Japanese fans enjoying the English dub of an anime? My 11-year-old self was going to have to eat her words. 

Promare is a 2019 original theatrical anime produced by Studio Trigger and directed by Imaishi Hiroyuki and written by Nakashima Kazuki. This team was already well-established with action hits Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007) and Kill La Kill (2013). The film debuted in Japan in May, followed by an American release in September; then, in December, the distributor made the unusual decision to book English-language (dubbed and subbed) screenings in Japan, allowing Japanese audiences to see the English dub version. 

Promare follows a young hero named Galo as he joins a firefighting squad, except the fires in this world aren’t your average kitchen fire: they are caused by “Burnish,” humans with pyrokinetic abilities. As Galo captures Lio, the leader of the Burnish, we learn that the Burnish are in fact being oppressed, imprisoned, and experimented on by the human government. Galo and Lio join forces to save the Burnish, resulting in an obvious metaphor for discrimination and a fun action fantasy romp through fighting fascism. 

More importantly to its appeal: Galo and Lio are extremely gay. Not, like, in a way where the movie actually says that. In the more typical anime way where the emotional core of the movie is focused on the development of their relationship and they are obviously obsessed with each other and it would be hot if they kissed, which they sort of do. For fans in Japan and abroad, especially female fans, the implied homoeroticism was a major draw for the film. Almost as soon as the movie came out, fans were creating dōjinshi (fanzines), fanart, and fanfiction depicting Galo and Lio falling in love. 

The scene that had Japanese fans in a tizzy over the nuances of English translation was a homoeroticism classic: a CPR scene. During the climactic battle, Lio has expended all his energy; he falls unconscious and begins to disintegrate. Galo punches the villain and then runs back to revive him. He performs CPR using the Burnish flame, swallowing it and kissing it into his mouth. Lio’s injuries heal and he awakens. 

The English line that trended on Japanese twitter was a translation of what Galo says as he tries to revive Lio. In Japanese, he says 「しっかりしろ！」shikkari shiro! “Shikkari” means being strong, firm, or secure; in this context, Galo means “hang in there” or “don’t die.” The English dub translated this as “Stay with me!” as a paramedic might say to a patient they’re trying to revive. Honestly, this line in English doesn’t strike me as being romantic because it’s so commonly used in this scenario. The Japanese fans, however, found this to be an overtly romantic proposal; they might be mainly familiar with the phrase “stay with me” as a staple of love songs and romantic dramas. To them, this was a new suggestion of Galo and Lio’s love and, therefore, a source of pleasure for fans who viewed them as having romantic potential. The Japanese fans’ distance from the English language allowed them to hear nuances in this line that English native speakers might not be able to hear. The “Stay with me” line—left in English—became the title and theme of a number of dōjinshi and other fanworks by Japanese creators. 

Though homoeroticism is a common feature of anime, Promare is one case where a queer reading of the characters also dovetails nicely with the film’s explicit anti-discrimination message. The Burnish grow up as regular humans but become “dangerous” when their powers awaken, similar to how members of the LGBTQ+ community grow up with their identities secret. The linked clip includes Galo’s own reaction to realizing he had set a fire, which he swore never to do; as he grew to care about Lio, he discovered he himself was also a Burnish. 

Status in American anime fandom is often determined by how much proximity you can claim to the original “authentic” foreign culture of Japan; part of what American fans are consuming is the Japaneseness of anime. We see a similar phenomenon in K-pop fandom where fans decry their faves becoming too Westernized by singing English songs that appeal to global markets. They want the Koreanness, which they view as markedly different and superior to the homegrown pop stars. What makes a foreign pop culture more appealing? A part of it is retro-style orientalism, the desire for those in the center of Empire to consume those external to it to enact their own sort of conquest. But another part of it is an exhaustion with the sameness of hegemonic American media. Many fans view Japanese or Korean media as a way to escape the white supremacy of mainstream American culture. For me growing up, part of the appeal of anime (besides being a great topic for internet arguments) was that it seemed to show more queerness and more gender variation than American media (and certainly more than American children’s media!)

The transnational movement of anime always entails the reinterpretation of the material by overseas fans, who are partly blind to the original context and reapplying the works to understand their own cultural position in ways that many Japanese fans would find surprising. Often the ways in which queer representation is read into anime differs between American fans and Japanese fans, with American fans being more focused on representational politics and characters’ stated identities while Japanese fans are more interested in relationships and suggested connections. Here, with the reimportation of Promare into Japan in its English dub form, we can see Japanese fans going through the reinterpretation process with the English dialogue, finding new ways to see the queerness in the text through the transformative qualities of translation.