Sharing Stories Internationally through New Media

I have always had a fascination with Japanese manga, from when I was really in my younger teens I was always checking out manga books from the library or searching YouTube to watch different anime cartoons and to see the animation that they use compared to how we create it here in America.

My favorite manga is one called Pichi Pichi Pitch: Mermaid Melody created by Michiko Yokote. It is about the seven mermaid princesses that were the guardians of the seven seas. It focused on one princess in particular, Luchia, because she was coming into adulthood and had fallen in love with a human boy, Kiato. It was forbidden, but the princess continued to kind of "woo" Kaito.

Kaito and Luchia

Unfortunately, her true form and the monsters that were trying to capture the princesses created complications for the couple. I have not finished the series, so don't spoil it for me.

Luchia's Different Forms (Human, Mermaid, Warrior)

Various Mermaid Melody Villains

How I stumbled on the story is kind of interesting. I had been watching music videos on YouTube that showed animation clips from different cartoons. One of the clips showed a mermaid and a young man together. It caught my attention so I looked into the list of cartoons the creator had used and found Mermaid Melody listed among them. I investigated into the cartoon and found episodes of the anime on YouTube.

During my youth I was only able to find episodes that were in Japanese with English subtitles. I was also able to find similar versions with French or Spanish subtitles, instead.

But recently, I was able to find versions that have voice overs in English, French, Spanish and even Greek, which you can see below, respectively.

I knew the anime was based off of the manga, but I hadn't really looked for it. One Christmas morning, sitting in my stocking, I found an English copy of the first volume of Pichi Pichi Pitch: Mermaid Melody! I was so excited! I have plans to buy the other six in the series and to finish watching the anime on YouTube when I can find all of the episodes.

My copy of Mermaid Melody

I found it really interesting how over the course of ten years the manga was created and published in its original form, was translated and published in other languages, and then became an anime that has been recreated by YouTube-ers to have not only subbed versions, but dubbed versions, as well. It is so neat how new medias have allowed the public to not only share stories internationally but how they can be recreated, or changed so that a new audience can understand them in their own languages.

Changes like these also show us back to that idea that "Medium is the Message", because of the different formats this story was created in.

In its original form, its message was meant to reach Japanese individuals for entertainment purposes, then when the English versions came out, it was given the chance to reach a wider audience. It's possible there are other languages the manga came out in, I am just unaware of them at this time.

When the anime version came, it was meant for the content of the story to be shared in an easier format because people no longer needed to read a whole book, but they could watch half hour episodes that breaks the story down.This version was meant to stay specifically in Japanese. The creators did not have plans to create it in English or any other language. But YouTube-ers had different plans. Because these people created versions of subbed and dubbed episodes, the message had now been changed again to allow a wider audience to enjoy the story in the new format.