The Japanese sometimes swear, no matter how polite they are and how polite their language sounds. with the word baka for example (バカ) denotes the idiot or fool; kuso (クソ), a “vulgar affix for reinforcement”, is used for ranting and swearing (see “Japan Digest”). However, when the usually very friendly Japanese mouths suddenly say “Sakra!”, “Zefix!” or “Shit!” escapes and a schoolchild tipping from the chair “Kruzifünferl!” calls, it’s irritating at first and takes some getting used to. Just like the Japanese pregnant woman who shouts “Mi tears it straight away!” groans or the inflationary use of the generic term “Depp”, sometimes specified in special attributions such as “swollen skull” or “Zipflklatscher”. It may well be that some people find this embarrassing in the Nippon context. Otherwise you’re not ashamed. It’s funny in a funny way, but most of all: pretty funny. In any case, it’s not stupid slapstick, that is, total rubbish. No kidding either. More of a piece with a V effect: In The Vroni from Kawasaki a story from Japan is actually told, only with partly very crude Bavarian original tones.
It is a comedy dubbing of a family soap opera with the original title Hanbun, Aoi. The humor specialist Gerhard Polt has them with fun-loving colleagues like Gisela Schneeberger, Christian Tramitz, Michael Ostrowski or Benedikt Weber as lip-synchronously as possible in dialect form. They have now recorded at least ten episodes of this 156-part cult soap opera. They will be broadcast from May 14th on Servus TV, whose director Ferdinand Wegscheider is so enthusiastic about the format that he speaks a guest role himself. All ten mini-episodes (15 minutes each) are already available can be seen on ServusTV On, the media library of the Austrian broadcaster.
The series, filmed in 2018, begins in the 1980s and continues into the noughties, thus also telling of the dawn of old Japan into the technological modern age. When Gerhard Polt’s son Martin saw them in a hotel during a stay in Japan and didn’t understand a word, he thought about what the characters would say in Bavarian during the scenes. That’s how he came up with the idea of dialect synchro. The Bavarian Vroni is originally called Suzume and doesn’t live in Kawasaki at all, but in a town in the prefecture of Gifu, whose village character one can certainly derive alpine charms from. The river there also goes through as the Isar. And isn’t the sky, whose clouds Vroni, who is talented in manga drawing, so fond of painting with imaginary figures, clearly white and blue? “Half blue sky” is the title of the series Hanbun, Aoi translated.
Japanese cuisine serves cabbage wraps, yeast dumplings. And Polt a culinary intro
While the original accompanies the protagonist for decades, the ten episodes tell the story Vroni from Kawasaki first of all only about the birth and childhood of the title heroine. She is “a wuide henna”, i.e. a very bright child who starts to speak in the womb (with the voice of Eva-Maria Reichert) and uses a hearty expression: “Yes, lick!”. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The parents, Huber Otto and his Maria, also formulate very robustly (the Austrian Michael Ostrowski and Gisela Schneeberger, who is always so nice and snappy in Munich, are a joy), and grandpa (Polt) anyway. Since they run an inn, there is a lot of talk about food. It is a treat in itself how the Japanese cuisine is interpreted here in a Bavarian way, from cabbage rolls to yeast dumplings and Blunzengröstl. Each episode also begins with a satirical Polt intro, in which he describes nothing more than the tasting on a trip to Asia with Bavarian-Brass Polt scrupulousness – and thus exposes entire clusters of arrogance.
In addition to the Huber restaurant, the local hospital is a hotspot, where the staff tend to go about their business as Saxons and Rudi, her friend, is born on the same day as Vroni. He’s a really good guy, namely highly talented and from a better family. Fat Bene comes from an even better one. The games and conflicts of the three, including an insight into their families, are the topic. That’s all, that’s why there are also narrative lulls; the plot is maintained by Polt and his family. But it is precisely the lengths, which also arise from the fact that Japanese uses many more words, that the dubbing squad uses for their own designs. You can feel the joy in it. The anarchic desire not to give a shit, especially not about caution about political correctness. Good this way.
But a lot goes together here anyway that doesn’t belong together at first glance. Suddenly Japan seems very Bavarian and the world like a village under a single white or semi-blue sky. It also has something that brings people together. However, the majority of humanity remains excluded: If you don’t speak the foreign language Bavarian, you don’t understand anything – and can sneak out.
The Vroni from Kawasakion Servus TV On.
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