Sorry, this post is very long. It's partially a response to a thread here. It's probably a terrible idea for me to do this, since I've been told by colleagues and loved ones that "haters gonna hate, don't engage with the Internet." But I believe in engaging from time to time. I actually care about fandom opinions, even though fandom has hated me so badly in the past that, no exaggeration, I seriously considered leaving the industry because the harder I worked on a script, the more vitriol I received. When I try to do a more direct, rigidly faithful adaptation of a manga/light novel script, I have so much less pride in my work...I feel like I'm being a lazy coward, and the English version could be this unique, cool gem that improves a manga if I just invested the time. I DO think some manga have such strong dialogue in the Japanese that a rigidly faithful script is the right decision...but I can think of maybe 1-2 examples in the decade of me working in the industry that fall into that category. Most scripts, in my opinion, could benefit from changes in the adaptation phase.

In the case of Alice--I'm a long-time otome gaming geek. I requested Heart no Kuni when I was rewriting manga at Tokyopop because I love Quinrose. I'm also doing the Clover and Joker books for Seven Seas along with Crimson Empire. I have NOT worked on any of the Yen Press versions, although they partially adapted my Heart scripts for Vols 1-5. They decided to make their scripts closer to the original translation and thus took out my rhyming (among other things). The editors at Yen Press are great, hard-working women and I respect that they wanted to do a different script. I just want to be clear about who worked on what so you don't associate them with decisions that I personally made.

Peter rhyming was my idea. If you need to blame anyone for it, blame me, because the translators and the editors have nothing to do with it (although the editors approve, which I'll go into later). The reason Peter rhymed at Tokyopop and still rhymes in the Seven Seas books is because I literally followed the series from one company to the next; I was emotionally invested and wanted to continue with them. I know, most pre-existing Alice fans hate the rhyming. I've read scathing fan reviews across the Internet. Please allow me to explain why I chose to do this.

1.) Peter is lovesick, flighty, serious, and scary in one package, and he flips between his emotions at the speed of light. He's a very layered character and probably my favorite in the Alice franchise. I feel that rhyming dialogue can switch between fanciful and super serious (think like a rhyming prophecy) in a very obvious way, and since Peter drives a lot of the plot and has a lot of major lines, I wanted to draw more attention to them. You may not believe me, but I genuinely think him dipping into rhyme from time to time deepens his characterization of someone with many sides, since rhyming can imply many different things, depending on how it's employed.

2.) Having Peter rhyme helps differentiate his voice from the voices of the other characters. As the fans well know, all the characters in the Alice games have specific speech patterns in Japanese that can be difficult to adapt into English. This was one more way to make his voice unique--and, as I mentioned before, to make it rise to the top of all dialogue by drawing the most attention.

3.) I like to reference Lewis Carroll's version of Alice in slight ways from time to time. The whimsical nature of rhyming was a bit of a throwback to Carroll.

4.) Expanding on that, the series (and Alice herself) acknowledge that Heart is a country of stark contrasts--fanciful costumes and buildings that are soaked in blood and guts. Using Peter's rhyming--both to make his soft side more whimsical and his serious side more prophetic--helps me represent the two-sided nature of the world they're in.

When I first told my writing partner that I wanted to make Peter rhyme, she told me it was a terrible idea. I knew the Internet might hate me for it because literally anytime I change something in a script, some fans will hate me just BECAUSE I made a change (regardless of what the change is and/or my reasons for that change). But I really thought it would give the English manga a unique tone--something different from the Japanese version, so fans who owned both would get something new out of the English version. I tried the rhyming in my first draft...once I had examples to show her, my writing partner admitted that she thought it worked. I talked to my editors about it, and they all had my back on the rhyming, including when I switched from Tokyopop to Seven Seas. I've probably read every single review online to see what people think about it. Critics and casual/new fans seem to like it--critics seem to really like it, actually. But the hardcore Alice fans hate it.

I've been a rewriter in the manga industry for over a decade, and even though the industry and the fandom have been incredibly cruel to me at times, I've stuck with it because I f'cking love manga. My philosophy on rewriting has always been "bring out the best in the original manga, tone down the worst in the original manga, and if possible, bring something new to the table that doesn't conflict with the original message." I take my Alice scripts very seriously. Making Peter rhyme is extra work I stack on top of an already loaded script, but I do it because I think it's different, interesting, and in tone with the overall series...and the critics and may casual fans like it. But I'm so disappointed that I've alienated the hardcore fans through this, because I'm a huge Alice geek and I care what they think.

Give me your feedback or questions here, if you have any. For the record, all that great extra info on the games/overarching story in the Clover Alice books can largely be attributed to three things: there was a lot of extra content in the Japanese books (as opposed to the Hearts books), our editor at Seven Seas is Adam Arnold and he's one of the most detailed-oriented and emotionally invested editors I've ever worked with, and our translator Angela Liu is a HUGE Quinrose fan who's played, like, every Quinrose game and gotten 90% of the endings. She's a GODSEND on these books.

TL;DR. I made Peter rhyme for a reason...I wish we could all get along. But feel free to yell at me in person here.

ADDED: This has been brought up elsewhere, but I made another, pretty major character change in the Heart manga for Tokyopop: I made Blood more of an obvious, crude misogynist to Alice than his original dialogue did. I take 100% responsibility for this. In short: for a series made popular by its strong heroine, and with Alice's unique power dynamic with Blood, the original version of the comic made too many shocking parallels to domestic violence and the comic brushed over them, including victim-blaming crap that the series didn't usually incorporate. I toned down the internalized sexism and made Blood's dialogue more awful, to draw attention to the awful person he was that was clearly demonstrated by his actions.

Someone on Jezebel awhile ago said it best: in America, we let people get away with murder if they're eloquent and speak well, but if they're crude and/or swear and/or "have a bad tone," we dismiss their thoughts without listening to the content of what they're saying. Blood has always been eloquent, so I didn't want to completely change that, but his velvet tongue could have an even more loaded (and horrible) effect on an American audience. Besides, the attitude of Blood/Alice/the story was always unexpectedly disturbing in the original Japanese version of the manga,* in my opinion, so my criticism still applies to the original version...borderline romanticizing an older man who hits a much younger girl isn't okay, no matter the culture. So! I peppered his sweet dialogue with scathing horribleness so the English-speaking audience would be shocked into remembering that he tried to kill Alice with his bare hands in Volume 3.

*I know most of the men in the Alice franchise are violent psychopaths, but there's a difference in how it's presented with Blood. Alice can defend herself, at least emotionally, from most of them. But the minute Blood steps into the room, she loses all the power, and she barely even fights it. VERY BIG DIFFERENCE. Happily, he's much tamer in the Clover/Joker books, so I make much fewer changes in his dialogue in those.

And I yes, I let my Western feminist ideals influence how I adapt a manga, because my job is to adapt it and put it into the hands of North American teenage girls. I'm sure there are themes that come up in North American media that are considered inappropriate for teenage girls in other countries, so those things may be changed during export...it ties into the fact that every country has its own rating systems. But please keep in mind that, whenever possible, I try to adapt things subtly to maintain the majority of the original intent. Thus: Blood's dialogue is still eloquent most of the time, but the added barbs "remind' the reader that his honeyed words hide a horrible man.

ALSO ADDED: The Twins, some of the best translators I've ever worked with, weigh in on some related topics here. And we argue in the comments, because I won't shut up lately.

 

There are no words for how much I CANNOT WAIT. Why did they release these screens? I'm going to die a little bit every day until the first episode of the OVA is released in June.

Dammit, Tyrant Falls in Love...I love you too damn much.

...More screens! MORE!