English on Japanese DVDs

[Mycernius]

Just a quick question. Do home- market Japanese DVDs come with English sub-titles as standard? I ask this because I have several home market Japanese DVDs (Ocean Waves, Kourei, Chakushin Ari 2 are a few) and they all seem to come with English sub-titles. I wondered if the same is for others or is it just done for films? Region is not a problem, as Japan is region 2 and so is Europe, plus my DVD is multi-regional

[Da Monstar]

I saw your topic was pretty left alone to die.

I'll try to answer your question with as much as I know.
If you want the official newly released DVD's from Japan, it is highly possible that there will be no Subtitles what so ever featured. Though it is possible to get a cheaper version online aswell, though the chance of this being a bootleg disc is at about 99% (bootleg being a copy of an original DVD, though sometimes with additional subtitles but in a lower DVD resolution quality)

At the moment I'm looking for the j-dorama "1 litre no Namida", its was released about 2 months ago on yesasia.com without subtitles, and at a very spicy price (But totally worth it in my opinion) but was some time earlier released on another moviesite zoommovie.com at a much lower price and with subtitles (Apperantly the site has gone down during the last weeks, perhaps it was a smart move to rethink buying from them)

But if you by "Home-market" dvd's mean Japanese DVD's shipped to england and released in stores, I would say, It is possible...


to summarize.. I know shitz about this problem u might be having :-), but I would say to you, if it doesn't state on the cover that it includes English subs then it dont. If you don't have a chance at looking at the cover, you just need to think if the movie is so good that it is worth watching without subs.

[Mycernius]

Cheers for your reply. Like I said I have a couple of home market Japanese DVDs and they all have English subtitles, just wondering if they all did. When I said Home Market I was refering to those sold in Japan or on Amazon.co.jp.
As for bootleg, you can usually tell these as they are region 3 because they are mostly done in Hong Kong.

[yukio_michael]

I'll add a question here. Do region 2 Japanese DVD's include subtitles in Japanese, say for the hearing impaired, the same as if they were sub-titled English movies?

I'm most interested in reading the script of the film in Japanese, rather than the loose English translations.

[leonmarino]

I'm afraid many of the DVD's in Japan have no subtitles whatsoever.. Not even Japanese subtitles.

When I buy DVD's I always look for subtitled ones, not for myself but so I can watch with friends. So far, most of the DVD's I saw were without subtitles.. Even the oh so popular "Sengoku Jieitai 1594" (or whatever) and "Densya Otoko".. "Yaji and Kita the Midnight Pilgrims" on the contrary does have subtitles! I have already enlightened many of my friends with it :D