A very few of us are interested in anime, though, and there's a thread on that. I speak no Japanese (though I once sold some of my software there); but I know enough background to be able to comment in the (largely inane) recent arguments about the English translation of 好き (suki) as "like" or "love" triggered by the new translation in the Netflix release of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The inanity is the claim that having a particular character say like in the new translation when in a previous one they said love - to another character of the same gender - is "gay erasure". Apart from anything else, this displays an appalling lack of appreciation of what their interaction means to the characters concerned.
Hoo boy...I haven't watched anime in years (though I used to be pretty heavily into it in the late 90s and the naughts), and back then, the biggest arguments were things like whether it was a good idea to actually use "Duck" as Ahiru's name in Princess Tutu
Though that got pretty heated sometimes...for some reason.
The use of 好き is awfully...nuanced, maybe?...to makes that kind of argument though. We just don't have the right words for it, nor the various specific kinds of relationships that are peculiar to Japan. No translation is ever going to satisfy, and using it as a "window into the soul" of the translators is a little troublesome. So yeah, you're absolutely right that the meaning of the interactions to the characters is what you always need to come back to. Getting a least a slightly better window into this sort of thing isn't why I started studying the language (wanted to read Haruki Murakami without the translatoin barrier), but it was definitely a happy side-effect.
I'm glad that Evangelion is back out there though! It seemed to disappear completely for a long time...maybe we'll finally get a decently cleaned up release of End of Eva? The Manga Entertainment release could've used some serious, serious remastering.
