In the middle of creating character profiles for boku_no_koe, I became immensely annoyed with the translation of vol. 1. Compared to the Japanese version, there is quite a lot of swapping, or worse, removal of the suffixes. The scanlation is simply not trustworthy. I've seen -san swapped for -sensei, -san and -chan removed so no suffix is present. It is irritating because the suffixes work very well to determine relationships and moods, and the depth of those. So I had to cross-check all the info...



However, it seems as if "Kaza" is closer to Hosaka and Yumi than I thought as they actually don't use any suffix after his abbreviated name... Kaza does call Yumi "Kurokawa-san", though. And as for Kokubu, he is less respectful and not "-sensei-ing" Yumi as the translation suggests, which makes sense as Yumi calls Kokubu exactly that, Kokubu without -kun, or -chan. Hence the closeness.

Kazama seems to like Yumi a lot. He "will listen to anything Kurokawa will say" and tells him he is "in his heart". Heh. Kokubu, too, seems attached to Yumi: he entered the seiyuu business "out of admiration" for him.

On the other hand, Hosaka is called Hosaka-kun, and Yumi is just Yumi, or Yumi-chan. It seems mostly like pet-suffixes between very close friends.

On a different note Tanahashi is more powerful than I thought. He doesn't deal with the lesser seiyuu, only when Jouchi gets a main part, Tanahashi shows up to talk to him about it (no matter that he went to the studio when we first meet Jouchi - but that was possibly to take care of Sigma's money cow, Yumi). This means that Tanahashi has underlings, and his secretaries shows up a couple times. Due to the way offices are laid out in Japan (open, one room, usually with the manager on a podium), it is not possible to determine whether he's a very much higher-up or "just" a office manager. However, he seems to be able to decide by himself about (the obviously talented) Jouchi's career, as well as managing Yumi. The owner of Sigma? Managing director? Not a standard salaryman, I think, and that was surprising. I guess I just admired his sexy man-wearing-glasses-ness and hadn't reflected that he might be quite up there... Hmm.