This just occurred to me. Will they change Prime's name to Convoy or Jazz's name to Meister when the movie debuts in Japan? I don't know if any other characters have different names in Asia or Europe but that did make me wonder.
yeah. kids in japan dont know who jazz or optimus prime are. the names were changed in the original movie too.
I’m sure the core fans do know the American names but I’ll willing to bet they change them to what they are more commonly known as. And if they don’t I’m sure there is a Japanese TF board that will be full of “OMG they are using the American names to rape my childhood!!!iti!!” posts.
Japanese TF fans know the western characters names certainly, but the films not 'big fans' only, regardless of what country in which it's released. They'll change the names, just as certainly as they have for nearly every translated series, and just as certainly as there are people in the USA who have heard of Optimus Prime, but never heard of Convoy (outside of trucker movies, that is)
I wonder if it'll be a case of just subtitling the movie or if it will actually get dubbed. Guess it depends entirely on how much Takara wants to push it.
That makes me wonder: Alternaters Mesiter is just Jazz with a different name because Hasbro lost the rights to Jazz. Do you think Jazz will be called Mesiter in the movie?
It'll be Convoy because Optimus Prime is too difficult for japanese to speak (OPU-TEE-MASU PURAIMU) and Meister because Jazz is has no meaning other than a musical genre in Japan.
