The story begins almost 10 years ago. A friend had just introduced me to a game called "Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon", and I loved watching him play it so much, I decided I had to rent it and try it for myself. I thought that, faulty camera and other bugs aside, it was great.
Fast forward to summer 2007. I just finished my first year of college, which, for reasons I still don't quite understand, made me feel really nostalgic (it must have been all the Super Smash Bros. we played...). Anyway, I had just ordered a Wii on the Internet and done some research on the Virtual Console. I looked at a list of currently available titles, and lo and behold, the prequel to MNSG, "Legend of the Mystical Ninja", was available for download. My mind returned to the game that remained in the back of my head for so long because of its quirky humor, and I decided that I would order it and the sequel, "Goemon's Great Adventure", off of half.com (my best friend at the time) when I got back home.
Both games arrived at my house the day after Memorial Day, 2007. Excitedly, I got to work playing through a game that forced me to keep the same stupid grin on my face the entire time, as well as its equally admirable sequel. I did a lot of research into Goemon and found that the series was much more expansive than I originally thought, with a sizable following in Japan even though it never really caught on in the US. I joined a forum dedicated to the discussion of all things Goemon, Goemon International, under the username Diehard_Fan (based on one of my favorite lines in MNSG; I've never actually seen the film "Die Hard").
Goemon actually changed my life in several ways. One way, perhaps the most major, was that I decided I would try to teach myself Japanese. I'm 1/4 Japanese (my paternal grandmother is Japanese; more about her later), but I don't really have an ear for languages, so I never bothered to learn much Japanese, or any other language for that matter. But this time was different. I wanted to learn to at least read the language so I could understand what was going on when I played the Japanese Goemon games on an emulator. (There's another way Goemon has changed my life. Having a father who works in the entertainment industry, I found the use of emulators to be morally reprehensible before now, as I considered it a form of piracy. I'm still against them in most cases; perhaps I'm a hypocrite, but I can't think of any other reasonable way to get my hands on the Japanese games.)
Anyway, moving on to Labor Day, 2007. I'm still teaching myself Japanese, albeit quite slowly and only to the knowledge of my parents and my sister. I'll remember this as a disastrous day. My dad dropped a section of our pier on his foot, but even worse, my grandma (the one I mentioned above) stepped on a stone in the middle of a parking lot and fell. She was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors determined that she was lucky enough to get out of it with only a few fractured bones, and that she would more than likely be healed before long.
Before I go on, I should probably clarify something. I'm originally from Los Angeles. I attend a university that's thousands of miles away from there, but it's really close to my grandparents' house. I spend most Saturdays there, and since there's no Internet, there's not really much to do there except read and do homework after whatever jobs I need to do around the house to help them out.
So, around the beginning or middle of October, I'm looking through YouTube for videos related to Goemon, and I come across something interesting. Somebody uploaded two songs that were included only in the Japanese version of what we know as Goemon's Great Adventure. The songs are "Smile Again" and "Double Impact", and the person who uploaded them was requesting romaji (Japanese words spelled using Roman letters) lyrics of the songs. I thought to myself, "Hey! I can read Japanese. I can do that!" Oh, but wait just a minute! There's a Kanji character (A Chinese symbol) at the end of Double Impact. I don't know how to read Kanji. But then an idea hit me. "Wait a minute. Grandma's Japanese. Maybe she can help me."
I scribbled the symbols and the lyrics for the entire song down onto blank sheets of printer paper and took them to my grandparents' house that Saturday. Not only did my grandmother help me with the Kanji, she gave me a line by line translation of what the song was saying (somewhat different from translating scenes, as the grammar in these songs is off). Being confined mostly to sitting on the couch and growing quite bored of it, she asked me to bring more the next week.
Following her instructions, I brought the lyrics for Smile Again next. The same thing happened: we sat down and discussed the song completely. I found that I was enjoying myself, spending time with my grandmother while learning about her culture and native language at the same time.
The middle of the following week was the semester break, and that's when I decided to try something a little different. I found the opening to the intro of "Ganbare Goemon 4" on YouTube and took it with me. Once again, I copied the script in its entirety, and we went over the whole scene. Unlike the songs, however, I was taking careful notes about what was going on.
Sometime between then and the next weekend, I got the bright idea to try this with some of the other scenes in the various games, but this time, I would post videos with subtitles of the English translations on YouTube. I decided to start with "Ganbare Goemon 2".
It was difficult, but my grandmother was able to translate it. On November 4, 2007, I uploaded "Ganbare Goemon 2 in English" to YouTube, and announced the start of this project to the members of Goemon International (sometimes referred to as GI from here on out).
My grandma, now healed almost completely, continues to help me in this endeavor to this very day. What started as trying to give her something to do while sitting in bed or on the couch turned into a nearly weekly ritual to increase my knowledge and subsequently that of others. I hope you continue to enjoy watching these videos and learning what's really being said in these scenes.
Wow, that was really long. And it seems like I lied in the previous post. This one really did contain more information about me, probably more than you wanted to know. Well, don't worry. More Goemon is coming soon.
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