If you are on the wrong side of your 30s, you will probably remember an age of anime localizations when cigarettes turned into lollipops and onigiri became jelly donuts. Anime’s early forays into the Western world were often on the wild side. Official subs were rare or nonexistent until the late ‘90s (dubbing and translation were often works of passion, with plenty of artistic freedom applied). We often tend to look at these cultural artifacts through nostalgia-tinted glasses. The Dragon Ball fandom, for example, is split between those who appreciate the original Funimation dub and those who call out egregiously nonsensical lines.
With anime becoming such a prominent and profitable form of entertainment, these early experiments (and sometimes, disasters) seemed a thing of the past, or at least that’s what I thought until I saw Netflix’s recent Italian dub of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind going viral on social media. The voice acting cast, working under director Mosè Singh, decided to really go all in on the “bizarre” part, creating something that’s equally hilarious and bamboozling.
As fans of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure know, Golden Wind is set in Italy, a country that the manga’s creator, Hiroiko Araki, has long been enamored with. The protagonists are all Italian, with many of them hailing from Naples. To add more realism to the dub (I think?), the staff decided to insert Neapolitan dialect in the dialogues. As someone born a few miles south of Naples, I almost spilled my milk when I heard Abbacchio call Giorno “facc e cazz” (literally “dickface”), or Giorno describe the piranha fish he creates with his Stand power as “nu bellu pesc” (“a beautiful fish,” which is slang for “penis”).
Needless to say, there’s no trace of this in Araki’s work. No matter how much he loves Italian fashion and art, Golden Wind’s characters still speak regular Japanese with the odd insertion of an Italian word for flavor (and they don’t make dick jokes). But language variations are not the only things added in this new dub. Entirely new lines of dialogue have been added, along with references to Italian memes and internet culture, in an attempt to make the series feel as “Italian” as possible. Bucciarati’s gang went from being a bunch of lovable weirdos with a peculiar sense of fashion and a penchant for violence to talking like the average Italian Gen-Z. The dub also adds a lot of profanity that’s nowhere to be found in the original, but is often associated with the use of regional dialects in Italy.
What surprises me the most, however, is that fans are actually loving it. If someone came out today with the equivalent of the infamous Ghost Stories English dub for a popular series such as JoJo, I would expect to see riots in the streets. Instead, Italian fans mostly love this dub. Digital creators are sharing scenes on social media, and the comments are overwhelmingly positive. The reason is that the dub is objectively funny, and it suits the series surprisingly well.
While JoJo may have emotional moments and high-stakes storylines, the series also never takes itself too seriously. It’s no coincidence that, since the anime’s debut, JoJo has generated countless memes. Araki’s brand of subtle humor has been evident since the beginning in Joseph Joestar’s “Oh my god!” expression, Jotaro’s absurd flexes, Josuke’s hair-induced rage, and more. Part 5 of the saga, Golden Wind, takes this one step further. (Just look at the viral torture dance sequence for proof.) So adding a bunch of weird lines and sudden bursts of Neapolitan dialect doesn’t feel that out of place.
However, every form of translation generates a debate between faithfulness to the original and freedom of interpretation. I can enjoy this weird dub because I’ve read the manga and watched the anime in Japanese with subtitles, but if this were my first approach with the series, how much would my perception of Araki’s work be influenced, or even distorted, by the liberties taken by the dubbing team? Imagine if we never got a Dragon Ball Kai dub, and the only English version of the scene where Frieza impales Krillin is the one where he yells, “Yeehaw ride ’em cowboy!”
I’m not equating Golden Wind’s dub with those early anime localization disasters. This work was done by artists who know and love the source material and decided not to merely translate it, but create something unique. You can like or dislike the result, but the intent is clear. Personally, I’m more irked by the choice of not using Neapolitan voice actors. The voice of Giorno comes from Matteo Garofalo, who is from Sardinia, while Bucciarati is voiced by Andrea Oldani, who was born a few miles outside of Milan. This results in a stumped use of Neapolitan, which makes the dub even funnier, perhaps, but also raises questions of authenticity and cultural respect.
Garofalo ineffectively answered these critiques in a TikTok video, where he points out that the weird pronunciation of The World, Dio Brando’s Stand in Stardust Crusaders, by Japanese voice actor Takehito Koyasu, became iconic as “Za Worudo.” I don’t think this argument is particularly relevant to the critiques that have been moved to the new dub. Moreover, the excessive use of swear words — not present in the Japanese version — also seems culturally problematic, as it paints a picture of Southern Italians as crude and unrefined that leans into common stereotypes. Sure, Bucciarati and his gang are a bunch of criminals, but considering how fancy they dress, they can’t be that uncultured.
I don’t think that taking artistic liberties with a dub is necessarily wrong. I’m enjoying the Italian version of Golden Wind and I burst out laughing every time I hear one of those weird lines. It’s a good excuse to rewatch the series, too, and it reminds me of a simpler time when anime and their fans didn’t take themselves too seriously. But I would never put it above the original version. It’s a funny variation and nothing more. I just hope that, next time, they’ll use actors who actually speak the language they are portraying.
