Sunday 5 October 2008

Sindbad, the ARABIAN"?" sailor...

اتا سندباد المغترب.. ابعد ابعد اقترب..
لا اهاب الموج ابدا حين يعلو و يضطرب..

Sindbad, the very VERY famous cartoon in the arabic world, talks about the story of an Iraqi kid who sails around the world.
If you were born in the 80s, then you probably grew up watching this cartoon.

To my surprise, this cartoon is actually Japanese. Yup. Its actually Japanese dubbed in Arabic. 
Nowadays when I have time, I watch the Japanese version to enjoy my childhood memories and practice my Japanese.

Check the video below..






Watching this video as a grown up, I could see the big mistakes regarding the arabic or the islamic culture. 
For example, on the first episode, people are shown praying and bending over on their knees for the king. This is neither an islamic nor an arabic behaviour because bending over is only for god.

The director of this cartoon made some effort in reading and reflecting the arabic environment, but it was not the best he could do since he could simply just avoid such simple mistakes.

Anyhow, sindbad is my favourite cartoon. Its best of the best and if you watch it you will be amazed how the story builds up. 

6 comments:

momiji said...

I was knowing it is japanese since I was watching it in my childhood, because there was at the beginning song some japanese writings that I wasn't able to read.
"sinbad no bouken" !
(I'm able to read them now! ^_^)

Sinbad anime is based on the famous tales of shahrazad! I read some of them , and for my shock, the tales themself have non-islamic behaviour!
so i think the problem is not from the director, the problem is from the tales themself!

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

Very nice post Sanado san!^^
But Arabic literature is not always Islamic.. I mean those tales do exist, take 1001 nights for example. I've never read them but I heard that they have contents that can never be described as Islamic~

シンドバッド懐かしい~

Saemon 左衛門 said...

I never noticed that childhood anime were Japanese. I just saw the weird letters on screen. When I was a child I didn't even know the difference between China and Japan. But sindibad was especially confusing because it had 'basmala' in the openning screen. It was unusual to see Arabic text inside the animation.

I find it weird that sindibad is not part of the 'world masterpiece theatre' series (anime series of sally, tom sawyer, perrin, flona, pinocchio, etc..) althought it was nippon animation and fuji tv. Is Arabic literature not masterpiece-y enough for them ;P

Are you absolutely sure that even before Islam, Arabs never kneeled to kings? This difference in cultures is interesting to me. In Japan people bend lower and longer infront of higher-status people, and they even reach down to the floor if they make big mistakes or want a favour. This is called 'dogeza' but I'm not sure how frequent it is nowadays in Japan. Anyways, these are things that make me extremely uncomfortable with ojigi, although I don't mind it as a simple greeting gesture.

I hope I'm still on-topic!

Biraru said...

For me I had watched Sindbad arabic dubbed in my childhood but I didn't thought - that time - about being a japanese anime or not .. recently I watched on youtube - I think - the arabic version of the intro song & I felt happy for noticing the word ( sinbad no daibouken ) .. wow, it's a japanese anime \\(^o^)//

about the book "1001 nights" .. it's very very very bad book .. very "echi" .. I was shocked (o_O) why everybody was telling me that it's a great tales ?!!!!

Sanad san ^^
do you know links to download all episodes of this anime in japanese ? ^^

subzero said...

momiji-san,
I too was surprised to know this about shahrazad tales. Its annoying coz people might think this is islamic behaviour.

Kanji-chan,
You are right. But the problem is in people thinking this is islamic. Especially that Sindbad starts with Quran!

Saemon-san,
The anime talks about after islam era, and definitely no kneeling then.

biraru-san,
Downloading the anime is kind of illegal..
But you can contact me on email regarding this :)

rua said...

I never thought of it because I was a child when I watched the anime but there is a lot of Arabic behavior that is not Islamic , I don't know its very complicated^-^