How accurate is the language in the series really?
Summary:
- Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian will follow a half-Russian half-Japanese girl.
- There will be lots of Russian in the series.
- Alya has a strong accent when she’s speaking Russian, but everything is clear.
Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian (Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san) is an upcoming romantic comedy anime based on the light novel series of the same name written by SunSunSun and illustrated by Momoco.
The anime is scheduled for July 2024 and will tell a story of a half-Russian, half-Japanese girl named Alya who keeps flirting with her classmate Kuze in Russian without realizing that he can understand the language as well.
There have been a couple of teasers for the anime previously, and a new promotional video was released on March 22, 2024. The thing that you can see (or, well, hear) in all of the videos is Alya speaking Russian, so fans are naturally curious about all of the phrases and how accurate they are.
Japanese seiyuu
Alya is voiced by Sumire Uesaka, and even though there’s going to be a lot of Russian in the series, the voice actress is not afraid: she voices all of the lines herself.
Of course, the Japanese and Russian languages and their phonetics are very different, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that Russian people can hear a strong accent.
However, that doesn’t make them like the actress any less. It might be challenging to find another actress just to voice the Russian lines, especially considering the current political situation, so fans are just happy that such an anime is still possible nowadays.
On top of that, the accent is not even that bad. Russian fans can always understand what Alya is saying and they can hear how Sumire Uesaka is trying. It feels like all the lines are spoken a bit too slowly to actually believe that she’s a native speaker, but it’s nothing terrible.
How accurate is it?
It’s not when pleasant surprises for the Russian audience end, though. The language in the series sounds natural, and there aren’t many weird words or phrases, which means the Russian lines weren’t just translated via Google or AI.
We think this has a lot to do with the respectful Japanese mentality: these people care about other cultures and try to represent them in the best possible way.
Russian fans have seen a bit too many examples of their language being butchered in various American series, so they’re just happy that this anime is better