トモダチコレクション わくわく生活 - Tomodachi Life Living the Dream

 こんにちは! 

For my choice of Japanese culture to interact with this week, I decided to watch the latest Nintendo Direct for a new game I'm really excited about in Japanese! I used to play the 3ds version many years ago, but my sister ended up losing my copy, so I didn't get to play it again until now with this new edition! It'd also be interesting to analyze the video since Tomodachi - ともだち, is one of our vocabulary words! 



I had already watched the American version of this video from Nintendo America, but despite the information being the same, there were many differences! Firstly, the characters introduced were different; the main girl was Marie-San, a fun-loving college student. Just by listening without captions, I was able to distinguish many phrases and words that we have learned so far, which was really cool! Once the video shows Marie complete and ready to interact, she introduces herself with the phrases we learned in class! 

はじめまして、わたしまりえです！よろしくおねがいします！

Since this is a game targeted at a younger audience, I noticed there was an increased usage of Hiragana characters, with smaller ones appearing over top of Kanji. I thought this was a sweet detail as it makes the game accessible to younger players as well as new Japanese beginners such as myself! The Nintendo Direct also used slower speaking for easier understanding, and I was able to listen to the same tones used in the English version when the narrator was speaking to the Miis.

Another cute detail was the function of feeding the Mii characters, before they all ate in the video they said いただきます, while in the English version they would either say "Yum" or nothing at all. The foods they used in the two videos were also different, showing the cultural considerations to make the game feel more relatable to different audiences! The humor was also slightly different, with a big part of the two trailers being the main character confessing her love twice to two other Miis. In the Japanese trailer, Marie confessed much more directly than in the American version and the characters involved were much more silly! Overall, I'm really excited to learn more Japanese by the time this game comes out!! I think I will definitely be playing with my language settings set to Japanese so I can continue practicing in such an accessible way! 

ありがとう, ともだち!

Comments

  1. Hannahlaura SchuchhardtFebruary 3, 2026 at 10:10 AM

    This is a great game to practice Japanese with! Thank you for sharing. I'll have to check this out.

    ReplyDelete

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