

In several anime shows, when a character is staring at another, the character
actually says "stare" (sometimes with the "stare" in written form too not
unlike manga - not the subtitles).

From the context and the animation, the stare is obvious, so why go the extra
mile and literally shout "stare"??

This is not about the lightning display when two characters stare into each
other. It is about saying or shouting stare when staring.

* * *

I understand that in manga you have to put those things in written form, so
this question is restricted to anime media.


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2015-04-20T15:12:01.897
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tropes
Why go through so much trouble to show a character is staring by having her say or shout "stare"?


In Japanese, there is actually an onomatopoeia/mimetic for the act of staring:
じー _jii_ (or something similar to that - mimetics don't generally have
strictly prescribed spellings as far as I'm aware). To the English speaker,
this seems bizarre, because staring is not an action that produces sound, so
why would there be an onomatopoeia for it? Nonetheless, [for whatever
reason](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/5318/3437), Japanese is a
language rich in mimetics, and often has mimetics for concepts that lack
equivalent onomatopoeia in English.

So to the Japanese audience, it isn't terribly weird that there would be a
"sound effect" accompanying someone staring at someone else. Now, I don't know
that it's necessarily often the case that "the character actually says
'stare'" - certainly the character's _voice actor_ will say _jii_ , but I
don't think that this corresponds to the character themself saying _jii_. I
think the idea is more that using _jii_ there as sort of a "sound effect" just
emphasizes the fact that someone is staring at someone else.

Anyway, this causes a problem for subtitlers - clearly something is being
spoken, but this particular utterance is something that simply does not and
cannot occur in English. I don't know what a good solution to this is, and I
guess that nobody else does, either, and this is how we end up with subtitles
that make it look like the character is literally saying the word "stare".
Which looks really stupid in English, but is there a better way to go about
it? Not that I'm aware of.


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answer