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Médias en français que j'ai lu/regardé
(Media in French that I have read/watched)
Pendant ma quête d'amélioration de mes compétences en la langue française, j'ai commencé à regarder et lire beaucoup, pour apprendre vocabulaire et comprendre mieux le français parlé. Avant de ces efforts, mon français était très mal. Maintenant c'est en train de devenir mieux, probablement proche d'un niveau B2 ? Je suis peut-être trop confiante, c'est probablement que je ne suis pas si avancée...
De toute façon, sur cette page sont mes pensées à des livres et la télévision en français. La majorité de ces médias ont doublé ou traduite, mais je voudrais faire un effort à trouver plus de choses qui sont originellement francophones. Je vais ajouter à la page si je trouverais quelque chose intéressant.
During my quest to improve my French, I started to watch and read a lot of things to learn more vocabulary, and to understand the spoken language better. Before I did this, my French was very bad. Currently, my skills are getting better, probably close to a B2 level? That's what it feels like, but I'm probably too confident. My skills are likely not that advanced...
Anyways, on this page I am going to write my thoughts on the various media in French that I've watched/read. Most of it has been stuff that's been dubbed or translated, but I'm going to try my best to find things that were originally in French. As I watch/read more, I'll try and update this page. Hopefully it'll be of some use to other FLE students.
This page is mostly in English, but sometimes I write in French here and there when I feel like it. My confidence in using the language isn't that high yet, because my grammar sucks. Also, I realised that a lot of this page doesn't really talk much about learning, it's mostly just my opinions on various French dubbed anime. Sorry if the organisation is a bit of a mess, I'm still figuring out how to lay out things properly.
Télévision
(Unfortunately, this is mostly limited to Japanese animation, cause that just happens to be what I liked to watch.)
Sonic X
Somehow after switching my Netflix to French, I got access to the uncensored version of Sonic X, which includes the Japanese, French and Korean voice tracks. However, it still thinks I'm watching the 4Kids version, so it gets confused how long the episodes are, and always asks me if I would like to skip the credits halfway through the episode. This was the first series I ever started really watching in French. I know, it's such a bizarre choice, choosing anime to learn. Isn't anime usually recommended to learn Japanese?
This series isn't perfect, but it has a special place in my heart. The French dub is actually decent. I like the voices for Eggman and Sonic specifically. Chris sounds like a college student, whereas in Japanese he sounds like a toddler. They even translated the theme tune! The lyrics work well, but I prefer the original. The opening song for this series is so catchy, it randomly gets in my head all the time. For the ending songs it just plays an instrumental version, so I usually switch to the JP audio during the beginning and the end. For certain scenes I wanted to hear what the Japanese version was like, and for some reason I could understand it better than the French. But this series was important in getting me used to the sounds of the language. I had already studied French for years, but at school it was mostly just grammar, no pronunciation or listening. The only people I spoke and listened to were the teacher and the other learners in my class, so my comprehension was terrible. So, thanks to Sonic X, my French improved slightly.
Sonic Prime
I decided to watch this entirely en français, most of my opinions on it are on the actual plot, not the dubbing. Some of the words in my Quizlet deck showed up here, which was great! The French voices seem like they are more similar to the JP actors than the English ones. I think a few of the actors from the Sonic X dub were here too, so that was good. My understanding of the dialogue was pretty decent, I think.
Random Stuff on Disney +
Disney + has a French Canadian dub available for a lot of their stuff, which is cool because I need to understand that accent. So far I watched Zootopia +, and half of Disenchanted. The Zootopia series had good voice acting, the voices sound close to the English ones. I suppose it doesn't always have to sound similar to the original language's actors, but it's cool when they do. Disenchanted was easily understandable with the Québec voices, but for some reason some of the characters singing voices used the European French audio. The worst thing is that I can't find the soundtrack from the French Canadian version on Spotify, all I have is someone's unofficial YouTube upload.(By the way, Disenchanted was nowhere near as good as the first film.)
Juju et Juliette (Rolli und Rita)
This is the French translation of this weird series from the 90s, that was originally intended for kids learning German. It became a meme because of its ugly animation and strangely catchy musical numbers. (Unfortunately, the songs were not brought over to the French version.) I found it here on YouTube. I think these were just small segments included in a larger episode, but this compilation was all I found. My reasons for watching this were out of curiosity, not for learning. The show is like a strange fever dream, it's actually quite entertaining. Although the French here is very basic, it's good for people who are new to the language, cause each episode's plot is designed so they have to use a load of basic vocab. In one episode they use words for giving directions, another they have food words, and then in one they use a load of adjectives to describe someone. It's probably an effective tool, because it's so hilariously odd that you'll remember it better!
Various Dragon Ball movies that I could find on YouTube for free...
Did you know they have the entire Resurrection F film in French, in HD, for FREE on YouTube? There are a few DB movies on there, all with varying levels of quality, so of course I watched them. In some of them they don't dub the characters screaming or grunting, instead it switches back to their original JP voice which is funny. These movies are easy to understand, but that's probably cause I've already seen them all. The language is pretty basic really, and a lot of the DB films have plots that are fairly simple to follow. I can't recall any new words or phrases I learnt in particular... But I feel like the voice acting is fairly decent. I love the voice of Frieza (or "Freezer", as it's written in French), it sounds so similar to the JP voice, like you got Japanese Frieza and just made him start speaking French. It's just funny that in Japan Goku's voice is super high pitched, and then you listen to his voice in other languages and it's so much deeper.
On a side note, I have some French volumes of Dragon Ball Super. They're also really good, except I feel really dumb because it took me a while to figure out who "Sangoku" was...
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
Will I ever be able to track down the last four volumes of the manga...?
Le doublage français de Pichi Pichi Pitch n'est pas très bon, mais je continue à le regarder parce que j'aime l'intrigue de cette série. Selon moi, le bande dessinée est meilleur, mais la série est bonne pour les chansons. Pourtant, je n'aime pas les chansons dans le VF. J'ai appris un peu de vocabulaire d'amour avec Pichi Pichi Pitch. Je te recommande que tu le regarde, ce n'est pas tellement original, mais c'est juste amusant, et mignon. Toute la série en japonais ou en français est sur YouTube gratuitement pour toi, donc regarde-le !
The French dub of PPP isn't very good, but I just keep watching cause I'm enjoying the plot. (And it's good for learning, even if the acting sucks.) In my opinion, the manga is better, but the series is good for the songs. However, I don't like the French versions of the musical numbers. I learnt a bit of romance related vocabulary through this anime. I would recommend this series though, it's not the most original, but it's just fun, and cute. The entire show is on YouTube for free, in Japanese (with English subtitles), and in French, so watch it!
Lina/Rina is the best part about this whole series, she's so cool...
Sonic Boom
Another Sonic series?
I couldn't understand much of what they were saying in this one. They seemed to speak too fast! I could understand the Italian dub better somehow.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (The 90s OVA)
Je ne finis pas cette sérié maintenant, donc je n'en ai pas beaucoup de opinions. (I am not sure if my usage of "en" was correct in this case, I apologise if the grammar's wrong...) La voix française de Polnareff est très bien, les autres sont simplement OK. Selon moi, l'animation dans cette OVA est meilleure que ce qu'est dans la sérié de 2015, mais le plus nouveau a d'animation qui est plus comme le bande dessinée originale.
I haven't finished this one yet, so I don't have much of an opinion on it. Polnareff's French voice is really great, but the others are just OK. I think that the animation style here is better than the 2015 anime. However, I think the newer series' art style is closer to the original manga.
Actually, I think I'm watching the newer part of the OVA that's actually a prequel to the original episodes. It looks like the art style in the original part is slightly different...
(I'm referring to "manga" in French as "bande dessinée", because I'm pretty sure the former word means anime instead of Japanese comic.)
Romans/Novels
Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur
The first novel I've ever read in another language. I'm glad I read this on a Kindle, cause the dictionary feature was super useful. This wasn't the easiest thing to read, in fact there were times when there were so many words I'd never seen before. Luckily the Kindle keeps a log of unknown words, so I could add every single one to my Quizlet deck. In the end, I learnt so much from this book. Reading it was so much fun, in fact I want to reread it in English one day.
It wasn't just vocabulary I learnt, but also how novels in French are structured. I actually had no idea that they don't use speech marks in French. They use these double arrow things that I don't know the name of. Maurice Leblanc doesn't use anything to mark dialogue, so at first it was pretty hard for me to make out when the talking started and finished. Eventually I got the hang of it. Also, I came to know the wonderful thing known as the passé simple. Just when I thought I knew all the different past tenses, this one comes along. It's still hard for me to recognise verbs when they're written like this, I'm sure I'll pick it up soon. I don't think they teach this tense in FLE classes, but it's important to at least be aware of it if you want to read French novels.
This book is made up of multiple short stories, so it's good if you're just starting to get used to French. There's not too much description, it's mostly plot and dialogue. Each story was super fun, even if I couldn't pick up every single detail. I love Lupin as a character, he just does what he wants without a care in the world. His personality is very entertaining to read. It was actually Code: Realize that introduced me to him, so thank you, Otomate, for bringing this wonderful character to my attention.
Lupin novels are in the public domain, so you can read them for free if you want to. This is the version I read, from Project Gutenburg. Reading this novel actually made me go on a journey of reading classic public domain literature. There are some great novels out there for free. You don't need to spend money to read a good book!
Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès
After reading my first novel in French, the next one became so much easier to understand! Because I read so much manga before this, I find I am much better at understanding dialogue that I am the rest of the text. My overall comprehension of this book was pretty good, I think.
I prefer this book to the last Lupin novel. The two stories were super fun to read, I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes Herlock Sholmès, so I expected to enjoy this one a lot. The chemistry between Sholmès and Lupin was quite entertaining. The two stories are a lot longer than the ones in the first Lupin book, so there was a lot more time to develop a plot. I felt pretty bad for Watson Wilson, he seemed to get injured a lot. I finished the book a lot quicker than I expected, I'm not sure if that's because my French got better, or if I just really enjoyed it. Hopefully there's a decent film adaptation somewhere that I can watch.
BDs/Manga
I actually own quite a bit of French manga, (mostly cause it's cheaper than the English stuff) but I don't have too much to say about it.
Yu-Gi-Oh
C'est l'heure du DUEL! I only have one volume of YGO in French, but I'd just like to mention it here because of the really awful font they chose to add in some parts. Also, I watched some of the VF of the anime. It was OK, except I didn't expect them to use the same localised names that are in the English dub.
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