Having a hard time understanding politeness levels in your favorite anime? I think it's not a hard but extensive topic. Basically there's ですvs.だ, ます which is an ending to verbs that automatically forces your head and your body to lean a bit forward and, the hardest thing to learn, there're polite synonyms for common words, such as 食べる-飯する or 来る-いらっしゃる
Only by noticing these you can already find out if your favorite anime character is using polite speech.
Understanding if a phrase is too polite, rude or just right is the next level tho, requiring much better contextual awareness.
Like, "middle level" polite speech would be considered rude when speaking to a king, and on the other hand, speaking to a child that way also looks weird.. If the kid is not also a king of course, then it's... Uhm... Yeah, politeness levels in japanese are hell of a thing.
By making this topic, just wanted to find out if anyone finds this difficult to comprehend too. :)
I can find the politeness (or lack thereof) a bit jarring, yes, but it adds a lot of emotional nuance to video game dialogue. I was taken off guard by a Pokémon rival using informal and/or assertive language (e.g. オマエ and ぞ,) but then I remembered his tone is supposed to be harsh because it reflects his irate personality. It's a bit disorienting because I'm used to English content where the tone of text is more subtle, but I find the Japanese tones and politeness levels intriguing.
