TokuNet Anniversary Week: Translator, Michael Pang

From January 5th to 10th, the Tokusatsu Network celebrates its One Year Anniversary. Throughout the week, the members of Team TokuNet looks back on their first year together.

Better known in the general tokusatsu fandom as DecaEnd, Michael Pang spent a large portion of his childhood watching tokusatsu, such as Guyferd, Ultraman Tiga and Kamen Rider V3, all dubbed in Cantonese. While he generally stopped paying attention to it as he grew up, in 2009, he picked it up back up again with Kamen Rider. In 2014, he helped found the Tokusatsu Network as one of its first translators alongside Lead Translator, K.D. Komiyama.

Did you feel nervous or worried in the weeks leading up the launch date?

Not really. I joined around end so everything seemed to be in place already. The rest of them seemed to have everything together, so there wasn’t really anything to worry about. At that time, there was only one other translator, which felt rather reassuring. I have translated for a few other sites prior to working for the Tokusatsu Network. For quite some time, I was the only translator on those sites. Knowing that there was another translator for the Tokusatsu Network made me relieved that the workload would be somewhat split up.

TokuNet gathered 7,000 visitors and over 12,000 views in its first week with only three articles. How did you feel seeing that kind of response?

I have generally never cared about site stats. It was actually the first time I found about the amount of visitors on a site I have worked for, so I was not sure if this was a good thing or not. Seeing the rest of the team being so happy about it made me happy as well.

There were a lot of really positive tweets and messages from the tokusatsu community when TokuNet launched, what was that like for you?

We barely had any articles up, but there were a lot of positive messages purely about the team itself. We hadn’t even really done anything at that point. It was like we were doing the right thing without actually doing anything. All in all, it made me happy that I joined this team.

Screening Super Sentai Spirits, with Actor, Robert Baldwin (Kyoryuger Ramirez) and Senior Editor, Tom Constantine

TokuNet grew much faster than any of its other founders expected, do you have any sense of worry or excitement considering how much things have grown in such a short amount of time?

Generally, I’m not too worried, because at the end of the of the day, whatever the obstacle may be, I know I have a wonderful team of friends helping me out.

What are your personal hope and goals for TokuNet’s future?

Basically continue with what we are already doing and pretty much become the main source for Tokusatsu news for English speakers.

I’m also trying to get back to Japan and stay there longer in order to help out Kuni and Tom. Hopefully it will ease out on their workload.

with Tom Constantine and K.D. Komiyama

Lastly, what inspires you to keep moving forward creatively in your personal projects, as well as your projects and goals for TokuNet?

I first started translating Tokusatsu-related because there weren’t many people doing it at that time. There were so many things that would go unnoticed. I’ve also noticed that I’ve learned a lot of things, and my Japanese has improved quite a bit over this year. I’ve also met a lot of new people and made new friends. All of these things keep me motivated and keeps me going basically.