Fantasy Geography

[fileg]

No spoilers unless Geography is a surprise to you....



For the second time I have encountered the *same* piece of fantasy geography in anime reference.

When I ran into it the first time, it was in the "man from uncle dream" sequence in Patlabor, so I thought it might have been intentional.

But I read all the Death Note manga I have this weekend (that's through vol.11) and in vol 8 when the missile is launched, we get this bit of Dialog:




followed by this map, showing the trajectory from the LA area to Hudson Bay:




This information shows us that *someone* thinks Hudson Bay is in NY - probably that big bay at the mouth of the Hudson River . We call that New York Harbor. See the red dot? That's approximately where Jim and I grew up.

See the Great Lakes way to the north, and the red arrow pointing up above them? Hudson Bay is up there a little further than I can get to on this map.


Since I have now encountered this twice, I wondered if NY Harbor is called by another name in other countries. But, the *translators* have no excuse....

Comments

And I thought....

[aspidites.livejournal.com]

...that only Americans were ignorant of geography.

Actually, I wonder if the writers think that, well, of course Hudson Bay is at the mouth of the Hudson River! What kind of nutty continent would have two major bodies of water named "Hudson"?

Both the bay and the river were named for Henry Hudson, of course, and New York Harbor is occasionally called "Hudson's Bay", after all... Confuses me, sometimes, and I'm not particularly clueless, geographically speaking.

[telperion1.livejournal.com]

Well, I am from NC and I occasionally heard people call NY harbor the Hudson's bay which maybe once or twice got changed into Hudson Bay. I would know what was being referred to, but would only think NY harbor if the context made it clear we were talking about NY geography. My first impulse on hearing Hudson Bay is always frigid big dip into Canada. And that's the case for other people I know, too.

So yeah, this translator is an idiot.

[kortirion.livejournal.com]

You're back!!

I missed you. *hug*

They do this all the time to DC

[markbark.livejournal.com]

In No Way Out we see our hero get out of the subway station in Georgetown (there isn't one) ... and my favorite howler, leaving the Pentagon at 3pm and somehow making to the Whitehurst Freeway in around 15 minutes (perhaps at 2 am... if you speed, but at 3pm that's about an hour's ride into the teeth of rush hour)

--MAB

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Granted, it was the same Hudson (mind, Hudson's Bay was whee his mutinous crew put him and his son overboard in a small boat. They're still there, somewhere.) but that's absolutely, um, dunderheaded.

Not to mention that whatever it was seems to have impacted slightly south of Grand Banks, a few hundred miles off the coast.