It's in how you say it
One thing that always gets me about translating Japanese series to English, is just the sheer amount of information lost in translation. And I'm not just talking about the occasional jokes and things that don't quite work when translated, but in Japanese in particular, in mediums such as manga, there's an amazing wealth of information conveyed solely via characters' dialogue. From social status to gender to personality, what many English-language series will show through narration or action, Japanese series often express purely through dialogue.
For example, say we have a character who's decided to go by the name "M" for some reason. When this character gives their name, they could say it any one of several ways. To give a few:
私の名前はMです (watashi no namae wa M desu)
ぼくの名前はMです (boku no namae wa M desu)
あたしの名前はMです (atashi no namae wa M desu)
オレの名前はMだ (ore no namae wa M da)
ワシの名前はMじゃ (washi no namae wa M ja)
All of these say, literally, "my name is M". However, each one gives a distinctly different impression of the speaker. The first one sounds like either a woman, or a man being polite. The second sounds like it's probably a young boy. The third is a girl or a woman (or possibly even a crossdressing man), the forth a man who's probably fairly confident in himself, and the last an elderly man or woman. And all that just from variations in the pronoun and verb; were I to include more different ways of expressing the same information, there'd be many, many more possibilities, and more specific ones. Omitting and/or adding certain words or particles, for example. It's possible to convey information about a character's personality, attitude, and gender in just their first line or two of dialogue.
Of course, it isn't always perfectly clear-cut, and there's many nuances and unusual cases, but by and large, Japanese spoken language provides an enormous wealth of information about the characters speaking it. Far above and beyond just such things as honorifics and the use of keigo and so on that most fans are familiar with. It's more than just tone of voice and expression- though those factor in too- but rather linguistic details that simply don't have any English equivalents, more often than not.
Although, there are ways to attempt to translate dialogue and such in a manner that is as close as reasonably possible to expressing the same attitude, but this can only be done if one is aware of the nuances in the original language in the first place. This is another reason why I tend to prefer avoiding fan translations when possible, and usually read/watch series in Japanese when I can- I'm well aware of just how much can so easily be lost in translation, and I often gain a far better idea of the characters and story as a whole from the Japanese. Which isn't to say all translations are bad, but just that they could be better.
In any case, what it comes down to is that one of the interesting quirks of Japanese simply is its ability to convey so much information about a speaker solely through dialogue. To the point where there's many character types that can be easily identified just in how they speak. It's one of the things that I find interesting about Japanese material, really, and something that seems to be very important to the material- I would highly suspect that a part of the reason why Japanese and English speaking fandoms of the same series often have such widely differing takes on certain points, is simply because of the sheer amount of information that gets lost in translation.
For example, say we have a character who's decided to go by the name "M" for some reason. When this character gives their name, they could say it any one of several ways. To give a few:
私の名前はMです (watashi no namae wa M desu)
ぼくの名前はMです (boku no namae wa M desu)
あたしの名前はMです (atashi no namae wa M desu)
オレの名前はMだ (ore no namae wa M da)
ワシの名前はMじゃ (washi no namae wa M ja)
All of these say, literally, "my name is M". However, each one gives a distinctly different impression of the speaker. The first one sounds like either a woman, or a man being polite. The second sounds like it's probably a young boy. The third is a girl or a woman (or possibly even a crossdressing man), the forth a man who's probably fairly confident in himself, and the last an elderly man or woman. And all that just from variations in the pronoun and verb; were I to include more different ways of expressing the same information, there'd be many, many more possibilities, and more specific ones. Omitting and/or adding certain words or particles, for example. It's possible to convey information about a character's personality, attitude, and gender in just their first line or two of dialogue.
Of course, it isn't always perfectly clear-cut, and there's many nuances and unusual cases, but by and large, Japanese spoken language provides an enormous wealth of information about the characters speaking it. Far above and beyond just such things as honorifics and the use of keigo and so on that most fans are familiar with. It's more than just tone of voice and expression- though those factor in too- but rather linguistic details that simply don't have any English equivalents, more often than not.
Although, there are ways to attempt to translate dialogue and such in a manner that is as close as reasonably possible to expressing the same attitude, but this can only be done if one is aware of the nuances in the original language in the first place. This is another reason why I tend to prefer avoiding fan translations when possible, and usually read/watch series in Japanese when I can- I'm well aware of just how much can so easily be lost in translation, and I often gain a far better idea of the characters and story as a whole from the Japanese. Which isn't to say all translations are bad, but just that they could be better.
In any case, what it comes down to is that one of the interesting quirks of Japanese simply is its ability to convey so much information about a speaker solely through dialogue. To the point where there's many character types that can be easily identified just in how they speak. It's one of the things that I find interesting about Japanese material, really, and something that seems to be very important to the material- I would highly suspect that a part of the reason why Japanese and English speaking fandoms of the same series often have such widely differing takes on certain points, is simply because of the sheer amount of information that gets lost in translation.