Tone

I've always been aware of the fact that it is very difficult to sense tone when just reading text. This is most apparent in email and instant messenging, where the whole point of the text is to talk to another person. Often, something that you type out can be taken differently by other people, simply because the other person doesn't know the tone in which are are saying said phrase.

I've also found this problem in another place -- subtitles.

Case in point: I was watching an episode of Tsubasa Chronicle, and there was a scene where Fye and Kurogane were fighting a goblin. The goblin hit Fye in the leg, injuring him, and Kurogane took them out. After the battle, Fye is on the ground, leaning up against a brick wall, and says:

"Well, I won't die from it."

And Kurogane turns and replied:

"It's not that you won't die from it. It's that you can't die from it."

The first time I watched it, I was puzzled, because I had taken it to mean that Kurogane was implying that Fye could not be killed. The guy is a magician afterall, so maybe he had some way of becoming immortal. But then, after watching it again, I realized what, exactly, Kurogane meant.

He was simply saying that Fye had the wrong attitude. Kurogane thought Fye should have said, "Well, I can't die from it.", meaning that he refuses to die before he accomplishes his mission. Kurogane then says he hates anyone who takes their own life for granted, after which Fye replied, "Then you must hate me most of all."