Forum - View topicGhost Stories and the legacy of Steven Foster.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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About Ghost Stories:
One of the reasons why I like Ghost Stories so much is because it seems like the actors were having a lot of fun with the dub. Whenever I watch anything I always enjoy it more if I believe that the people who made it enjoyed what they were doing and were happy with their work. I think that ADV did a very good job with the Ghost Stories DVD release. In addition to the dub it also has the original Japanese audio and faithful (I think) subtitles. So anybody who does not like the dub can watch the original subtitled. It also has two subtitle tracks for the dub. One is the typical translation of signs and other on-screen text. The other is actually a closed caption track with the exact dub dialog and sound effects. I really like that one. The extras on the ADV release include ghost profiles with background and historical information about all of the ghosts in the show, and a bit about the ghost story genre in Japan. I found those to be very informative. Does anybody know if Discotek included all of the ADV extras and subtitles in their release? As for Steven Foster in general, I have never seen a show that he worked on that I did not enjoy. However, with the exception of Ghost Stories I have not watched the shows that I have seen the most complaints about, such as Clannad and Guin Saga. Another that I do think was exceptionally good is Pani Poni Dash. A lot of the credit for that goes to Christine Auten, who wrote and directed the last four episodes, the other script writers, and, of course, the actors. Steven Foster was usually working with some excellent, in my opinion, actors such as Hillary Haag, Monica Rial, Luci Christian, and Chris Patton, to name just a few. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9849 Location: Virginia |
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There is a show that was very similar to Ghost Stories that came out from Bandai in 2000 called Haunted Junction. It had the same basic premise, school age kids dealing with school ghosts. As I remember it even featured Hanako of the toilet. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, it did not receive a gag dub. No one talks about it anymore and probably only a few people still remember it exists. It wasn't a masterpiece but I don't think it was any worse than the original version of Ghost Stories.
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I own Haunted Junction. It was one of the first shows that I watched subtitled, because it was not dubbed.
Unfortunately I do not remember much about it except that I did like it, and I think that it was more of a comedy than the original Ghost Stories was. I hope that I can get around to watching it again before too long and see how it compares. Haunted Junction is mentioned in the ghost profiles on the Ghost Stories DVD. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9849 Location: Virginia |
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@Touma
I just checked. The Discotek release of Ghost Stories has no extras and does not have the extra subtitle track that mirrors the dub. Also I just noticed that the final line in the dub is a thank you to Steven Foster for writing the script. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18210 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Not having the subtitles keyed to the English dub for Ghost Stories would be a significant loss, as those subtitles had additional jokes in them. (The way the babble of the female lead's kid brother became trademarked after a few episodes, for instance.)
As for Guin Saga, yeah, that one Foster did drop the ball on. It was an epic fantasy story in the tradition of a Conan the Barbarian that always played completely seriously and without (much) cheese, and the couple of attempts at comedy in the dub fit horrendously badly. I've said before that it's a classic example of an otherwise-respectable dub being completely spoiled by roughly about five minutes of incomprehensibly bad acting and directing choices, and I still stand by that. |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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That is too bad. The ghost profiles are very informative. I think that everybody would benefit from them, and they would be especially nice for people who watch the show primarily for the actual ghost stories. The Extra subtitle track is almost a necessity for anybody who likes the dub, because some of the lines can be hard to understand at times. Unless Discotek made some significant improvements, in something, I suggest that anybody who is interested in the show should try to find the ADV release. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6868 Location: Kazune City |
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But as some form of proof, let me propose this scenario: suppose the Japanese producers were dissatisfied or enraged at ADV for desecrating their show with a gag dub. If that were true, then why would they allow Discotek to relicense the series and re-release ADV's dub with it? We've seen with Sentai's Dominion Tank Police that license rescues don't necessarily include existing dubs, and there was speculation that the Japanese side didn't want CPM's old dub resurrected again. Other scenarios include: 1) The Japanese were fine with the dub 2) The Japanese never heard anything about the dub one way or the other, and thus don't care enough to worry about how the dub may or may not have ruined the show. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6262 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I am aware of that and I know you don't represent ANN or the anime industry but your statement did sound credible when I first saw it because ANN moderators don't throw in blanket statement (now I know that sound ironic since I'm sort of making blanket statement about ANN moderators), and ANN moderator don't make up this stuff (because you guys abide by "teh rule" and you talked between the admins via staff forum, and that means moderators would sometime knows what's going on behind the scene in the industry when the mods talked with the admins). So that's why I took your previous statement seriously.
That's a good point, I didn't think about this until you brought this up. Thanks for giving that thought Zalis. |
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