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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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superdry
 Posts: 1309 |
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You do know that Aniplex USA is just importing the Japanese release (really no different than a store selling imported goods, but this is more official) to distribute via TRSI. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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I am aware and I think it's insane, but I'm sure they will sell out of it. I just don't think they'll get what they would if they did a normal release (unless all the companies are just idiots with low prices, but I somewhat doubt it).
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3186 |
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I don't think it will sell out as fast as the Garden or sinners did. $400 once vs $370 TWICE is hard for some fans to justify (even avid importers like myself). I'm only used to buying one cour shows. This is going to be hard on me because I can only afford one full Japanese BD release per season. F/Z will take up HALF a year of funds.
I've heard folks here say that that $2k per year range is average among Japanese otaku too. I certainly hope Aniplex of America offers domestic options sometime down the road so I can sell my BD sets. |
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Animerican14
 Posts: 963 Location: Saint Louis, MO |
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If I remember correctly, I think you've implied before that you were probably not going to end up caring for the dub, so color me kinda un-surprised  . You know, I have to wonder... for those of you that have been critiquing the dub so far in a not-so-positive/more-neutral light, whether by the first episode or the entire set, just how much do you think you're basing such critique on your own super-familiarity/strong memory of the subtitle track (which just might be plain inevitable)? For instance, Veers has watched the show several times over, even doing subtitle tracks for them, and thus I'd imagine it'd be hard to not literally think the original seiyuu as the characters, making the dub cast looking more like they're trying to play the seiyuu that are playing the girls.
I'm pointing this out because I watched the first two dubbed episodes with my sister, who has seen the whole series once before with me this past summer (and the first episode twice), yesterday. It was the first time for both my sister and myself that we saw those two episodes dubbed (and thus I'm deliberately holding off seeing the complete dubs of episodes 3 & 4 until Friday, when she has time...). Without even me saying anything after the episodes, she said she loved it, thinking it flowed well and felt pretty natural to her. And honestly, I found myself really liking the dub by the end of the viewing session myself, even though I've seen the series more times than she has and actually just saw the entire subbed track a few days earlier. Hell, I even forgot that I was watching a dub for many parts of episode 2; nothing particularly jarred me about the acting as I followed it, really. Oh, and regarding Kyoko: I assume that you haven't seen it then, Veers, but Aniplex posted the voice-cast video for Kyoko some days ago. It never even got its own individual post on Facebook, so I guess that means she'll be marketed as "extensively" here as she was in Japan, hah. Anyway, there are a few lines from episodes 5 and 6 scattered around a bit, and she might end up being one of my top actresses for the dub, actually-- I'd be lying if I told you that hearing her bit of dialogue between the 0:31 and the 0:37 mark didn't bring a wide smile of glee to my face  . (Incidentally, this line might reflect some of the softness that you thought might've been "missing" from the end of the first episode.)
Guess I'll report some more on dub thoughts after finishing it up on the BD this Friday... though my weekend's gonna be pretty crazy, so maybe not *right* after. |
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Veers
Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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I kinda feel like we should move this discussion over to Madoka proper in the anime forum, but I'll just leave this here
That said, I don't think it's a good dub objectively, and I believe there are many factors at play (VA experience and VAing as a career here vs there, direct feedback from the writer/producer/director or lack thereof, the character roles themselves defining the scope of acting/emoting, etc.). It's not terrible, but it's not as good as the show deserves. Here are some more thoughts in much greater detail. spoilers for eps 1-4 Specific characters: 1) Madoka. In the Japanese, she sounds like a squeaky young girl, supposedly normal, identifiable, etc. Overall her seiyuu does fine, but I think the script itself really doesn't give the seiyuu a real chance until the last quarter of the show, and as such is the weakest performance. In the English dub, she sounds like a squeaky young girl forcing her voice to match the pitch of the original dub, definitely not normal. People have complained that Madoka sounds like she's just reading the script in English, in the sense that her lines are just kind of "said" but not "acted," but to be fair, she kinda sounds like that in the Japanese half the time, too (again, I think it's often intentional there, part of her character). By the same logic applied to the Japanese dub, the English voice for Madoka may display better acting later in the show, but the problem is that the dissonance generated by the similarity of the voices is hard to get past for me. Casting wise I guess it's a good pick in that sense; she does sound a lot like the original performance, and that was probably the goal, so for that objective, they did succeed...I am just questioning the importance of that objective versus something that sounds a little more like a normal English-speaking voice. Overall verdict for Madoka is "fine for now." 2) Sayaka. In the Japanese, she is expressive, distinctive, and I guess kind of "modern" (going by her vocabulary). In the English, she is expressive but not distinctive, and sufficiently "teenager-y." She sounds too much like Mami and Kyubey, but other than that I really don't have a lot to say here, I thought Sayaka was probably the best part of the English dub so far (of the main characters). 3) Homura. In the Japanese, she sounds aloof, disinterested, stern, and way older than she looks (until later in the show). In the English, she sounds aloof, disinterested, stern, and way older than she looks. Homura definitely sounds "acted" in both dubs (in a good way). Similar to Madoka, the script doesn't really give her many chances to do much until later. Like Sayaka, I think so far she's fine in the English dub, and the proof will be in the pudding of the later episodes. One thing I did notice, having paid particular attention to the line right after Madoka says she heard QB asking her for help where Homura says "Sou?/Really?" in the Japanese dub (because of the difficulty of conveying the tone in subtitle text for this line), she really nailed that line in English, conveying the proper "ORLY?" reaction without being overly sarcastic. Like Madoka, overall verdict for Homura is "fine for now." 4) Mami. Uh... Okay, so in the Japanese, she sounds like a stereotype (you can make the case that all the girls start out this way, but Mami especially does), very proper, "senpai-ppoi" so to speak, and very sure of herself. In the English, she sounds very, uh... like a normal woman in her 20s reading a script. There were a few places that stood out as "up to par" with the original delivery (mostly Mami's lines to Homura, and then also the conversation between Mami, Madoka, and Sayaka about Mami's wish and Sayaka's hypothetical wish), so in a sense I think the English VA is capturing the character as best she can, I just think the actress is not a good fit for Mami's character because she doesn't sound like what Mami's character is (not to be confused with "she doesn't sound like the Japanese performance"). She sounds too motherly in the English, I guess. Like the performance itself was not bad, but I think it was a poor casting choice. Even when not compared to the Japanese dub, I think Mami's voice actress sounds out of place--Homura doesn't sound "normal" in either dub, and Mami doesn't sound "normal" in the Japanese dub, but she sounds too "normal" in the English dub, if that makes sense. 5) Kyubey. Kyubey is a salesman. In the Japanese, Kyubey doesn't "emote" much (again, until closer to the end of the show a few times), but he's always expressive, kinda cheesily happy sounding (thatsthejoke.jpg). In the English, Kyubey alternates between sounding bored out of his mind or way too emotive but with this strained sound. The sound of the voice in the English is fine, it's just as obviously-a-girl-doing-a-gender-neutral-voice as the Japanese was, but the line delivery in English just didn't feel right except in a few places (the scene on the roof when QB bids Madoka and Sayaka farewell, for example, had good line delivery from QB). Maybe it'll get better, but acting wise, Kyubey was decent in its own right but a disappointment in these first four episodes compared to the mood conveyed from the Japanese. 6) Kyoukospoiler[tan~]. Really too early to tell, so I'll stand by what I said before where my impression is that while the VA isn't doing a bad job, she's the most miscast (except maybe Mami) because her voice sounds way too much like the rest of the girls; definitely lacking the distinctive softening from the JP dub. 7) Kyousuke. Why is he the best voice in the English dub? It's not fair. No, seriously, his lines and delivery were great. 8) Other. Madoka's dad was good. Junko didn't sound old enough (compared to the Japanese) but was generally fine (nailed the drunk scene, too). Tatsuya was acceptable. The teacher was good. Hitomi was fine. In general: 1) Episode one. ffffffffffffff. So wooden. As I mentioned before, a lot of lines felt flat and devoid of any emotion. And so many lines where the timing was just really notably awkward. Right from the start, Kyubey's lines in the dream scene were really badly done (emotionless, sounded lethargic and unnaturally slow/drawn out), and there were other similar problems (like Homura asking Madoka to take her to the nurse's office--I know that particular line at least had mouth flaps to match, so there's an excuse in this case, but still). The three episode rule should not have to be applied to dubs, and unfortunately Madoka's English dub didn't feel like it found itself until the third, maybe fourth episode (partly thanks to the script/content, maybe). Madoka's first two episodes are kind of "off episodes" in terms of content, but that serves the story; weak dub performance cannot be excused in the same way. 2) Poor distinction between voices. In the Japanese dub everyone sounds very distinct. In the English dub, Madoka and Homura's voices are distinct, but pretty much everyone else, QB included, sound alike (even Sayaka, though at least she is frequently expressive which helps make her overall delivery stand out). I'm sure this'll smooth itself out in time as I get used to the voices, but the Japanese dub didn't have this problem; I could always tell who was talking in Japanese, while in the English dub there were several times someone said something and if I had not been looking at the screen, the only reason I'd know who was talking was because I practically have the show's script memorized (or perhaps more accurately, my brain's first reaction was to identify the speaker via the line itself, not via the voice). 3) Script in general. I was pretty pleased with the translation overall. There were a few parts I remember from working on subtitles that were kind of tricky (more tricky to word cleanly and succinctly in English, not so much tricky to understand the spirit of the line in Japanese), such as Mami's conversation about making a wish for others (I think the AoA translation captures the spirit well enough) and Mami's line to Homura about their patience being at an end for each other when Homura confronts her (I'd gone with a more literal word mapping in the subs, which didn't read as naturally, and AoA's script does a good job of making the line sound more natural even though it did leave out part of the nuance in the original). As I mentiond in the other thread, the only part that really stood out as awkwardly translated was the "ally of justice" line. To quote my own post here: The phrase is used several times in the show (to clarify, the English dub is a literal translation of "seigi no mikata" so it's technically not inaccurate), and each time it's used it indicates a certain naivety or idealism (it's used in conjunction with Sayaka and Mami). "Superhero" (capturing that kind of immature nuance--this is what I ended up going with in the subtitles I worked on) or even something as plain as "good guy" (because Sayaka likes to paint things in black and white and describes Homura as a "bad guy") would have worked better I think. 4) Name pronunciation. It was awkward (though I guess for someone not so used to the Japanese dub, this may be less of an issue). I remember even the original dub cast discussing in one of the commentaries how "difficult/unusual" the names were even in Japanese, but I'm not sure that's a valid excuse for the English dub. Admittedly, they're not names that roll off the average English-speaking tongue but still... I guess I was subconsciously expecting this part of the dub to be bad (in the same way that Japanese voice actor pronunciation of English names is generally bad; it works both ways, this one), so it didn't bother me a ton, but it definitely made me cringe a bit at first (especially in episode one; seemed like either they got the hang of it more as they went, or maybe my ears just adjusted). 5) Overall. Overall, it's a serviceable dub. Nothing about it was repulsive, yet not enough stood out as good for me to really be impressed. It wasn't "bad" enough to make me want to switch back to the Japanese track. I didn't buy this release for the dub, but I'm glad it got one; even if it's not a stellar dub and certainly won't meet some peoples' expectations, I think overall it's "good enough" for people who a) have low expectations, b) weren't really buying it for the dub anyway (such as myself), or c) will have their first exposure to the show via the English dub, and it will make it easier to pitch to a few RL friends who don't really "keep up" with anime but will generally try stuff if I recommend it. For me, the original dub is key to the Madoka Experience, but for others less invested in the series or less attuned to listening to Japanese dialog, maybe not so much. ...that was way longer than I intended, but there you go. Thoughts on the dub for episodes 1-4. Last edited by Veers on Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5825 Location: Virginia, United States |
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This was done for the Japanese BD's also. So it is not an Aniplex USA thing. I had no problem with three equal divisions of the soundtrack. Thirty minutes of music per CD is quite long. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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No, pretty sure I was judging it based on how I heard it. I'm pretty crappy at remembering/recognizing voices. Also, I know at least a couple people who didn't see the show at all until the live streaming of the dub on NicoNico and they found it wanting, one of whom has an almost exclusive preference for dubs. |
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Trustilotous
 Posts: 55 |
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Well it was a bit of a long wait, but my LE is finally here. It took a while, but I'm not going to complain all that much about it.
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Trustilotous
Posts: 55 |
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They've posted an image of the Madoka Magica Volume 2 LE.
http://madokamagicausa.com/product-combo2.php |
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WTK
Posts: 4047 |
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And it looks like the 2 Double-sided posters change from weeks ago isn't a typo. 
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DarkRoseFairy
Posts: 271 Location: Alberta, Canada |
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I guess they added another poster, because there no Kyubey sticker this time. |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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Considering the content in the episodes, I think it'd be much more appropriate to have Sayaka on the slip case. spoiler[Mami's time to shine has passed].
Still sweet, though. |
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Veers
Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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I'd much rather have Sayaka or Kyouko on the box, but I'm glad they defaulted to the v4 (instead of the v3) artwork for the disc case at least. I love that picture.
Then again, in a way, Mami on the box is still sort of fitting... in a way... spoiler[:D] |
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fireaxe
 Posts: 503 Location: Trois-Rivieres, Canada |
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I don't really get why Mami's on the main cover, given that Homura will definitely make the final one, I feel it would have made more sense to have Sayaka on it. If they really wanted to have Mami on one of those, I believe the first L.E. would have been a much better fit (and Madoka on the 2nd would have been just as fine)... That being said, this isn't the first (and probably won't be the last) time I disagree with some of their packaging choices.
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