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REVIEW: Ranma ½ Blu-Ray Set 3


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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4369
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:15 pm Reply with quote
definitely one to behold.however for the dubbing it was kinda obvious that cox would voiced ranma from the beginning. and it wasnt that hard to get use to inuyasha's voice as ranma and vice versa.especially when this cast is the same one back in the old VHS days.

though hearing Duo trying to be jamaican was definitely nerve grating to hear. I'm Trinidadian and i personally know some jamaicans as friends and they sure as hell dont sound like that. the closest was the VA that did the golden lion king shiki from the one piece strong world movie. Viz should have gotten that VA instead.
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SpacemanHardy



Joined: 03 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:59 pm Reply with quote
jr0904 wrote:
though hearing Duo trying to be jamaican was definitely nerve grating to hear. I'm Trinidadian and i personally know some jamaicans as friends and they sure as hell don't sound like that. the closest was the VA that did the golden lion king shiki from the one piece strong world movie. Viz should have gotten that VA instead.




.......They did. Confused

person#746
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PurpleWarrior13



Joined: 05 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Pretty good review, though a little late considering Set 4 has been out a few months, and Set 5 will be out soon. You can see by my profile picture that I'm a huge fan of this show, and I enjoy these earlier seasons in particular. The characters are really fleshed out, and the show doesn't take itself too seriously. I guess it gets a little old as it goes along, but it's always a fun time. The Blu-rays are amazing, some of the best in my collection. The show looks as good as it possible could. Richard Cox takes some getting used to as Ranma, Sarah Strange will always be Ranma to me. The show took almost 10 years to dub (1993-2001), so naturally there were a few cast shakeups along the way.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 1:32 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, it's entirely my fault that it didn't get done sooner. It hit my doorstep during a particularly busy time for me last fall and kept getting backlogged as higher-priority (and shorter!) things kept showing up. Finally got to finishing it last week.

Volume 4 never hit my doorstep, so this might be the last set that gets a review.
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1thought



Joined: 17 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:35 pm Reply with quote
If you enjoy the English dub these sets are probably great.

If you like Japanese with subtitles these sets are pretty bad since the subtitles are basically impossible to read while watching.
Viz uses small white subs that are impossible to read while watching.
Rebecca mentioned this as well in the review for Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet.

It's just disappointing because it's a nice release but with fatal flaws on the subtitles.
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Raebo101



Joined: 17 Mar 2010
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:38 pm Reply with quote
SpacemanHardy wrote:
jr0904 wrote:
though hearing Duo trying to be jamaican was definitely nerve grating to hear. I'm Trinidadian and i personally know some jamaicans as friends and they sure as hell don't sound like that. the closest was the VA that did the golden lion king shiki from the one piece strong world movie. Viz should have gotten that VA instead.




.......They did. Confused

person#746


Hahaha! That's funny Laughing

I guess Scott McNeil's Jamaican accent was more rough around the edges back in his Ranma 1/2 days Razz
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PurpleWarrior13



Joined: 05 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:50 pm Reply with quote
Principal Kuno is very much a caricature, so I think a more exaggerated voice and accent is more appropriate. Razz Same with Shampoo and the Jusenkyo Guide's Chinese accents (I love Elan Ross Gibson as Cologne, but I wish she attempted an accent too, though that might've taken away the seriousness and frankness of the character).
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Zalis116
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:00 pm Reply with quote
If the Japanese viewers can survive having the same VA playing Inuyasha and Ranma, surely English-speaking viewers can do the same.

I've been watching through this general range of episodes exclusively in Japanese on the old DVDs, which have large and easy-to-read yellow subtitles. Guess Viz has been listening to the yellow-haters a bit too much. Yeah, things don't feel as fresh as they used to, but at least there's a large enough cast that can easily rotate in and out of focus to provide a little novelty here and there.
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1thought



Joined: 17 Sep 2014
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:26 pm Reply with quote
Well every licensed anime company pretty much uses yellow with a decent font.
Except who? Funimation? And I'm not sure why they have never changed because I've always heard complaints about them being too small.

Anyways....
These subs from Viz are the worst I've seen on a home video release ever.

They don't have black bold around the lettering and Ranma uses a lot of light coloring scheme in the backgrounds so the white subtitles become kinda like camouflage.

Someone told me every Viz release is like this recently in the last few years.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 5:22 pm Reply with quote
PurpleWarrior13 wrote:
Principal spoiler[Kuno](spoiler for the new kids!) is very much a caricature, so I think a more exaggerated voice and accent is more appropriate. Razz


Principal's an odd character, as we don't know whether his being Ranma and Ukyou's proud Japanese punching-bag in his first episode is meant to be a Rumiko caricature of school-rule authority (with his "haircut" motif), or of his broken English, squarejawed American features and stock-comic American accent ("Ohhh, nooo!") in the original JP.
Even in the manga, he speaks broken Roman English, so speaking broken Island in the English version was the only way they could preserve the "stereotype" gimmick...Not to mention his being a complete lunatic who even out-lunatics proud Japanese Kunou, itself no small feat. Smile

As for the change in Ranma and Cologne's VA, we get a "Thanks to your patronage, we're coming back!" announcement from Viz at the end of S3, and don't remember, but think it may have been a Maison Ikkoku-like situation where they didn't know whether they were going to come back for a fourth season of disks, after just transcribing the VHS dubs.
And, that that meant going out to hire new actors they hadn't contracted for the longrun. We already know about the change in Nabikis later on, but it's not hard to guess Viz's reasoning for the others.
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Levonr



Joined: 19 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:24 pm Reply with quote
1thought wrote:

If you like Japanese with subtitles these sets are pretty bad since the subtitles are basically impossible to read while watching.
Viz uses small white subs that are impossible to read while watching.
Rebecca mentioned this as well in the review for Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet.


Now I'm glad I watched it on Hulu where the font can be changed to large.
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Key
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:51 pm Reply with quote
I watched the whole thing with the subtitles on (even with the dub on) and didn't see anything hideous about the subtitles. I've definitely seen far worse.
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PurpleWarrior13



Joined: 05 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:34 pm Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
Principal's an odd character, as we don't know whether his being Ranma and Ukyou's proud Japanese punching-bag in his first episode is meant to be a Rumiko caricature of school-rule authority (with his "haircut" motif), or of his broken English, squarejawed American features and stock-comic American accent ("Ohhh, nooo!") in the original JP.
Even in the manga, he speaks broken Roman English, so speaking broken Island in the English version was the only way they could preserve the "stereotype" gimmick...Not to mention his being a complete lunatic who even out-lunatics proud Japanese Kunou, itself no small feat. Smile


None of it's supposed to be taken seriously. The series is full of crazy stereotypes, and the dub only augments that even more.

EricJ2 wrote:
As for the change in Ranma and Cologne's VA, we get a "Thanks to your patronage, we're coming back!" announcement from Viz at the end of S3, and don't remember, but think it may have been a Maison Ikkoku-like situation where they didn't know whether they were going to come back for a fourth season of disks, after just transcribing the VHS dubs.
And, that that meant going out to hire new actors they hadn't contracted for the longrun. We already know about the change in Nabikis later on, but it's not hard to guess Viz's reasoning for the others.


Cologne's voice didn't change. Elan Ross Gibson voiced her for the whole series. The only time someone else voiced her was in the first couple OVAs where Kathleen Barr filled in (the character hadn't yet appeared in the TV series when those were dubbed).

There were casting changes throughout the whole series (at least one character every season after season 3). There was no hiatus. The series took almost 10 years to dub, and some people just left at various times for different reasons. Sarah Strange quit because she was getting too busy with her live action work (she's a very prominent Canadian TV actress). Teryl Rotherly (Kodachi) quit after the next season for probably the same reason. Her replacement, Erin Fitzgerald, along with Angela Costain (Nabiki) and Ian Corlett (Dr. Tofu/Jusenkyo Guide) quit the NEXT season, though Angela returned for the final season. Fitzgerald had moved to the US, and Corlett had a pay dispute with Ocean. Costain's sister filled in for her while she attended flight school.

Maison Ikkoku DID have a 6-year hiatus because it's dub was outright canceled after episode 36 because the VHS tapes had sold so horribly. It was given a second chance on DVD years later after Inuyasha was a hit, where the dub was finished. So many recasts occurred because of the time that had passed, and many actors simply were unavailable.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 6:07 am Reply with quote
Ranma 1/2 was one of the earliest TV series home video dubs, so early that it had a quirky distinction where, when it started, its dub VAs were around the same ages or even younger than their characters!
IIRC, Angela Costain started at age 14 voicing 17-yr-old Nabiki, for instance.
(There wasn't yet a stable of anime dub VAs with years of experience, so it seems they hired young and figured out the ropes of anime dubbing along the way.)

Sarah Strange was a divisive issue among fandom.
Myriam Sirois moved to Toronto and ended up playing Sarah Cantrell in Babylon 5.
Still, the tapes dominated the select few stores' "Japanimation" shelves that would have 'em, before DBZ took over that mantle.

It's also a sitcom, so save for the early seasons introducing the characters and occasional mini-arcs, it's not a show for binge-watching.
Though that probably helped when selling at 2 eps/tape at a time, so viewers can jump in and out at pretty much any time.
(In contrast, that didn't help Maison Ikkoku which is more a serial story.)
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4369
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:29 pm Reply with quote
Raebo101 wrote:
SpacemanHardy wrote:
jr0904 wrote:
though hearing Duo trying to be jamaican was definitely nerve grating to hear. I'm Trinidadian and i personally know some jamaicans as friends and they sure as hell don't sound like that. the closest was the VA that did the golden lion king shiki from the one piece strong world movie. Viz should have gotten that VA instead.




.......They did. Confused

person#746


Hahaha! That's funny Laughing

I guess Scott McNeil's Jamaican accent was more rough around the edges back in his Ranma 1/2 days Razz


which most people like myself didn't saw cause it was such a long time ago and unfortunately hard to find online.
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