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Drifters (TV).


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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2016 11:31 am Reply with quote


Drifters (TV)

Genres: action, comedy, fantasy
Themes: gore, historical, other world, parallel universe, samurai

Plot Summary: Shimazu Toyohisa is the real-life samurai who fought in the pivotal Battle of Sekigahara. In his dying moments, Shimazu is transported to a world of magic with other famous warriors throughout history. These warriors are forced to fight each other in an endless battle.
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Saw the OVA version of it and was impressed.

I like the quality of the world setting and was glad to see that they kept a lot of the violence. The style they adapted this with feels a lot like Hellsing (if you're familiar with that series). Meanwhile, they portrayed the character personalities pretty well. From the recent anime expo, Funimation are going to stream it and they announced that the show will be 12 episodes (1-cour) long. I expect them to maintain the quality as shown in the previews before. Mixing historical themes and fantasy into the story is quite entertaining.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2016 1:09 pm Reply with quote
The OVA was a specially edited version of episodes 1 and 2 of the upcoming series, so those who have watched it will not miss too much from the opening weeks.

Obviously looking forward to it, but will keep expectations low to stretch my enjoyment of it.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 10:20 am Reply with quote
Episode 1

Pretty good episode, animation style, and action were on par with the way it's done.

Plus we got the main characters introduced including Shimazu. In the meantime, I really like the fantasy setting and the violence reflected in the story. Yoichi (the Traper archer) also has a cool feel to his personality. Might have to get used to the comedy at some timings but I think it works so far for the show.

Catchy ED theme song and overall cool premiere, can't wait to see more.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 6:42 pm Reply with quote
As expected, this is the first half of the OVA released some time ago with a few additions.

For the first two weeks this studio effectively buys itself more time to get episodes 3 and beyond into shape since most of this episode is effectively the same as the OVA. The additions take far less time and effort than a full-fledged episode require.

Good luck to whoever's in charge of doing the subtitles for this series. I've said it before and I'll say it again: doing three distinct dialects very much removed from standard Japanese (especially Toyohisa's thick Kagoshima accent) absolutely requires someone who's actually lived in Japan or is a native speaker to do a proper job. The strange Slavic variant the elves use isn't a big problem because of the convenient Japanese subtitles which anyone with basic Japanese can easily translate.

Kouta Hirano gets to go wild with his historical fantasy since much of what happened during Sekigahara itself is based on soldier accounts and records written some time after the battle. Everyone knows what happened to Ii Naomasa, but Shimazu Toyohisa's ultimate fate lends itself well to the basic premise behind this series. The same goes for Oda Nobunaga and Nasu no Yoichi. It might be an incomplete adaptation, but it's going to be a seat of the pants ride from start to finish.

Don't know if the song at the end will serve as the official OP or ED song, but I much prefer the one played at the end of the OVA as an ED. A pity that it was a special commission just for that release and hasn't carried over to the main series.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 5:46 am Reply with quote
Episode 1

That Valkyrie is less hot than I would hope, looking like a cross of Anderson and The Major, and so far Valhalla has less mead and more elves than I would expect. I am joking, but the mysterious force grabbing warriors on the brink of death does make it come to mind.

For some reason I found an annoying frame rate problem at times, like with the CG at the beginning, but overall it looks good. It does not take much to see that the author of Hellsing is involved.
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CCTakato



Joined: 24 Jul 2015
Posts: 514
PostPosted: Wed Oct 12, 2016 12:59 am Reply with quote
i don't think I'll be sticking with this one. Unless it has a really engaging story, I'm not that into super violent anime as I have a weak stomach for it and this first episode really bothered my stomach. Weirdly I wasn't effected at all when I watched Hellsing Ultimate. Maybe it was because Hellsing featured vampires and supernatural beings and stuff and this is just overly strong humans in a weird time travel thing that makes it more icky to me? It's weird to explain. It was also kind of distracting that everybody looked like a clone of the Hellsing cast and I kept expecting Intregra to show up any moment and start bossing everyone around. But I kept feeling confused about what exactly was going on and who all these people that were fighting each other were and why I should care. I guess I'll give it another two episodes at least but I already have a lot of other really good shows I'm watching this season I enjoy a lot more that this isn't high on the priority list.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:13 pm Reply with quote
#2

OVA part 2 with little difference in the official episode broadcast. It should be obvious by their comments who the old man with one eye and his bickering adversary are.

The standard of quality assurance employed by those who air subtitled episodes is gauged partly by the ability to spell properly, especially if it's for dialogue which is unintelligible by ear and easily deciphered by already-present Japanese subtitles. An inability to even get basic spelling right leaves one with little confidence on the quality of subtitles to come.

Toyohisa's fighting style is simple, but effective. He always goes for the head, attacks really quickly and cleanly and doesn't give his opponents any chance to respond. For enemies standing their ground like the knight Aram, he is not averse to using unusual tactics to gain a brief advantage which he exploits to full effect.

History buffs might as well keep suspension of disbelief on and not bother criticising every little detail in the weapons and armour. Nobunaga might be good shot with his matchlock, but the weapon was notoriously inaccurate just beyond point-blank range making his single attack in this episode extremely unlikely in real life. it still looks cool though which is probably all that mattered.

I know what's coming next, but for those new to this series it's probably worth pondering over why the human soldiers are aware of the Octobrist organisation which governs the Drifters (as well as the latter's ability to converse in Japanese). The little spat between Easy and Murasaki towards the end is another point worth consideration. It's also a good bet that the "Ends" Easy talks about refers to the group of shadowy characters right at the end before the credits.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:37 pm Reply with quote
Anybody know what "language" the non-Drifters are speaking? It doesn't sound Japanese to me, but what the hell do I know? Presumably it is not a made up language because then the translators would have no idea what to put in the subtitles. Is it just Japanese that's pronounced in a weird way to make it sound like a foreign language?

Anyway, I'm enjoying this so far, although I do bemoan the lack of lusty elven wenches. I hope we see some soon. I feel bad for the elves. It looks like the "cure" for their troubles will be worse than the disease.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:42 pm Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:
Anybody know what "language" the non-Drifters are speaking? It doesn't sound Japanese to me, but what the hell do I know? Presumably it is not a made up language because then the translators would have no idea what to put in the subtitles. Is it just Japanese that's pronounced in a weird way to make it sound like a foreign language?


spoiler[ In the source material, it's typed out in Roman lettering but otherwise completely unintelligible. I think there are examples of it in some kind of strange hieroglyph as well. Readers can pronounce it, but it doesn't really make any sense. I thought it was related to Slavic, but don't know enough of that language family to be absolutely sure.

As far as the subtitles are concerned, the strange language is translated into Japanese subtitles which appear in Japanese traditional presentation on the top-right/right-hand side of the screen whereas for the web broadcast the English subtitles are shown with the original Japanese subtitles dispensed with. All the (semi-competent) translators have to do is read the Japanese subtitles and come up with something equivalent in English instead of bothering with the spoken dialogue. ]


Last edited by Harleyquin on Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 5:43 pm Reply with quote
Ah, interesting. Thanks, Harlyquin. That's where my confusion came in. In the past, I have seen Japanese subtitles retained along with the English subtitles when there is a made up language or a language other than Japanese used. Because I didn't see the Japanese subtitles this time, I assumed what we were hearing from the non-Drifters was a real language.
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HelloBucket



Joined: 07 Apr 2015
Posts: 477
Location: Upstate New York
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:41 pm Reply with quote
It's hard to be intimidated by a villain named Easy. Not that it matters with how goofy the show is.

Speaking of goofy, I got a big kick out of all the random soldiers of various descriptions singing along with the OP song. It's exactly the right sort of stupid humor.

My only big question going forward is how long is it going to take for Caesar and Hannibal (as best as I can figure without Googling) to connect up with the Japanese drifter crew...
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:48 pm Reply with quote
Close. It was Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. I won't pretend I knew that from general knowledge. Wikipedia is my friend. It confirmed that Scipio had studied Hannibal's tactics and used them to win at Zama which lines up with the dialogue.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 9:01 pm Reply with quote
For casual viewers wanting to know a bit more about the cast, there's always

http://www.nbcuni.co.jp/rondorobe/anime/drifters/character/toyohisa.html

which this website borrowed most of its material from when doing its anime spotlight feature. There are more drifters who have yet to take their bow on stage while the ends are also introduced.

It seems poor English isn't just the preserve of the web broadcast translators. I didn't realise there was "the Japan's history" when as far as I recall "Japan's history" is what is most commonly used for sentence construction.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 6:04 am Reply with quote
Episode 2

Yeah, I really like this style, the Hellsing kind of being totally over the top yet a certain type of atmosphere. The cruelty that can creep onscreen, and the stupid humour with deformed character designs, they are all things I am familiar with and kind of hungry for more.

On the language, I don't really know that much about other languages, but for some reason it sounded a little German. Like not entirely so, as a whole it does sound a bit like a mix of languages, I was a little confused earlier about it all since I could not see any subtitles left for Japanese viewers and wonder how they would have been expected to understand.

Oh, and this will be off topic, and I am sure there is no actual relevance, but for some reason the dark fantasy setting has been. It was probably on my mind last episode from the campfire after the main character almost or pretty much dying. With the mention of other races like dwarves and hobbits I am interested in seeing more.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2815
PostPosted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 7:59 am Reply with quote
The made-up language uses English loanwords and words from either a Romance language branch or a Slavic(?) language branch. Alternatively it's using Japanese as a base template and then deploying a cipher on the letters which comprise "regular" Japanese speech to come up with the imaginary language.

Nergos: Kill

Sedaya: Stop

Demi: Demi (human)

Drif: Drifter

E Mon: That (man?)

Can't really match the other words to something more intelligible. The good news is spoiler[ viewers don't have to put up with it for much longer. ]


Last edited by Harleyquin on Sun Oct 16, 2016 6:05 pm; edited 1 time in total
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