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The Mike Toole Show - Searching for Star Blazers


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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 12:45 pm Reply with quote
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English subs on Japanese BDs are usually reserved for either Studio Ghibli films, or catalog re-releases of popular classics.


And all the new Gundam, like Origin and Thunderbolt! A few other random series too, like the first season of Jojo's (but not the second, just like Yamato.)

Any reason why you didn't import the Japanese release instead of the Italian one, like I did? I No region worries there. Was price the issue?
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5406
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:10 pm Reply with quote
I have to be blunt Mike: WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU IMPORT THE JAPANESE BD'S OF YAMATO 2199? I bought all the 7 volumes, and they cost me around US $400. Yes, that is a lot of money for 26 episodes, but it was worth it because I love freaking show. I intended to import the 2202 discs, but Bandai Visual apparently does not want our stinky, non-Japanese money. But hopefully someone in the U.S. puts out at least subtitled BD's,
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penguintruth



Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 8458
Location: Penguinopolis
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:14 pm Reply with quote
Any continued use of "Star Blazers" to refer to Space Battleship Yamato is enough to send me into a rage. It's bad enough Voyager Entertainment has utterly destroyed the sale of the franchise in NA, isn't it? Like Harmony Gold, it's like they actively hate making money.


Well, 2199 wasn't that amazing, anyway. It lost the Kodai-Okita father-son dynamic and a lot of the original's heart. But it did have more gender diversity and more about the Gamilians, at least.
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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Can't see Tom Cruise accepting that role unless he's allowed to seduce Nova. Then again, the guy who played the lead in the Japanese Yamato films was pushing 40, so maybe Cruise could apply some of that digital de-aging cream & play Derek.
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Shar Aznabull



Joined: 12 Jan 2015
Posts: 236
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Patlabor 2 (and 1) was actually limited to 10000 copies, I have #2471 of 2 and #4494 of 1.
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
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Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:38 pm Reply with quote
As the person who was i charge of the English subs on those Japanese blurays, I believe I should add all I can about how those came to be included.

In around November of 2011, I attended a meeting of the The Association of Japanese Animation companies, (hereafter AJA), where I was introduced to the crowd by my patrons at Tezuka Productions (where I was working as a freelance translator at the time).

About a month late I got an email from Mikio Gunji, a producer a Production IG (and the Producer for Yamato 2199), who asked if I could help him out on something, and it turned out he wanted to know if it was possible to put subtitles on the Japanese blurays.
It was a first for IG to handle this themselves, and it was actually quite complex to figure out the work flow.
The blurays were being authored by Q-Tec, and they basically had an in house subtitling software suite that was completely locked down and couldn't import any subtitle data at all. I eventually figured out by working with Q-tec a method by which we rendered the actual BDN subs (XML+PNG) and sent that to Q-tec to mux into the blurays directly, which saved IG hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars as Q-tec's prices for subtitling were fairly bonkers.
They also originally requested that we do _multiple_ subtitle languages. I had in fact just handled 7 language simulcast of fate/zero for niconico.com (remember that?!), and though I got a quote down to like, $150 per language, it was still too expensive for the budget available so that was scrapped in favor of just English.

As a project this was the longest term project I had ever been on. It spanned me working for like 3 different companies... It started in Dec 2011 and we turned in the subs for the final bluray... around October 2013.

So why are there no English subtitles on 2202? Probably the simplest reason is that the producer whose idea it was, Mikio Gunji, is no longer a producer on it. I do not think many people were even aware the blurays HAD english subtitles in Japan.
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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 2:09 pm Reply with quote
penguintruth wrote:
Well, 2199 wasn't that amazing, anyway. It lost the Kodai-Okita father-son dynamic and a lot of the original's heart. But it did have more gender diversity and more about the Gamilians, at least.

It's a well-done distillation/combination of the good bits from the old Yamato stuff (mostly the first TV series of course but with elements of later stuff skillfully blended in) and I like the more complex ending (spoiler[the Yamato doesn't single-handedly destroy a galactic empire]) but new-Kodai is a snore and all the totally new stuff is shockingly awful. None of the new characters are worth a damn, even the Rei clone they spend so much time on. She doesn't do anything!
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Borderite92



Joined: 20 Apr 2015
Posts: 47
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 2:17 pm Reply with quote
Jumped the moment Kinokiniya was pre-ordering for volume one and managed to get Both lanyards(Gamillas Green and CosmoNavy Blue).
Then reality struck Voyager when went it alone instead of working with MUCH better distributer and sat on it. Could have been Illumitoon-bad(Beet in English was atrocious), but I had 4 of the released dvd's .
I had at one time in the 90's ordered the Comet empire VHS set by mail order, it was delayed a bit longer when they forgot to check the order.
And I found this video oddly after a search for the result of Seattle Sounders match and the search link picture was of Avatar(or Otika) in his command chair. It lead to a site of team supporters and a fundraiser. Odd what they have as their logo. "Nos Audietis YachtCon 15" on Youtube
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Primus



Joined: 01 Mar 2006
Posts: 2758
Location: Toronto
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I do have one apocryphal story to relate, and it's killing me that I can't find the original email containing this anecdote. Apparently, back during the height of the DVD boom in the mid-2000s, one of those big-box retailers that likes to use the color blue approached Voyager Entertainment and asked the publisher to create an inexpensive Star Blazers TV box set for them to sell. Yes, one of the biggest retailers in North America apparently went to Voyager with hat in hand, just begging for something that they'd undoubtedly sell thousands of. It never happened, though, and for the rest of their print run, Voyager's Star Blazers DVDs remained expensive, mediocre-quality, and a pain in the ass to find.


Think of the returns Voyager would have to accept back.
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explosionforgov



Joined: 16 Jun 2016
Posts: 80
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:17 pm Reply with quote
I went to a very small sci-fi/fantasy convention a few months back, one where there were a few viewing parties for various obscure sci-fi shows, and Yamato was on there. An older bearded gentleman who ran a Yamato fansite showed a few subbed episodes of 2199, lectured a bit about it and the licensing troubles, was impressed that at 25 I even knew about some of this older anime (I was by far the youngest one in the room), and then showed a bit of the unsubbed sequel series. It's a beautiful show, one I'd gladly watch in full if it was licensed.

I think I remember hearing that a few licensors are very greedy, and seem to have a very inflated idea of how popular anime is in the States, and so they hold onto a license until they get astronomical amounts of money, which rarely if ever happens. I think it has gotten much more popular as of the last couple decades, but it's still nowhere near as ubiquitous as some otaku tend to feel it is.
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SolHerald



Joined: 07 Oct 2012
Posts: 99
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:25 pm Reply with quote
I just wish the Yamato franchise was in the hands of more competent licensors. There is no reason such a classic series and its remakes shouldn't be streamed and have home releases.
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:31 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I'm going to figure a US release of Star Blazers 2199 simply has to come up at some point, because I've spent a bunch of cash on buying a fancy foreign edition of this series. That's just how these things work.


This always happens to me, too. The most recent example I can think of is waiting over 10 years for a new release of the Johto Journeys arc of Pokémon, which was the only season I was missing. The DVD singles got stupid expensive and (the reason I was waiting for a complete release) were missing the last two episodes. I thought for sure there would be a release when HeartGold and SoulSilver came out, but they only re-released the first two series and none of Johto for some reason. I bought the Australian R4 release 10 and a half years after the final original DVD single came out... and a complete R1 box set was announced literally the week after I received the Aussie set in the mail.

The trick didn't work when I imported The Tatami Galaxy, but maybe yours will work with Star Blazers this time! *fingers crossed*
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AstroNerdBoy



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Posts: 413
Location: Denver, CO
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:49 pm Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
I have to be blunt Mike: WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU IMPORT THE JAPANESE BD'S OF YAMATO 2199? I bought all the 7 volumes, and they cost me around US $400. Yes, that is a lot of money for 26 episodes, but it was worth it because I love freaking show. I intended to import the 2202 discs, but Bandai Visual apparently does not want our stinky, non-Japanese money. But hopefully someone in the U.S. puts out at least subtitled BD's,


Because that release doesn't say "Star Blazers" and as we all know, "Star Blazers" > than "Space Battleship Yamato" and its filthy Japanese connections. Rolling Eyes

penguintruth wrote:
Any continued use of "Star Blazers" to refer to Space Battleship Yamato is enough to send me into a rage. It's bad enough Voyager Entertainment has utterly destroyed the sale of the franchise in NA, isn't it? Like Harmony Gold, it's like they actively hate making money.


I'm with you on this one, sir. The ONLY reason this was called "Star Blazers" in the 70s was to rid it of the "stench" of being something associated with Japan, which still held a negative connotation in the mind of most Americans thanks to World War II. So I understand why they did it back then. There's zero reason to continue this today. For me, the franchise is "Space Battleship Yamato" not bloody "Star Blazers."

And yes, I was a kid in the 70s who saw some episodes of "Star Blazers" when it aired. Then I came to Japan and learned the truth.

Quote:
Well, 2199 wasn't that amazing, anyway. It lost the Kodai-Okita father-son dynamic and a lot of the original's heart. But it did have more gender diversity and more about the Gamilians, at least.


I've got to finish watching it. I was glad to see more babes than just Yuki in it 'cause the original anime had her basically doing almost every job on the ship, which wasn't realistic. Through the episodes I've watched, I like that a lot of 70s cheese is gone and that Gamilus has more exploration.

samuelp wrote:
So why are there no English subtitles on 2202? Probably the simplest reason is that the producer whose idea it was, Mikio Gunji, is no longer a producer on it. I do not think many people were even aware the blurays HAD english subtitles in Japan.


That doesn't surprise me. My impression is that many of those in charge in Japan fail to properly recognize a market for their product outside of Japan. Plus, the Japanese market is a house of cards that could easily collapse under the right conditions, which I can't believe Japanese production houses are not painfully aware of.

Fronzel wrote:
None of the new characters are worth a damn, even the Rei clone they spend so much time on. She doesn't do anything!


I presume that's the female pilot?

explosionforgov wrote:
I think I remember hearing that a few licensors are very greedy, and seem to have a very inflated idea of how popular anime is in the States, and so they hold onto a license until they get astronomical amounts of money, which rarely if ever happens. I think it has gotten much more popular as of the last couple decades, but it's still nowhere near as ubiquitous as some otaku tend to feel it is.


In the mid-late 90s and early 2000s, this was certainly the case. Companies were spending tons of money on anime licenses, often for shows that were crap. But I don't think that's so true these days.
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 4:42 pm Reply with quote
I also wish people would stop calling it Star Blazers, it's pretty dumb and worked when the series was some janky Scooby-Doo nonsense, but not for 2199 where it's a more serious and mature War drama. Not to mention that all of the English names are idiotic.

Also, having watched 2199 first, I don't see any flaws with it. Kodai is a bit flat, but overall I like all the characters and the additional minor subplots, like the one with Mamoru, blue girl and Spock. Having the series be a more ensemble cast was a good choice and made the ship feel more realistic, showing a bigger slice of humanity than a small centralized cast could, which I think is important considering the scale and nature of the story.
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Kruszer



Joined: 19 Nov 2004
Posts: 7981
Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 5:16 pm Reply with quote
Why Itally? Anyhow I pieced together a complete release by buying the first 4 volumes from Voyager and importing 5-7 from Japan. They're all subtitle only releases so they're basically the same product with slightly different packaging, except the episode order is different which just means I have the same one or two episodes on both discs 4 of the Voyager release and 5 of the Japanese release. I also snagged the 2nd movie from Japan, it also has English subs. Not really interested in the recap film so I skipped that.

*Insert obligatory flipping of the bird in Voyager's general direction here*


Last edited by Kruszer on Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
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