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Ridiculous or stupid anime descriptions




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Gatherum



Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Posts: 773
Location: Aurora CO
PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:53 pm Reply with quote
Let's have a look at the description for A Place Further than the Universe, as written on the ANN preview guide:
Quote:
Tamaki Mari (known to her friends as “Kimari”) had big hopes heading into high school. She was going to travel to new places, skip a day of school, and just all-around make the most of her youth. But one day she realizes that she's somehow reached her second year without doing any of those things, because she's afraid. Every time Mari tries to do something new, she gets anxious and backs out at the last minute, and no matter how much she tries, she can't seem to get past that block. Then one day, she sees a girl from her school racing past her at the train station. The girl loses an envelope that turns out to be filled with cash – one million yen. When Mari tracks her down, she tells Mari that her mother was lost on an Antarctic research trip when she was in middle school, and now her goal is to raise money to go find her. She invites Mari to go along with her on the trip, which just may be the push that Mari needs to finally begin living the life she wants.

A'ight. Okay. I can get behind that. Let me go and add it to my VRV watch list.
Goes to VRV and does so, only to notice the description written there:
Quote:
Scenery that we have never seen. Sounds that we have never heard. Scent that we have never smelled. Food that we have never tasted. And the surge of emotion that we have never experienced. This is the expedition of recollecting the pieces torn apart and sensation left alone. When we reach that place, what will we think? Howling, 40 degree angle. Raging, 50 degree angle. Shouting, 60 degree angle. A wilderness beyond the heavy sea. The furthest south, far from civilization. At the top of the Earth. We will find lights through the girls' eyes to live tomorrow.

What the ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff...!

What does this shit even mean?! Like, I understand trying to sound mysterious, or cryptic, or...I dunno, ethereal or whatever?! But like...this legit doesn't make any damned sense, and if this were my only reference point going in, I would probably have thought, "Yup! This is this season's token fluffy abstract anime that's trying to be deep and woke, but really, really isn't." Fortunately, the good editors at ANN (assuming they wrote their own description) have their shit together.

Maybe one of you can enlighten me. Alternatively, you can post some of your own findings, here. Could be good for a laugh. Razz
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23769
PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 4:54 pm Reply with quote
Yeesh. That sounds like something that was originally written in Ancient Sumerian and was then put through Google Translator...

...on the other hand, I kinda want some of whatever the writer was ingesting before writing that.
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
Posts: 1489
PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:27 pm Reply with quote
Bandai's description of Love Hina:

Quote:
Attempting to fulfill a promise to his childhood sweetheart, Keitaro Urashima is determined to enter Tokyo University! After being rejected twice, he decides to leave home and stay at his grandmother's apartment complex to study. But when he arrives, his grandmother is gone and he finds himself under attack by the all-female residents!

Will the girls accept him as their new apartment manager? Will his bones ever knit? More importantly, can he concentrate on his studies when he discovers that one of his tenants might be his long lost sweetheart?


A reasonable description of a TV-14/13+ series, right? Now, Funimation's sexed-up description...

Quote:
College isn't the only thing he can't get into!

How's a guy supposed to keep his nose in the books with so many sexy girls in his face? Keitaro moved to his grandma's apartment building to cram for a college entrance exam. Too bad nobody told him the complex is for ladies only and that he's the new manager!

The job has some perks: girls frolicking in the hot springs all day and lounging in their naughtiest nighties all night. It's definitely gonna be tough for Keitaro to focus on studying - especially if one of his titillating tenants turns out to be his long lost love! From the man who quickened your pulse with Negima! and My Santa, it's Ken Akamatsu's classic - Love Hina!


Someone at Funimation needs to get fired for getting ridiculously horny at work and feeling the need to rewrite a perfectly fine description into softcore porn. I get wanting to sell DVDs, but you've gotta draw the line somewhere. Anyone who buys Love Hina looking for "girls frolicking in the hot springs all day and lounging in their naughtiest nighties at night" is going to be disappointed by the minimal amount of fanservice (especially by today's standards).
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4609
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:31 pm Reply with quote
Sounds like a Makoto Shinkai plot.

I doubt either wrote them themselves, just picked up from promo material.

For the preview guide I bet ANN used a first episode description.
CR / VRV took the description from other promo material.Did a basic translation and didn't edit it.
And if you look at ANN's Anime Spotlight for the show you'll see a version of the same text, but edited better and beacuse it's part of a larger guide it doesn't matter that only a bit of it is flowery and vague.

animenewsnetwork.com/anime-spotlight/2017/winter/a-place-further-than-the-universe/.125474

Story

Our first step always began from simple curiousity.
Scenery we've never seen.
Sounds we've never heard.
Scents we've never smelled.
Textures we've never felt.
Food we've never tasted.
And, a heartbeat we've never experienced.
This is a journey we've embarked on in order to pick up the pieces we forgot somewhere along the way, the touching moments we left behind.

I wonder what we'll think when we get there.

The Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Shrieking Sixties. A primordial land located across a raging sea, at the south of the planet, separated from civilization. This is the story of four girls on a journey to the South Pole—A Place Further Than the Universe. These are sparkling memories we will make, seeing everything through these girls' eyes.
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9839
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:13 am Reply with quote
I believe that comes under the heading of "lost in translation".
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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:12 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
I believe that comes under the heading of "lost in translation".

Which in my mind is forever associated with Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola.
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Gatherum



Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Posts: 773
Location: Aurora CO
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Spastic Minnow wrote:
Story

Our first step always began from simple curiousity.
Scenery we've never seen.
Sounds we've never heard.
Scents we've never smelled.
Textures we've never felt.
Food we've never tasted.
And, a heartbeat we've never experienced.
This is a journey we've embarked on in order to pick up the pieces we forgot somewhere along the way, the touching moments we left behind.

I wonder what we'll think when we get there.

The Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Shrieking Sixties. A primordial land located across a raging sea, at the south of the planet, separated from civilization. This is the story of four girls on a journey to the South Pole—A Place Further Than the Universe. These are sparkling memories we will make, seeing everything through these girls' eyes.


Trouble is, that's only slightly better. Like, I'll grant that it makes grammatical sense now, but it's so cryptic that I'm still like, "Yup. Fluffy and [expletive] woke!" The only thing one can definitively discern from this description is that it's about four girls who go to Antarctica--which, on its own is...cool, I guess?

Also, lol @ "Roaring Forties". Roaring in economic pain, amirite?
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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Joined: 14 Jan 2011
Posts: 612
Location: inland US west, pretty rural
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:22 pm Reply with quote
Gatherum wrote:


The Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Shrieking Sixties. A primordial land located across a raging sea, at the south of the planet, separated from civilization.

Also, lol @ "Roaring Forties". Roaring in economic pain, amirite?


Let me try my two bits worth- bad weather there made sailors call the oceans south of 40 degrees south latitude the roaring forties. The other two are more of the same, I think. Used here to hype how extreme things are going to be for the girls, make it seem more exotic, etc.
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Gatherum



Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Posts: 773
Location: Aurora CO
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:52 pm Reply with quote
Nom De Plume De Fanboy wrote:
Let me try my two bits worth- bad weather there made sailors call the oceans south of 40 degrees south latitude the roaring forties. The other two are more of the same, I think. Used here to hype how extreme things are going to be for the girls, make it seem more exotic, etc.


Oh, hey. Learned something new today. I stand corrected. Very Happy
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Qualms





PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 2:21 pm Reply with quote
I feel like an outsider here, because I very rarely read series descriptions, whether on a DVD/Blu-Ray case or preceding a review. Maybe they can get weird (read: creative) because they only matter to people who read description blurbs?
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Violynne



Joined: 09 May 2014
Posts: 128
PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 2:06 pm Reply with quote
Back in the days anime used to be sold in singles, this was very common. Holding up two singles in the same series would often yield different results, leaving the reader questioning if they were from the same series.

My favorites where similar to what CatSword described: a completely different description trying to push sex (anime of old was often mistaken for "cartoon porn" given many OVAs contained nudity) to sell the series.

I even laughed at the examples when the video codes would change, turning a "G" or "PG" based rating into an "R" rating for uses such as "Mild Nudity" (which showed nothing) and "Strong Language" (because "damn" and "hell" were "strong" languages).

Can't say I miss those days.
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
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Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4609
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 3:16 pm Reply with quote
^^^
Yes, and sometimes companies couldn't decide what to emphasize. I once blind bought used copies of the Maze OAV and Jewel BEM Hunter Lime OAV on the same purchase. The first was billed as fantasy adventure (whose adult content was oddly minimized) and the second was described as a raunchy sex comedy with anime boobs everywhere!

Maze turned out to be the gratuitous ecchi comedy adventure title, with frequent cartoon nudity and "comedic" sexual assault and implied rape. And JBHL was a very light ecchi title that I don't even remember having any actual nudity.

Both are horrid incomplete messes that start in the middle of a story and end without any resolution. But that's a different complaint.
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horseradish



Joined: 27 Oct 2015
Posts: 574
Location: Bay Area
PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:40 pm Reply with quote
A show from the late '90s called Coji-Coji advertised their Youtube channel on ANN a few months back, as part of a 20th anniversary celebration. I find the ANN description amusing and charming in a way that matches the graphic used to represent the show:
Quote:
They are neither animals nor humans. They cannot be distinctly categorised as boys or girls. They are also not considered to be Earthlings or space creatures. There are no such specific titles in the world of Coji-Coji. Instead, it boils down to the meaning of "existence", an emphasis on the root of a character. This world hinges on all things natural, the pure existence of life. The protagonist, Coji-Coji, represents a perfect existence where truths of life are constantly being delivered and no words of malice can be spoken.

I thought the show would be available after the advertising, but unfortunately the channel has uploaded only the first episode and some clips.
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