Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-09-10]
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8462 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Mediocre would be an improvement. That third OVA was a trainwreck with its pointless new characters, go nowhere plot, and disappointing wrap up. It pretty much destroyed everything that had been built up until that point. It boils my blood just thinking about it. There is literally not a single anime that has angered me more. And I've seen Gundam SEED Destiny. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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They're talking as though they're recent, recording in multiple studios under differetn directors, etc. They mentioned on this & the last maybe the one before they're up to the original eps they dubbed & also a mention of fixing stuff/call backs on va's as I recall One of the difs that has always seemed to exist is some dub groups research more than others. I remember ADV commentaries where VA's commented they were not allowed to know what happens in future scripts while on the Magic Knght Rayearth commentary Lex Lang mentions several of the va's watching the Japanese tracks. And if the director has some vision of keeping the VA's in the dark like Japan, I don't have as much of a deal (to be fair on Japanese commentaries, there are comments of the VA's reading the manga which isn't always an option for the American VA's unless they can read Japanese & care to import. Some comment they are already fans of the title when they were hired while others mention reading the manga for clues on the character) However, the scriptwriter at least should have a solid idea of the title. It really shouldn't be too much to expect then to at least watch the entire title if there's only 13-26 eps so they know where its headed. Every once in awhile I've hit a series where it really seems the scriptwriter is clueless on future events. It wouldn't hurt to watch all of a 50-54 ep title for that matter. It IS just a job, but the actors they are paid to act so they really should never just phone in the work. Yes, it is "just" cartoons, but not to those of us paying top buy the dvds. We're willing to plop down our hard-earned cash I haven't bothered with the Tenchi thing because it is pretty well ridden into the ground. It's been stretched pretty far after 3 series & the Magical girl Sasami was pretty average fluff. It's really a title for die hard Tenchi fans so I assumed the latest was also stretched pretty thin. In the back of my mind, I'll get it eventually, but I really don't expect much. It's like Season 10 of a sitcom. Most bases have been farmed for solid jokes & now it's the audience tuning in because it's comfortable, but we all know better material is out there & it's probably a newer title |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3490 Location: Back stateside |
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Okay, I actually agree with your general point that while in theory fansubs can be used in a positive but in reality often aren't, I have to quibble with that analogy on a few major points. 1) Most places, at least in America, don't have marijuana dispensaries. In this regard, I think your analogy works, though not the way you expected it to. If you imagine Japan and any place a series is licensed as the state with legal marijuana, and any place where a series is unavailable as a place where marijuana is still illegal, than in those latter states the only recourse is the dealer -- i.e. fansubs. If marijuana became legal in that state (i.e. a series became licensed) then the dealer needs to go. 2) Places in the US that have legalized marijuana have done so for "medicinal purposes." Setting aside how much this holds true in practice, you still need to have at least a pretense of a "prescription." There is no parallel in the anime industry. 3) I don't know of any fansubbers that have connections to violent criminal elements the way some (though certainly not all) street dealers do. 4) Dealers charge you money. Fansubbers don't (or at least, they're not supposed to). For your analogy to work, the dealer would have to be giving pot away for free. So it would be more like growing pot in your own backyard and sharing with friends vs getting from a dispensary. This whole analogy really makes little sense because anime is not marijuana! One is a set of copyrighted ideas, the other is a plant that can be grown naturally. They are too dissimilar for simple comparison. But like I said, I think your point that fansubs in practice are not as harmless as they could be in theory is a valid one. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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The reason that fansubbers are not connected to violent criminal elements generally is because the state's in question have to this point been extremely ineffectual.
You would see significantly more violence in that black market should the state get involved to a higher degree. http://mises.org/daily/4553 Wherever the state intervenes the most you find a combination of higher prices, more exploitation, restricted supply, lower standards, violence, etc. These don't necessarily occur all at once and the type of intervention tends to make them more one way or another (police-style intervention tends to promote violence leading to exploitation and high prices, while regulation tends to only increase prices and restrict supply.) One needs only look at health care, drugs, schooling, or any other industry the state has a high involvement in to find a myriad of controls that ensure the situation remains poor. Drug laws are the US government's gift to drug dealers. Anti-prostitution laws are the government's gift to pimps. Absent these types of regulations we'd see significantly less violence and significantly less exploitation of workers and consumers who would have more options. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3490 Location: Back stateside |
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Anime also doesn't have long-term damage to your health the way use of cocaine and heroin does (I'll give you marijuana as no worse than alcohol). Now, I don't think much of the so-called "war on drugs," but drug use needs to be combated, as an issue of public health. And simply legalizing it won't get rid of dealers and their criminal ties, at least not right away, nor will it get rid of some of the bad policinghabits and legal precedents that emerged during the "war." It'll be a long process to undo the damage, not a simple fix. And seriously, you think fansubbers will take up with violent elements to protect themselves??? Again, the two things are way too different! Fansubs are distributed digitally so ducking the law takes different forms, it's free so there's no competition for profits or territory, etc. etc. The situation is not the same at all. The analogy simply does not work. |
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NNUfergs
 Posts: 15 Location: Nampa, ID |
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I have not seen the FMAB Blu-Ray disc, however, I don't think Funimation is being as careless as many of you seem to think. Subtitle tracks, audio tracks, and video tracks are completely separate from each other on both DVDs and Blu-Rays. The menu option for a specific audio and subtitle track combination are simply presets if you will. They made it easy to select the two most common combinations right from the start, but that does not mean other combinations are not possible. Start playing the disc in English with no subs and I you have a decent Blu-Ray player or software you will still be able to turn on the English subtitles. Or turn them off while watching the Japanese audio track. All of which can be changed on the fly without stopping the disk. Blu-Ray is especially good at this. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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There is one difference, at least for the mainstream titles, which is that the broadcaster put money into the pot to produce the anime, while none of those involved with bootlegging put money in, in return for permission to do what they are doing. They are similar in that watching on television encourage the broadcaster to keep broadcasting the anime and watching the fansub encourages the fansub group to keep fansubbing the series Except "advertising aside" is just a way of saying, "if we ignore the difference, then there is no difference". They are different in that encouraging the broadcasters to keep broadcasting the show helps keep the struggling industry alive, while encouraging the fansubbers to keep fansubbing does no good for the industry and may well be doing substantial harm. The actual equivalent to watching a broadcast of the show and then buying the DVD is watching a legit stream of the show, and then buying the DVD. So, for example, Nozomi has started streaming selected titles on YouTube, with the first two staying up and the later ones in a series on a one month timecast. Maria-sama ga Miteru Season 1 just started, streaming on Tuesdays. That's the actual equivalent of watching on broadcast ... and then if you buy the DVDs of the shows that you like, that is the exact analogy. Independently of whether you own the DVD, watching the fansubs is still encouraging the production of fansubs and has to be judged on its own. If that is wrong, then owning the DVDs does not magically convert it to being right.
Also its not worth enough money to attract the attention of violent criminal elements. As we have seen, you need to get to the OneManga level to make into the $100,000/yr range, and that relies heavily on a massive pyramid of volunteer labor. If many of the volunteers are not OK with working with violent criminals, there goes the whole parasite business model. It may well be that the parasite sites are gleaning a fraction of a penny while doing a dollar's worth of damage ... but in any event the cut for the violent criminals would come from the fraction of a penny gained by the parasite site, not the penny or dime or dollar lost by the industry. Last edited by agila61 on Sat Sep 11, 2010 4:04 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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teh*darkness
 Posts: 901 |
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Except for when the discs are encoded in such a way that you cannot switch between versions. Like DVDs that have rated/unrated versions on them. You usually select at the outset of the disc which version you want to watch, and you can't switch while it's playing. You have to jump back out to the menu to do so. I have the FMAB sets in question but have not watched them yet, but from other threads, the issue is that the English has no selectable dialogue subtitles, and the Japanese language stream is hardsubbed. If this is the case, it is almost definitely due to reverse importation fears, but I will take this setup over an English dub-only release, as BEI has taken to doing. On the technical side of things, the tracks are not completely separate. All information on a DVD is stored in the .VOB files, and various programs, as well as hardware such as DVD players and DVD-ROM drives, are able to read the audio and subtitle image data (i.e. subpicture) from the container stored on the disc. The menus on a DVD are simply a way to tell the hardware, or program on your pc, what information to read from the container. So, if Funimation is encoding their Blu-Rays as separate video streams, with no subtitles in the English version, and the Japanese version is indeed hardsubbed, there would be no way around this. As I have no experience with BD ripping, this is only a guess on my part. |
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Guren Alchemist4
 Posts: 347 |
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I understand that yellow subtitles are used since they tend to not blend with anything making it easy to read, but they just look terrible and I have found them to be distracting to some extent. I'm glad companies are using white subs with black outlining and they're just as easy to read without being distracting to what is happening in the anime. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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What I said seems entirely unreasonable because it would take a lot more restrictions to get to that point. It would take at least the following 1) state takeover of internet service providers 2) states making any encryption they can't decrypt illegal 3) state observation of all communications to ensure everything being done is legal. 4) a substantial lack of licensing or rise in costs of goods sold through legal channels (or.. making anime illegal altogether would work, but I don't think that would happen except with regards to some kinds of anime). Sufficient consumer desire to reject cheap substitutes is a precondition, I'm not sure if that's there enough that this would happen at all, but I don't think it's impossible is what I'm getting at. The state isn't really that serious about this stuff. Most nations let most of it get "resolved" by civil enforcement rather than criminal, so it's not to that level yet. The ACTA coming up is certainly a step in that direction, but even it doesn't get us to the point we'd have to be at to see what I'm talking about.
I'm not sure how you define "right away" but I'd say to look at the end of prohibition as an example of how fast dealers will end their criminal ties or be out of production altogether. The reason is easy to see, the production of any illicit material is always driven by consumer demand for it (just like anything else). Consumers have little reason to go with sources that they don't like, and they certainly don't like violent criminals. The only reason they go with these people now is because they are the only people selling. This is the reason you don't see fansubs going this route. I should be clear that I'm not using an analogy here. If people want anything enough and you restrict it you will create a black market. The more you attempt to restrict that black market, the more violence you will inevitably create as incentives increase due to the supply restriction. We imagine these things are specific to prostitution and drugs because those are where we see problems, but they could just as easily apply to pizza or dvds if we started restricting those things in the same way. The clear evidence of this was prohibition itself, and the relatively mundane drug marijuana which has a huge criminal operation surrounding it despite it's relatively benign and not altogether addictive nature. (I literally can't name a person I've known who hasn't quit marijuana easily when they wanted to, while tobacco is certainly more addictive).
You are entirely correct. It would take substantially more money and a huge incentive to change to result in violent criminal operations. Fortunately, all 4 of the statements I made above are extremely unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. |
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Rukiia
 Posts: 1897 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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It must be because I have been so used to the yellow subs that when they switched to white it threw me off. I never found the yellow subs distracting but, again, it was what I was used to when growing up with anime in the 90ies as most anime companies back then used that format. Probably was for the better that they switched to white and black, but I still miss the yellow format as I thought it looked better and made the subs more clearer to read. |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Not a lawyer. I rely on the courts to tell me who's a client & who isn't & if my client wants to argue their guilt with me, I tell them it's not my place-get a lawyer & go talk to the judge However, I assume if you have a valid rx for marijuana in California or any other state it's legal for medicinal use, you will still go to jail in any other state. In fact, there is a medicinal form (pill) of marijuana I've been told doesn't get one high while others clain it does, but you can get an actual rx for which I assume would be valid in other states. All of the marijuana rx's I've seen that people pay all that money for say basically "I would prescribe marijuana for this person if I could, but I can't" so it's more a suggestion to use marijuana. They also claim to have discussed the pros & cons with the client, yet none of my clients realize marijuana use has been linked to causing schizophrenia & testicular cancer (puff away dudes, the schizophrenia rate is higher for guys also) so they seem more a cash cow for drs who have been caught on camera writing the rxs without even examining the client.
A licensee putting it out for sale or viewing.
And there are certain similar between fansubbers & a guy who has converted his house into a pot growing facility, investing in the hydroponics or whatever the hell they're called that I only half-pay attention to but understand growing quality pot is a bit more than Miracle Grow. And no, a good number, maybe even half of the marijuana growers I've supervised had didn't have guns or anything like that when they were arrested.
Money not being charged isn't that big a part of it. Fansubbers are one-part passion, but also there's the asking for donations, isn't there? Ads to support the website? There's money at a certain level. If it matters, see it as a drug dealer distributing to certain parties without money being exchanged at the point of the deal because the sale was paid for by someone/something else. Trust me, I have lots of clients, particularly gals who claim they never paid for their drugs. They just don't see how they're paying. Or there's the other example I used of one of the manga-ka's assistants/studio janitor/the fansubber leaving a back door open/posting that fansub so you, the most devoted fan in the world of that project can just look at it as soon as it's been made because you always buy it anyway & you never disturb anything in the house, but then several thousand "fans" are also storming in every night reading it & not buying a thing, including fans who used to buy it, but hell, why buy the cow when the milk's free? |
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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LOL, no Funimation is not using separate video streams. Separate video streams for as many episodes as Funi is putting on a disc would very visibly impact video quality. It's just forced subs. Any PC with AnyDVD/DVD Passkey can watch the FMA:B BDs in Japanese with subs turned off or English with subs turned on. An yes it's almost certainly a demand of the licensor, since all of Funi's FMA BDs (the movie and both TV sets so far) are like this, and none of their other BDs are. It's not something that's done by accident or on a whim as it only serves to piss people off. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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On the topic of Tales of Earthsea in the UK; as far as I can remember it was a DVD only release back in '06. It did eventually air on our Channel 4's, Film4 digital channel a few times, but it never got a cinema screening as far as I'm aware, or is listed at our Anime UK News site. I think the critics were far too harsh about it IMHO. The only fault I could find with it was that it was too short for the story to develop properly. Apart from that, taken on its own without prior knowledge of the books it was a good movie otherwise. |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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It did get a theatrical release in the UK, just not a very big one. It was shown at my local arthouse cinema. I agree with you that it's not a bad film though - it's just kind of fair-to-middling (aside from the visuals, which are quite pleasant) and forgettable. I don't regret having bought it but it's not something I imagine I'll rewatch on a regular basis. |
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