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REVIEW: Demon Girl Next Door


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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Oct 04, 2019 8:04 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Pound/euro/australian dollar all share the same configuration (100 cent give one dollar and so on), so all there value are pretty close to one another. 400 dollars is not a lot of money, 400 pound is not a lot of money, 400 AU$ is not a lot of money. The yen doesn't work this way, with only a single "denomination". Someone who doesn't know that could think 4000 yen would be equivalent to 4000 dollars and wondering how that's bad, alternatively they could think it's worth 4000 cents, and wondering how they could even afford to eat for the days. In this case localizing the amount is definitely the way to go.

Officially the yen shares that configuration too; 100 sen equals 1 yen, it's just that sen haven't been in circulation for a very long time. But that aside, the other mentioned currencies are closer to each other than any of them is to the yen, but they're still not close enough that they're functionally the same, especially when talking on the scale of a monthly household budget or annual income. I'd say it's pretty common knowledge roughly what a yen is worth, at least in that a single yen is functionally similar to a cent in most other currencies. And if not, it doesn't take a genius to work it out if the price of a bottle of soft drink is 120 yen. No-one's going to think the soft drink must be worth $120. (edited when I realised I got the price of the soft drink wrong...)

Key wrote:
While I don't disagree with you in principal, what you propose isn't practical. A big part of the reason why we go with series based on reader votes is because reviews of desired titles drive page views - and thus, by extension, advertising. Also, frankly, debating episode-to-episode developments on popular titles (or in some cases reading detailed analyses of them) can be both fun and informative.

Besides, titles like this one are more the exception than the rule among titles which don't make the cut. A high percentage of those titles aren't worth it. (And I think I can speak with some authority on that, since I end up reviewing a fair number of those either after the season or when they hit Blu-Ray.)

Fair enough. I still think this is why we'd all be better off if internet content wasn't produced based on the clicks/ad revenue it generates but rather what's actually interesting and useful to people overall, but if I could figure out a way to do that and get it to catch on, I'd be a much richer man than I am. I also think the episode-to-episode debates are going to happen with the popular titles anyway, but true enough about reading detailed analyses. And you're right that most are still junk anyway, but I personally find that holds as true with the high profile titles...

In any case, thanks for responding to this.

Edit:
meiam wrote:
True on the 40 000 being close to cents value, but it still leave the massive issue of people assuming a rough 1:1 conversion to dollar. I also highly doubt anyone actually took the time to look at the coin (and everyone has a firm idea that coin = low value).

People notice all kinds of things that are on the screen. The number on the coin isn't exactly hard to spot. And in any case, if people have that firm an idea that coin = low value, it's not necessary to "translate" it to $5.
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timber



Joined: 12 Dec 2014
Posts: 135
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 1:27 am Reply with quote
tfwnoymir wrote:
I want to address just one thing that the review forgot to mention: how Americanized the subs were, case in point the “$400 a month” curse, which was "40000 yen a month" in the original, or replacing metric units with imperial ones (even incorrectly), despite no country besides the US are using it. And it's not like the series was only licensed in the Anglosphere, even Funi doesn't go that far with the subs despite that. It was definitely an odd choice. The names being in western order is just icing on the cake, but that's something I can overlook, since lots of localizations are the same way.


Funny you mention that, I am always put of by how the French translates the Japanese middle and high school 3 years cycles into their very own three 2 years cycles. This thus gives you weird issues that the terminals in middle school are 1st years, newbies in high school 2d years and the sempais 1st years. Anime cry
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
Posts: 1595
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 5:42 am Reply with quote
timber wrote:

Funny you mention that, I am always put of by how the French translates the Japanese middle and high school 3 years cycles into their very own three 2 years cycles. This thus gives you weird issues that the terminals in middle school are 1st years, newbies in high school 2d years and the sempais 1st years. Anime cry

It has always annoyed me how they do that in English by default even when stuff like currencies are respected, but god, given how bonkers the French system is it must be awful.
But at least this stuff trains your ear to catch the right terms easily. "Chuugakkou ninensei" or "koukou ichinensei" are now like proper names.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4104
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 7:33 am Reply with quote
Demon Girl Next Door, great series, the best of the season and one of my top five of the year. I haven't seen a gag series with this much plot progression since Hinamatsuri but Demon Girl did just as much while relying on fewer characters.

When I heard that Yuko had to defeat a Magical Girl and put her blood on her totem, I thought "So does that mean..." and that did indeed mean what I thought but then there are further consequences... for everyone somehow. It was funny and all it had to be was funny but it had this edge to it that if you look at the story head on, it's a gag comedy with rapid fire jokes and characters talking over one another but if viewed another way, it becomes a combination of a horror story and a serious drama.

spoiler[ Yuko's dad is a box... funny... but is he conscious? And he did it willingly to help his family as opposed to what exactly? And the magical girl who did it disappeared or died? And they went up to the 400 dollar a month curse from... oh right because Yuko was deathly ill. Wow, that's... it's still funny. Very heavy and serious, especially in regards to what could happen to Momo but funny. Look at Mikan, she has her own funny curse... yeah, there's going to be a real reason for that too, isn't there?]

Just like Wasteful Days of High School Girls, this is a show I'd love to see continue.
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave



Joined: 14 Jan 2019
Posts: 514
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:04 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:

it's arguable that it coul cause problems there.
Specially if you can handwave the coin away. There you were counting on literally nobody noticing that a) the 5-value coin had a 500 written on it b) that suddenly we have a $5 COIN.
If one can handwave those, one can also handwave 40,000-whatever as the very minimum necessary to live (and all things considered, beyond the international currency exchange rate, the local cost of life will heavily impact that if we want to be so precise. Do 40,000en for a Japanese mean the same as $400 for an American?).


I didn't notice , as I expect many didn't, the coin value and if I did I wouldn't expect it to be the dollar in the image since I know that the correct value is in yens, also as a non-American I don't even know if there are 5$ coins or not. However, for me as a non-USian the dollar value was much more clear than the yen value and they're close enough to euros and pounds to not matter much, which is where I disagree with Sakagami Tomoyo. I do agree they should do it like 40000 yen (400$), so people could get both values. Generally I thin dollars/euros/pounds are both similar in value and well known currencies, and are easier to calculate due to not being used in thousands. We actually renominated currency in Poland from 1996 to 2010 converting 10000 please to 1 PLN and as someone who lived under both currencies the new one is much clearer in value, so I still claim yen values are really not as easy to grasp.

As for which shows are covered and which are not, I definitely get that there is a demand for covering popular show episode after episode , because discussing them this way is a big draw, and incidentally this is where the Netflix model fails us peiople who love discussing unfortunately, but in the case where there are 5 isekai shows, the site could use more diversity, possibly some mid-season switch? I noticed the Dr Stone episodes are already covered often late and two-at-once, maybe the more disappointing
and generic shows could be switched to that kind of model. I would also welcome more "This week in Anime" with otherwise not covered series, I get that they're a lot of work but IMHO they're really good for covering and promoting "underdog" shows.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:50 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I was super disappointed to not see Demon Girl Next Door appear at all on This Week in Anime as that's the weekly platform where it could have been easily discussed as a one-off.

Thankfully there's no shortage of anime discussion on the internet so I was able to easily find earnest discussion of various facets from this series and other gems that ANN decides to treat as if they're nonexistent as they're airing in Japan.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
Posts: 1595
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:51 pm Reply with quote
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
I didn't notice , as I expect many didn't, the coin value and if I did I wouldn't expect it to be the dollar in the image since I know that the correct value is in yens, also as a non-American I don't even know if there are 5$ coins or not. However, for me as a non-USian the dollar value was much more clear than the yen value and they're close enough to euros and pounds to not matter much, which is where I disagree with Sakagami Tomoyo. I do agree they should do it like 40000 yen (400$), so people could get both values. Generally I thin dollars/euros/pounds are both similar in value and well known currencies, and are easier to calculate due to not being used in thousands. We actually renominated currency in Poland from 1996 to 2010 converting 10000 please to 1 PLN and as someone who lived under both currencies the new one is much clearer in value, so I still claim yen values are really not as easy to grasp.

I'd say I did notice, but I switched subs before that scene came up (although the 500 coin was present on episode one, inside Momo's henshin device). I'm usually not very observant but I'm pretty sure I'd notice two different numbers being written on screen at the same time. Most people I know would.
As a non-American I DO know that Americans are so ridiculous as to use $1 bills, so they absolutely can't have a $5 coin in use (although ironically the 500 yen coin has roughly the same value), and yes-Americans will KNOW this for sure. And as a non-American I do know how USD relate to EUR, but that's because I have needed to convert units often (same goes for JPY), otherwise I don't know how a non-American would be able to guess the right value of the Yoshida's income from the given number no matter where the dot is put. Like, if you go and assume that GBP=USD and use those subs, then their income just increased by over a 25%.
And again this is wholly ignoring the very important cost of life, no matter how familiar the dot-putting feels to you, without that information or a very accurate conversion to your local currency you will NOT know the actual value of the given number and you will have to take the characters' word for it (not like accuracy matters as much as how the characters treat it in the first place), at which point the only difference it makes is whether you're mixing up countries or not, whether you're pulling off a jelly doughnut or not.
(as for PLN, of course it makes more sense now, if the currency was converted it's because the old one made no sense anymore. In my case, both pesetas and euros make the same sense, only difference is that the latter is better equiped to handle inflation over the decades but that's not here nor there)

Jesus Christ I'm getting long-winded about useless badsub nitpicking.

Machikado Mazoku is great. It deserved better. Isekai could be sacrificed for it.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15516
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 7:16 pm Reply with quote
Since there has been so much talk about translations, I am going to throw in a weird thing from being an Australian in terms of watching anime, and it is that we only have two stages of mandatory school. There is Primary School that is kindergarten plus years 1 to 6, and High School with years 7 to 12. It took me a while to get used to the so called middle school, which the closest I could get was that High school years are broken into junior and senior, but otherwise by their year. I still don't think I understand the names like sophomore that America uses.

For currency, I think official dubs would have their best idea of what to use once the show is far enough, where exact amounts of yen being used quite often that, where the audience could easily pick up what the general value is, it might be better to keep yen. Such as in this show where Shamiko was given a few hundred yen and an entire episode was around what she could buy with it, eventually spending it on food and a coke. There has to be a point where you can trust the audience to understand a non USA currency, more so when a series might set itself up as super Japanese, like I think Lucky Star was.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 7:31 pm Reply with quote
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
I didn't notice , as I expect many didn't, the coin value

Really? I mean, I wouldn't call this easy to miss.

I mean sure, that's not the actual coin but a comical illustration of one, what about the actual number on the actual coin being noticable?

I really am not sure how one could miss those, if they're actually looking at the screen.
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
However, for me as a non-USian the dollar value was much more clear than the yen value and they're close enough to euros and pounds to not matter much, which is where I disagree with Sakagami Tomoyo. I do agree they should do it like 40000 yen (400$), so people could get both values.

I'm not American either, and we even use dollars as our currency. But it's just so seriously out of place for an amount of money in a Japanese work set in Japan to not be yen. If it was the show itself using it as a means to show that Things Are Different in the show's world, fine. But not as a translation. But yes, I do agree that providing a rough conversion as a note is a good idea.
Edit:
DuskyPredator wrote:
Since there has been so much talk about translations, I am going to throw in a weird thing from being an Australian in terms of watching anime, and it is that we only have two stages of mandatory school. There is Primary School that is kindergarten plus years 1 to 6, and High School with years 7 to 12. It took me a while to get used to the so called middle school, which the closest I could get was that High school years are broken into junior and senior, but otherwise by their year. I still don't think I understand the names like sophomore that America uses.

I found it slightly easier to wrap my head around the Japanese school system than the American one; Japanese is basically like Australian except high school is split in half into middle school and high school, whereas American has middle school and high school but changes the year level ranges covered by primary and secondary school. And the whole freshman, sophomore, etc thing still does my head in. Year 7 makes sense. Middle school year 1 makes sense. Whatever the yanks call it doesn't.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:20 pm Reply with quote
As with most things are are weirdly and mostly unique to Americans nowadays, the origin of freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior comes from Europe, 17th century England to be exact.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:31 pm Reply with quote
Sakagami Tomoyo wrote:
I found it slightly easier to wrap my head around the Japanese school system than the American one; Japanese is basically like Australian except high school is split in half into middle school and high school, whereas American has middle school and high school but changes the year level ranges covered by primary and secondary school. And the whole freshman, sophomore, etc thing still does my head in. Year 7 makes sense. Middle school year 1 makes sense. Whatever the yanks call it doesn't.

Actually, it's even worse than that. Depending on where you are in the U.S., "middle school" (often called "junior high") can be grades 6-8, 7-8, or 7-9, although 7-9 isn't common.
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Alan45
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Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:54 pm Reply with quote
@DuskyPredator & Sakagami Tomoyo

The U. S. School systems used to be fairly simple.

Traditionally, it consisted of Elementary School (also called Primary) consisting of grades 1 through 8 and High School (also called secondary) consisting of grades 9 through 12. Anything after that, including both vocational training and college are referred to as Post Secondary.

Four year colleges have traditionally referred to their years as Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior (in ascending order). These same terms are also used to refer to the four years of high school, probably as a reflection of the college usage. I'm not sure where these terms come from, likely England.

The baby boom after WWII caused immense problems with this traditional system. School systems found themselves building a lot of new schools, both elementary and high schools, not because the old ones wore out but because they were filled well beyond intended capacity. They placed new schools in the system between elementary and high school and named it "Middle School". The dividing lines between elementary and middle school and between middle school and high school are very blurry and tend to be based on which buildings have the space to handle what ever bulge in the demographics is currently an issue. That is, in most systems, "middle school" is what ever grades are currently attending the local middle school building.

Technically what is mandatory is through grade 12. However, beginning in about grade 9 it gets easier to get permission to quit and many just stop going. Many school districts lack the resources to go looking for them.

Keep in mind that there is no national school system as such. The Federal government has some requirements, mostly dealing with discrimination. Each state dictates how local schools will be set up to some degree. Anything not mandated by the Federal or state governments is strictly up to local school districts. This can vary immensely from state to state and often within states.


Last edited by Alan45 on Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:55 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
Actually, it's even worse than that. Depending on where you are in the U.S., "middle school" (often called "junior high") can be grades 6-8, 7-8, or 7-9, although 7-9 isn't common.

This helps explain why I've never been able to get a clear idea of which year levels are covered by which "level" of school.
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Alan45
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 9:03 pm Reply with quote
@Sakagami Tomoyo

Don't feel bad. I graduated before middle school had ever been heard of where I was. It took me a long time to figure out what was happening. My youngest brother is almost ten years my junior and our local school district built a middle school in time for him to attend.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 9:47 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
Four year colleges have traditionally referred to their years as Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior (in ascending order). These same terms are also used to refer to the four years of high school, probably as a reflection of the college usage. I'm not sure where these terms come from, likely England.

The problem I have with these terms is that there's no logical system to it; unless you've memorised it by rote it just isn't going to make any sense. "College junior" sounds like it's the first year, but "third year of Uni" as we'd call it here is nice and obvious and unambiguous. (There's lots of other American ways of doing things that are based on rote memorisation of "this is the way it's done" rather than a logical progression that's easy to figure out, but those are the subjects of different rants.)

Alan45 wrote:
The baby boom after WWII caused immense problems with this traditional system. School systems found themselves building a lot of new schools, both elementary and high schools, not because the old ones wore out but because they were filled well beyond intended capacity. They placed new schools in the system between elementary and high school and named it "Middle School". The dividing lines between elementary and middle school and between middle school and high school are very blurry and tend to be based on which buildings have the space to handle what ever bulge in the demographics is currently an issue. That is, in most systems, "middle school" is what ever grades are currently attending the local middle school building.

We dealt with the baby boom overwhelming schools by just building more schools. Seems to me (and evidently to post-war governments here) like a simpler and more workable idea to just build more primary schools and then more high schools than to build more schools and at the same time create a new "level" in the school system and rearrange what years go to which school "level". Especially when it becomes a mishmash based on location.

Interestingly, a similar thing appears to have happened at some point with the Japanese school system. To look at the names of each "level" of school, there used to be a logical progression of primary education (小学, shougaku) (aka elementary), secondary education (中学, chuugaku) (aka high school), tertiary education (大学, daigaku) (aka college or university) (for those unfamiliar with kanji, it kind of literally goes "little school, medium school, big school".). Then at some point secondary got split into junior high (which kept the chuugaku name) and senior high (高校, koukou).

Alan45 wrote:
Keep in mind that there is no national school system as such. The Federal government has some requirements, mostly dealing with discrimination. Each state dictates how local schools will be set up to some degree. Anything not mandated by the Federal or state governments is strictly up to local school districts. This can vary immensely from state to state and often within states.

And this is what I think is the biggest problem with the American school system. (And similarly a lack of real national system is the biggest problem with many things in America, but again, the subjects of other rants...)
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