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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 2245
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 5:35 am Reply with quote
I find that shows involving puns or a strong knowledge of Japanese culture and history as a whole tend to suffer on CR. Detective Conan is one I can think of off the top of my head--and it's not helped by the fact that whoever owns the license in NA is just sort of sitting on their hands and doing nothing with it.

Back when the DCTP--Detective Conan Translation Project--was still doing fansubs, I found I vastly preferred their subs to others because of how meticulously they were with keeping character's speech patterns in tact. The rougher-speaking Mouri Kogoro and the Kansai speaker Heiji Hattori were always translated especially well, for example, plus they were mindful of all the puns and/or word plays that littered the series, and were sometimes integral to solving the mystery at hand.

It's something I worry about with the newer Kindaichi series, as I remember one older case from the manga and the original series that involved a clue about a Japanese keyboard, which Tokyopop helpfully changed to suit a Western keyboard so as to not alienate their readers.
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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2443
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 6:56 am Reply with quote
DmonHiro wrote:
I honest to God do not understand these anime-musicals. Why? Just... why?

If you like musical theatre, you can't help but see instances where your favorite works from other media might work on stage. With so much good music in OPs, EDs, and insert songs, anime should be a pretty good fit, actually. After all, what is Angel Beats! if not the second Act of Carousel, just with more machine guns and PCs?

Speaking of which, I seem to share Justin's policy of "if you torrent something and it ever comes out here, you are obligated to buy it", which applied to me with The Rose of Versailles and Anohana. Well, guess what? All the Angel Beats! / Girls Dead Monster music I torrented last year just hit iTunes. Here's the OST, and from the related items you should be able to find the GDM "Keep The Beats!" album and all the singles.

You're welcome / I'm sorry.
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omiya



Joined: 21 Sep 2011
Posts: 1825
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 6:58 am Reply with quote
Well, the stage productions of Sengoku Basara http://www.basara-stage.com/ seem to have gone well, with the latest stage play including a newly written song by Chiaki Ishikawa, who also starred in director Daisuke Nishida's production Kagerou Pain early in 2013. (I attended the opening night of Kagerou Pain and it was a very professional production, and on later performances others like Minori Chihara and Atsuko of the band Angela attended).

I wonder if there would be more direct sales of Japanese releases if they included English (and even Japanese) subtitles?

As far as series that saw no kind of release/streaming outside of Japan, I enjoyed Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince (bought the first OP and ED, the OST and the first 2 volumes of the Japanese blu-ray), but the high price for the Japanese individual volume blu-rays with no subtitles put me off.
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Barbobot



Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Posts: 460
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:02 am Reply with quote
whiskeyii wrote:

Hi, I'm the one who asked that question--and yup, it was prompted by remembering that Paranoia Agent ep. It's amazing that a lot of stuff is still partially done by hand, though--reminds me of those old "Making of" sections in the Disney DVDs where some poor sap was stuck making what was basically a flipbook!

I thought that kind of work had gone out the window with the introduction of CG though, since I remembered seeing some sort of Production I.G. touring program that showed all the colors being added via Photoshop--I assumed all the drawing was done digitally as well. But then the OP of Tonari no Seki-kun had that hand-drawn flipbook in it, which threw me for a loop! o_O And I'd never thought of looking at it from an investor's POV before either. ^^; Gonna' have to check out Kuromi for sure!


You should try finding the Making of Little Witch Academia extra as it shows a lot of really great and interesting stuff on the process of making animation and is about an hour long. What they do isn't gonna be exactly the same as what people go through making a full tv series since LWA is just a single episode and used younger, less experienced animators as a way of teaching them, but still has a lot of great information. Pretty much all of the young animators time seems to be spent doing all the drawings by hand, which once everything's approved they finally hand it over to the CG people for coloring and effects.
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BooktapC



Joined: 13 Apr 2011
Posts: 80
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:47 am Reply with quote
"that piece of human garbage pirates anime!"-On that I think it is correct nobody can really stop you but you should buy anime as much as possible in the best of your ability to know your doing the right thing.

Jennie's boyfriend really is in the wrong. She would be a hypocrite if she was still pirating consistently and a lot but when she is at least making some effort to buy some anime here and there no matter how small I have to applaud that. It is a person that cares about the anime industry at least something. Really the boyfriend seemed kind of irritating. I would not have put up with it at all. Thanks for the column.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2381
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 12:59 pm Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
Juno016 wrote:
Even as a fansubber, I cannot find a truly good excuse to use most current fansubs over most current official streams if your goal is simply to "watch [an] anime." Especially if the show is available on practically every legal alternative in its uncut glory, with perfectly fine subtitles and high quality streaming, and FOR FREE.
I can find some excuses, mainly applying to CR's offerings, though your mileage may vary on how truly good they are. Like:

* Songs not translated. (Yes, I know this is initially due to time constraints with lyric translations approvals, but they generally don't bother to add them later)
* Many signs ignored, lackluster typesetting for signs that are translated.
* Subtitle timing flashes, flicker, and scenebleeds (very short gaps between lines, or lines beginning/ending right before/after a scene change).
* Fragmented timing and inane line divisions (sentences broken up at illogical points into rapidfire, short subtitles when they'd work better joined)
* If the ads don't crash the player and/or your browser, the player can accomplish lag and crashing on its own.
* Some shows have subtitles that're the exact opposite of "perfectly fine." Between the many typos, borked linebreaks, awkward writing, missing lines, and missing parts of lines, I pity anyone who tried to watch CR's error-ridden, nigh-incomprensible Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chuu subs without already knowing Japanese, for instance.
* Pointlessly undertranslated terms, like "Masou Shoujo" in Is This a Zombie? or "Goku Uniform" and "Kamui" in Kill la Kill.
* Most streams are the TV broadcast versions, not the "glorious uncut" versions.
* The FOR FREE streams are generally 360p or 480p; more of "adequate quality" than "high quality."
* Ads at random/distracting spots. Ads are of course a needed part of free streaming, so I'm not complaining about the mere existence/presence of ads. But with all the logical places for commercials (beginning and end of episodes, before and after the OP/ED, mid-episode eyecatch), is there really a need to shoehorn in an ad break at the 17-18 minute mark, as many sites like to do?

Maybe not all of these things would bother people simply looking to "watch an anime," but seasoned viewers who're used to fansub offerings will pick up on some of them. And many of these subs, especially in CR's case, are done by former fansubbers with fansub software, so there's even less of an excuse for some of these missteps. How much of this decline of standards can be blamed on flash renderers?


Indeed, there are a lot of these that are somewhat problematic, but at the same time, I know a lot of fansub groups who don't subtitle the themes, ignore on-screen text, mess up in timing so that subtitles don't stay on screen long, mess up in translations pretty badly (and we're not just talking word-choice here), leave certain terms untranslated (which I argue isn't a "problem" so much as it is personal preference--there IS a demand and sometimes reasoning for this, and those decisions fit that demand, even if they aren't completely necessary), only subtitle the TV broadcasts, only offer low-quality direct downloads (for those who can't torrent, sometimes including myself), etc. If you're streaming a fansub on a third-party site, advertisement and buffering can be just as much of an issue, too.

I think most of these issues are simply discrepancies between "styles" of subtitling or just inevitable mess-ups that come with subtitling, especially if your job is to get them done ASAP. I know some people who think there is a best/better way of subtitling to the masses, but we're now talking about a niche audience of the current generation, of which the "masses" only occasionally drop themselves into. If something is left untranslated, I think it should have a good reason, but "Kamui" is perfectly fine untranslated (it's both a spiritual pun and an alternate kanji reading that is unique in Japanese), "Goku" from "Goku Seifuku" has a ton of possible translations, but none that I can think of that carry the same meaning as the Japanese (which is really just a name), and "Masou Shoujo" puns a term that has already gotten itself accustomed to in the general anime fandom, which could otherwise go unnoticed or sound like anything BUT a pun if translated ("Magic-equipped Girl" sounds less like a pun and more like a description). Certainly, there's a lot of personal freedom so that people CAN translate them if they want to, but the fact that people have latched onto the terms without really complaining about their inclusion means that it hasn't been unsuccessful. One group I follow for a tokusatsu show I watch has been getting some pretty nasty remarks for trying to translate every term, even going so far as to translate some names and such. They're a good translation group and they don't really ever mis-translate anything, so I like them compared to the other possible groups out there for the show, but if I didn't already know Japanese and get the meaning behind those particular translations, I would probably have preferred the other groups more. And that seems to be the case for a lot of people. So really, it's all personal preference, even when it comes to typesetting and translating lyrics or not (except the rare case when a show purposely includes the theme as a part of the show, like Madoka in episode 10--then I think it's better to make an exception and translate it for the sake of making its role clear).
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4376
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 2:29 pm Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
I liked Justin's response to the piracy guilt question. I never would have guessed that he used to be a gigantic pirate.

In my early days of more massive anime consumption (2008) I almost exclusively used fansub websites and YouTube to watch anime. I eventually began buying legal disc releases, but I continued to watch fansubs to explore more anime.

It was until I discovered and subscribed to Crunchyroll in 2012 that I decided to commit to abandoning fansub sites. Almost every anime I stream nowadays are new shows in legal sites. I wish I did not have to do it anymore, but I still need to use fansub sites for old and/or obscure anime that is not legally available for streaming.


well i primarily dont watch fansubs. the only series i do watch fansubs are series that will probably never get a US license like kodomo no jikan, and some 18+series like Choisuji , Boku no Pico & most of the Pixy/Lilith titles.

Other than that the other fansubs i watch are series that will never get an original unedited english dub version and will never get an official sub version which are mainly series that are targeted for a younger audience like pokemon and Yugioh as well as all of the series that have been butchered by the horror that is 4kids and haven't been given a license rescue.

Also i wouldnt say answerman is necessarily wrong. its true that funi mainly does the whole simulcast thing but it seems that viz is doing the same with neon alley.

also the dub is also pirated illegally just as the sub version. not as severely as he said, but its there. and at times the dub will be pirated more than the sub if it's much superior and popular which in itself is EXTREMELY rare. the only ones i know of where the dub was more pirated than the sub was of course the hellsing series and Black Lagoon.

Probably the reason why Funi have done a simulcast for Space Dandy where the sub is online and the dub is on adult swim in order to completely nip the fansubs and illegal streaming in the bud.
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Echo_City



Joined: 03 Apr 2011
Posts: 1236
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 10:28 am Reply with quote
jr0904 wrote:

Probably the reason why Funi have done a simulcast for Space Dandy where the sub is online and the dub is on adult swim in order to completely nip the fansubs and illegal streaming in the bud.

Now the pirates can only upload one dubbed episode per week. Which isn't all that different from the pirates who upload the weekly episodes of airing-in-Japan shows.

BTW, AS is legally streaming the first dubbed (ugh) episode right now.
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nhat



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 922
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 1:52 pm Reply with quote
walw6pK4Alo wrote:
nhat wrote:
DmonHiro wrote:
I honest to God do not understand these anime-musicals. Why? Just... why?


Ehhh just like how there's broadway shows for the Lion King and other shows based off cartoons?


Most of those were musicals to begin with, so their transition to SUPER HIGH BUDGET BROADWAY PRODUCTIONS isn't a logical canyon to cross.


ehhh cinderella and other Disney movies that are based from books etc isn't the case. Comon even spiderman got a musical lol
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 6:33 pm Reply with quote
Razzuel wrote:
Regarding the piracy question asker about whether she is a hypocrite, I just wanted to say that improving who you are (such as supporting legal anime options instead of illegal ones) doesn't make you a hypocrite. No one should be chastised for becoming a better person. That's nonsense.


Yes ~ while Justin's answer was fascinating, the most basic response was what he touched on in passing ... that's not what hypocrisy means.

Person at Time A Says Its Wrong, but Does It
= Hypocrite

Person at Time A does it, at time B changes their mind, at Time C doesn't do it.
=/= Hypocrite

The word for that is not "hypocrite", its "reformed".

I'm lucky that Netflix by mail was a thing when I first got into anime in a big way after returning to the US from Australia in the mid-noughties. For several years I had a three disc subscription to Netflix, and for maybe 80% of that time I had a disc in my DVD player, a disc on the way back to Netflix, and a third disc heading my way. By the time that I had worked through most of what I wanted to see from DVD releases from the early noughties, Crunchyroll had gone legit and Funimation was starting to crank up their Hulu streaming.
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everapril



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 7:00 pm Reply with quote
I have a friend in television who pirates more TV shows than anyone else I know and a friend in publishing trades "Not for distribution" copies within his company with employees at other publishers. Both are young, trying to get a foothold in their industries and are expected to be experts in this type of media they are producing yet can barely afford. I think it's pretty common.
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eyeresist



Joined: 02 Apr 2007
Posts: 995
Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney)
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2014 9:00 pm Reply with quote
Interesting - I had not realised that recap episodes were the "nuclear" option. I suppose the most notorious example is Wolf's Rain's four-in-a-row recap eps, leading to the end of the series being issued as a OVA. Kudos to them, I suppose, for not just rushing to wind up the story in broadcast.

A related but different issue is the first half of His & Her Circumstances (before the director was fired), where the recaps at the start of the episodes just grew longer and longer!
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2443
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 5:52 am Reply with quote
eyeresist wrote:
A related but different issue is the first half of His & Her Circumstances (before the director was fired), where the recaps at the start of the episodes just grew longer and longer!

Oh man, I'd forgotten the His & Her Circumstances train wreck. It's one thing to have recaps around episode 12 of a 26-episode series, but they have a second set of recaps around 20, and then finish with like four episodes that more or less throw up their hands on wrapping up anything.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 10:00 am Reply with quote
I figured that the reason Funimation and Sentai don't make their dubs widely available is because they want to entice people to buy the discs. On the other hand, isn't making anime more accessible to casual fans one of the main reasons they dub anime to begin with? So, if (like Sentai) they barely make their dubs available for preview, how are casual fans supposed to find out about them?
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 2:39 pm Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:
On the other hand, isn't making anime more accessible to casual fans one of the main reasons they dub anime to begin with?

I think one of the things licensors learned over the past decade is that "casual fans" are a tiny slice of the audience of people who actually buy anime. If Funi streamed its dubbed versions, who would buy their discs? And what are they really selling other than the dub itself?

I know there are people here and elsewhere who prefer dubs, but my sense is they are an older group of fans who are becoming less numerous in the audience over time. CR has a lot of subscribers, and I doubt many of them are rushing to buy dubbed versions of the shows they watch there. Collectors may prefer discs, but again I think they are a declining part of the anime audience despite their relative prevalence here. Most people only want to watch a show once. Streaming fulfills that need. And if they do want to watch it again, the chances are good it will still be up at CR or some other site.

I am a bit puzzled by some of Zalis's comments, especially the ones about video quality and ads at CR. For $7/month you get no ads and decent quality streams. That's hardly a big price to pay. (I get the best quality from CR on my PS3.) I just joined Hulu Plus for a while because I want to watch some foreign movies that are distributed by the Criterion Collection. I doubt I'll subscribe for very long, though, since paying for Hulu Plus does not remove commercials from most of its offerings. I dropped by the Ghost Hound page just to make sure.

If shows like Hyouge Mono and Bartender were streamed, then I'd have no need for fansubs. I don't see that happening in the future. I do expect that streaming will become more centralized in Japan itself with the regional licensors playing less and less of a role. I suspect Daisuki represents the future better than do Crunchyroll or Funimation.
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