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I'm definitely going to have to check this out. I'm not making any assumptions about the original Japanese version of this particular OVA but I've always found Japanese humour to be a bit hit and miss. Occasionally I'll watch a show like Seitokai Yakuindomo which makes me laugh out loud but most of the time it'll be something like Yuruyuri or Nyarko-san with a really generic 'wacky' sense of humour (Often revolving around random stupidity and lame 4th wall breaking jokes) that often leads to whole episodes going by without so much as a minor chuckle from me.

I'm not saying English speaking countries have an inherently superior sense of humour (Allen Gregory and The Cleveland show are way more unfunny than any anime series I've ever seen) but the dubbed versions of shows like Baka and Test and Cromartie Highschool have made me laugh way more than any show I've watched in Japanese. Whether it's through adaptive scriptwriting, better comedic timing or just the simple fact that being in English means I'll be able to understand and appreciate the show better (I am an ignorant uncultured gaijin after all); I love a good comedy dub.

Take Highschool DxD for example. Watched the first four episodes in Japanese because I liked the seiyuu cast, barely laughed at all and found Issei to be incredibly irritating. Switch to English and suddenly the jokes are really funny and Issei is actually making me laugh. There's this one amazing scene where Issei and Rias have an encounter with a weeby foreigner (Voiced by Monica Rial) who dresses up in a suit of armour, speaks in a combination of English and broken Japanese and calls herself 'Susan-san'. That's the sort of joke that would never, ever work in Japanese and it's easily the funniest joke in the entire show. Granted the show is still bad for a multitude of reasons that no English dub would be able to fix but a much better sense of humour makes it tolerable enough that I'd at least call it a guilty pleasure if we're talking exclusively about the dubbed version.

So, as I said, probably going to have to watch this one. I'm interested in seeing an early example of a good comedy dub.

SquadmemberRitsu wrote:

There's this one amazing scene where Issei and Rias have an encounter with a weeby foreigner (Voiced by Monica Rial) who dresses up in a suit of armour, speaks in a combination of English and broken Japanese and calls herself 'Susan-san'. That's the sort of joke that would never, ever work in Japanese and it's easily the funniest joke in the entire show.

So you don't like Genshiken Nidaime (and, coicidentally, Sue)? I've seen that joke lots of times and I think it works perfectly well in Japanese. It just tends not to work so well in subtitles alone, but if you understand Japanese even at a "two semester in college" level it works fine IME.

The only joke I can think of off-hand like that that really doesn't work (except on an absurd level) in Japanese is in Trigun, where there's a Japanese samurai character who writes in Japanese and isn't understood by anyone else, since on that planet officially everyone speaks English.

EricJ2 wrote:

purplepolecat wrote:

jr0904 wrote:

Quote:

While the wacky humor didn't work for everyone, enough fans found it funny enough that even hardcore anti-dub otaku could often be heard quoting its more memorable lines.

seriously? cause i really really doubt that.

Get in the green glowing square, jr0904.

Just try saying "OMG, I'm going to die in a Godzilla suit!", and see the light of recognition spark in the eyes of older fans...

A few I remember:

"Oh no, he saw my bare skin! If they do I have to either kill him or make him my boyfriend! Oh, he's cute, I think I'll keep him!"

"I am not a bimbo!"

"Grey is GOOOOD!"

"If you ask me, she's one OVA short of a series."

"I can't die now, I have to give my daughter a stuffed fish."

"I can't lose to her, she has bad hair."

"My Montage! I will live, IF ONLY TO DRIVE... HER... AGAIN!"

"Hmm, girls really seem to like a guy in spandex."

In short, yes, people who never otherwise watched dubs quoted these lines. It was the one show we showed dubbed in college anime clubs I belonged to.

noigeL wrote:

EricJ2 wrote:

We need another title for the column besides "Pile of Shame"

Every single time. Someone just has to say this. Every. Single. Time.

I'd just consider that a feature of the column by this point.

Zac wrote:

If I rename it "Justin talks about old stuff" will you cool it with the pedantry?

Laughably, that's a legitimately good title. The simplicity is catching.

silentjay wrote:

It's a very gentle parody, and is more "laughs with" than "laughs at."

I didn't find it as funny for the same reason. The dub has some great one-liners, but overall, I felt the show was little too "nice" with the subject matter.

Who Can forget the most badass rap ever from Elf Princess Rane!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbJeA-4cOY

I'm so cool, I'm so smart! Laughing

staab99 wrote:

Who Can forget the most badass rap ever from Elf Princess Rane!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbJeA-4cOY

I'm so cool, I'm so smart! Laughing

Gotchabagoose!

John Thacker wrote:

So you don't like Genshiken Nidaime (and, coicidentally, Sue)? I've seen that joke lots of times and I think it works perfectly well in Japanese. It just tends not to work so well in subtitles alone, but if you understand Japanese even at a "two semester in college" level it works fine IME.

I've only seen a few episodes of the first Genshiken (Despite having both the original seasons and the OVA on DVD) but the reaction they're going for in that one particular scene of DxD is a joke that would only make sense in English. I can't imagine that scene in particular being anywhere near as funny in Japanese.

Quote:

The only joke I can think of off-hand like that that really doesn't work (except on an absurd level) in Japanese is in Trigun, where there's a Japanese samurai character who writes in Japanese and isn't understood by anyone else, since on that planet officially everyone speaks English.

Yep, that was definitely awkward. I watched the show in English but when I saw that scene I switched to the Japanese for a second. It really confused me that the joke was literally identical to the one they made in the English dub. But to be honest, I haven't really seen too many jokes that didn't work specifically because they were in Japanese.

It's just that there's a lot of occasions where I either don't get the full impact of the joke because I'm reading subtitles or the sense of humour just doesn't really appeal to me. Since I speak English I can understand the jokes in dubbed anime a bit better than by reading subtitles and an unfunny series can be edited so it becomes funny.

That being said I can freely admit that not every comedy dub is good. In Strike Witches the jokes in the original aren't laugh out loud hilarious but they're funny in their own way. Funimation's dub in other hand throws in all these stupid jokes and Americanised slang terms (Like Shirley calling Lucchini a 'wuss-tard') for seemingly no reason which makes the comedy more annoying than anything else. Then when it gets to the serious scenes the acting is mostly very unconvincing. And then there's the second season of K-ON where most of the jokes are really awkward as if they gave up halfway through translating them. Even the fansubs I watched for the show did a better job at translating the jokes.

Although the English dub version generally makes me laugh more than the Japanese version of the same show.

"Bwaah! Giant fish, right in my face!"

"Wait a minute! Look at those colors! If you were a superhero, would you choose colors THAT UGLY!?"

If you ask me, I'd say she's one OVA SHORT OF A SERIES."

"BUSINESS CARD CUTTER!!"

BEST.
SCRIPT.
EVER.

Quote:

Gotchabagoose!

GOTCHABAGOOSE!!

Thanks, Justin! I just ordered me a used copy online. Adding another title to my collection. Very Happy

For the love of God, "Pile of Shame" is a saying that means "backlog". It doesn't mean that there's shameful content in it, it means that there's "shame" upon the speaker for allowing the backlog for be formed.

More on topic, I'm veru surprised this slipped by my radar back in the day. Perhaps I did see it but I thought it was straight-out sentai and dismissed it? (I don't like the genre that much)

My brother actually saw this article series for the first time yesterday, and his first reaction to the title was along the lines of "What? Shinesman is a pile of shame? But I loved that show!" I had to explain what "pile of shame" meant to clear it up. I wonder if "pile of shame" is more of a regional thing, or an industry term. It only shows up as "stack of shame" on urbandictionary, so I figure maybe it's not used that widely.

Didn't this air on Sci Fi Channel or some other American cable channel at some point? I know I've seen this, yet I'm pretty sure I never rented it or saw it at a 'con.

Or was it available on VOD at one point? Yeah, that might have been it.

Key wrote:

Didn't this air on Sci Fi Channel or some other American cable channel at some point? I know I've seen this, yet I'm pretty sure I never rented it or saw it at a 'con.

Or was it available on VOD at one point? Yeah, that might have been it.

If it was on the Sci-Fi Channel's Anime Unleashed block, I would know. I sat through every show up to Cromartie regardless of its quality, and continued to check on it every now and then to see what they were showing at the time.

And I can say with certainty that it's never been on Toonami or Adult Swim Action. I've continued to follow them every year ever since Toonami got started.

I think I realized why I haven't heard of it: The fame it had seems to have been because the dubbing company promoted this heavily on dub tapes and sub tapes alike. This completely slipped past me because nearly every anime fan I knew when I was younger was strictly download-only; they had nothing but contempt for official translations and would not even pick up sub tapes. In fact, I had only ever heard of ADV because of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, which I found in a bargain bin at a Wherehouse.

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