Forum - View topicREVIEW: Macross: Do You Remember Love? - Kiseki Films sub
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skullone
 Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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Mods please note that this is not yet quite ready to be put in the Reviews section. It will be updated within this week.
Synopsis: In the year 2010, the SDF-1 Macross is caught in battle against the giant alien race of the Zentradi, along with thousands of civilians living in her holds. We follow the footsteps of the three main characters, Hikaru Ichijyo, Lynn Minmay and Misa Hayase, through this fierce war, this time with a bizarre (at best) subtitling by Kiseki and in poor picture quality. Rating: TA Review: Reviewing this release strictly based on the Japanese movie you're watching, all the words of praise that I had used for my review of the Perfect Edition apply. Otherwise, we're talking about a release which is almost as bad as Best Film and Video's Hong Kong-dubbed version. Don't get me wrong, the movie is really good. It's just that the subtitles are a horrible example of what people humorously refer to as "engrish". On many occasions, the dialogues make absolutely no sense ("my engine blocks are angry at me", to name but one of the many "gems" one can find here). The subtitles are so bad, that the viewer is left staring, with his/her mouth open in dismay and horror. Is this the "literal translation of the Japanese dialogue" Kiseki promises on the box? Even a conversation with Syd Barrett or one of those "artificial intelligence" computer programs (like Eliza) would make a lot more sense than the text Kiseki came up with. And please, don't tell me this could be a fansub. Even the worst DYRL? fansubs I've seen on the internet are far better than THIS. Easy to read digital subtitles? Yeah, more like obnoxious. Adding insult to injury, Kiseki's subtitles are in a big, chunky font, without the slightest hint of font smoothing. VERY obtrusive. The packaging... A badly scanned in very low resolution, badly printed cover and a text in the back of the box which clearly shows that Kiseki don't know what they're doing: "A Race of giant male bionoids from outerspace attacks earth, and the humans send their super space fortress to repel the invaders. The space war turns out to be a three way conflict when the invaders arch enemy arrives - a race of giant female bionoids. Both bionoid armies assault Macross with a huge robot-like spaceships. The earthlings appear doomed...Until they discover their human behaviour has strange effects on the aliens." I've used the EXACT syntax, grammar and spelling of the VHS tape's cover. It sounds like they just copy/pasted the text from "Clash of The Bionoids". And, what's worse, this account they give has nothing to do with the Macross storyline. As for the image quality... It reeks. Even ADV's DVD releases, which are nothing but poor compressions of old, worn and faded VHS tapes onto DVD look better and crisper. I'm sure they used an old, practically dead, umpteenth-generation tape as a master for this one. Horrible. Just horrible. All the greatness, the detailing, the effort that went into DYRL? is swamped in the mud of this release's murky picture quality and the excellent voice acting is negated by the outrageously horrid subtitles. Even the worst Kung Fu movie dubs I've watched in my life sounded more coherent than this. To sum it up: I want the approximately 110 minutes of my life that I wasted on this atrocity back. Grade: Overall (sub): F- Story : B+ Animation : A Art : A Music : A +: Excellent animation, myth that Minmay is a ditz crumbles, well-written and executed soundtrack adds to the movie's feel, very good voice acting -: Too bad you won't see or hear anything of all this, because of the incredibly bad picture quality and the nonsensical subtitling. Rated: Teenagers (May contain bloody violence, bad language, nudity) Production Info: Director: Noboru Ishiguro Shoji Kawamori Screenplay: Sukehiro Tomita Character Design: Haruhiko Mikimoto Animation director: Toshihiro Hirano Ichiroh Itano Haruhiko Mikimoto Mechanical design: Kazutaka Miyatake Director of Photography: Kazunori Hashimoto |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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With all due respect, I doubt that any of your "reviews" will ever see the light of day on this site. Not the way you write them now, anyway. You're too nit-picky and opinionated (especially toward anything that even vaguely resembles Robotech), you exaggerate too much, make too many broad generalizations, and you don't pay enough attention to the most important parts of the films. (Nobody cares about how much you hate the box summary.) From where I stand, and I'm sre I'm not alone, your "reviews" are little more than ultra-fanatical rants. My advice: Just give up and go back to MacrossWorld. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3906 Location: CO |
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Skullone,
I think it's nice that you are so dedicated to Macross. May I make a suggestion, however? There is yet no review on this site about DYRL? Maybe if you polished up your review of the movie, added in blurbs about the different releases (so you could talk about Kiseki, if you wanted to), then you could submit them to ANN. After all, if anyone wants reviews to be posted in the review section, they should be submitted directly to the editor. That way, your reviews might still "see the light of day on this site." 
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skullone
Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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SakechanBD: Miagi has helped with the DYRL review I wrote and it was posted on the site, just not linked. As for whether I'm too nit-picky, so what? Do we have to be extremely forgiving to everything? Let's say it squarely, folks, like the best reviewing magazines do. When something is horribly sub-par, it's just that. There's no way around it. If the voice acting is horrible, it's horrible. If the subtitles make no sense, why should we sugarcoat it? If the picture quality is bad, why not say it as it is?
End of story. This is how we should be with everything. If it's bad, it's bad. If it's good, it's good. Here's the link: [don't do that] - ADMIN Oh and Sailormech: I never thought that reviewing something involved sugarcoating the pill when a certain version of a product is bad. The mere fact that the summary you see on a tape's box is totally unrelated to the movie recorded on the tape or burned on the DVD has to ring some warning bells about what you should expect. Do I sound like I like to bash? Well, as much as I have praised Bandai/Emotion's Perfect Edition of DYRL? (and I DON'T see how being annoyed by the jerky panning here and there is nit-picking), I'll also criticize a multi-generation version with badly-written subtitles. Writing a review means that you're stripping yourself of any sort of nostalgia or other preoccupying factors that might endear you to what you're reviewing and also that you're prepared to discover even the most minute flaw the product might have. Otherwise, you're not serving the buyers. And, anyway, who does a reviewer have to serve? The company's short-term profit (which is served by overhyping and overpricing a product that doesn't really cost much to make) or the consumer? Of course, the latter. And you know what? By serving the consumer with objective reviews, where no company or product is spared a quarter, you also serve those companies that try to provide decent goods and listen to the customers. Last edited by skullone on Wed Nov 20, 2002 4:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lebhead
Posts: 6 |
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sailormech,
while i agree with you that ol skully is a bit harsh on Robotech and us Robotech fans, i really don't think you have the right to tell him where he is allowed to post and where he isn't. he is entitled to his opinion (even if he is wrong about RT  ).
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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Reviewing is all about trying to encourage your reader to comsume or not to consume the product you are reviewing. You don't do that. You're too preoccupied with technicalities. You tell us that you like it in just so many words, and then you ramble on for two paragraphs about the differences between international releases and how how little respect we should have for them. That doesn't tell me whether or not I would like the show. Neither do your exaggerations (F- ? Riiight...) nor your unfounded "expert opinions" ("Even the worst Kung Fu movie dubs I've watched in my life sounded more coherent than this."). As a matter of fact, your decision to advocate only versions of the film which are not readily available is rather self-depricating. How useful do you think it can be when you basically tell people "The only versions most of you can get will suck?" I'm not sure that even qualifies as support for a product. Your basic writing skills are decent. If you drop the bias and the tangental ranting, and focus more on the work itself... Then maybe your reviews will achieve their purpose, and be attractive to major review sites. As you write them now, I wholeheartedly do not believe that they are worthy of being posted on a site like this one.
None of us have any rights here. This is a privately run website, not a town meeting. We have to follow Teh Rules, and I have done that to the letter. There is no rule prohibiting criticism of other user's writing. In truth, rule #4 implies protection of our prerogative to do so:
If you care to look back, you'll see that I prefaced the post with "With all due respect...", and that I did not direct a single profanity in Skullone's direction. What I posted is a straightforward criticism of the writing - nothing more, and nothing less. If I overstep the boundaries set out in Teh Rules, I'm sure the people who actually run this site (read: Cookie and Tempest) will let me know. If you want to tell other people what their "rights" are, you might as well go elsewhere and do it. |
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skullone
Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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Reviewing is about giving an honest, unbiased opinion to the reader, without having any rose-tinted lenses on your eyes and without being hostile to the product even before you lay your hands upon it.
Encouraging or discouraging the reader to buy the product entails the element of subjectivity. Even worse, it might be like one of those ToyFare "reviews" where the "reviewers" never have any words of criticism for the product they are writing about. And, of course, especially when there's no given reviewer's name, it usually is an ad disguised as a review. Or, in the case when the reviewer is actively promoting one industry's interests against the interests of another (see the way British car reviewers slagged off any foreign car - except the German ones - and closed their eyes to the glaring deficiencies of the products of their much-ballyhooed British Leyland conglomerate; they still do the same), you're actually talking about grey advertizing, unreliable reviews etc. As for Kiseki's sub... I know you'll say "don't judge a book by its cover", but the mere facts that (1) the cover is a badly-printed, blown-up, horribly artifacted downloaded image of the original's cover and (2) the summary seems to be that of the "Clash Of The Bionoids" version and poorly written at that, can only put one off. Viewing the tape in all its "glory" revealed, like I said earlier (but that's an ultra-fanatical rant to you) an atrociously-written subtitle text, in a huge font, and image quality was so poor (blurry, undefined image with poor contrast) that it pissed anyone off. I doubt they used LaserDisc masters or anything. It seems that they just took an old, tired VHS copy, smacked a poorly-written sub on it (even the worst fansubs are better than this version) and started selling it. So, can anyone be called an ultra-fanatical fanboy for demanding a good subbed or dubbed version, with decent audio and video quality? The answer is up to whoever reads this thread. And, once you've answered the above, ask yourself this: Is giving a bad product a negative review an "ultra-fanatical rant"? |
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garry
Former ANN Editor
 Posts: 120 |
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All I know from reading your review is that you like the movie and the subtitling is unacceptable.
Oh, there's a space war in there, too. I have no useful information about the film, no clue about the drama or message of the movie I might or might not buy. I know that the packaging and production values are poor, and that there's some other version that's better. I need more. You didn't review a movie, you complained about how it was presented. When I read a review of a hollywood picture, I don't care about the quality of the print, I want the meat of the film served up in ten inches of print so I know whether or not to waste my wages on it. Drop the ranting, focus on the heart of the film, then tell us that the presentation is unacceptable. |
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skullone
Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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I have another review for the movie itself.
animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=643 I have to say that I tried my best to avoid spoilers. |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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When you're writing a review, yes there is a problem with that. That's not the purpose of a review. Clearly you don't see one, but that's only to be expected after seeing the kinds of "reviews" you write. But I digress. If you think these "reviews" of yours are up to snuff, don't argue with me over it - Prove it. Convince Cookie and Tempest to post them in this site's Reviews section. If you can accomplish that, I will gladly admit that I was wrong. If you can't, I recommend that you swallow your pride and re-read the suggestions I have offered you here in this thread before you write any more reviews. |
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skullone
Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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Ok. Whatever.
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