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As promised, here’s a re-casting of Daryl’s answers to the latest round of anime podcaster questions put forth by Regan Strongblood of the Anime82 podcast. We’ll be back to actual episodes next time. Probably.
In the event the next AWO comes out way later than usual, be a gangsta and back Masaaki Yuasa’s Kickstarter.
If the problem is the sound of the voiceless bilabial stop “p”, then shouldn’t you be complaining about the allophone [p], rather than the phoneme /p/?
Also, I notice that Regan inserts a schwa into ‘scanlations’. Fairly common in English, but an interesting feature of mental grammar nonetheless.
I agree. This is a very important comment!
Well you SHOULDN’T agree, Mr. Teacher Man, because I DIDN’T misspeak! I was talking about the full set of sounds which cause the rush of air that result in waveform pops that typically have to be cut out, one at a time (despite my foam windscreen and double pop filter). The problem is not specific to the voiceless bilabial stop at all; it will occur for both aspirated AND unaspirated sounds. Therefore, it’s “phoneme” and therefore it’s /p/ not [p] and in short, ya’ll can suck my black dick in Hell cuz I invented dis pedantic English/grammar Nazi shit
Okay, I’ve got to admit, that was hilarious. You got me good.
You spent so much time qualifying how wrong most of what you said would probably be that I just couldn’t resist starting an argument about something utterly irrelevant.
This is also a very important comment that I also agree with very strongly!
As a real comment though, Daryl its a real shitty move that you pirate almost all of the comics that you read. I know you feel like you’re supporting these things by just buying the tv shows and movies and what not but there are tons of writers, artists, inkers and letters that are really just scraping by on their sales. I do appreciate you’re calling yourself a “reader” rather than a comic fan, but I’m not entirely sure people who have their books cancelled due to low sales will find that an acceptable answer.
That is certainly true, but I don’t actually care about those people. Fuck ’em. I’ll spend the actual cash on manga instead.
It sounds like Yagyuu Juubei Dies is the perfect manga for you. It’s Ken Ishikawa’s adaptation of Fuutarou Yamada’s novel (the conclusion of the Yagyuu Juubei trilogy which inspired Ninja Scroll and had its second part made into Ninja Resurrection). Incredibly detailed art of extremely violent ninja and samurai fights, with the addition of a ton of crazy scifi shit (a bunch of designs in New Getter Robo’s time travel arc were taken from this comic). There’s also a dude who walks around with his wife strapped to the front of his body so that they’re constantly having sex as he walks around. They each carry two swords and moan loudly as they stab people. That’s just one villain from the first book.
While you’re waiting a very uncertain length of time for that to get scanned (although it is definitely happening), I suggest you check out the Black Lion manga, which was posted in its entirety about a month ago. The anime covered less than half the story.
Also, have you seen the Big Comics Special editions of Fist of the North Star? They’re 14 enormous volumes with all the color pages from the original magazine run, a gorgeous fold-out poster in each book, and embossed gold-ish dust jackets with a selection of notable death-screams from that volume on the inside flaps.
Oh, speaking of the dude who wrote/drew the S-Cry-Ed manga, did you know he’s also (unfortunately) responsible for the closest thing we’ll ever get to a proper continuation of Imagawa’s Giant Robo? Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Burned could be great, but his horrific pacing and cluttered layouts turned it into Crystal Triangle instead.
No one, no one at all (and that includes the super billionaires) can afford to pay for every last bit of entertainment being produced in the world. People buy what they like. As for the rest, it’s a non issue. So what if someone pirates some comics? He wouldn’t have bought them in the first place, so what do you do?
I spend money on DVDs primarily. As for manga, generally no. The only manga I have are very old French editions of Akira and Appleseed, as well as the English version of Nausicaa. One of the few that I was interested in these last few years was Macross the First and that exists only in Japanese. So of course I go the scanlation route. Bless those guys that actually translate the manga in a language I can understand.
Buying the Japanese release serves no purpose at all for me, first because I don’t understand Japanese and I’d end up looking only at the images which is absurd. I want to see and read the manga. And second because I’d be simply sending the message that it is okay to ignore foreign markets since “fans” buy Japanese shit even if they can’t understand it.
Now if the manga were officially translated in English, French, Italian or Spanish? Then and only then they’d get my money.
Love your guys’ podcast. Very good quality. Please continue for years to come. ^_^
Hi, Daryl, Gerald, and Clarissa (but mostly Daryl :p):
Thanks for wasting our time and answering questions. These not-podcasts have been really entertaining, even if they’re not quite episodes of AWO. I jumped at the opportunity to donate to the kickstarter project as soon as I heard about it. I loved Masaaki Yuasa’s other works, so I’m really excited to be able to help him make one of his pet projects.
Oh, and now I’ll finally get a chance to watch Mazinger Z. All hail Diskotek!
Daryl, judging an artwork based on its fans (or a vocal minority) is [a] very HIPSTER and CHILDISH thing to do. Come on, Daryl, we are living in the
twentiethtwenty first century, it is no longer high school in the 1990’s![BRONY DETECTED. –Daryl]
“So what if someone pirates some comics? He wouldn’t have bought them in the first place, so what do you do? ”
What I fear is that this group is getting bigger and bigger, no matter what the companies do to please them. Piracy might not be bad for art that has low production cost (i.e., novels and comics), but I think it could be bad in the future for high production artworks (i.e., films and expensive TV shows).
Maybe I am cynical, but I do believe that once the theaters go away, film is going to be the next Vaudaville. Piracy is going to become easier and easier, and unlike video games (i.e., online play), there is little incentive for people to pay for film downloads/streaming. It will impossible to recoup the cost of films with the budget of 30 million or higher.
My hope is that with the fast technological breakthroughs in digital filmaking, future low budget films can look as good or better than current day blockbusters. If not, we still have over 100 years of film history, and I hope, also a new, visual, narrative based medium.
One of your listeners is a friend of mine and linked me this when our NMH2 and Anime Theater videos were mentioned. Nice podcast! I just wanted to clear something up: the point wasn’t to find the worst of the worst, but a variety of things that were laughable in some way, usually for being bad. In Aim for the Ace’s case, it was for the high drama of tennis and hamburgers, as well as the fansub issues you mentioned. It was one of the few I could imagine having an audience, even though I’m not the kind of guy that would be in it. Now, Mars of Destruction on the other hand…
I actually would have linked to the video except I forgot the name of the thing I was watching and, at the time of posting, wasn’t in a position where I could just bring up the SA LP subforum or anything related to games. Personally, the real Aim for the Ace insanity scene I would’ve singled out is the part where the coach uses the tennis ball serving machine to repeatedly launch tennis balls into Hiromi’s face “at a high rate of speed,” to quote the late Ray Traylor.
I think what says the most about Mars of Destruction is the fact that if you Google the name, your Youtube video of it is returned within the first set of results.
Aim for the Ace, Lady Oscar [The Rose of Versailles], and Brother Dear Brother should be REQUIRED viewings for any anime fan worthy of that name. Boy or girl. It should be part of your basic culture. Of course, the best would be watching these anime with a great English dub. Just watching it subbed is not the same thing.
As for the problem about fansubs and how they tend to be Japanese-centric to such levels that they end up being ridiculous, I wholeheartedly agree. And this is a phenomenon that is universal to the whole fansubbing scene. American, Italian, Spanish etc… In real life you would never greet a Japanese businessman in the US with the “-san” honorific. You would simply say “Mr …..” Languages are complex and with lot of nuances. Whatever concept you can express in Japanese, you can just as well express it in any other language (not accounting for real cultural differences of course). Perhaps not in a 1:1 form, because languages offer so many nuances you have certain leeway in how you translate. But there can be many good translations. It’s never the case that one translation is good and the others are bad. [Oh, how soon do we forget. –Daryl]
Nothing pisses me off more than watching a fansubbed anime and coming across Japanese honorifics that can just as well be translated into Italian, English, French etc. For instance, in the Italian dub of Aim for the Top 2: Diebuster, when Nonoriko addresses Lal’c she uses the term “Signorina,” a word which conveys a mixture of respect and admiration. There was no need to use the Japanese term, as cool and useless as that might have been. And yet there was a very vocal minority that expressed dissent. They want all the Japanese terms to be used and the Hell the everything else. This is just plain stupid. Anime doesn’t stop being anime because you translate some terms.
If you want the full Japanese experience, learn to speak fluent Japanese, learn their history and culture and watch the anime in Japanese. As for the rest of us, a good and faithful adaptation of the script and great dubbing is a must. And I’m as good an anime fan as any of you out there even as I prefer 99.99% dubbed anime to subbed ones.
The decades-dead topic of “subs vs dubs” as presented in the post above has basically nothing whatsoever to do with what was discussed in this podcast. On the one hand, you’re talking about the problems with excessively literal subtitle scripts. But then you start talking about the vitality and necessity of good ADR. These are completely distinct topics that are in no way related to one another. Personally, no matter how good an English dub is, I’m going to watch this stuff in Japanese with English subtitles if I have a choice in the matter.
I certainly enjoy all of those Osamu Dezaki/Akio Sugino series mentioned, but I can’t really knock other people for never having seen them. We are after all talking about shows from 20 or 30+ years ago, and that’s not just older than most anime fans at conventions but older than most “older” anime fans at conventions.
I can see from your email address and IP that you’re from either France or Italy where those titles were made available as they were being created. In America that wasn’t the case. The fansubs were the only game in town, and it’s not like there were multiple groups working on those. So if the translation was subject to the issues I noted, that was the only manner in which it was available to see. I’m glad that we’re starting to see some of them courtesy of the streaming site Viki, but the subtitles on those releases have their own issues by virtue of being crowd-sourced and thus being subject to consensus-based editing a la Wikipedia.
You’re right, I went off on a tangent talking about dubs and subs. I will not touch the subject again. As for bashing/criticising anime fans for not wanting to watch “old” anime I don’t agree with you. Anime as any other cultural medium is what it is because of people like Dezaki and co (or Tezuka etc…) that gave anime its shape and form. They cannot be ignored, the same like you cannot ignore Shakespeare in literature, or Victor Hugo or Dante… Even though these people were born and died before all of us were even born. Their legacy is important and should be read. The legacy of Tezuka, of Dezaki, of Sugino is important and should be read (in case of manga) or viewed in the case of anime. Not knowing about the past, gives you no context to understand the present. It’s true in history, it’s true in literature and certainly true in anime.
That’s nice, but nobody at any point ever said a single thing about people “not wanting” to watch old anime. That is ALSO an entirely separate topic, and I was not responding to that. I was explaining why your position that fans are somehow deficient for not having seen things which they haven’t actually been given an opportunity to see isn’t very equitable.
You can’t just say “as for [topic which I have not said a word about], I disagree with you.” That’s not how conversations work. Either English isn’t your first language or you’re trying to bait me.
Having just caught up with the Battle Angel Alita + Last Order through the municipal library system, I find that the story has lost its focus.
I like how Last Order started, but their space trip all but diminishes the events that occurred prior to that. Now the whole objective of recovering Lou seems to have disappeared in favour of winning the tournament in order to possess the Scrapyard+Tiphares, while asserting that Alita can control the fate of everything. Or something like that.
I still find enjoyment out of it, if only for the pretty pictures and action scenes. It’s almost like when I have to turn off a part of my brain to enjoy That Tennis Manga.
In any case, it’s good to hear some new content. I’m really looking forward to your Drops of God podcast, because I can’t get enough of this title.
Speaking of your comment about manga publishers whining about scanlations ruining the marketability of manga, just take a look at the New York Times bestseller list for manga. Naruto: scanlated. Bleach: scanlated. But what really makes me smile is seeing 20th Century Boys on the Top 10 list. That was scanlated. Then we had to wait 3 years for Monster to finish, then 4 years to get to this point.
If you license good manga, it will sell. [But nobody bought Offered or Wounded Man or Swan or… –Daryl] If you license crap, it won’t. Simple.
Geez. “Ed BrubaCKer.”
Is Regan the one doing the voiceover in the Iron Man 3 trailer? “There are no heroes, gentlemen.”
Just noticed the “Anime Theater” guys seem to be busted for good, all their videos are gone off the internets as we speak, so I guess I don’t have to subject myself to the horrors of them complaining about “Sempai” and all that. [I don’t follow the LP threads that closely, but I think they’re just moving everything over to Dailymotion instead. –Daryl]