GeekNights 080604 - Toshokan Sensou

Apreche

Tonight on GeekNights we discuss the new anime, Toshokan Sensou. In the news, Tokyopop is restructuring and Jojo's was halted by muslims. Also, this weekend is the MoCCA Arts Festival and also Lolita and Maid Fashion Day at Kinokuniya.

Scott's Thing - Fansub Documentary
Rym's Thing - Alice

Tyashki

I sounded like the energy level was higher this episode, so this bi-weekly deal is paying off already. Looking forward to the Box video.

Alex Leavitt

The fansub documentary is pretty interesting. He makes good points, but turns his message into a whiny tirade. I disagree with him about translating kanji (although I understand his dislike of imitating the style in which the kanji is written on screen). The major argument against the documentary's narrator is that fansubs are broadening the cultural scope available to non-Japanese audiences that translations of ordinary movies don't provide the average viewer.

mattman

I am also eagerly awaiting the Scott's Box videos.

Anastius

...Lolita and Made Fashion Day at Kinokuniya.

Banta

How about calling those shows about the first few episodes of an anime 'First Impressions'?

Viga

How about calling those shows about the first few episodes of an anime 'First Impressions'?

HEY!

...

They buy the building, declare it a library and go in.

DARN YOU RYM! Now I feel tempted at watching Toshokan Sensou again. Like Scott said, the world it's set in is very preposterous. It bothered me so much after the first episode that I ignored it in favor of what I consider better shows, but darn you Rym, that part sounds like awesome.

Maybe I should stab my eyes out and puncture my ears for the duration of the scenes where the crazy world bumps in.

I agree with Tyashki that you two sounded more energetic, though this might also due to you being more excited about stuff than previous episodes. Nice episode, will watch that documentary thing when I'm back home, in a few hours.

gomidog

...But I like Toshokan Sensou. Any romance story with lots of fighting is up my alley and the animation is really good.

Viga

I can't believe I'm convinced to watch this.....I can't believe I'm convinced to watch this...

Kiey

This show sounds intriguing, you pretty much had me sold at Production IG.

...

On to the documentary about fansub(ber)s.

- Screen clutter/notes on screen, agreed, they are really freaking annoying, especially because you MUST read them because most of those notes contain the translation/definition of the untranslated text on screen (unless of course you can read Japanese, but the majority of fansub watchers are like me and can't read Japanese), basically this mean HIT PAUSE (was tempted to do so through the documentary, but said fuck it), READ NOTE, UNPAUSE and PREPARE TO HIT PAUSE FOR NEXT NOTE.
- Honorifics, agreed to some extend. If a character is using old (I forgot the proper word) Japanese to refer to others and themselves, that's a characteristic of said character and as a watcher I would like to be informed of this peculiar habit of said character. I could say "TRANSLATE IT TO THOU" just to be anal, but that's ridiculous, a small note would be enough. This note of course being in a supplied text file for there's no huge need to know it during the show.
The same goes for a character talking about themselves in third person. The same happens in English, some people just refer to themselves in third person, it's a self-image issue. Again, a characteristic of the character in question, I say don't mess with it, and this you can just leave in.
- Crazy fonts, they are nice, and at first glance they are far more appealing than the standard (Arial) plain fonts, but agreed, sometimes they are very distracting or even extremely hard to read. While I do agree on those points, I have to say I like styled subtitles if they of course blend in with the style of the anime, are readable, unobtrusive and don't go bat shit insane in front of my eyes. Also, I've never encountered a fansub with dancing attack name translations until now iirc.
- Karaoke, did I already tell I can't read Kanji, Katakana or Hiragana? I also can't sing. However, I personally enjoy reading the remaining romanized lines (the rest disappears as is discussed in the documentary) after reading the English translation and picking out words I recognize, for example, yume, dream, once in a while. Generally I skip openers and closers though since besides the song there's a bunch of untranslated credits on there and only rarely a great animation. And if I'm not drawn to the song or the animation there's no reason to watch it. Both this point and previous point do just say "OMG LOOK AT US, WE KNOW HOW TO USE THE SOFTWARE WE USE! PH34R!".
- Crappy translation/clinging to direct 'dictionary' translations, AGREED. HOLY FUCK the crazy sentences I sometimes bump into. I have to pause, rewind, play, pause at crazy sentence, read what the hell it's saying and resume playback. This happens more often the crappier the fansubbers quality standards are. AND IT'S ANNOYING! It certainly doesn't help that I'm not a native English speaker and most likely do not read as fast as average native English speaker.

Which brings me to my final point/rant, one which is unaddressed in the documentary and is only slightly related to this. Distribution. And the moment every 'legal' fansub group destroys its distribution methods for a show the moment it gets licensed in the US. The world does NOT end at the borders of Japan and the US FFS! Americans are not your only audience. Yes I know all the bullshit surrounding copyright law and that this is merely an irrational rant that has grown from a mere annoyance, but it's really freaking annoying if I bump into an interesting show that supposedly has fansubs of it, but they are unobtainable because the distribution for that anime is dead JUST BECAUSE the show got licensed in the US. The only way I've found thus far, short from obtaining it by shipping it from the US itself is a Belgian website, where over 80% is imported anyway! Again, this is merely an irrational rant, don't bother responding to this part.

And Rym, what were your points exactly? You said you couldn't/didn't disagree with him for the most part, but had some minor points differing (or something along those lines), what were they?

Eryn

Has anyone seen the thread about the fansub documentary on the AnimeSuki forum? I'll give you a summary, based on what I could stand to read before closing the thread out of disgust and tl;dr.

"It isn't supposed to be professional! We're not trying to get new people into anime!! We just wanna have fun!!! Stop complaining!!!! He's so biased!!!!!!"

Okay, so there aren't so many exclamation marks in the actual thread, but you get the point.

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=66958

EDIT: Direct quote from the thread that ticks me off - "Fansub main goal is no longer to introduce new people to anime, but to have fun, as said before." The fact that he/she says this like it's a good thing just makes me... URGH. This is exactly OtaKing's point. People like this are keeping new fans out by making fansubbing as clique-y and non-accessible as possible. RAAAAAAGE.

Luke Burrage

I've never watched anime except for some movies so don't know what "fansubs" look like. After watching a bit of that documentary I must say there is no way I'd put up with that kind of garbage.

Kiey

With the fansub doc I think that on principal I have to agree with everything he said, because he is right when you get right down to it. I personally think that I don't mind all that extra stuff, like the non translating of some words or the foot notes, because I'm interested in the language and so I find those notes to be interesting. But I don't think that if fansubs went the more professional route I would mind not having them, I probably wouldn't even notice they weren't there anymore, which I guess is the point of a good subbing.

Eryn

Oh I usually find the content of translator's notes to be at least mildly interesting too (when the translator's note is warranted, at least). However, I am vehemently against those notes being displayed on the screen during the show without the viewer being able to choose whether he/she wants to see them there or not. If I wanted the option of having a bunch of on-screen notes, I'd watch something that comes with the option for AD Vidnotes.

The better way to handle those notes? Either include them in a separate text or PDF file with the fansub, or make a little translator's slide-show that plays either before or after the episode. For example, I saw some fansubs of Ebichu recently, and rather than having notes on-screen during the show, each episode was prefaced with a cute slide-show explaining all the cultural references and puns that would be coming up, thus allowing the viewer to get the needed info beforehand and keep focusing on the anime whenever the references came up.

Apsup

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=66958

Reading that topic made my brain hurt. Is it really so that most fansubbers are idiots, or is it that only those post in that topic. I really can't get the point that they are just doing fansubs for fun. Why do they then release them in sites where normal anime fan like me can find it, why not make some fansubbers paradise where they can compare their subs, without hurting our eyes and minds.

Apreche

Why do they then release them in sites where normal anime fan like me can find it, why not make some fansubbers paradise where they can compare their subs, without hurting our eyes and minds.

First of all, there are many fansubbers who do release them in fansubbers paradise, and don't let the world see them. These are fansubbers of the worst kind actually. Ignoring the quality of their subs, these people are acting directly against the fundamental point of fansubbing. We have works of art that are only accessible to a few people in the world, and we are trying to make it so they are accessible to as much of the world as possible. By not putting them up in an easy to get place, they are acting directly against this principle.

The reason that some of these fansubbers do release into the wild, is so they can see how many downloads they get. They want to compete with the other fansubbers to see who is more popular. That is why you will see a bunch of different people all fansub the same thing. They want to see who does "better".

...

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=66958

Eh... it actually gets decent at some point. Otaking starts replying himself, and then theFluff comes with his standard TL;DR wall of text analyzing his posts and grading his Trollness XD

Eryn

I read a bit more of the thread later on after I posted. Some of the pro-modern-fansubs people have a few good points, but not nearly enough to outweigh the general wave of "We missed the point entirely! Let's just mindlessly call all dissenters trolls!" that pervades that thread.

Favourite quote: "Nobody gives a fudge what you think. You are a small insignificant person in the grand scheme of things. The minority. We do not sub for the leechers, we sub as a hobby. We do not care."

Yeah, great. Way to prove the point about fansubbers not doing things "for the fans, by the fans" anymore. Now it's all about "for the people who can't get enough flashy fonts, by the mindlessly competitive who care far less about showing people anime than they do about which group has the biggest, fanciest logo."

Granted, Otaking's defending posts weren't exactly the greatest, considering the type of people he was up against, either. I really, really liked all of neeta's posts defending Otaking's views, though.

...

Favourite quote: "Nobody gives a fudge what you think. You are a small insignificant person in the grand scheme of things. The minority. We do not sub for the leechers, we sub as a hobby. We do not care."

You have to read further. Also, as I said before, I wasn't 100% on his side to begin with, but even less now, since I prefer fansub subtitles (the ones made by good fansub groups) over standard subtitles. And I've seen many subtitles in my life, it's what you get when the majority on TV is in English. ~.n

jcc

I read a bit more of the thread later on after I posted. Some of the pro-modern-fansubs people have a few good points, but not nearly enough to outweigh the general wave of "We missed the point entirely! Let's just mindlessly call all dissenters trolls!" that pervades that thread.

Happens on most boards of a certain size. You get used to it.

Nerissa

My question is why does Otaking need encouraging to come on the show? How can a "Self-proclaimed Genius" be shy?

Also the scene where obi-one turns off the tractor beam was actually in english during the first release of star wars. It wasn't changed until they re-released. (why do i know that)

Corbin

On the "documentary":

Let's face it, the purpose of fansubs is no longer to introduce people to the medium of anime, that's what the licensed DVDs are for. The purpose of fansubs are for:

1. People who don't want to buy the DVDs (either for lack of funds, don't approve of the price, don't want to spend the money to import them, etc.)
2. People who want to see the show before it is released officially (because really, a vast majority of the anime that is shown on Japanese television will eventually be licensed)
3. Shows that are extremely old or obscure and can not be found without a great deal of hardship

With that in mind the majority of his points are not really relevant, these are not "professional" translators therefore they most likely do not know most of the principles to which he references. As Rym and Scott have said before, the majority of any kind of genre, medium, what-have-you is crap. The same is true with fansub(ber)s. There are a few really high-quality fansub groups that put out great releases, but they are by and large not the norm.

He has some good points in there, such as screen clutter, but I disagree with more points than I agree with probably based on my viewpoint of things. I don't like liberal translations because I want to know what they are really saying, I'm referencing the part where he mentions the "Where did the bastard go?" part. I have more criticisms of the video, but I think I made my point.

With that said, my biggest gripe is that he calls it a "documentary", the only part that you could call a documentary is the beginning where he tells what fansubbers used to use, the rest of the video is "What I don't like about modern fansubbing and fansubbers".

lackofcheese

Let's face it, the purpose of fansubs is no longer to introduce people to the medium of anime

It might not be their purpose, but that doesn't prevent unfortunate exposure.

With that in mind the majority of his points are not really relevant, these are not "professional" translators therefore they most likely do not know most of the principles to which he references. As Rym and Scott have said before, the majority of any kind of genre, medium, what-have-you is crap. The same is true with fansub(ber)s. There are a few really high-quality fansub groups that put out great releases, but they are by and large not the norm.

So, fansubbers suck but we don't have any right to complain about it?

I don't like liberal translations because I want to know what they are really saying

Ultimately, there's two ends of the scale. One is to make it completely understandable without any knowledge of Japan. The other is: GTFO and learn Japanese, fool.
Now, I personally like to get that little bit of Japanese culture in there, and I like to get tidbits of the language sometimes, so I can pretend I'm actually learning something. However, I'm willing to admit that that is a lie.
I wouldn't want such annoyances imposed upon others, and I'd be happy to sacrifice them. I also can see quite plainly that, at least in the short term, it makes the anime viewing experience worse rather than better.

...

I don't like liberal translations because I want to know what they are really saying, I'm referencing the part where he mentions the "Where did the bastard go?" part.

OH come on. What about the 'Onee-sama' example he gave? There's an English word that perfectly conveys what is being said there!

Eryn

So, fansubbers suck but we don't have any right to complain about it?

Here, here. Just because they do their work for free and as a hobby doesn't mean we are thus barred from laying criticisms against that work. It just means that the fansubbers don't have to listen to our complaints if they don't want to. People are free to point out things that they don't like or that they think could be improved, in the hopes that at least some fansubbers might see the complaints and take them into consideration (even if they don't act on them).

I don't like liberal translations because I want to know what they are really saying

Ultimately, there's two ends of the scale. One is to make it completely understandable without any knowledge of Japan. The other is: GTFO and learn Japanese, fool.
Now, I personally like to get that little bit of Japanese culture in there, and I like to get tidbits of the language sometimes, so I can pretend I'm actually learning something. However, I'm willing to admit that that is a lie.
I wouldn't want such annoyances imposed upon others, and I'd be happy to sacrifice them. I also can see quite plainly that, at least in the short term, it makes the anime viewing experience worse rather than better.

The purpose of translation is not only to provide a word-for-word changeover from one language to another. A speaker's intent is often difficult to translate that way, and often, a translation like that will often produce results that sound very awkward in English, thus changing the impression an English speaker would have of the dialogue vs. a Japanese speaker's impression of the same. As Otaking quoted, the goal of a translator is to give their audience the same experience as was had in the original language, and in some cases, that means a few clever reworkings to make things flow more smoothly and stay truer to the original intent of the writing. This does not mean that there aren't translations that take the rewrites too far as well, but I believe a good translation will strike a good balance between staying accurate to what is being said and smoothing out the kinks that result from the Japanese to English conversion.

Not that any of this matters with fansubs, because according to many people's logic, fansubbers could write "monkey purple Thursday" over all lines of dialogue and we wouldn't be allowed to complain about it because they're only doing this as a hobby.

Dkong

For the record, I haven't watched the said documentary...
Awhile ago on ANN, there was an interview with a fansubber. He basically said that the only reason that his particular group (Live-Evil) fansubs stuff is for the competition element. They rarely, if ever, do it for the fans...at least according to him. Though, taking a look at the kinda stuff they're subbing (Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, other classic anime), I find it hard to believe that they're not doing it for the fans.

Regardless, some responses to stuff you guys have brought up...
:Translation notes- I like it the best when they're in PDF files that are in the torrent along with the episodes. The only anime I have that did that is Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Stories. I don't mind when they're posted as subtitles at the top of a screen. If it happens only once or twice an episode (which it usually does, otherwise the group will have a slideshow at he start or they'll have a PDF file), I'm fine with pausing to read.
:Crazy fonts- as long as it's readable and easy on the eyes, I'm PROBABLY not gonna complain. The [more or less] only subs I complain about are the piss-yellow colors that some companies use on their official releases.
:karaoke- I don't mind it. Sure, it's mainly just the fansubbers trying to enlarge their e-pen0r, but since I usually skip over the OP and ED of most anime I watch, I could care less. And when I do watch, I don't really care what's on the screen, as I'm listening for the sake of listening, not watching.

As for AnimeSuki forums. I find it to be the direct opposite of ANN's forums. With ANN, you have butthurt industry fans who get pissed at the notion of a fansub. With AnimeSuki, you have butthurt fansub fans who get pissed at the notion of buying a DVD. At least, that's the vibe I get when I visit said forums (yes, I have an account for both).

As for the Tokyopop thing, I'm extremely happy about this. Like Rym and Scott said, the majority of what they put out is shit. So now that they're cutting down their releases, maybe we won't see so much shit...and as such, maybe Borders' bookshelves won't be filled with so much shit. In general, the only Tokyopop's I have are Samurai Champloo (which actually is totally shitty, especially when compared to the anime, which was awesome), Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star (which is better than the regular Cowboy Bebop manga, but it's still not great), CardCaptor Sakura (which isn't that bad, but I've stopped buying it), and that's about it...

Eryn

:Translation notes- I like it the best when they're in PDF files that are in the torrent along with the episodes. The only anime I have that did that is Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Stories.

Yeah, I remember those files for that series, and I thought back then that more fansubbers should do their notes that way. It was very convenient to just quickly browse through the file first, then to turn on the episode and not have to pause during the parts that would have had on-screen translation notes with any other fansub group.

Dkong

For anyone who is interested and doesn't follow the anime blog:
http://theanimeblog.com/interviews/an-interview-with-paul-otaking-johnson-creator-of-the-rise-and-fall-of-anime-fansubs/

animemiz

Actually didn't really care if Tokyopop restructured, because I stopped buying from Tokyopop after I finished buying Petshop of Horrors. However I do dislike, the way they are trying to promote bad drawing it is not cool and drawing away from the whole translating Japanese manga thing.

Hmm as for the fansub, I didn't watch the documentary, but from the various blogs I read about it, I was also thinking back to where I read this blog entry on Japan actually publicizing against fansubs, but knowing me. I would support any fansub as long as they release the episodes on time.

Toshokan Sensou is something I watched several episodes on, but to compare it to Cowboy Bebop, wouldn't Black Lagoon be a better comparison with that? Read or Dream seems to be better to compare with Toshokan Sensou, since they both dealt with censorship, well Read or Die was a bit too short..