Gundam Seed

[Keith]

Looks like MI finally did a full HK set, so I just placed an order. Should see it in a week or too, and I blame you guys for making me anticipate seeing it! It also claims "new subtitles," so hopefully they'll be better than the previous individual HK DVD subtitles out there, or at least up to par with Victory's translation.

Unfortunately, it's probably still a TV rip though, as the last 2 R2 volumes aren't due out until next month. Oh well, if I like it, I'll pick up the R1's anyway.

[Graham]

Looks like MI finally did a full HK set, so I just placed an order. Should see it in a week or too, and I blame you guys for making me anticipate seeing it! It also claims "new subtitles," so hopefully they'll be better than the previous individual HK DVD subtitles out there, or at least up to par with Victory's translation.

Unfortunately, it's probably still a TV rip though, as the last 2 R2 volumes aren't due out until next month. Oh well, if I like it, I'll pick up the R1's anyway.

Be sure to let us all know how the subs are Keith.

I gave up on the series around episode 24 and gave all my individual discs away.

However, I've been hearing that the ending is pretty good, so if the subs on the box set are an improvement I may just buy it.

Graham

[azrael]

They rushed the ending. They could have used one more episode and ended it. Once you get to where Freedom Gundam shows up, the pace starts increasing. One of the nice things about Seed is that for little details, you have to read the Astray manga. But still, they could have put in one more episode into the ending. The fight between Strike vs. Providence, could have gone on a little longer for me to be satisfied. But oh well.

[Effect]

I've been wondering how the subs on this were as well. If good I just might pick it up, no way would I try to download all of these episodes. Don't care for the show enough to do that.

[Abombz!!]

An OT but Seed related question... hows the game? Its been out for a while... and I have yet to hear anything about it. Any Seed fan played it yet?

[Vinny]

I doubt MI went and changed all the subs. Most likely having the "New English Subs" part is to try and trick clueless Gundam fans into thinking it's an official set. I plan on picking this up eventually, but I'm thinking of waiting for a better packaging from another company If the subs are like the individual DVDs, they seem to be slightly above the quality of the 0079 set, which I thought were decent. GAODA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I keep seeing on Ebay though these 8 disc DVD sets that supposedly have perfect subtitles. But no one ever posts pictures, so I'm a bit weary on buying it.

[Mechafan]

I order a set of VCD's. They should be here by the end of the week. So far that seller I got them from has had good feedback on these.

[Druna Skass]

I saw an ad for Encounters in Space and it said there were going to be suits from SEED in it, anyone know what suits are going to be in it?

[Effect]

Encounters in Space is suppose to be the sequel to Journey to Jaburo. So its UC One Year War based with most likely suits from surrounding side stories the way JTJ was setup. In that you had suits from 0080, 8th MS Team, Blue Destiny. I have a feeling that EiS will have suits from the same plus maybe 0083 and more from the OYW but not sure. I really doubt their would be SEED suits in it.

[Druna Skass]

Encounters in Space is suppose to be the sequel to Journey to Jaburo. So its UC One Year War based with most likely suits from surrounding side stories the way JTJ was setup. In that you had suits from 0080, 8th MS Team, Blue Destiny. I have a feeling that EiS will have suits from the same plus maybe 0083 and more from the OYW but not sure. I really doubt their would be SEED suits in it.

Well in the ad I saw in the Dec. PSM it said they were throwing in suits from SEED, Wing, G, and a new suit made just for the game, along with the UC suits.

[Blaine23]

Definitely interested to see your review Keith... I'm still deciding if its worth waiting for what will likely be a better rip and possibly better subs.

[Vinny]

Yes, SEED MS will most likely be in Encounters in Space. The American version of Encouters will have all MS open in the beginning. With the Japanese version, you have to download them. SO far, the only ones up for download are Wing Zero Custom, Tallgeese III, Shaku (a Zaku with hearts. Don't ask), God Gundam, and Master Gundam. Problem is, I don't hve a fricking hardrive to save them to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You NEED the harddrive to paly as them, as they are not already in the game. They are saved to the hard drive, and used form there in the game The American version is supposedly going to ahve them open from the start, which gives me a reason t rent it. I'll jsut ahve to mute it, because dubbed Gundam makes me cry

[Keith]

I trust they'll improve the subtitle script. You'll recall they re-did both the Z & ZZ sets with improved subs, so this could likely be a similar case.

Speaking of the 0079 set, aside from subs on it, is it true that it's missing portions of episodes 23 & 32? I've been eyeing it for a little while now, but haven't commited to picking it up yet.

And while Encounters is looking like a more promising purchase, I still haven't seen Zeta Gundam listed in it. Wing & Seed MS's are all well & good, but Zeta stands above all!

[Keith]

Hey come on, what about the HK 0079 set!

[Vinny]

Calm down Keith I'm not on all the time Anyways, my set didn't ahve any missing portions. People were saying it was missing portaions of two episodes, I checked those out, and I had it all. My set is by Anime Cartoon, and the missing portions are in MI's set. Well, anyone who's been into HKs for a while knows AC and MI are the same company, so i don't see how this is possible. But it's not the first time MI and AC releases have differed.

And I know they redid Double Zeta's subs, but when did they redo Zetas? My MI set has awesome subtitles for the majority of the series, so maybe I'm jsut to new to the HK scene to have seen bad Zeta sets.

[Keith]

Calm down Keith I'm not on all the time Anyways, my set didn't ahve any missing portions. People were saying it was missing portaions of two episodes, I checked those out, and I had it all. My set is by Anime Cartoon, and the missing portions are in MI's set. Well, anyone who's been into HKs for a while knows AC and MI are the same company, so i don't see how this is possible. But it's not the first time MI and AC releases have differed.

And I know they redid Double Zeta's subs, but when did they redo Zetas? My MI set has awesome subtitles for the majority of the series, so maybe I'm jsut to new to the HK scene to have seen bad Zeta sets.

Well, I wouldn't call Zeta's subs "awesome" though they're passable for most of the series. I guess MI fixed thier set, which is all I need to know, it's going into my next purchase

The way things look, I should have Seed by Tuesday/Wednesday at the latest, can't wait.

[Keith]

Just got it in the mail today. Haven't had a chance to watch it though (I'll watch 2 or 3 episodes later tonight). But hating people that say "yeah I got it" without saying anything else, I popped the first & last disc into my PC's dvd drive.

Note: I can't give any fair review on video quality yet, as my PC's playback hardware/software makes everything look soft to begin with, so that'll wait until tomorrow once I've watched it on my standalone.

-Source: They seem to have taken the video from multiple sources. The episodes I skimmed through on the first disc have a logo during the next episode previews that say "GUNDAM-SEED.NET," along with another one that has the logo & something about broadband. Mind you this is only during the next episode previews, there seem to be no ohter watermarks anywhere. All I can deduce from this is that these episodes must be from the download broadcast Sunrise did. However....Peaking at the last disc, there's the noticable line on the bottom of the picture, and no such logo during next ep-previews. I assume these to be TV rip episodes. So somewhere between the first & 6th disc, they switched sources.

-Subtitles: The subtitles I skimmed through on the first disc seem to be true attempts at translations, but the word tense just isn't quite right. Definately HK originals, and while I haven't watched to any degree, I can comment on how accurate they are, but they "seem" accurate considering the bad sentence structure. One word I recognized being "ZAFT" translated as "ZAFUDO," a perfectly acceptable subtitle. The episodes on the 6th disc I peaked at use an entirely different subtitle font all together, and seem to use a "tighter" translation, or at the very least, better word structure. I won't comment too much on these episodes until I watch them next week (I don't want to go out of order afterall).

-Menu's: The first disc has a really basic menu, similar to Bandai's Gundam Wing R1 menu's with the background being the cockpit with scenes playing through the view screen. Selections here aren't in english, but the optiosn are simple enough (play all, subtitle, episode select). The episode select is a simple text menu. The menu on the 6th disc much like everything else is radically different. There we have a character backgrop menu, selections in english, and animated episode select options (scenes playing from episodes).

I didn't play anything through very loudly on my PC speakers (dont have my headphones hooked up) so I can't comment on the audio yet either. One minor thing of note though, MI seems to have gotten the gatefold pictures mixed up for the 1st & second disc's. Not a big deal at all (though it did confuse me when I popped in the wrong disc on the Yamato series 3 set, but that's another story). The disc's are numbered, so other than the un-matching pictures, the art is great.

When I've gotten to more meat in the episodes, I'll give more specific reviews of the set.

[Keith]

Ok, I've taken a more thorough look at the set. The first disc is entirely different from the rest, its subtitles are more "engrish'y," (understandable, and seems to be accurately translated, but the sentance structure is just off). the font itself is smaller, and it's the only disc that uses the www.gundam-seed.net broadband version. Overall the video looks like it was recorded off of the download, onto VHS, then to DVD. Suffice it to say that it looks like a really good fansub tape, but not quite DVD quality. The colors & sharpness want to be there, but just fall a bit short. The audio is a decent stereo sound, but there are some pops & stuff noticably in it. The names seem to be mostly correct, or at least semi-close in sounding to what they're supposed to be. There are some odities though, such as "Jila,"instead of "Kira." All prologues, intro's, eyecatches, endings, & next ep previews are there.

Disc's 2-6 however are improved in every area. The translations seem to be "much" better, I'd say on par with the ZZ set. All the menu's reflect the description of disc 6's. There are some strnage things though. The next episode previews are gone, or rather, only the last episode on each disc now has them. In addition, the transition from the prologues to the opening credits seem a bit rough. I've never seen Seed before, so I couldn't say if there's anything clipped, but the chapter break there is definately "rough" for lack of better terms. This goes on until the 3rd opening starts, when things transition smoothly between pologue & opening. The bar on the bottom also isn't visable, & seems to dissapear into the overscan area of the screen (only really visable on my PC display). I'd also say the video is a bit better than Disc 1's, though still not much more than really good fansub VHS quality. The sound is about the same as previously described.

Episode count is 8/9/9/9/9/6

Overall, I'm happy with the set, aside from disc one, the subtitles are a lot better than the descriptions I've heard about the individual disc's. It'll definately hold me over until there's an R1 boxset.

[Mechamaniac]

How much was the set Keith??

I have all the eps downloaded and the quality is awesome on all of them. The only thing is that they came from two different fansub groups so they don't all exactly match and you can see some of the name mistransations change, for instance, I was so used to calling him ASURAN, even though I knew the correct name per NewType is ATHRUN, that when they finally caught on to it, and corrected it, I found myself calling him ASURAN anyway..

Depending on the cost of the series, I may just burn my downloaded eps onto DVD's myself since I have all of them anyway.

[Keith]

It was $48, not too shabby at all.