What Current Anime Series Are You Watching? v2.0

[wolfx]

A new Kikaider anime?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az8VSCPjnF4

LOL...ermm...who sits in the sidecar?

[RavenHawk]

Slightly off topic here, but there are two upcoming anime which I am very excited about: "Viper's Creed" and "Rideback" (as anyone who knows me will attest, I'm a bit obsessed with variable bikes).

Both of these, I believe, premier in January.

Does anyone know if there is any way to see these, living in the USA, when they come out, or do I just have to wait for a DVD release?

Thanks.

[Radd]

Ten episodes in, still watching Tytania. I really hope everything so far has just been a really long prelude, it certainly feels that way. Lots of interesting possibilities keep popping up, but it doesn't seem to go all the way with them. My optimistic side is suspecting everything so far is prelude, and hoping for some massive payoff as the various plot threads suddenly collide. The pessimist in me suspects it's gotten as good as it's gonna get, and will never be nearly as interesting as LotGH got. So far it's good enough that I look forward to each new episode, so I'll find out eventually.

[bandit29]

Started watching some of Hokuto No Ken Raoh Gaiden: Ten no Hao. Not bad..I still don't get why the Japanese love Raoh so much.

[F-ZeroOne]

Indulged some curiosity and looked into the first five episodes of After War Gundam-X.

Gundam-X? Came between Wing and SEED? Yes, its a Gundam series. No, really it exists. Honest...

Edited December 22, 2008 by F-ZeroOne

[miriya]

So I have been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time and it has been taking me a while as my free time is limited but I got to episodes 21 - 24 last night and just wow! In episode 21 alone a whole lot of plot unraveled. I am going to watch the movie first before watching episodes 25-26 and then watch those as I have been advised. It is an amazing series. I am sure most of you have already seen it if not hudreds of times already.

[dreamweaver13]

So I have been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time and it has been taking me a while as my free time is limited but I got to episodes 21 - 24 last night and just wow! In episode 21 alone a whole lot of plot unraveled. I am going to watch the movie first before watching episodes 25-26 and then watch those as I have been advised. It is an amazing series. I am sure most of you have already seen it if not hudreds of times already.

a hundred and one, last count.

after you watch the EOE movie, then episodes 25-26, give yourself a week off, and then watch the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie. and if you can, DO watch it on a BIG TV with a kick-ass sound system. a movie theater wouldn't hurt, too.

[Keith]

Indulged some curiosity and looked into the first five episodes of After War Gundam-X.

Gundam-X? Came between Wing and SEED? Yes, its a Gundam series. No, really it exists. Honest...

Actually, between Gundam Wing & Turn A. X didn't really wow me at all though, it felt like ZZ mixed with Orguss.

[Black Valkyrie]

Rewatching Future Boy Conan, haven`t scene it in decades.

[miriya]

a hundred and one, last count.

after you watch the EOE movie, then episodes 25-26, give yourself a week off, and then watch the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie. and if you can, DO watch it on a BIG TV with a kick-ass sound system. a movie theater wouldn't hurt, too.

Cool. Where do I find the Rebuild movie?

[SilentCrossHairs]

Checking out Gundam 00 season 2. I'm liking it. Reminds me of Gundam Zeta in the UC universe.

[Gui]

A new Kikaider anime?

Nope: the old animated TV series; I finished it yesterday: it's really not bad at all and worth a watch. I liked how it went on the 'short' side instead of running on dozens and dozens of episodes and each of them built around a 'monster of the week' plot. The basic idea is interesting too although it could have been more developped. I think I'll give a try to the OAV

Indulged some curiosity and looked into the first five episodes of After War Gundam-X.

Gundam-X? Came between Wing and SEED? Yes, its a Gundam series. No, really it exists. Honest...

Not only it exists, but it owns. The end is slightly rushed though, because of the usual 'not enough audience' thing which crippled First, Ideon and many others; I sometimes think that Gundam is somewhat cursed...

So I have been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time and it has been taking me a while as my free time is limited but I got to episodes 21 - 24 last night and just wow! In episode 21 alone a whole lot of plot unraveled. I am going to watch the movie first before watching episodes 25-26 and then watch those as I have been advised. It is an amazing series. I am sure most of you have already seen it if not hudreds of times already.

Only once for me, thanks: it was more than enough; I had already seen the same thing in Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall when I was 17 therefore Eva didn't impress me enough to make me want to watch it again, all the more as its pacing's rather slow and quickly becomes boring. The Rebuild of Eva first movie is overally in the same mood, so you may like it if you liked the TV series

I plan to watch Batman Gotham Knight tonight and after that I'll probably begin Generator Gawl

[wolfx]

New anime season.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/5818/wi...9chartv2mh2.jpg

What i'll watch:

Rideback cuz i dig ride armours

Druaga cuz its sequel

Minami Ke cuz its sequel

Shikibane Hime cuz its sequel

Birdy cuz its sequel

White Album cuz its yuri...i think

Marimite cuz its yuri

Maria + Holic cuz its failed yuri

The Girl Who Leapt Through Space cuz its Sunrise

[yellowlightman]

New anime season.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/5818/wi...9chartv2mh2.jpg

Another depressingly terrible season.

I'll watch a few episodes of Ride Back and Vipers' Creed, but I'm guessing they'll both disappoint. Hetalia Axis Powers sounds goofy, but I'm not sure if it'll actually be interesting.

The rest... cr*p.

[Gubaba]

This is a little bit off-topic, but does anyone know what happened to the getfansub wiki? Everything I've clicked on recently has led to a "deleted due to terms of service violation" page. Did someone at Megaupload clean house recently...?

[RavenHawk]

Ok, so I ask again, if we're in the USA, how do we get to see these (specifically Viper's Creed and Rideback for me), other than waiting for an eventual DVD release?

[Gubaba]

Ok, so I ask again, if we're in the USA, how do we get to see these (specifically Viper's Creed and Rideback for me), other than waiting for an eventual DVD release?

BitTorrent, man. BitTorrent.

[thegunny]

Ok, so I ask again, if we're in the USA, how do we get to see these (specifically Viper's Creed and Rideback for me), other than waiting for an eventual DVD release?

Bit Torrent absolutely.

The odds of those shows being picked up by a US distributor are going to pretty slim and then you'll have to wait for them to dubbed so if you want to see them within the next 2 years Bit Torrent is the only way.

Besides fansubs are usually 99% better than studio subs and a million% better than dubs any day (US dubs suck).

[yellowlightman]

Besides fansubs are usually 99% better than studio subs

That's not true at all.

[thegunny]

That's not true at all.

Sorry to disagree with you but I reckon they are

I like the way they are not manipulated to please US tastes and are for the most case a true translation of what was said (note I said for the most case as some are a bit FUBAR).

Edited December 25, 2008 by thegunny

[yellowlightman]

Sorry to disagree with you but I reckon they are

I like the way they are not manipulated to please US tastes and are for the most case a true translation of what was said (note I said for the most case as some are a bit FUBAR).

A true translation of what is said? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're one of the guys who like "translations" like this (image mildly NSFW) or think that words like kisama should be left in untranslated.

Outside of subtitle tracks that use dub scripts, I'd like to see some examples of subtitles being "manipulated" to please US tastes.

The truth is fansubs are often painfully unprofessional, usually because there's such a heavy focus on getting out a release ASAP for bragging rights (keep in mind that 95% of fansubbing is about bragging rights, or else you wouldn't have five different groups subtitling the same popular series). There's also tons of translation errors, usually resulting from rushed translators or translators translating from Japanese into Chinese and then into english.

Throw in more BS like the fansub groups' name added to the title screens of anime, and the fansub staff's names placed on the credits instead of translations of the actual staff and what you get is a bunch of unprofessional cr*p. Remember, you get what you pay for.

[thegunny]

Oh dear sorry to have an opinion that differs from yours

I'll know better next time.

Although I don't have a command of the Japanese language that you seem to thing you have your assumption is wrong.

[wolfx]

A true translation of what is said? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're one of the guys who like "translations" like this (image mildly NSFW) or think that words like kisama should be left in untranslated.

Outside of subtitle tracks that use dub scripts, I'd like to see some examples of subtitles being "manipulated" to please US tastes.

The truth is fansubs are often painfully unprofessional, usually because there's such a heavy focus on getting out a release ASAP for bragging rights (keep in mind that 95% of fansubbing is about bragging rights, or else you wouldn't have five different groups subtitling the same popular series). There's also tons of translation errors, usually resulting from rushed translators or translators translating from Japanese into Chinese and then into english.

Throw in more BS like the fansub groups' name added to the title screens of anime, and the fansub staff's names placed on the credits instead of translations of the actual staff and what you get is a bunch of unprofessional cr*p. Remember, you get what you pay for.

Holy crap you sound like

.

I like fansubs....and I don't really mind official subs either...but sometimes you have to give the fansubs some credit for explaining stuff that most "official subtitles" will just replace with an American equivalent phrase rather than a direct translation with notes. Otaking would argue that this is not what "professional translators" do but meh.

[Gubaba]

Oh dear sorry to have an opinion that differs from yours

I'll know better next time.

Although I don't have a command of the Japanese language that you seem to thing you have your assumption is wrong.

I have to say that I'm with yellowlightman on this...I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I can get by; more importantly, I know good dialogue when I hear (or read) it, and a lot of fansubs seem to be (at their best) almost painfully literal, and (at their worst) entirely wrong.

The official subs for Macross Plus are a good example of translation done well, I think (despite a couple of simple romanization errors, like Jan Neumann becoming "Yang" Neumann). It's like they took the dialogue completely apart, word by word, and reassembled it into English that reads naturally and fluidly, and helps characterization (Isamu, Guld, Myung, Sharon, Yang, Lucy, and Millard all have different ways of speaking, and that's reflected in the subs, sometimes obviously, sometimes not). Often, the sub dialogue is vastly different from a what a dictionary-perfect rendition would say, but it always conveys the same information in a succinct way that's true to the story and the characters.

Creating a good translation of a work of fiction requires as much knowledge of characterization and plot that creating a work of fiction does. Some fansubbers get this; a large number don't. While there are certainly bad "professional" jobs out there, they're better on the whole than most fansubs. What they gain in accuracy, they lose in artistry.

[VFTF1]

I like fansubs....and I don't really mind official subs either...but sometimes you have to give the fansubs some credit for explaining stuff that most "official subtitles" will just replace with an American equivalent phrase rather than a direct translation with notes. Otaking would argue that this is not what "professional translators" do but meh.

Insofar as "professional translators" prefer "explaining" things from the original language to us rather than giving us a "direct translation" - I think that this is a vice and a bad habit in the translations business. I think it is more important to get a literal translation, even if it sounds or reads strange in your language rather than getting the translator's interpretation of something.

Gubaba - you and Yellow know Japanese, so it is not surprising that you take issue with fan subs, because you immediately spot inconsistencies, errors - sloppiness that is the result of a rush job.

However - if we are simply speaking in general about which method of translation is better - then I would say that literal translation is the best, while interpretive translation is the worse. Here is why:

For those of us who do not know Japanese (and in general for readers/viewers who do not know the original language), it is not simply a matter of words being different, but very often a matter of being confronted with a different intonation, way of expression, vocals, structure - everything that is inherent in linguistic form which to a large extent actually determines content.

If we who do not know the original language are not given the opportunity to be confronted with the strangeness of this language through literal translation, then we will not come as close as possible to the original work, but instead what we will get is a professional translator's opinion of the work.

I believe that the translator should be invisible - neutral to the extent of not even caring whether something is grammatically correct, let alone stylistically pleasent in english (or whatever the language is that things are being translated into). I think the reader/viewer should have the opportunity to say "huh!? What?!" and take that shock and explore the linguistic discrepencies.

Without those discrepencies, lots of things will be glosed over - and we'll end up thinking that we've seen a movie or read a book when what we've really seen and read is a translator's interpretation thereof.

So - I'm not going to argue that there are not sloppy dubs out there - but whenever I have compared subs to dubs - I have prefered the subs - and lots of times it was precisely because the subs were "wierder" and more raw and more strange and hard to fathom - this gave me a clue that something more was being said than what the dub hinted at - and that is good - it expands the possibilities for thinking things through.

Pete

[Gubaba]

Insofar as "professional translators" prefer "explaining" things from the original language to us rather than giving us a "direct translation" - I think that this is a vice and a bad habit in the translations business. I think it is more important to get a literal translation, even if it sounds or reads strange in your language rather than getting the translator's interpretation of something.

Gubaba - you and Yellow know Japanese, so it is not surprising that you take issue with fan subs, because you immediately spot inconsistencies, errors - sloppiness that is the result of a rush job.

However - if we are simply speaking in general about which method of translation is better - then I would say that literal translation is the best, while interpretive translation is the worse. Here is why:

For those of us who do not know Japanese (and in general for readers/viewers who do not know the original language), it is not simply a matter of words being different, but very often a matter of being confronted with a different intonation, way of expression, vocals, structure - everything that is inherent in linguistic form which to a large extent actually determines content.

If we who do not know the original language are not given the opportunity to be confronted with the strangeness of this language through literal translation, then we will not come as close as possible to the original work, but instead what we will get is a professional translator's opinion of the work.

I believe that the translator should be invisible - neutral to the extent of not even caring whether something is grammatically correct, let alone stylistically pleasent in english (or whatever the language is that things are being translated into). I think the reader/viewer should have the opportunity to say "huh!? What?!" and take that shock and explore the linguistic discrepencies.

Without those discrepencies, lots of things will be glosed over - and we'll end up thinking that we've seen a movie or read a book when what we've really seen and read is a translator's interpretation thereof.

So - I'm not going to argue that there are not sloppy dubs out there - but whenever I have compared subs to dubs - I have prefered the subs - and lots of times it was precisely because the subs were "wierder" and more raw and more strange and hard to fathom - this gave me a clue that something more was being said than what the dub hinted at - and that is good - it expands the possibilities for thinking things through.

Pete

Naturally, I disagree.

Unless the languages involved are extremely close (Spanish and Portuguese for example), a very literal translation will always falsify the tone of the work; no matter how "faithful" the translator is trying to be, there are no one-to-one correspondences from Japanese to English, and so choices must be made in order to make the work comprehensible. No matter what, you're getting the work as interpreted by the translator.

Think of it like playing a Bach cello piece or something. Sure, there's the sheet music. You can tell five cellists to play the piece EXACTLY as it appears on paper, in order to be as faithful to Bach as possible. But those five versions will all sound subtly different, no matter how precise the players are. There's simply no way around it.

Too-literal translations also tend to become comprehensible ONLY to people who know both langages, as well. To cite an extreme example, the Japanese word "hiyoko" is used to mean "rookie," "greenhorn," "newbie," stuff like that. Literally, it means "fledgling" or "chick." There are (AFAIK) two basic fansubs of Macross Zero. One has Focker say, "I'll bring both the VF-0 and those fledglings back." It's okay, but still, Focker saying "fledgling" sounds kinda weird (to me, at least). The other fansub has him saying, "I'll bring them both back. The VF-0, and those chicks." Now we all know Roy's quite handy with the ladies, but the true meaning is lost to anyone who doesn't know that the word used was "hiyoko" and what its secondary meaning is. That's not a translation, that's just a mess.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'm done spouting off on translation theory here. If you're still not convinced, please PM me. (Or we can start a new thread, if you prefer.)

[Arbalest]

I just took in Macross Frontier.....Kinda liked how they threaded Macross Zero into this series.

[wolfx]

Took a trip down memory lane and started watching a classic well lauded on MW , Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Pretty funny and classic. Up till ep 5 now.

[Gui]

I found this one rather boring after the first bunch of eps, personnally...

Otherwise, Batman: Gotham Knight was a very pleasant surprise, both on the artistic side and on the narrative one: I recommend it

[Bri]

Watching Gundam 00 season 1 and 2 atm. Love the concept and story sofar. Hate to say it but 00 is almost as good as Frontier for me.

[Chindenathus]

I just finished watching R2 of "Code Geass". It felt a bit lost during the third quarter,

but it ends pretty well. Admittedly the ending felt a bit rushed/strongarmed but

I chalk that up to them having more plot than they could fit in the time constraints.

I found it to be a damned sight better that the end of Death Note which I really

enjoyed until the last 5 episodes or so.

[reddsun1]

I'm actually going back and re-watching Hokuto No Ken. LOL, it's hard to pick which theme is my favorite: You Are Shock!, or Tough Boy, Tough Boy, Tough Boy, Tough Boy! Liking the first Chapter eps the best so far. Who could ever get enough of head-popping, muscle-ripping, blood-spurting cartoon violence? "AHT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT!!!!!!!!!!"

Not a big fan of Hokuto No Ken 2 though. Character designs are so extremely over-ripped, to the point of looking just deformed or something.

Not overly impressed with the new OVA movies though. Sure, the sound is better. Sure, they're slicker, more polished than the old 80's animation. But they're still just a re-hash of the original eps...

[Gubaba]

I'm actually going back and re-watching Hokuto No Ken. LOL, it's hard to pick which theme is my favorite: You Are Shock!, or Tough Boy, Tough Boy, Tough Boy, Tough Boy! Liking the first Chapter eps the best so far. Who could ever get enough of head-popping, muscle-ripping, blood-spurting cartoon violence? "AHT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT AT!!!!!!!!!!"

Not a big fan of Hokuto No Ken 2 though. Character designs are so extremely over-ripped, to the point of looking just deformed or something.

Not overly impressed with the new OVA movies though. Sure, the sound is better. Sure, they're slicker, more polished than the old 80's animation. But they're still just a re-hash of the original eps...

Y'know what I'm not a big fan of? Those twelve or thirteen clip shows that came in between HnK and KnK2.

But yeah, I never actually finished watching HnK2, even though I loved the "Tough Boy" theme song...it became a little TOO clear with that one that the writer was just making it up as he went along...Plus, let's face it: when Raoh dies, the series dies.

[wolfx]

Finished up Kannagi....man...poor Tsugumi.

[bandit29]

Started watching the remastered version of Vision of Escaflowne. I haven't watched this series in years and these new fan subs by Grey Phantom look great. Boxtorrents has them if you want a quick(lots of seeds) 8gb download..took less than 24hrs on DSL.

Edited December 30, 2008 by bandit29