#2 When you have a 120" display, you can TELL the difference between good encoding and bad, regardless of bitrate. (Compression artifacts the size of my head = BAD.) But if you think bitrate doesn't affect image quality, you're an imbecile.
#3 Sorry, I meant to say 'no one that counts'.
#4 Oh please, do tell me where my blame should be pointed.
#5 I shouldn't be? They have a pretty long track record with regards to bad releases.
I would also like to point out to the mods that Kagami001 makes a perfectly valid point, and shouldn't really be modded down. Sorry about the double-post, but the moderation happened while I was writing my other reply.
Well, I certainly agree that foreign fans aren't worthy of respect.:) But 'already voted with my wallet'? Hardly. I only buy R1s if I'm not crazy enough about the series to pay like $60 a DVD and have it shipped from Japan, or I want subtitles. (Or plan to watch it with someone who needs them) All my favorite shows are R2 DVDs.
Sometimes I'm just crazy-go-nuts about a series, and I do something insane like import the limited edition 5.1 boxset of Cowboy Bebop. (Because, why the hell not? I also have the movie in 1080i HDTV.):)
My point isn't that I'm cheap and I expect Japanese DVD quality for US prices, it's that you can't GET Japanese DVDs without buying them FROM Japan. If American companies wanted to take the Japanese DVDs as-is and slap their crappy subs on it (Hell, I'll even let them add a dub), I'd gladly pay $40-60 each just so I don't have to sell organs for shipping that takes less than a month. (I have, on several occasions, worked out that it would actually be cheaper for me to live in Japan than live on the east coast of the US and import stuff.)
Why don't they do that? Price is no concern of mine in the face of quality and convenience... (However, quality alone versus both convenience and price loses alot of the time, I'm sorry to say.)
What the hell? I accuse them of butchery and suddenly I'm a dub-watcher?
I'd still rather eat glass than watch dubbed anime, but what's wrong with the concept that they SHOULD be able to do a decent dub? I mean, I AM paying for it afterall. By buying a crappy, low-bitrate American anime DVD, I AM PAYING FOR IT. And on top of that, 99% of the time anime is on TV in the US, it'll be dubbed. So, don't you think it's in their vested interest to produce something that doesn't suck, so people aren't immediately turned off?
But that's all beside the point; if you think the 'butchering' I'm referring to has something to do with the dubs though, you obviously don't know enough Japanese to know that the subtitle translation is inaccurate, at best, let alone watch it WITHOUT them.
If Japanese DVDs didn't cost twice as much for half as many episodes, I wouldn't have any R1 DVDs in my collection. Since the lack of subs wouldn't be a deal-breaker; the R1s are so bad as it is I usually don't want to watch them with my (non-anime-loving) friends.
Something worth noting: A good Japanese anime DVD with 2 episodes on it, uses more of the DVD's space than a US DVD with 4-5 episodes and English audio.
Would you say compromising the visual quality of the DVDs falls under the heading of 'butchery'? I would.
Would you say that cluttering the disc with crappy dubs no one listens to, and subtitles that sometimes come within a mile or two of an 'accurate translation' maybe, kinda sorta, falls under the heading of 'butchery', or at the very least 'bullshit'? Meh.
Would you say that doing bad things to the original content for no good reason falls under the heading of 'butchery'? I certainly would. Want proof? Rent RahXephon, DVD 1. Watch the first couple minutes of episode 1 and explain to me why they needed to do that.
And what about releasing DVDs that are quite simply...SCREWED? I especially loved the RahXephon movie. They made sure the English audio was perfect...but the Japanese...well, they didn't seem to notice that for half the movie, all the audio was coming from one side. Oops. Atleast they RECALLED that one, no such luck with what they did to the TV series' first DVD.
4kids is another story, their butchery is so far beyond the scope of the normal order of things that it defies a proper definition...
Tokyopop wouldn't be far off, if they hadn't included the ORIGINAL Initial D on the DVDs with their Americanized craptastrophe. (I actually own those, 10 DVDs and counting, even my father loves Initial D...the fact that he drives like Bunta is probably responsible for me never getting behind the wheel of anything not being rendered by a game engine.)
One last thing, when ADV's Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai DVDs came out, I reviewed them sub, dub and all. I thought they'd turned over a new leaf; the dub was actually GOOD (for a dub, anyway), and the subtitles were fairly ACCURATE...they even included these popup bubbles that explained things to the uninitiated, so they didn't have to dumb down the subs! As time passed, I started to suspect that the series was either an isolated incident, or it was outsourced to people who knew what they're doing.
Funimation's work on Fruits Basket isn't bad either...which is surprising, as Funimation is...bad. They have two subtitle tracks, a sort of dumbed down set of English subs, and another that includes name suffixes, and were generally pretty neat.
It'd be nice if more companies followed those two examples. (For one, I really hate it when they drop name suffixes, or God forbid, actually try to 'translate' them. Pioneer's 'x-chan = little x', anyone? The choice and use of particular suffixes is a very important clue to how characters relate to eachother... And the optional pop-up subpicture track would eliminate the need to overexplain typical Japanese stuff, by including notes for people who don't understand Japanese culture. Even fansub groups include notes. Why the hell don't t
Do decent translations. (All titles except Abenobashi)
Stop recording horrific dubbed audio, and find people who can ACT. (Most titles, with the notable exception of Abenobashi)
Stop releasing faulty DVDs. (RahXephon the movie, and others)
Stop manipulating other people's works in ways that should fall outside of their licensing rights. (Evangelion DVDs 1&2, subsequently un-done and released without manipulations. RahXephon DVD 1, never fixed, told we were SOL. And god knows what others.)
So much being so 'open-minded'. I'm willing to bet this 'trailer' of theirs is DUBBED. Great way to advertise something, expose people to it in its most hideous form first.
Actually, I was referring to doing things such as blurring out large portions of the screen to insert the same english credits that are at the end of the episode in an intro-less ep, or digitally editing signs and stuff, or hey..here's one: Providing the worst subtitles I've ever seen outside of the fansub community. (That's assuming the DVDs even WORK.)
Companies like ADV are why I pay twice as much for Japanese DVDs, and STILL can't introduce my friends to anime.
Well, I believe, and it's been my experience that, people who are in any way serious about computer use; geeks, gamers, graphics people, will buy a new computer whenever they can afford one as long as there's an appreciable performance difference. So I don't think the fact that stuff will still run on outdated hardware really affects PC sales.
That said, I'm still grudgingly running an Athlon xp 2700, 'cause I'm still saving for a 64-bit system. (And up until recently, my OS and my animation package of choice didn't come in 64-bit flavors anyway)
I've been waiting for this for a while. While I appreciate the utility of Firefox's built-in dedicated searchbar (I have wikipedia, dictionary.com, google, and imdb on mine), I miss the 'open cached version' right-click options you get with the IE google bar.
Yeah, but the sumi thing in Photoshop sucks. And I'm not talking about the filter, which does nothing like what I'm talking about, I'm talking about being able to paint things and do calligraphy.
How is it, I make a serious statement, and it gets modded funny, but I say that I'd give anything for that idiot that owns the word 'stealth' to be killed by ninjas...and no one gets it?
Well, you certainly just named most of the groups I know to be doing any good, though I don't follow most of those series. (In so far as their translations aren't total bs, they're not stealing them from other groups, and they're not translating korean or chinese scripts.) I agree with a couple of earlier posts, that fansubs offer alot of what retail DVDs don't; no dumbing down, no over-explaining, proper notes for things we may not understand, and more literal translations.
The problem is, it's a very small cross-section of the community that's doing any good, and that doesn't work. There's atleast a couple dozen groups that release regularly, and maybe as many as a hundred active groups, total. (And that's just English subbing groups)
I think the US companies will really feel the hurt when more good groups start adding subs to R2 DVDs and posting the images. I've seen a few, like DVDs of Gantz and Elfen Lied with English and German fansubs...Or even DVDs of Samurai7 with an alternate angle for the op/ed that gives you hardsubbed karaoke effects. I think it's really going to take stuff like that to make them wake up. It'd be interesting to see how far those go. Like maybe a fansubbed R2 DVD that has a pop-up note subpicture track like ADV's Abenobashi DVDs?
I mostly just stick to raws, too. But sometimes it's nice to be able to watch anime with other people, and not be the only one what understands it, you know?;)
Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you checked out some fansubs? The community is in a state of disaster. It's horrific. Between them, and the US DVDs, there's a reason I haven't tried to intruduce my friends to good anime...
AnimEigo... Yeah, I haven't seen anything of theirs in ages, I thought I had recently, but it doesn't appear on their list of titles, so I must have been mistaken.
btw, as bad as ADV is most of the time, have you seen their Abenobashi DVDs?
First of all, something like 1% of the fansub community does work that's any good. The sad thing is, atleast 5% of the fansub community tends to do a better job than the US companies that license the shows. I myself almost refuse to buy American anime DVDs. Besides the fact that the translations are crap, and at times utterly ridiculous, they also encode the DVDs horribly.
I have Japanese DVDs that have two episodes, no extras, and no English soundtrack, and use MORE of the DVDs' capacity than the US releases with FOUR EPISODES, extras, and additional English audio.
If American fans are buying less anime, it's because they don't want to spend hard-earned money on CRAP, imagine that. Fix the problem not the symptoms.
Example: Soukyuu no Fafner just came out in the US, the Fafner robots are named Mk. Elf, Mk. Sechs, Mk. Vier, Mk. Drie, and Mk. Nicht. (Those are just the ones I can remember off-hand), as you probably noticed, with the exception of Mark Nicht, they're all german numbers. These correspond to the numbers on them in roman numerals. The folks over at Geneon have taken the liberty (Read: A long walk off the pier of wtf?) and are calling Mark Sechs 'Zexs'. Between that, and their overall flaky transliteration, it was enough to make me boycott Geneon once and for all.
And for the last goddamn time, you Pioneer rejects, -chan does NOT translate to prefixing the subject with 'little'. LEARN JAPANESE.
I have an HD-ready projector that I use as a TV, and I still don't watch television, cable or otherwise. When I want to watch something, I download it or rent it. (I download my favorite shows every week in 1080i HDTV) So I guess what I'm saying is...whichever way this goes, I'll be pointing and laughing.
Okay see, now THAT'S wrong. I'm perfectly content with the kids getting reamed for doing something like THAT. But if, like the article said, they were simply downloading stuff, even if it WAS porn or illegal music, and keeping the admins from spying on them...then this would be ridiculous.
Has anyone questioned the absurdity of them being charged with 'computer trespass' against machines IN THEIR POSSESSION?
Isn't there a more applicable crime somewhere in the DMCA that they can just have the kids executed by firing squad for? Like uhh... 'circumvention of blah blah blah' ? I mean, my god! They didn't want to get spied on and have everything they do monitored, they must be terrorists!
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#1 Won't dignify with a reply.
#2 When you have a 120" display, you can TELL the difference between good encoding and bad, regardless of bitrate. (Compression artifacts the size of my head = BAD.) But if you think bitrate doesn't affect image quality, you're an imbecile.
#3 Sorry, I meant to say 'no one that counts'.
#4 Oh please, do tell me where my blame should be pointed.
#5 I shouldn't be? They have a pretty long track record with regards to bad releases.
I would also like to point out to the mods that Kagami001 makes a perfectly valid point, and shouldn't really be modded down. Sorry about the double-post, but the moderation happened while I was writing my other reply.
Well, I certainly agree that foreign fans aren't worthy of respect. :) But 'already voted with my wallet'? Hardly. I only buy R1s if I'm not crazy enough about the series to pay like $60 a DVD and have it shipped from Japan, or I want subtitles. (Or plan to watch it with someone who needs them) All my favorite shows are R2 DVDs.
:)
Sometimes I'm just crazy-go-nuts about a series, and I do something insane like import the limited edition 5.1 boxset of Cowboy Bebop. (Because, why the hell not? I also have the movie in 1080i HDTV.)
My point isn't that I'm cheap and I expect Japanese DVD quality for US prices, it's that you can't GET Japanese DVDs without buying them FROM Japan. If American companies wanted to take the Japanese DVDs as-is and slap their crappy subs on it (Hell, I'll even let them add a dub), I'd gladly pay $40-60 each just so I don't have to sell organs for shipping that takes less than a month. (I have, on several occasions, worked out that it would actually be cheaper for me to live in Japan than live on the east coast of the US and import stuff.)
Why don't they do that? Price is no concern of mine in the face of quality and convenience... (However, quality alone versus both convenience and price loses alot of the time, I'm sorry to say.)
What the hell? I accuse them of butchery and suddenly I'm a dub-watcher?
I'd still rather eat glass than watch dubbed anime, but what's wrong with the concept that they SHOULD be able to do a decent dub? I mean, I AM paying for it afterall. By buying a crappy, low-bitrate American anime DVD, I AM PAYING FOR IT. And on top of that, 99% of the time anime is on TV in the US, it'll be dubbed. So, don't you think it's in their vested interest to produce something that doesn't suck, so people aren't immediately turned off?
But that's all beside the point; if you think the 'butchering' I'm referring to has something to do with the dubs though, you obviously don't know enough Japanese to know that the subtitle translation is inaccurate, at best, let alone watch it WITHOUT them.
If Japanese DVDs didn't cost twice as much for half as many episodes, I wouldn't have any R1 DVDs in my collection. Since the lack of subs wouldn't be a deal-breaker; the R1s are so bad as it is I usually don't want to watch them with my (non-anime-loving) friends.
Something worth noting: A good Japanese anime DVD with 2 episodes on it, uses more of the DVD's space than a US DVD with 4-5 episodes and English audio.
Would you say compromising the visual quality of the DVDs falls under the heading of 'butchery'? I would.
Would you say that cluttering the disc with crappy dubs no one listens to, and subtitles that sometimes come within a mile or two of an 'accurate translation' maybe, kinda sorta, falls under the heading of 'butchery', or at the very least 'bullshit'? Meh.
Would you say that doing bad things to the original content for no good reason falls under the heading of 'butchery'? I certainly would. Want proof? Rent RahXephon, DVD 1. Watch the first couple minutes of episode 1 and explain to me why they needed to do that.
And what about releasing DVDs that are quite simply...SCREWED? I especially loved the RahXephon movie. They made sure the English audio was perfect...but the Japanese...well, they didn't seem to notice that for half the movie, all the audio was coming from one side. Oops. Atleast they RECALLED that one, no such luck with what they did to the TV series' first DVD.
4kids is another story, their butchery is so far beyond the scope of the normal order of things that it defies a proper definition...
Tokyopop wouldn't be far off, if they hadn't included the ORIGINAL Initial D on the DVDs with their Americanized craptastrophe. (I actually own those, 10 DVDs and counting, even my father loves Initial D...the fact that he drives like Bunta is probably responsible for me never getting behind the wheel of anything not being rendered by a game engine.)
One last thing, when ADV's Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai DVDs came out, I reviewed them sub, dub and all. I thought they'd turned over a new leaf; the dub was actually GOOD (for a dub, anyway), and the subtitles were fairly ACCURATE...they even included these popup bubbles that explained things to the uninitiated, so they didn't have to dumb down the subs! As time passed, I started to suspect that the series was either an isolated incident, or it was outsourced to people who knew what they're doing.
Funimation's work on Fruits Basket isn't bad either...which is surprising, as Funimation is...bad. They have two subtitle tracks, a sort of dumbed down set of English subs, and another that includes name suffixes, and were generally pretty neat.
It'd be nice if more companies followed those two examples. (For one, I really hate it when they drop name suffixes, or God forbid, actually try to 'translate' them. Pioneer's 'x-chan = little x', anyone? The choice and use of particular suffixes is a very important clue to how characters relate to eachother... And the optional pop-up subpicture track would eliminate the need to overexplain typical Japanese stuff, by including notes for people who don't understand Japanese culture. Even fansub groups include notes. Why the hell don't t
Now if only they would:
Do decent translations.
(All titles except Abenobashi)
Stop recording horrific dubbed audio, and find people who can ACT.
(Most titles, with the notable exception of Abenobashi)
Stop releasing faulty DVDs.
(RahXephon the movie, and others)
Stop manipulating other people's works in ways that should fall outside of their licensing rights.
(Evangelion DVDs 1&2, subsequently un-done and released without manipulations. RahXephon DVD 1, never fixed, told we were SOL. And god knows what others.)
So much being so 'open-minded'. I'm willing to bet this 'trailer' of theirs is DUBBED. Great way to advertise something, expose people to it in its most hideous form first.
Actually, I was referring to doing things such as blurring out large portions of the screen to insert the same english credits that are at the end of the episode in an intro-less ep, or digitally editing signs and stuff, or hey..here's one: Providing the worst subtitles I've ever seen outside of the fansub community. (That's assuming the DVDs even WORK.)
Companies like ADV are why I pay twice as much for Japanese DVDs, and STILL can't introduce my friends to anime.
ADV Films licenses Japanese animation from Japanese studios for distribution in North America and the UK.
Distribution? I believe the word you're looking for is 'butchering'.
Feel free to mod me into oblivion, it felt good and was worth it.
Well, I believe, and it's been my experience that, people who are in any way serious about computer use; geeks, gamers, graphics people, will buy a new computer whenever they can afford one as long as there's an appreciable performance difference. So I don't think the fact that stuff will still run on outdated hardware really affects PC sales.
That said, I'm still grudgingly running an Athlon xp 2700, 'cause I'm still saving for a 64-bit system. (And up until recently, my OS and my animation package of choice didn't come in 64-bit flavors anyway)
I'm not one for star wars humor, but damn that was funny. :) Worth a watch. The animation is real nice, too.
More retarded than something our COURTS would do? Hell, this is more ridiculous than something the PATENT OFFICE would do.
Hey, thanks. I'll give it a try.
I've been waiting for this for a while. While I appreciate the utility of Firefox's built-in dedicated searchbar (I have wikipedia, dictionary.com, google, and imdb on mine), I miss the 'open cached version' right-click options you get with the IE google bar.
Yeah, but the sumi thing in Photoshop sucks. And I'm not talking about the filter, which does nothing like what I'm talking about, I'm talking about being able to paint things and do calligraphy.
How is it, I make a serious statement, and it gets modded funny, but I say that I'd give anything for that idiot that owns the word 'stealth' to be killed by ninjas...and no one gets it?
I've been looking for something to more completely emulate the look of Japanese sumi painting, I bet this'd do a damn fine job. :D
...that sooner or later it's just going to be easier to KILL the stupid sonofabitch in question, than it is to take care of the situation properly.
Oh wait...when this kind of bullshit becomes rampant, killing the perpetrators WILL be 'taking care of it properly'...
Seriously though, this kind of crap is ridiculous. I would give anything for this guy to be killed by ninjas. I really would. Any takers?
Well, you certainly just named most of the groups I know to be doing any good, though I don't follow most of those series. (In so far as their translations aren't total bs, they're not stealing them from other groups, and they're not translating korean or chinese scripts.) I agree with a couple of earlier posts, that fansubs offer alot of what retail DVDs don't; no dumbing down, no over-explaining, proper notes for things we may not understand, and more literal translations.
;)
The problem is, it's a very small cross-section of the community that's doing any good, and that doesn't work. There's atleast a couple dozen groups that release regularly, and maybe as many as a hundred active groups, total. (And that's just English subbing groups)
I think the US companies will really feel the hurt when more good groups start adding subs to R2 DVDs and posting the images. I've seen a few, like DVDs of Gantz and Elfen Lied with English and German fansubs...Or even DVDs of Samurai7 with an alternate angle for the op/ed that gives you hardsubbed karaoke effects. I think it's really going to take stuff like that to make them wake up. It'd be interesting to see how far those go. Like maybe a fansubbed R2 DVD that has a pop-up note subpicture track like ADV's Abenobashi DVDs?
I mostly just stick to raws, too. But sometimes it's nice to be able to watch anime with other people, and not be the only one what understands it, you know?
Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you checked out some fansubs? The community is in a state of disaster. It's horrific. Between them, and the US DVDs, there's a reason I haven't tried to intruduce my friends to good anime...
AnimEigo... Yeah, I haven't seen anything of theirs in ages, I thought I had recently, but it doesn't appear on their list of titles, so I must have been mistaken.
btw, as bad as ADV is most of the time, have you seen their Abenobashi DVDs?
First of all, something like 1% of the fansub community does work that's any good. The sad thing is, atleast 5% of the fansub community tends to do a better job than the US companies that license the shows. I myself almost refuse to buy American anime DVDs. Besides the fact that the translations are crap, and at times utterly ridiculous, they also encode the DVDs horribly.
I have Japanese DVDs that have two episodes, no extras, and no English soundtrack, and use MORE of the DVDs' capacity than the US releases with FOUR EPISODES, extras, and additional English audio.
If American fans are buying less anime, it's because they don't want to spend hard-earned money on CRAP, imagine that. Fix the problem not the symptoms.
Example:
Soukyuu no Fafner just came out in the US, the Fafner robots are named Mk. Elf, Mk. Sechs, Mk. Vier, Mk. Drie, and Mk. Nicht. (Those are just the ones I can remember off-hand), as you probably noticed, with the exception of Mark Nicht, they're all german numbers. These correspond to the numbers on them in roman numerals. The folks over at Geneon have taken the liberty (Read: A long walk off the pier of wtf?) and are calling Mark Sechs 'Zexs'. Between that, and their overall flaky transliteration, it was enough to make me boycott Geneon once and for all.
And for the last goddamn time, you Pioneer rejects, -chan does NOT translate to prefixing the subject with 'little'. LEARN JAPANESE.
I have an HD-ready projector that I use as a TV, and I still don't watch television, cable or otherwise. When I want to watch something, I download it or rent it. (I download my favorite shows every week in 1080i HDTV) So I guess what I'm saying is...whichever way this goes, I'll be pointing and laughing.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess this guy _wasn't_ going around talking about being a Jedi BEFORE he was appointed. (Or whatever the hell) :P
Okay see, now THAT'S wrong. I'm perfectly content with the kids getting reamed for doing something like THAT. But if, like the article said, they were simply downloading stuff, even if it WAS porn or illegal music, and keeping the admins from spying on them...then this would be ridiculous.
Has anyone questioned the absurdity of them being charged with 'computer trespass' against machines IN THEIR POSSESSION?
Isn't there a more applicable crime somewhere in the DMCA that they can just have the kids executed by firing squad for? Like uhh... 'circumvention of blah blah blah' ? I mean, my god! They didn't want to get spied on and have everything they do monitored, they must be terrorists!
Are we supposed to be surprised that he'd say this? I mean, was he supposed to say "Oh noes! Amazon is going to steal our market!" ?
...are we going to find out why Wedge is indestructible and has the devil's own luck?