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photosinensis at 10:24pm on 06/09/2011 under anime: haruhi, anime: k-on!, i really need a better television
photosinensis at 10:24pm on 06/09/2011 under anime: haruhi, anime: k-on!, i really need a better televisionWow, I'm still alive. I'm doing crack, but I'm still alive.
So I got a couple things in the mail today: disc 3 of K-On! and the DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Of course, I'm quite familiar with these materials and how they should sound. I've read the original sources for both of them, too.
I was quite worried about K-On!, specifically in its rather comical use of honorifics (in ways that don't translate into English at all), as well as with some of the nicknames (which incorporate honorifics or Japanese onomatopoeia). Thus far, I'm quite satisfied: even in the English version, the girls call their teacher Sawa-chan (an interesting way of addressing her: it would normally be Yamanaka-sensei--this will become important in season 2, where Yui will start calling her Sawa-chan-sensei), and the club's underclassman is Azunyan, not Azu-meow (as was rather stupidly done in the manga).
More generally, I'm still not entirely sure that substituting out the music they play for Yui in episode 1 was a good idea. "Love Me Tender" just doesn't work there. Perhaps if they'd used "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", which occupies a place in our culture similar to "Tsubasa wo Kudasai", it might have made more sense. Using the original song would have brought up perhaps the wrong connotations from American fans unfamiliar with subbed series, as Americans tend to only know the song from its use in either this series or during the climax of Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0/2.22. (Actually, amongst the more hardcore amongst us, we'd also have seen this from Nichijou/My Ordinary Life1, but that happened back at midsummer.) Likewise, rendering "Moe moe kyun!" as "The power of cute compels you!" made me scratch my head. I know that the folks at Bang Zoom have no problem with using the word "moe": I've seen episode 2-1/2x012 of the Haruhi dub as well as excerpts from the Lucky Star dub, so I really don't know what gives.
I'll have to wait for Thursday for a discussion of the dub of Disappearance. I have standing appointments on Wednesday night that will leave me without the three hours needed to watch the film properly. Yes, it's a fully animated feature with strong use of cel-style techniques. That doesn't stop it from running 164'3. The length doesn't stop it from being really well done.
The stuff down here is for people that have no file system checking clue what I'm on about. If you know your animu, mango, and light novel scene, feel free to skip my footnotes today.
1. The only reason anyone in the US picked up Nichijou when it started running back in the spring is because the television adaptation was made by the same trolls that made, well, both of the things I got in the mail today.
2. Silly anachronic order: it's the first episode of the first season chronologically, the second episode to be broadcast, and is the first episode in the second season ordering, as the second season ran interspersed amongst a chronological order rerun of the first season.
3. Did I not just say that the people who made it were trolls? They, like moot, believe that trolling is a art. What's more, the film itself is a part of a long troll. The short troll was remaking the same damned episode 8 times and running each version on television. The long troll was getting viewers to admit that maybe they had a point.
So I got a couple things in the mail today: disc 3 of K-On! and the DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Of course, I'm quite familiar with these materials and how they should sound. I've read the original sources for both of them, too.
I was quite worried about K-On!, specifically in its rather comical use of honorifics (in ways that don't translate into English at all), as well as with some of the nicknames (which incorporate honorifics or Japanese onomatopoeia). Thus far, I'm quite satisfied: even in the English version, the girls call their teacher Sawa-chan (an interesting way of addressing her: it would normally be Yamanaka-sensei--this will become important in season 2, where Yui will start calling her Sawa-chan-sensei), and the club's underclassman is Azunyan, not Azu-meow (as was rather stupidly done in the manga).
More generally, I'm still not entirely sure that substituting out the music they play for Yui in episode 1 was a good idea. "Love Me Tender" just doesn't work there. Perhaps if they'd used "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", which occupies a place in our culture similar to "Tsubasa wo Kudasai", it might have made more sense. Using the original song would have brought up perhaps the wrong connotations from American fans unfamiliar with subbed series, as Americans tend to only know the song from its use in either this series or during the climax of Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0/2.22. (Actually, amongst the more hardcore amongst us, we'd also have seen this from Nichijou/My Ordinary Life1, but that happened back at midsummer.) Likewise, rendering "Moe moe kyun!" as "The power of cute compels you!" made me scratch my head. I know that the folks at Bang Zoom have no problem with using the word "moe": I've seen episode 2-1/2x012 of the Haruhi dub as well as excerpts from the Lucky Star dub, so I really don't know what gives.
I'll have to wait for Thursday for a discussion of the dub of Disappearance. I have standing appointments on Wednesday night that will leave me without the three hours needed to watch the film properly. Yes, it's a fully animated feature with strong use of cel-style techniques. That doesn't stop it from running 164'3. The length doesn't stop it from being really well done.
The stuff down here is for people that have no file system checking clue what I'm on about. If you know your animu, mango, and light novel scene, feel free to skip my footnotes today.
1. The only reason anyone in the US picked up Nichijou when it started running back in the spring is because the television adaptation was made by the same trolls that made, well, both of the things I got in the mail today.
2. Silly anachronic order: it's the first episode of the first season chronologically, the second episode to be broadcast, and is the first episode in the second season ordering, as the second season ran interspersed amongst a chronological order rerun of the first season.
3. Did I not just say that the people who made it were trolls? They, like moot, believe that trolling is a art. What's more, the film itself is a part of a long troll. The short troll was remaking the same damned episode 8 times and running each version on television. The long troll was getting viewers to admit that maybe they had a point.
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