Anime of Early-Mid 2012 that has you excited.Follow

I think I could enjoy Sakamichi No Apollon (By the cowboy BeBop dudes), if not for the fact that I ******* hate jazz music. Otherwise the first episode was decent.

Son, I am disappoint.

At the start of a new season I tend to give anime some leniency with whether I'll watch it or not, since there are plenty of shows I've watched that I didn't think sounded good from the initial premise or the first episode (Any new show I start, I wait until episode 2 or 3 before I decide to commit or quit, unless the first episode is really bad, like, painful to sit through.), but I always tend to miss or opt out of the late arrivals (ie: the tail end of the new season premiers that pop up when the other shows are already 2-3 episodes in) because I get overloaded on new shows. This season I'm actually fairly low on shows that caught my interest, so I caught a gem of a late arrival.

Hyouka. The initial premise seemed kind of dry, since it's a Mystery Genre show that isn't also horror or supernatural, and I've found with mysteries that are prone to sticking to reality, I either get bored because I've figured out the mystery really fast and have to wait for the cast to catch up (usually due to the creators being bad at mysteries, giving way to many clues to the audience, or using a totally dried up "mystery" that anyone who's every seen a few mystery shows will already know) or because they end up suddenly veering off from their "sticking to normalcy" shtick and throwing the entire show into horror, supernatural, fantasy, or whatever else, and the sudden shift is too jarring to my attention to let me enjoy it.

tl;dr: I'm really, really, really picky about Mystery Genre shows.

Anyway, hyouka sets up kind of dull, but the main character really caught my attention simply by being pretty much the exact definition of my highschool self (low energy, not out of laziness but "I don't want to do it because it's a waste of time/not worth the effort." ie: fully capable of doing ****, and do stuff when it needs to be done, but not doing anything that doesn't need to be done. He gets strongarmed (apparently; she requested he do it by letter, and he said that she's trained in aikido and some other form of martial combat (it wasn't a name I recognize, so I forgot it)) by his older sister into joining a club at his high school so that it doesn't get shut down. Proceed to him meeting a girl in the club room who somehow manages to unknowingly enchant him into action (solving the present mystery), which shocks him. The episode's first mystery surrounds the fact that the door was unlocked when she got there, and locked when he did 3-4 minutes later, with her inside, despite the fact that the door can only be locked with the key he had just gotten from the teacher's office. It's pretty obvious what happened when everything's set up, but the funny thing is that he figured it out at the exact same time I did. Second half is pretty standard high school mystery intro fodder; investigating one of the school's "seven legends" and it seemed to play out pretty plainly, but the ending of the episode pretty much hooked me.

sooooo let's see, my list for this season, since I haven't actually thought about it and want to note it down somewhere; in no particular order:

Continuations/Second Seasons of shows I've already watched:
- Kore wa Zombie desu ka? Of The Dead (lol, forgot that filter)
- Fate/zero
- Moretsu Pirates (not that it actually stopped airing, or anything)

New Shows:
- Sankarea
- Zetman
- Accel world
- Jormundgand
- Medaka Box
- Tasogare Otome X Amnesia
- Saint Seiya Omega (guilty pleasure. It's baaaaad, but that makes it good. It's basically a modern style remastery of the 1970-80's style of story telling)
- Hyouka

I-want-to-see-another-episode-or-two-before-I-decide's:
- Hairyore! Nyarko-san (I really can't tell whether I love this or hate it.)
- Ozuma (I need to actually sit down and watch the 2nd/3rd episodes to get my opinion, I just haven't yet. I'll probably end up watching it, though)

I knew I was right when I thought this felt like light load... I usually end up watching more from a new season than this . A bunch of the new shows are totally out of my interest, genre-wise, though, so that's probably a big part of it.

It doesn't sound like you're super picky to me. I don't think most people just love everything they watch.

Mystery is a much smaller genre than, say, fantasy. So it's not at all surprising you'd like a much smaller subset of episodes than with a broader one.

[EDIT]

Just ran into my first English dub on Crunchyroll.

[EDIT2]
Anyone know where I can find Kurokami subbed? I just can't do dubbed anime anymore.

Edited, Apr 23rd 2012 1:34pm by idiggory

Honestly, I don't like crunchyroll. but I rarely like "official" subs anyway, and the site has absolutely horrible selection. It's basically some of the new airing stuff and a few of the really big name shows that have already been subbed/dubbed officially. The "professional" translators rarely ever do anywhere close to as good a job as fansubbers, anyway, though.


that's kind of weird, since Zetman and Accel World are two of the strongest new shows this season

Soul Reavers, and that's hardly the official's fault when the original Japanese tends to alternate between Shinigami and Soul Reaver as well. *And from what I hear Saturday nights, they're pretty good at keeping the names the original Japanese, including Zanpakutou. Granted, it's somewhat butchered and labored because of annunciation issues, but it's not exactly something I hold a grudge against when they're actually trying.

I'd be more receptive to officials if they were, in any sense of the term, expedient in their releases. Call it a sense of entitlement if you must, but being months behind on a show tends to get annoying, and then coupled with a sense of foreboding from witnessing the 90s 4Kids/DIC releases? I'll give them credit for doing a much better job now than the previous generation, and I have no problem watching it late at night, but I'm still going to avoid the daytime/Saturday morning releases.

Edited, Apr 24th 2012 10:54am by lolgaxe

I dunno, It's not that I fault them for translating it the way they do, because they're trying to translate it for a wider audience that isn't well-versed in typically understood anime terminology, or japanese cultural quirks, but honestly, most of their audience is well versed in that stuff and prefers it stay in, so when the "official" translation takes it out, not only does it kill it for the audience, it also insults the author of the story. The degree varies with how much it's changed, though. Knocking out the little stuff like honorifics isn't usually much of an issue if they know how to equalize it when they're played for laughs/dramatic effect, though I heavily emphasize that if (see my rant below that I cut out of this). Stuff that I would see as being a little insulting and moderately annoying would be the whole "fully translating absolutely every single word" issue that causes things like "soul-cutter sword", because while it adds clarity if done right, it's rarely done right, and almost always kills the flow/pacing of conversation; I'd honestly prefer they just butcher the stressing/pronunciation of the original japanese word than completely translate it and ruin it's usage, though that really isn't much better. The obvious example for the grievous insult to the author would be to **** like completely rewriting the dialogue, changing the episode order, or dropping episodes altogether, etc. I can understand something like editing Sanji's cigarette into a sucker in certain situations (ie: that they were playing one piece as a kids show despite it not being a kids show, so they had to if they wanted to show it, and it's not really something relevant to the plot) but like, if you remember the first pokemon series, when they cut out the Safari Zone episode because the Owner had a gun. Little while later, Ash suddenly has 30 Taurus, and everyone's kind of like, "Wait, what? When the ****?" That **** is annoying.

Rant about honorifics, specifically family-related ones: The FMA dub (and the million other dubs that do this) drives me ******* insane, because honestly, no english speaker calls their sibling "Brother" or "Sister" unless they're directly referencing their relation to said person, or are being silly/sarcastic. At least, none that I've ever met. Bro/Sis, sure, and really, bro would work just fine in place of niisan/chan and likewise for sis. "Big Brother/Big Bro/Big Sister/Big Sis" is another issue. It sounds weird, but it's usually ok with little kid characters, but once they hit puberty, it's not something any english speaker always calls their sibling; it's something they use for emphasis, usually trying to be cute or snarky. I mean, yea, the opposite isn't true, Little Brother/Little Bro/Little Sister/Little Sis are pretty commonly used, I use them myself, (well, Little Sister, anyway, since I'm 3rd of 4, but still), but if you're going to try and translate familial nick names, don't just translate the words, either leave them as is, or Anglify them to their proper cultural equivalents, which do exist, despite people thinking they don't.

Another thing that bugs me; they're totally fine with butchering scenes and redrawing stuff to meet their translation/standards, but they can't/don't/won't do the one redrawing/editing thing that most fans wouldn't mind. By that I mean, "We chose that translation so it would match the character's lip movements." ....seriously. You're willing to ******* redraw sanji's cigarette in every single episode, but not adjust his mouth movements so what he's saying makes ******* sense in english? What? (Just using sanji as a quick example, to lazy to find an actual one I know fits both criteria) /rantoff

I can sort of understand Shinigami -> Soul Reaper, though. It probably would have been better to go with just plain Reaper, but Death God isn't remotely right. Literal translations are not always the best choice, and this is one of those situations, because Death God just doesn't flow well, and doesn't really have the same connotation to an english speaker as shinigami does to a japanese speaker. They could have god with Grim Reapers, but that wouldn't really fit either, because the general connotation for english speakers is that there's only one Grim Reaper, and the massive armies of Shinigami would kind of kill that. Soul Reaper fits well enough to work cleanly, though, so it doesn't bug me. That said, Death God/God of Death/Grim Reaper/Angel of Death (another one that just plain wouldn't have worked for Bleach) would all work perfectly fine in Death Note, because of how vastly different the portrayals are.

Followed by "Itai".

The bigger problem is that "god" and "kami" aren't remotely as synonymous with each other as translators generally pretend, primarily because the Western concept of a deity is fundamentally different from the Japanese one. Bleach's shinigami aren't incompatible with the Japanese mythology, but they do go against the Western conception of a God. Honestly, the definition that is MOST accurate, in a Western context, would be "Angel of Death".

Grim Reaper would have been a really bad one. For one thing, the Grim Reaper is generally a single character, not the name of a type of mystical being. Furthermore, it's a specific Western character. He's also USUALLY translated as "Gurimu Riipaa" from what I've seen. Death is usually translated as either rate me down or Shinigami, which generally depends on how Westernized the anime is (Soul Eater, for instance, uses both but is definitely heavily influenced by the West). Soul Reaper, afaik, was the word created to describe the kind of units Shinigami (in Bleach's context) were. Shinigami is usually translated back as Death God, outside of Bleach.

But I'm really only talking about subs. I totally get why the dub would use "Soul Reaper", because it's targeting an exclusively Western audience. If you're watching a subbed anime, chances are you actually care about the Japanese context, which makes their attempts to negate it counterproductive.

Dattebayo is one of the best subbers I've seen (in my opinion), because they typically left key terms in Japanese, but added a note at the top of the screen breaking it down for people. That way, it remains a cohesive name like the writer intended (eg, Zanpakutou), but you get the same luxury as the Japanese audience in understanding the root. They also, generally, kept the cultural jokes intact and just noted why the Western audience would have missed them.

A lot of your issues are with dubs, which I don't really have. Primarily because I just don't watch dubs, but more importantly because I think the changes are reasonable. Like where honorifics are concerned. It's a huge pain in the *** to figure out a way to translate a sentence, with the appropriate tone, so as to leave out an Honorific.

Some are easy, like making Yamada Sensei or Yamada San into Mr. Yamada. But what the hell are you going to do with Kun? Chan? Sama? What do you do when it's a classmate calling his slightly older classmate San? What would you replace oniisan/oneesan/niichan/neechan with? It may not be fully natural, but it's probably the best route. I generally call my siblings hermano/hermana, to tell the truth. Or how about when Karin calls Ichigo "Ichinii"? That's really hard to properly translate, because it's also word play. Ichigo being his name, Niisan being brother, and Ichinii being shorthand for both that and "best brother".

That's a deliberate action on part of the writer, so how would you translate it? "Big Brother" might be the best.

It's generally easier, in any case, to translate imooto/otooto, since pet names are more common for younger siblings.

Reanimation is actually expensive, so they aren't going to do it anywhere they don't have to. They HAD to edit One Piece to air it (butchering it in the process). Everything else was optional. And realistically, it wasn't going to do much. Everyone who knew the original dialogue was going to be furious at the necessary changes done to switch age brackets, so it isn't like they were really risking anything by just changing dialogue. Chances are, the kids watching weren't going to care if they didn't understand one line.

Aren't you Canadian, though? Canadians don't count because they're all weird. I've never met a brit/aussie/myfelloamuracan that would do that, aside from, occasionally, snooty rich kids, and even then, they're only doing it because they're either intentionally being snooty, or are too young to realize how pretentious it makes them sound when they're around other people (the way they say it is what sounds pretentious, not the act itself). I'm probably biased though, because I just plain don't like canadians, even the ones I like.


The whole God vs Kami thing was what I was getting at. And I realize I was talking more about dubs than subs, but most of the "official" subs I've ever found did pretty much the exact same thing (ie: basically just using the dub script).

Honestly though, with honorifics, it's totally understandable if they improvise in a situation where there is no real way to translate it accurately, so long as they at least try not to make it sound painfully awkward. My issue stems more from the tendency I've found for them to over-do it and apply one single fix to every application of a specific honorific. Sama is probably the hardest one to translate cleanly, honestly, because there's really no english equivalent in any situation except for Sir/Lord/Master/Madam/Lady/Mistress in the settings you'd expect them. San can at least translate to Mr/Ms/Mrs a fair amount of the time, even if not always, and kun and chan can usually be worked into a diminutive, at least in works where the characters have western names, or if not that, then a playful nickname that doesn't really detract from the story telling sometimes works. I would honestly consider a classmate calling another classmate or an upperclassman -san as about the same as calling said person by their first name in a fairly generic, polite manner, like you would refer to someone you're not well acquainted with. We don't really have obvious honorifics, but we can convey similar meanings with the way we say someone's name, the tone of our voice, and the frequency with which we add extras. If you're speaking to someone you're not as familiar with, you're not going to add nearly as many "dude"s or "man"s when you're referring to them, for example, as you would with a friend, usually the reference is silently implied, like, "Hey..." more often than "Hey man...". English has varying degrees of formality to its word usage just like any other language, they're just not as clear cut as they are in japanese

But like, with peers of the same grade level, if you're familiar with them, it's not at all weird to refer to them by a nickname, or something, in school anyway. Hell, a lot of people get their last names used as nicknames, if their last name isn't excessively common, or hard to pronounce.

Nope. I'm New Mexican. Not quite the furthest you can get from Canada in the continental US, but pretty damn far. Nor are we rich.

Last show of the Spring Season, AKB0048Alright, who is going to check it out so I don't have to?

So its Macross without the mecha?