December 15, 2007
Last year in anime
Well, if everybody is talking about finding ten good shows from last year...
I don't watch a whole ton of stuff. Furthermore, I tend to wait until a few weeks into the season to bother with anything at all. Part of that is the big pile already sitting around, part of that's so that I don't have to wade through the mediocre. By the time word of mouth gets around, I can generally tell if I'll like a show or not.
So from last year, huh? Just going off memory, no particular order...
more...
I don't watch a whole ton of stuff. Furthermore, I tend to wait until a few weeks into the season to bother with anything at all. Part of that is the big pile already sitting around, part of that's so that I don't have to wade through the mediocre. By the time word of mouth gets around, I can generally tell if I'll like a show or not.
So from last year, huh? Just going off memory, no particular order...
more...
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December 13, 2007
Nanoha S1 in the can
Finished the DVD subs for the last volume of the first season of Nanoha.
This is actually kind of a convoluted process. Modern subtitling programs are pretty smart; if you tell it "put a subtitle up from this time to this time" and "put another subtitle up from that time to that time", and the two times overlap, it'll properly display both subtitles at the proper times, even moving one out of the way if they're positioned in the same place.
DVD subtitle pictures are not that smart. Every time the subtitle picture changes in any way, a new picture must be used. Furthermore, DVD subtitle generating programs are -also- not that smart. They won't sort out overlapping subtitles on their own, so the user has to break down each subtitle into separate pictures - so if a line from a song overlaps with four different subtitles, that's four different pictures, plus another picture for each gap before, between, or after those lines. Manually. It's a time-consuming process, and one you have to pay a lot of attention to, because if you typo one of the timecodes, it will likely blow up when you attempt to feed it into a DVD authoring program. (The various subtitle programs vary in how good they are at checking your file for this sort of thing. The one I'm using is terrible at it, but fortunately, I started working on one that was even worse, so I'm pretty careful...)
Ironically, you can actually produce DVD subtitles from Aegisub output, and it's smart enough to do it correctly. It's not, however, set up to do the same thing with timecode. This is most unfortunate... The subtitling software that we were using at ADV (near the end; at the beginning it was SSA and two VCRs), Wincaps, is not smart enough to do either of these things, but it's pretty easy to bash through it in a WSYIWYG environment, and it can take two completed streams and weave them together properly... so if you're clever enough to keep your subtitles from running over each other, it's pretty easy to put on-screen captions, songs, and dialog subtitles together without effort. (Then again, it's also several thousand pounds sterling, which is an investment I may eventually make, but not one for which the present work justifies.)
The upshot of all this is that the insert song in Nanoha ep 12, which has some fight-scene dialog over the song, contains about a quarter of all the subtitle pictures in the episode (not, I should point out, a talky episode by any stretch.) Each one of those subtitles has been opened up in Photoshop and edited to one extent or another by me. It took as long to do that song as all the rest of the volume's post-processing put together.
Of course, if this was a really complicated show, it would have been much worse. Excel Saga's first volume had over 5400, all told (though the vid-notes up that total substantially).
It definitely affects my timing practices. I'm very likely to leave subtitles contiguous (no gap between) if they're overlapping with something, unless the amount of space between them is huge. I'm also significantly less likely to include unimportant background dialog - sure, subtitle it and put in the effort if it's important, but if it's just background of people going "ohayo" in front of the school gate in the morning, forget it.
Can't complain, though - looks like it's going to come out pretty nicely.
This is actually kind of a convoluted process. Modern subtitling programs are pretty smart; if you tell it "put a subtitle up from this time to this time" and "put another subtitle up from that time to that time", and the two times overlap, it'll properly display both subtitles at the proper times, even moving one out of the way if they're positioned in the same place.
DVD subtitle pictures are not that smart. Every time the subtitle picture changes in any way, a new picture must be used. Furthermore, DVD subtitle generating programs are -also- not that smart. They won't sort out overlapping subtitles on their own, so the user has to break down each subtitle into separate pictures - so if a line from a song overlaps with four different subtitles, that's four different pictures, plus another picture for each gap before, between, or after those lines. Manually. It's a time-consuming process, and one you have to pay a lot of attention to, because if you typo one of the timecodes, it will likely blow up when you attempt to feed it into a DVD authoring program. (The various subtitle programs vary in how good they are at checking your file for this sort of thing. The one I'm using is terrible at it, but fortunately, I started working on one that was even worse, so I'm pretty careful...)
Ironically, you can actually produce DVD subtitles from Aegisub output, and it's smart enough to do it correctly. It's not, however, set up to do the same thing with timecode. This is most unfortunate... The subtitling software that we were using at ADV (near the end; at the beginning it was SSA and two VCRs), Wincaps, is not smart enough to do either of these things, but it's pretty easy to bash through it in a WSYIWYG environment, and it can take two completed streams and weave them together properly... so if you're clever enough to keep your subtitles from running over each other, it's pretty easy to put on-screen captions, songs, and dialog subtitles together without effort. (Then again, it's also several thousand pounds sterling, which is an investment I may eventually make, but not one for which the present work justifies.)
The upshot of all this is that the insert song in Nanoha ep 12, which has some fight-scene dialog over the song, contains about a quarter of all the subtitle pictures in the episode (not, I should point out, a talky episode by any stretch.) Each one of those subtitles has been opened up in Photoshop and edited to one extent or another by me. It took as long to do that song as all the rest of the volume's post-processing put together.
Of course, if this was a really complicated show, it would have been much worse. Excel Saga's first volume had over 5400, all told (though the vid-notes up that total substantially).
It definitely affects my timing practices. I'm very likely to leave subtitles contiguous (no gap between) if they're overlapping with something, unless the amount of space between them is huge. I'm also significantly less likely to include unimportant background dialog - sure, subtitle it and put in the effort if it's important, but if it's just background of people going "ohayo" in front of the school gate in the morning, forget it.
Can't complain, though - looks like it's going to come out pretty nicely.
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December 09, 2007
Norton Fighter!
Firmly in the category of "so cheesy it is awesome" comes Norton Fighter. If they can turn Win ME into a clumsy maid, why not Norton into a sentai hero?
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December 07, 2007
Finishing Zero - some thoughts
Overall, not a bad series. I enjoyed it fairly well on casual watching last year, and repeated exposure didn't ruin it for me; I'm still enjoying it, with just a touch left to work on. Spoiler-laden thoughts below the fold.
more...
more...
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December 05, 2007
Enka? In my Aika?
Ending song of the Aika special episode is a duet with Aika and Gozo singing a bit of enka. Just what I needed to cap off a six-day tear! Insomnia isn't so bad when you can be productive.
Subtitling is going well, all told - being on a thirty-day invoice for your primary income isn't precisely an ideal situation (especially when you don't invoice until final delivery), but the insurance job let me build up cash reserves that can hold out for quite some time, so it's no biggie, so long as the car doesn't blow out another intake manifold gasket. On the other hand, I hardly drive anywhere lately...
Recreational anime-watching has been circumscribed somewhat - just been keeping up with Hayate (still funny, though it's laying the references on pretty thick lately) and Moyashimon (one of the little quirky shows that makes anime such a fun hobby.)
Subtitling is going well, all told - being on a thirty-day invoice for your primary income isn't precisely an ideal situation (especially when you don't invoice until final delivery), but the insurance job let me build up cash reserves that can hold out for quite some time, so it's no biggie, so long as the car doesn't blow out another intake manifold gasket. On the other hand, I hardly drive anywhere lately...
Recreational anime-watching has been circumscribed somewhat - just been keeping up with Hayate (still funny, though it's laying the references on pretty thick lately) and Moyashimon (one of the little quirky shows that makes anime such a fun hobby.)
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November 30, 2007
Life is pretty nice sometimes
I made something like a week's wage today working on a show with approximately ten billion panty shots, with not a lolita to be found. And I'll do the same tomorrow. And probably Saturday too. There's something to this gig...
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November 26, 2007
Sue, sue, sue! Or... don't
One of the things that people assume, when talking about the fansub debate, is that the industry is poised on the precipice of some kind of RIAA/MPAA-style legal crackdown, legions of lawyers ready to swoop in and reduce the eeeeevil fansubbers to smoking financial craters.
Nope. Not gonna happen. Ever.
Copyright law in the US is federal law. Any case of copyright infringement, even the little dinky minor ones, are federal cases. This means filing in federal court. This means significant legal costs - not significant if you are a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise, but a whole lot if you're an anime company.
And, the way the law is set up, you pretty much have to file the suit before you get the person's identity, assuming they're not suing me or Steven or Jeff, or the other half-dozen fans whose real names are easy to identify. So that money is a sunk cost, even if it turns out that "narutofan1340" is a penniless college student, or a penniless little kid, or a penniless model otaku whose entire assets are tied up in plastic Gundams. (What? We're talking anime fans here, who's an anime fan and still has money? Give 'em credit for knowing that much about the audience, huh?) That's on top of the normal land mines of "oh crap, it's a single mom" or "Senator's son, uh oh" or what have you.
To put it bluntly, the anime companies can't individually afford an effort on this scale. Not "can't afford the negative publicity attendant upon filing a large number of lawsuits". Just plain ol' "can't come up with the scratch." Sure, in two or three years you might score a few big judgments, but your chances of recovering on them are virtually nil to start with - how much is a $250k judgment against a broke college student worth, after all? - and in the meantime, the capital investment you put into enforcement might mean losing a hit license and real revenue to a competitor.
I did say "individual". "But Avatar, obviously they'll just set up a collective agency and tag-team everybody!" Too late - it happened years ago. Anybody even remember JAILED? I honestly don't expect a second attempt to succeed any more than the first. We're not talking about huge conglomerates where there's layers of management to insulate the companies from each other.
Nope. Not gonna happen. Ever.
Copyright law in the US is federal law. Any case of copyright infringement, even the little dinky minor ones, are federal cases. This means filing in federal court. This means significant legal costs - not significant if you are a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise, but a whole lot if you're an anime company.
And, the way the law is set up, you pretty much have to file the suit before you get the person's identity, assuming they're not suing me or Steven or Jeff, or the other half-dozen fans whose real names are easy to identify. So that money is a sunk cost, even if it turns out that "narutofan1340" is a penniless college student, or a penniless little kid, or a penniless model otaku whose entire assets are tied up in plastic Gundams. (What? We're talking anime fans here, who's an anime fan and still has money? Give 'em credit for knowing that much about the audience, huh?) That's on top of the normal land mines of "oh crap, it's a single mom" or "Senator's son, uh oh" or what have you.
To put it bluntly, the anime companies can't individually afford an effort on this scale. Not "can't afford the negative publicity attendant upon filing a large number of lawsuits". Just plain ol' "can't come up with the scratch." Sure, in two or three years you might score a few big judgments, but your chances of recovering on them are virtually nil to start with - how much is a $250k judgment against a broke college student worth, after all? - and in the meantime, the capital investment you put into enforcement might mean losing a hit license and real revenue to a competitor.
I did say "individual". "But Avatar, obviously they'll just set up a collective agency and tag-team everybody!" Too late - it happened years ago. Anybody even remember JAILED? I honestly don't expect a second attempt to succeed any more than the first. We're not talking about huge conglomerates where there's layers of management to insulate the companies from each other.
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On Justin Sevakis' article on fansubs
Original article here. Author's commentary here.
First, it's easy to understand why people worry about fansubs as opposed to outright bootlegs. Sure, there are bootlegs on the market, but nobody knows exactly how many there are - could be hundreds, could be thousands, could be tens of thousands. But with the advent of Bittorrent and publicly available tracker data, it's easy to tell how many copies of a fansub are being distributed... and the morale effect can't be denied. It sucks to work all day on a show that'll get 1000 sales when you know 50,000 people already downloaded and watched the show! (Keeping in mind, of course, that the majority of DVD purchasers are interested in dubs, not subtitles...)
Fact is, the market has been hollowed out by widespread digital distribution of fansubs. That doesn't mean that every single title's sales have suffered; for a handful of very good shows, people will watch it and enough of them will go out to buy it. But for everything else, it doesn't work that way - people will watch a few episodes (or, more usually, the whole damn thing), decide "eh, it was all right", and not spend any money on it.
When I started working in the industry, even a marginal title could be profitable, even if it wasn't VERY profitable - you'd at least make enough back off of it so that you weren't losing money employing the people who were working on it. That's just not true these days. It's interesting that the financials are coming to resemble Hollywood, where a few hits finance a large number of turkeys... except that even the hits in anime aren't hugely profitable, since we're talking about orders of magnitude less in sales.
Is an official release "like" a fansub possible? Technically, yes. I mean, I could do it. The only problem is that people aren't talking about releases "like" a fansub, they want something you can charge for, which requires a huge amount of infrastructure. Personally, I think something like this would work best as a pure promotional tool, for a show that would have no chance here otherwise... say, Moyashimon, running #1 on this year's "this show is awesome but we would never even attempt to sell it" list. Sub it, slap a commercial on there for yeast plushies, set up a quick e-commerce site, and let BT do its magic. -I'd- buy one.
The biggest problem in that respect is the Japanese companies themselves. Let's put it bluntly - they are not adventurous with their business model. They aren't interested in taking a risk. Nor do they want to hear "your show is nice but not something we could get people to pay for." For the above suggestion to function, a Japanese company would have to admit that the US rights for their property are worth essentially zero - which will not happen, period. Something fundamental will have to change in their business outlook for things to change over here.
First, it's easy to understand why people worry about fansubs as opposed to outright bootlegs. Sure, there are bootlegs on the market, but nobody knows exactly how many there are - could be hundreds, could be thousands, could be tens of thousands. But with the advent of Bittorrent and publicly available tracker data, it's easy to tell how many copies of a fansub are being distributed... and the morale effect can't be denied. It sucks to work all day on a show that'll get 1000 sales when you know 50,000 people already downloaded and watched the show! (Keeping in mind, of course, that the majority of DVD purchasers are interested in dubs, not subtitles...)
Fact is, the market has been hollowed out by widespread digital distribution of fansubs. That doesn't mean that every single title's sales have suffered; for a handful of very good shows, people will watch it and enough of them will go out to buy it. But for everything else, it doesn't work that way - people will watch a few episodes (or, more usually, the whole damn thing), decide "eh, it was all right", and not spend any money on it.
When I started working in the industry, even a marginal title could be profitable, even if it wasn't VERY profitable - you'd at least make enough back off of it so that you weren't losing money employing the people who were working on it. That's just not true these days. It's interesting that the financials are coming to resemble Hollywood, where a few hits finance a large number of turkeys... except that even the hits in anime aren't hugely profitable, since we're talking about orders of magnitude less in sales.
Is an official release "like" a fansub possible? Technically, yes. I mean, I could do it. The only problem is that people aren't talking about releases "like" a fansub, they want something you can charge for, which requires a huge amount of infrastructure. Personally, I think something like this would work best as a pure promotional tool, for a show that would have no chance here otherwise... say, Moyashimon, running #1 on this year's "this show is awesome but we would never even attempt to sell it" list. Sub it, slap a commercial on there for yeast plushies, set up a quick e-commerce site, and let BT do its magic. -I'd- buy one.
The biggest problem in that respect is the Japanese companies themselves. Let's put it bluntly - they are not adventurous with their business model. They aren't interested in taking a risk. Nor do they want to hear "your show is nice but not something we could get people to pay for." For the above suggestion to function, a Japanese company would have to admit that the US rights for their property are worth essentially zero - which will not happen, period. Something fundamental will have to change in their business outlook for things to change over here.
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November 25, 2007
So my friends got me an early Christmas gift...
Got to see some friends from high school on Friday, along with their new baby. Baby is cute as hell. Baby also left Andy an early Christmas present of the stomach flu. I'm only rational here and there, but at least I'm to the point where I can hold down fluids.
Fortunately all this is happening in a bit of a break on the subtitling end, so there's nothing that's actually being held up by this - and I did get Nanoha A's 1 done beforehand.
At any rate, it'll probably be another day before I'm back among the functional here.
Fortunately all this is happening in a bit of a break on the subtitling end, so there's nothing that's actually being held up by this - and I did get Nanoha A's 1 done beforehand.
At any rate, it'll probably be another day before I'm back among the functional here.
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November 18, 2007
Second-guessing your translator
One of the real tricks of subtitling, professional or otherwise, is knowing how much confidence you can have in your translator. How do you know when the translator has perfectly captured a turn of phrase, when they've got the right idea but are missing a good metaphor, when they're stumbling along too literally, or when they're just talking out of their ass? All of this, mind you, in a subject where they are by definition more of an authority than you... except that you're the one that has to deliver a workable script, in a language you probably speak better than them. It's a touchy topic, too, because most translators don't take it well when you tell them "look, you're just plain wrong here" (or worse, "I rewrote half your script because you can't write worth a damn.")
A big part of building that confidence lies in getting the easy stuff correct. My Japanese skills aren't that great, obviously; I'm no translator. But I've done this for long enough to know a few things about the language, and if you get something blatantly wrong that I can spot myself, I'm going to feel a lot better about rewriting around the rest of it too; the chance I'm damaging something that's well-crafted goes down precipitously, while the chance that I'm salvaging what I can from a wreck goes up.
At ADV, of course, I just cheated and had a translator come watch when I was done with a script. Usually, this was Shoko, so no fears about introducing errors after the fact on that score. I learned a great deal in our discussions about why a particular line needed to be changed (or shouldn't have been changed, and that happened too.) While that's definitely the best way to do it, it's rather impractical as a freelancer, so I can't take the easy way out these days.
So what brought this on? Well, working on Nanoha A's, there's a certain amount of German used by the antagonists and their weapons. I know practically no German whatsoever, of course... but that's almost certainly the case for the translator as well, especially if they're working from a script with the German poorly converted into romaji (and listening to it being read by VAs who don't know German either, and even that is assuming that the Japanese writer didn't blow it in the first place, which happens a lot too.)
But "practically no" isn't "no". I do know "Jawohl!" when I hear it. And if I hear it, and that's not what it is in the script I'm looking at, this means I can't really rely on any of the rest of the German being correct, now can I? Which means that I need to track down German speakers who are also Nanoha fans and see how much I can dredge out of it. Ironically, I know a couple of them already, it's just getting the time zones right to let them know I need the back-up...
There's a little part of me that says "this is the kind of detail that nobody cares about, or at least nobody will be paying you to attend to, or even really understand why you care whether it's right or not." This would be the part that got laid off in favor of people who, well, don't worry about this kind of detail. But there you go - if I'm not this picky, who else is going to be?
A big part of building that confidence lies in getting the easy stuff correct. My Japanese skills aren't that great, obviously; I'm no translator. But I've done this for long enough to know a few things about the language, and if you get something blatantly wrong that I can spot myself, I'm going to feel a lot better about rewriting around the rest of it too; the chance I'm damaging something that's well-crafted goes down precipitously, while the chance that I'm salvaging what I can from a wreck goes up.
At ADV, of course, I just cheated and had a translator come watch when I was done with a script. Usually, this was Shoko, so no fears about introducing errors after the fact on that score. I learned a great deal in our discussions about why a particular line needed to be changed (or shouldn't have been changed, and that happened too.) While that's definitely the best way to do it, it's rather impractical as a freelancer, so I can't take the easy way out these days.
So what brought this on? Well, working on Nanoha A's, there's a certain amount of German used by the antagonists and their weapons. I know practically no German whatsoever, of course... but that's almost certainly the case for the translator as well, especially if they're working from a script with the German poorly converted into romaji (and listening to it being read by VAs who don't know German either, and even that is assuming that the Japanese writer didn't blow it in the first place, which happens a lot too.)
But "practically no" isn't "no". I do know "Jawohl!" when I hear it. And if I hear it, and that's not what it is in the script I'm looking at, this means I can't really rely on any of the rest of the German being correct, now can I? Which means that I need to track down German speakers who are also Nanoha fans and see how much I can dredge out of it. Ironically, I know a couple of them already, it's just getting the time zones right to let them know I need the back-up...
There's a little part of me that says "this is the kind of detail that nobody cares about, or at least nobody will be paying you to attend to, or even really understand why you care whether it's right or not." This would be the part that got laid off in favor of people who, well, don't worry about this kind of detail. But there you go - if I'm not this picky, who else is going to be?
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November 17, 2007
Nanoha A's underway
Man, they're keeping me busy, anyway. If everything stays on projected delivery dates, this will be the most profitable month I've ever spent. ;p
Been taking advantage of the extra time to get back to the gym. This is made easier by my younger brother, who is something of a fitness nut - though there are advantages and disadvantages to living with your personal trainer, especially when they're complaining about your diet. (Then again, Brian has been complaining about our diet for years. On the gripping hand, he suffers from no lack of comely female accompaniment, so there's probably something to it.)
Definitely feeling it in the legs today, I'll tell you. It'd be pretty terrible if I actually had to get up and do anything; as it is, I just want to loaf around some.
Been taking advantage of the extra time to get back to the gym. This is made easier by my younger brother, who is something of a fitness nut - though there are advantages and disadvantages to living with your personal trainer, especially when they're complaining about your diet. (Then again, Brian has been complaining about our diet for years. On the gripping hand, he suffers from no lack of comely female accompaniment, so there's probably something to it.)
Definitely feeling it in the legs today, I'll tell you. It'd be pretty terrible if I actually had to get up and do anything; as it is, I just want to loaf around some.
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November 14, 2007
Randomly Guchuko
Sometimes a bit of cute can help you get through the day, especially if you're working on a show like Zero. So here's today's cute:
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
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November 12, 2007
Do quit the day job
In a few minutes, I'll be leaving to go to work for what will presumably be the last time. Another contract came in, and the calculator came out (not really, but metaphorically, right?), and I'm now busy enough subtitling to preclude holding down both jobs, and the subtitling is significantly more lucrative than the insurance work.
If it were a full-time job, that wouldn't be the controlling factor in the decision; there's a lot to be said for things like stability of income and benefits. But it's a temp job, and one where the employer was quite clear on the first day that the job was liable to end with no advance warning whatsoever - that we'd be told the assignment was completed at quitting time of the last day. In that kind of extreme at-will employment environment, I suppose I shouldn't feel guilty about acting in the same fashion.
Certainly the company itself hasn't treated me wrongly - the compensation is handsome for the work involved, and the work not onerous, nor is the commute something I'm unused to. If they were to extend me an offer of employment in the future on a full-time basis, I'd go for it; there's many worse careers than HR.
But if the money's the same, and the one job has a commute of four feet and involves watching anime, but the other job is an hour away and has people timing your lunch and breaks to the minute, and neither of them has any job security... heh. And now even the money isn't the same! Not a hard decision to make at this point.
(Justifying said decision to my parents, gracious hosts that they are, is slightly more difficult. As much as they're too polite to mention, while I may make more money at the subtitling, it would take a significant amount of time for the finances to build up sufficient to allow me to move out again, without risking a dry spell in work and poverty. On the other hand, I still have a massive reservoir of good credit with them for having gone back and completed my college degree, long after they'd given up hope that I'd do so; and I bought them a steak dinner Saturday to boot. But on the gripping hand, as it were, why'd I bother with the degree if I'm going to continue doing anime work, where nobody cares about that sort of thing? ;p)
I finished timing Nanoha season 1 last night. Not finished finished - taking timed files and turning them into collections of DVD subtitle pictures is an involved and not-well-automated process, with this setup - but the timing is there and the scripts are done. I still love the ending for the season... it's not every day you can take an action show like this and have writers who realize that the climax isn't the big battle.
If it were a full-time job, that wouldn't be the controlling factor in the decision; there's a lot to be said for things like stability of income and benefits. But it's a temp job, and one where the employer was quite clear on the first day that the job was liable to end with no advance warning whatsoever - that we'd be told the assignment was completed at quitting time of the last day. In that kind of extreme at-will employment environment, I suppose I shouldn't feel guilty about acting in the same fashion.
Certainly the company itself hasn't treated me wrongly - the compensation is handsome for the work involved, and the work not onerous, nor is the commute something I'm unused to. If they were to extend me an offer of employment in the future on a full-time basis, I'd go for it; there's many worse careers than HR.
But if the money's the same, and the one job has a commute of four feet and involves watching anime, but the other job is an hour away and has people timing your lunch and breaks to the minute, and neither of them has any job security... heh. And now even the money isn't the same! Not a hard decision to make at this point.
(Justifying said decision to my parents, gracious hosts that they are, is slightly more difficult. As much as they're too polite to mention, while I may make more money at the subtitling, it would take a significant amount of time for the finances to build up sufficient to allow me to move out again, without risking a dry spell in work and poverty. On the other hand, I still have a massive reservoir of good credit with them for having gone back and completed my college degree, long after they'd given up hope that I'd do so; and I bought them a steak dinner Saturday to boot. But on the gripping hand, as it were, why'd I bother with the degree if I'm going to continue doing anime work, where nobody cares about that sort of thing? ;p)
I finished timing Nanoha season 1 last night. Not finished finished - taking timed files and turning them into collections of DVD subtitle pictures is an involved and not-well-automated process, with this setup - but the timing is there and the scripts are done. I still love the ending for the season... it's not every day you can take an action show like this and have writers who realize that the climax isn't the big battle.
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November 08, 2007
Busy busy
Work is keeping me going on both fronts. The day job's busy period should wrap up after next week, and goodness knows what they'll do after that... parcel most of us out to fill holes elsewhere, lay the rest off, I'll wager.
Subtitling continues to go well. I've managed to assemble a pack of free tools into a decent assembly system. No substitute for a Wincaps install for shows that are really caption-heavy or overlap-happy, but it'll function for what I'm currently up against, and if I get additional shows that require the caption-heavy features... I can probably afford Wincaps at that point. (Well, a yearly license, anyway. Expensive British software is expensive.)
Need to play with fonts some, though. I'm quite fond of the look of Tahoma for subtitling purposes - very clear and crisp, and I've liked it ever since we used it back in the days of VHS. But I need something for title captions and the like - while doing everything with Tahoma would be quick, it lacks a certain aesthetic appeal. On the other hand, I'm not so much of a masochist that I'm inclined to attempt to match my limited font repertoire to the on-screen text exactly (nor would such passion be rewarded in the constraints of the DVD spec). That said, anyone have any particular preferences, fonts that look especially nice and clear for such purposes?
Sixteen eps in on Akagi, and it's getting ridiculously over-the-top at this point, but it's still a fun if macabre watch, and I still want to play some mahjong. Watched episode 2 and 3 of Moyashimon, and it is quite possibly the ultimate anime about fermentation. Highly recommended. But it'll be a week or more before I have the opportunity to watch any more shows for fun...
Subtitling continues to go well. I've managed to assemble a pack of free tools into a decent assembly system. No substitute for a Wincaps install for shows that are really caption-heavy or overlap-happy, but it'll function for what I'm currently up against, and if I get additional shows that require the caption-heavy features... I can probably afford Wincaps at that point. (Well, a yearly license, anyway. Expensive British software is expensive.)
Need to play with fonts some, though. I'm quite fond of the look of Tahoma for subtitling purposes - very clear and crisp, and I've liked it ever since we used it back in the days of VHS. But I need something for title captions and the like - while doing everything with Tahoma would be quick, it lacks a certain aesthetic appeal. On the other hand, I'm not so much of a masochist that I'm inclined to attempt to match my limited font repertoire to the on-screen text exactly (nor would such passion be rewarded in the constraints of the DVD spec). That said, anyone have any particular preferences, fonts that look especially nice and clear for such purposes?
Sixteen eps in on Akagi, and it's getting ridiculously over-the-top at this point, but it's still a fun if macabre watch, and I still want to play some mahjong. Watched episode 2 and 3 of Moyashimon, and it is quite possibly the ultimate anime about fermentation. Highly recommended. But it'll be a week or more before I have the opportunity to watch any more shows for fun...
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November 04, 2007
Akagi: Eight episodes in
Liking the show so far.
Character designs - very strange. Chins sharp enough you could shave with the point, more like chisels than anything you'd see in an anatomy textbook. It's not bad, and I didn't get that "whoa, ugh" feeling like the first time you see Initial D characters. I think it's working because of the clean lines and relatively good (if undemanding) animation work so far; the model's bizarre but the animation is spot on, if you will. I'd hate to see what it would look like on a woman, but as there aren't any yet, I haven't had to.
The show can border on incomprehensible. I've played mahjong games before - I even fumbled my way through the one in Sakura Taisen 4! - but I have to pay close attention to follow the various rules, scoring combinations, and characters staring at their tiles in heart-attack-inducing states of tension over which tile to discard. In its own way, it's kind of like watching an episode of Yugioh, except twenty times more complicated, and with an almost infinite increase in manliness. At least when the characters cheat, it's made easy to follow for the viewer. But there's plenty of times when a character will tip over his hand and say "tsumo, triple straight dora dora dora, man gan" and everyone else will freak out at the huge win while you're trying to figure out what just happened.
Akagi is an immensely attractive character, though. The combination of erratic play and absolute confidence (and the occasional bit of outright theft) is something I can relate to. The only problem I have is that they spend quite a bit of time calling him a genius - it's in the show's title, for that matter. We get the point already, you don't have to mention that he's the genius that descended into darkness FIVE TIMES in an episode. Lay off the fanboy, Mr. Narrator.
Still, that's a minor complaint for a show I'm enjoying. Darn it, now I want to go play mahjong again...
Character designs - very strange. Chins sharp enough you could shave with the point, more like chisels than anything you'd see in an anatomy textbook. It's not bad, and I didn't get that "whoa, ugh" feeling like the first time you see Initial D characters. I think it's working because of the clean lines and relatively good (if undemanding) animation work so far; the model's bizarre but the animation is spot on, if you will. I'd hate to see what it would look like on a woman, but as there aren't any yet, I haven't had to.
The show can border on incomprehensible. I've played mahjong games before - I even fumbled my way through the one in Sakura Taisen 4! - but I have to pay close attention to follow the various rules, scoring combinations, and characters staring at their tiles in heart-attack-inducing states of tension over which tile to discard. In its own way, it's kind of like watching an episode of Yugioh, except twenty times more complicated, and with an almost infinite increase in manliness. At least when the characters cheat, it's made easy to follow for the viewer. But there's plenty of times when a character will tip over his hand and say "tsumo, triple straight dora dora dora, man gan" and everyone else will freak out at the huge win while you're trying to figure out what just happened.
Akagi is an immensely attractive character, though. The combination of erratic play and absolute confidence (and the occasional bit of outright theft) is something I can relate to. The only problem I have is that they spend quite a bit of time calling him a genius - it's in the show's title, for that matter. We get the point already, you don't have to mention that he's the genius that descended into darkness FIVE TIMES in an episode. Lay off the fanboy, Mr. Narrator.
Still, that's a minor complaint for a show I'm enjoying. Darn it, now I want to go play mahjong again...
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November 03, 2007
Saimoe: over
Well, decided to wait for the end to finish commentary on Saimoe, and now it's done with. Nagi beat Rena and Rika beat Shinku in the semifinal (Shinku losing by the razor margin of 5 votes), and Rika came in 20 votes or so over Nagi for the final.
I feel like I burned out on the tourney. That's not TOO surprising, really, since so did a lot of the voters; the semifinals and finals voting never really got the voting boost that we saw last year (though you could argue that we're only comparing it to the earlier rounds, which had much heavier voting than last year.) Tourney's just too long - next year, assuming they don't change the format, I'm definitely not worrying about it until the prelims are over. Too many rounds where nothing much was happening, and then when the characters I liked lost, I didn't have a lot of motivation to swap over to other characters.
Can't complain too much, though - Nagi is good enough to take a seat in second place without it being a travesty, while Rika is the one Higurashi character that I don't mind seeing do well in the tourney.
Anyway, rather than talk about moe all the time, I'll just catch up on anime. First episode of Moyashimon worked quite well for me; I'm also tempted to watch Akagi, as kind of an anti-moe...
I feel like I burned out on the tourney. That's not TOO surprising, really, since so did a lot of the voters; the semifinals and finals voting never really got the voting boost that we saw last year (though you could argue that we're only comparing it to the earlier rounds, which had much heavier voting than last year.) Tourney's just too long - next year, assuming they don't change the format, I'm definitely not worrying about it until the prelims are over. Too many rounds where nothing much was happening, and then when the characters I liked lost, I didn't have a lot of motivation to swap over to other characters.
Can't complain too much, though - Nagi is good enough to take a seat in second place without it being a travesty, while Rika is the one Higurashi character that I don't mind seeing do well in the tourney.
Anyway, rather than talk about moe all the time, I'll just catch up on anime. First episode of Moyashimon worked quite well for me; I'm also tempted to watch Akagi, as kind of an anti-moe...
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October 29, 2007
Saimoe quarterfinals, results
You know, something went badly wrong somewhere in Saimoe.
Okay, first, sorry for falling off the face of the planet over the weekend. Fully recovered from the Nanoha loss. (...I'm saying, like I was too broke up to blog over it instead of just being lazy...) Regular Saimoe coverage should resume here, or rather, there's only a few more matches anyway.
But come on, TWO of the four characters from the semi-finals from Higurashi? And the surviving Rozen Maiden is Shinku? That's not merely odd, it's bordering on perverse.
A friend commented that the reason we were seeing odd results (that eventually led to this) is because the floating opposition-vote was easy to keep organized, so to speak; a lot of strong characters ended up losing by a thin margin to weak characters because of very large numbers of votes cast by a loose coalition of "everyone who doesn't have a character in this round". Extreme popularity became a detriment, even - it just marked you as a target in later rounds.
That's not to denigrate the moe-ness of the characters who are left - they didn't get this far purely on spite and bile. I personally like Shinku, Nagi deserved every win she got, and I'm aware that my negative perception of the Higurashi girls is colored (practically dyed!) by the negative perception of that show in general. But at the end of the day, does anyone really believe this is a good reflection of which characters are the most moe? It's like watching a sports playoff between teams that muddled through their seasons, after all the good teams flamed out at the end because of injuries and hack-a-Shaq-style play.
So is the basic premise of Saimoe just flawed? In becoming more or less organized, and having grown to more or less maturity, has it gone beyond "which girl has the strongest moe" and become a pure selection process to weed out spectacular moe in favor of milquetoast characters who don't pose a threat?
I'm not really cross - I mean, if we take the sports analogy further, it's not the playoff that matters so much as the fun you had watching that season. But maybe it could be improved to make these issues less, well... less this way?
more...
Okay, first, sorry for falling off the face of the planet over the weekend. Fully recovered from the Nanoha loss. (...I'm saying, like I was too broke up to blog over it instead of just being lazy...) Regular Saimoe coverage should resume here, or rather, there's only a few more matches anyway.
But come on, TWO of the four characters from the semi-finals from Higurashi? And the surviving Rozen Maiden is Shinku? That's not merely odd, it's bordering on perverse.
A friend commented that the reason we were seeing odd results (that eventually led to this) is because the floating opposition-vote was easy to keep organized, so to speak; a lot of strong characters ended up losing by a thin margin to weak characters because of very large numbers of votes cast by a loose coalition of "everyone who doesn't have a character in this round". Extreme popularity became a detriment, even - it just marked you as a target in later rounds.
That's not to denigrate the moe-ness of the characters who are left - they didn't get this far purely on spite and bile. I personally like Shinku, Nagi deserved every win she got, and I'm aware that my negative perception of the Higurashi girls is colored (practically dyed!) by the negative perception of that show in general. But at the end of the day, does anyone really believe this is a good reflection of which characters are the most moe? It's like watching a sports playoff between teams that muddled through their seasons, after all the good teams flamed out at the end because of injuries and hack-a-Shaq-style play.
So is the basic premise of Saimoe just flawed? In becoming more or less organized, and having grown to more or less maturity, has it gone beyond "which girl has the strongest moe" and become a pure selection process to weed out spectacular moe in favor of milquetoast characters who don't pose a threat?
I'm not really cross - I mean, if we take the sports analogy further, it's not the playoff that matters so much as the fun you had watching that season. But maybe it could be improved to make these issues less, well... less this way?
more...
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October 26, 2007
Saimoe quarterfinals, Nagi vs. Konata
2ch! 2ch has left me in despair...
Nanoha goes down to Rena by 38 votes. Fake voting wasn't particularly heavy, but virtually all of them were for Nanoha, which was probably enough to do it. Come on, Japan, don't you like women? (As if I haven't been payin' attention...) Ah well, putting TWO first-place trophies on the fireplace next to Fate's runner-up would have just been ostentatious. If Strikers was only a bit better...
Actually, I say that, but the Japanese vote total was practically deadlocked - Nanoha had one extra vote. Foreign voters pushed Rena over the top.
Much less at stake in today's matchup, personally speaking. Nagi wins, Konata wins, it's all good... an otaku takes home the cup. Again, tough to pick the winner. Hayate has a freshness advantage, but is it really an advantage when occasionally it's just going stale?
Konata is the viewer, pure and simple. Rather, she's the viewer's gate into participating in a little slice-of-life show with otherwise normal people. There's a fundamental disconnect between a show like Azumanga and the life of your average otaku. Sure, okay, you can still feel some of the nostalgia, but with Konata, you can feel both the nostalgia of "wow, high school wasn't too bad after all" and "whoa, that game was awesome when I was twelve!" If you've had moments like not getting homework done because a quick session of MMO turned into a marathon, then Konata is absolutely your girl in this match.
Nagi is the same type of character, but placed in a love comedy... so she has a target, more or less, and gets jealous or embarrassed a lot depending on what Hayate is up to. She spends a lot more time living in her own little fantasy world than Konata, who's fairly well-examined despite herself - but Nagi has the wealth and power to make at least some of it happen, and more of it occurs just because of Hayate being Hayate (or, in other words, sufficiently close to "the coolest man in the universe" to keep Nagi's dream from being deflated.)
No winner picked today. I'll just root for the victor against Rena, thanks.
more...
Nanoha goes down to Rena by 38 votes. Fake voting wasn't particularly heavy, but virtually all of them were for Nanoha, which was probably enough to do it. Come on, Japan, don't you like women? (As if I haven't been payin' attention...) Ah well, putting TWO first-place trophies on the fireplace next to Fate's runner-up would have just been ostentatious. If Strikers was only a bit better...
Actually, I say that, but the Japanese vote total was practically deadlocked - Nanoha had one extra vote. Foreign voters pushed Rena over the top.
Much less at stake in today's matchup, personally speaking. Nagi wins, Konata wins, it's all good... an otaku takes home the cup. Again, tough to pick the winner. Hayate has a freshness advantage, but is it really an advantage when occasionally it's just going stale?
Konata is the viewer, pure and simple. Rather, she's the viewer's gate into participating in a little slice-of-life show with otherwise normal people. There's a fundamental disconnect between a show like Azumanga and the life of your average otaku. Sure, okay, you can still feel some of the nostalgia, but with Konata, you can feel both the nostalgia of "wow, high school wasn't too bad after all" and "whoa, that game was awesome when I was twelve!" If you've had moments like not getting homework done because a quick session of MMO turned into a marathon, then Konata is absolutely your girl in this match.
Nagi is the same type of character, but placed in a love comedy... so she has a target, more or less, and gets jealous or embarrassed a lot depending on what Hayate is up to. She spends a lot more time living in her own little fantasy world than Konata, who's fairly well-examined despite herself - but Nagi has the wealth and power to make at least some of it happen, and more of it occurs just because of Hayate being Hayate (or, in other words, sufficiently close to "the coolest man in the universe" to keep Nagi's dream from being deflated.)
No winner picked today. I'll just root for the victor against Rena, thanks.
more...
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October 25, 2007
Some geeky Nanoha support
Heh, it's not the prettiest Nanoha comic, but it's close to the funniest:
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Saimoe quarterfinals, Nanoha vs. Rena
And now, we'll let the epic befriending begin.
I'd start with "this is a tough call", but the easy calls are all over - nobody left but solid moe at this point. Even so, though, Nanoha vs. Rena is a pretty good match-up. One friend commented that this match contains the entire sexy content of the quarterfinals (or at least one hopes, anyway... ya pervs.) Both characters are simultaneously cute and extremely violent.
If Nanoha has a problem, it's that she's presented as being too good - she'd almost be a Mary Sue type character. Her only weakness is the occasional pang of doubt, but she overcomes that and goes out and kicks ass over and over again. We never see her be petty, or cruel, or suspicious, or jealous, or even annoyed. She's always acting out of motives which are essentially selfless and pure. She doesn't hate. Even Fate, though she ends up acting like Nanoha, has to make an effort to pull herself in to prevent her from killing an enemy; out of the four people who Nanoha is best friends with at the end of Strikers, she has blown the hell out of EACH of them at maximum power at one time or another, without either party holding it against the other later. (Thus, the "befriending" jokes.) Mind you, she also has a fortunate set of enemies...
Rena is very much a broken character. In cute mode, she's enjoyable if a bit ditzy - "I'm gonna take it home!" But she's absolutely top-class as a yandere - not just that she's insane, but that she's so variably insane, due to the weird nature of Higurashi. And it's not even possible to stop there, because there are plenty of times where she's probably being -actually- sane, but the person observing her is insane themselves, so it's hard to tell where Rena's nuttiness stops and everyone else's picks up.
Voting strength is tough to gauge. Rena has, after all, landed the highest number of votes of any character. But her performance in the final round makes it clear that a lot of those votes were anti-Kagami, rather than pro-Rena. Nanoha may have picked up some anti-Luna support too, of course, but probably not nearly as much - Luna was never the threat that Kagami was to otherwise-uninterested parties. Then again, Nanoha has a sort of veteran disadvantage - she did win this shindig before, so plenty of people are going to say "go home and let the new kids take a chance at it".
Naturally I'm an unabashed Nanoha partisan here - and if I wasn't, it would be bad, as I still have three episodes to proofread tonight before I submit them. So sure, if you're reading this, take a moment to go vote for her - we like busty transforming magical girls with banana ammo clips for their wands way more than we like crazy chicks with billhooks, right? Right?
more...
I'd start with "this is a tough call", but the easy calls are all over - nobody left but solid moe at this point. Even so, though, Nanoha vs. Rena is a pretty good match-up. One friend commented that this match contains the entire sexy content of the quarterfinals (or at least one hopes, anyway... ya pervs.) Both characters are simultaneously cute and extremely violent.
If Nanoha has a problem, it's that she's presented as being too good - she'd almost be a Mary Sue type character. Her only weakness is the occasional pang of doubt, but she overcomes that and goes out and kicks ass over and over again. We never see her be petty, or cruel, or suspicious, or jealous, or even annoyed. She's always acting out of motives which are essentially selfless and pure. She doesn't hate. Even Fate, though she ends up acting like Nanoha, has to make an effort to pull herself in to prevent her from killing an enemy; out of the four people who Nanoha is best friends with at the end of Strikers, she has blown the hell out of EACH of them at maximum power at one time or another, without either party holding it against the other later. (Thus, the "befriending" jokes.) Mind you, she also has a fortunate set of enemies...
Rena is very much a broken character. In cute mode, she's enjoyable if a bit ditzy - "I'm gonna take it home!" But she's absolutely top-class as a yandere - not just that she's insane, but that she's so variably insane, due to the weird nature of Higurashi. And it's not even possible to stop there, because there are plenty of times where she's probably being -actually- sane, but the person observing her is insane themselves, so it's hard to tell where Rena's nuttiness stops and everyone else's picks up.
Voting strength is tough to gauge. Rena has, after all, landed the highest number of votes of any character. But her performance in the final round makes it clear that a lot of those votes were anti-Kagami, rather than pro-Rena. Nanoha may have picked up some anti-Luna support too, of course, but probably not nearly as much - Luna was never the threat that Kagami was to otherwise-uninterested parties. Then again, Nanoha has a sort of veteran disadvantage - she did win this shindig before, so plenty of people are going to say "go home and let the new kids take a chance at it".
Naturally I'm an unabashed Nanoha partisan here - and if I wasn't, it would be bad, as I still have three episodes to proofread tonight before I submit them. So sure, if you're reading this, take a moment to go vote for her - we like busty transforming magical girls with banana ammo clips for their wands way more than we like crazy chicks with billhooks, right? Right?
more...
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