#every episode i watch of the japanese version i end up missing the english version.............

[orcelito]

finally continuing my japanese watch of trigun 98 and

they mean SO much to me...

[dreamweaversfavsandthoughs]

Some thoughts on Rick and Morty: The Anime

Spoilers ahead

Instead of doing a review for every episode I’m going to give some thoughts on the first episode and then do a final review at the end when the whole series has wrapped.

Voice Acting

I’m still baffled that they didn’t use the original voice actors for the English language dub. Maybe there were scheduling conflicts or they wanted more of a separation between the American version. Regardless, the actors do a fine job of being faithful to the characters. I really love Rick’s Japanese voice actor (Yōhei Tadano) who captures Rick’s personality and yet makes seem like the 70 year old man he’s actually suppose to be.

Morty and the VR Bisexual Sandwich

The majority of the episode revolves around Morty’s adventure in a VR game created by Rick to keep Morty distracted while Rick and Summer are doing more important things. We are introduced to our first original characters, Elle and Frank. Elle has appeared in several of the previews and has been set up as the main love interest. In fact, it’s implied that have a history even before he first meets her in the VR game. Frank, on the other hand, we haven’t seen before and we don’t yet what their relationship will look like at this point, but there are some romantic undertones. Throughout the game (which seems similar to Roy from Mortynight Run) we see Morty or Morties live a life that parodies Citizen Cane, has a romantic dinner with Elle, share a warm embrace with Frank, and is gifted a Nander Dragon’s Tear/Sweat from his partners. It is implied, however, that the VR game may not purely be a simulation due to the introduction of…

Long-Haired Rick and Troubles in Interdimensional Paradise

During the simulation, Morty meets a version of Rick we’ll just call Long-Haired Rick who informs him that the lines between dimension are becoming blurred and flowing into each other hence the reason this Rick is able to interact with a Morty even though his Morty has long since died. It’s rather nice to see a Rick who openly mourns his lost Morty and is a nice departure from the cynicism of the original show. Of course, the reason LHR and Morty are speaking with one another is the same reason our Rick is stuck in limbo with a nonfunctional portal gun and entropy bomb/not bomb with nothing but Summer to help guide him home. The dimension are bleeding into one another setting up the main conflict (possibly) of the series moving forward.

Final thoughts

I will say it did take a few watchthroughs to understand what was going on in the story because there is a lot of jumping around to different dimensions that can be easily missed if you’re not focused. This is not going be a show you can have on in the background while scrolling on your phone, so if you plan on watching this series expect to take your time with it. From what I’ve seen, I’m intrigued enough to keep watching to see how the story unfolds. I want to see how Morty’s relationship develops with Elle and Frank and what is LHR all about? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

[jotadoul]

🥰 anka and i are sharing a prion disease right now so we're rewatching the JJBA OVA. and okay. maybe it was the weed but i think it might be... i think it's my favourite thing ever made. that's ever existed. for all time. it's my favourite thing that exists. my favourite thing that Is. it really does makes me feel exactly like the ending of HEAT... LOL and i'm serious about this. it's like a stun gun or like being sandblasted where i'm shot outside of my body helpless to what's happening. horrible feeling and i love it very much.

and i feel soooooooo fucking VINDICATED because i dug deep into japanese forums + blogs and found people celebrating it ;__; there are discussions from this year (2024) even! people agree that it's gorgeous and that if you're going to watch (or even read) any version, it should be this one. that it rewards you on rewatches... which is true. every time i see it, i find something new, some extra bit of care that goes toward the structure of the mood. so many subtle movements in the acting, so much elegance to the balance of exposition in the dialogue. mainly in the japanese version, but it's not like it's lost in the english dub, just different. the voice actors did an amazing job with tone— notably there's this shaky tightness in Jotaro's voice during moments of fear/stress that enhances his expressions, actions.

i found people talking about the tension, acting, a wonderful review on the use of shifting, dynamic lighting throughout the OVA, the way the sound design— engineered by Skywalker Sound with score by a very young (~19) Marco D'Ambrosio— fills in SO MUCH for the animation with tasteful specificity in implying things like unique weight for footsteps, for Avdol's rings, or how the sound of Geb is like a strange layered scream. and fortunately found many people talking about being in awe of n'doul's humanity and how he has serious rizz lol and that he, in any version, is the only serious sobering moment of the glory gods... WAAAAH then i come on twitter or whatever and people are like "looks like shit, worst fight in the thing," and it's like jesus h. christ get a LIFE. i'm sorry you were tricked and lied to, but bad taste can be fixed if you just open your heart a little.

i do not feel moved whatsoever to watch the rest of the TV series (i made it up to the hunting episode of DIU.) something can be faithful and also a major downgrade, by intending to be as faithful as possible, misses the elements that make it what it is. besides, modern anime looks like real shit right now and i won't force myself through it solely because it exists. but i love this adaptation. i would rather see a beautiful interpretation that prioritises an effective, effecting mood, that tries to compromise with purpose and synthesise the source into what an animated version— the short film that this is— can do for it. what the form can heighten. there are little movements, upticks in speed or anxious stillness. the breathless timing and gravity of jotaro touching down and star platinum ripping right out of him like a major leaguer performing another major league hit. n'doul reacting to iggy, jumping slightly while kneeling. jotaro wiping off his fingers with a hanky and then rubbing them together. the entire scene with polnareff on the crates. oh GOD and the opening with the inverted sun... the cane... the cane scene cannot Not destroy you, be honest.

why did they include the red granite obelisk, notably from aswan, one of which was at one time commissioned by hadrian for his boyfriend antinous who drowned in the nile? that didn't have to be there, but isn't it beautiful? (and they put the eye hieroglyph right where we can see it... uuugh.) never mind the actual canonical content, with jotaro and n'doul mutually captivated, delighted, by each other's skill until the end. it's so painful knowing the inevitable outcome but it still somehow sneaks up on you with the way it's paced and i love to be rocked by it every time. the only guy ever to be spared on purpose— respecting him that much! and the respect is mutual! jesus, his monologue! he's the only one to be mourned. THE only one to be buried. by hand. alone. the fight begins under high noon sun and the burial completes at dusk. he's 17. fuck me.

i love when a story is never allowed to fully wrap up into the typical "and it was all worth it!" sort of vibe, which, in a way, is what happens, but it never rises to the point where... where that positivity matches the intensity of what was shown to you previously, or that those losses are meant to be forgotten in the wake of righteousness. and as far as i can recall, this is something araki has perfected over time. i'm thinking about the brutal bit in DIU with josuke carrying? dragging? okuyasu, and the particulars of kira's fate. but i'm REALLY thinking of VA, with giorno &co. in the office, and the epilogue. and then obviously SO. and then SBR. and JJL. this approach, the bittersweet heartache or outright mourning, has become a precise weapon and i can see the through-line from SDC. now that i've watched HEAT i can see why araki said that he cries every time he watches it. it's wrenching. and a big part of that is that you don't necessarily expect it because of genre or style flourishes, and that's really special. to be caught unawares, because you were already caught, you've been caught this whole time and now you have to take it.

i now know that yeah. yes. this is The definition of a special interest. because i have to, must, rotate this object in my head compulsively and purposefully so i can see every angle and crevice. i intuitively understand that i shouldn't be so bowled over and bitchy about it after so many years, sooo many years, but i can't help it! you like what you like and this is the benchmark. it pains me that it is so finite. that i've confusingly hung my heart on something that no one on earth could give one (1) solitary fuck about, and therefor there is an abrupt end to material. so i AM left rotating shapes in my head sussing out indentations in the form. kinda crazy. but fighting against it is maybe more punishing in a way.

this fight was chosen as the opening to the OVA because it's one where everyone is present. this fight was also going to be the entirety of the OVA, but araki liked it so much he requested more episodes 🥰💕

[real-life-senshi]

for the pgsm subtitles, I was wondering if you knew if the seaofserenity subs are more accurate than the ones you're watching? that was the version I watched, and I'm curious to know the difference.

thank you so much!

Hello hello!

Yes, I can confirm seaofserenity subs have better translation and subtitle quality than Miss Dream subs! It's generally more accurate and has a better grasp of the nuance in the Japanese dialogue!

Here's an example comparison using the scene I was most critical of for mistranslation with the Miss Dream sub.

Seaofserenity sub

Miss Dream sub (+ my own re-translation)

The fact the Seaofserenity managed to eloquently include the piece I mentioned about Ami aiming for "100 points" into its subtitle as a "perfect score" shows they are much more proficient in writing subtitles than I am as well!

However, as you can see from my screenshot, the copy rendered by Seaofserenity has a stretched video ratio horizontally, turning PGSM's 4:3 video ratio into 16:9. The visual colour quality is also a bit off (slightly faded)with Seaofserenity. As a video editor, gif maker and visual-quality snob, that's why I went with Miss Dream with live blogging. haha

That being said though, a perfect translation across languages is nearly impossible to achieve. While Seaofserenity sub is generally more accurate, they still may not always be catching the same nuances from the original dialogue I bring up in my live blog.

Another example from this scene is this:

Miss Dream sub & my own re-translation

Seaofserenity subs

Both Miss Dream and Seaofserenity translated "ura" as "dark", instead of "hidden" like I did.

I hope this helps, and hope you get to enjoy watching the show! :D

While I know you were only asking basically a Yes/No question, I want to also take this chance to explain myself a bit better...

While I have been critical of Miss Dream's sub, it's important for me to continue to reiterate that the efforts Miss Dream sub has made for this fandom are tremendously positive and should be celebrated, and the only reason why I can make those critiques and go deep into semantics is that I'm NOT actually trying to sub a show fully. It's incredibly hard to rewrite a script and try to make every single line cohesively written, especially when Japanese has such a different grammar structure. I can do what I do when live blogging because I can both "re-translate" and have the space to explain myself. When you are actually subbing a full episode, not to mention a full series, that space for explanation does not exist and you can only make the best choice forward. I would also weigh writing a good story through the scripted lines above aiming for full accuracy. At the end of the day, both Miss Dream and Seaofserenity undoubtedly delivered a great story to non-Japanese, English-speaking audiences via subbing the live-action!

I'm also not sure about Seaofserenity and Miss Dream sub if either subtitle team members are fluent Japanese speakers, or may include native Japanese speakers or not. Where I do feel very fortunate is I'm Cantonese born and grew up in an environment where Cantonese and English are simultaneously being regularly used, which means trying to translate and navigate two languages with significantly different grammar structures is quite second nature to me in my mind to catch all these nuances. Japanese grammar and vocabulary are much more relatable and connected to Cantonese/Chinese than English, so that gives me an edge in understanding some of the cultural and linguistic context just from hearing the dialogue, including recognizing and grasping the full meaning of words or idioms that English just doesn't have a direct equivalent for.

I also studied linguistics in my undergraduate studies with a special interest in semantics, so analyzing text and going hard on explanation is something I'm very used to and enjoy. lmao

[shield-and-sword]

My Fandom Journey: Anime

I thought I'd make a little series talking about my various fandoms and my journey in them. I'm starting with a broader topic of anime, getting into more specific titles at a later post. I'll do a manga one next but my initial introduction into Japanese media was anime so I'll start here. This is gonna be a long rambly post btw.

When I was in the Philippines at a young age (I wanna say around 5 or 6 years old), me and my siblings started watching Digimon Adventures first, we literally watched all the episodes up until Digimon Tamers. We did watch western cartoons as well, we were lucky enough to have Sky so we had Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. One of the reasons I think I liked anime was because it wasn't as overly stylized as cartoons, human designs and characterizations weren't overly exaggerated like in Hey Arnold or Rugrats for example, not to say I didn't enjoy those cartoons because I totally did up to a certain age. Also because anime tended to have overarching storylines and arcs for the most part, compared to the episodic nature of early western cartoons, I found myself focusing more on the story and wanting to watch every episode. Honestly I remember being glued to the screen while watching Digimon and always made sure I watched every episode and if I missed one then I'd catch the re-run that they aired on the weekend (I remembered the exact airing schedule of this damn series when I was a child). Whereas when I missed an episode of Spongebob Squarepants or Courage the Cowardly Dog I'd be fine about it.

Most animes that were aimed at kids were licensed and aired on local channels like GMA and ABS-CBN and were majority dubbed in tagalog but there were a few channels that aired anime in english dub so that's how I watched anime most of the time. I am glad though that they kept the original Japanese openings and ending songs for the Tagalog dub. (I loved Hunter X Hunter's Ohayou Opening, it was seriously the best)

Majority of the imported anime to the Philippines were mostly shonen (as far as I was aware anyway) so the other animes we watched after school were Slamdunk, Medabots, Yu-gi-oh, Beyblade, Hunter X Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Flame of Recca and a few episodes of Rave Master and Case Closed/Detective Conan. Surprisingly we weren't that into Pokemon but we did watch majority of the early seasons (Can't remember which ones, but Brock and Misty were the entourage). I think we watched Zoids too but only a few epsiodes.

When we got a bit older but still children (I was around 9-11) we started watching animes that would be considered seinen such as Rurouni Kenshin, GetBackers, Saiyuki, Cowboy Bebop, Galaxy Angels, Ranma 1/2, and a mecha anime that for the life of me I cannot remember the title of (It might've been part of the Brave franchise??). I also occasionally watched You're Under Arrest and Lupin III. Anyway most of these were obviously more censored than the manga or original Japanese version but they were still definitely innapropriate for my age range. I still don't understand how we got away with watching Rurouni Kenshin as kids it was aired on a sky channel that wasn't aimed at kids so the violence wasn't that censored, I think it was the first subbed anime that I watched

There are also animes that I didn't really watch but I was aware of like Naruto, Dragon Ball (Sorry to the fans I never quite got into these two series), Outlaw Star, Ah My Goddess, Inuyasha, Baki the Grappler, Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura.

Side note there's also another anime that I can't remember the name of but I've been looking for it forever, It's an old sci-fi spaceship anime about a man going through a mid-life crisis and becomes isekai'd(?) into this spaceship where he plays the electric guitar to power the ship and fight. Does anyone know this anime???

After moving to New Zealand when I was 11 I got exposed to different genres outside the usual Shonen and Seinen I grew up on. My first shoujo anime was Ouran High School Host Club followed by Fruits Basket, which while they're not my favorites, they hold a special place in my heart. I do remember watching animes early morning on Sunday, I would wake up at like 6am to watch Megaman, Digimon Frontier and Tokyo Mew Mew (yeah... 4kids ver). After school they aired Yu-gi-oh GX, Shaman King,

How I watched Anime also changed from just seeing what was on TV, the internet was becoming more accessible in our family (we had dial-up at first) and there were also video rental stores as well as the usual ripped DVDs that we got from friends. There wasn't a lot of choices in rental stores but they always had a decent selection of anime films and that's how I got into Ghibli films, also I think I watched the Ghost in the Shell film and 10 Centimeters per Second. At this time I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Ao Hana, Hell Girl, xxxHolic, Mushishi, Death Note (early episodes), and Bleach (only until the end of Soul Soiety arc). You can kind of see from my selection here that I had a phase of mystery, supernatural anime.

I can't quite remember at around what point I transitioned to being manga only but once I came across the original source material of my favorite anime I stopped watching anime for the most part. There are notable exceptions, such as anime-only series like Psycho-pass and K, music related series like K-On! (I really wanted to hear the songs). Nowadays I'll read a manga or light novel (if translated) first then decide if it's worth it to watch the anime. I did that with Kuroko no Basket and Haikyuu! but I haven't done it recently. Basically if the anime has a manga as it's original source I'll choose that but if it's an original anime or a game-based, light novel based anime then I'll watch it.

This has been a loooong post. I'll do another one on my manga journey maybe tomorrow. This series essentially is just so I can word vomit about my fandoms because a lot of my friends don't share as many fandoms with me. If you've read until here then thanks for listening to me ramble.

Bye-bee~

[skysquid22]

The Stardust Crusaders OVA (2000 + 1993): Where to Watch

As a self proclaimed #1 SDC OVA Fan I felt like there may be a need on how an another inspiring fan could find where to watch the relic. There used to be "movie" versions for the 2000 and 1993 OVA, but they've been deleted off of Youtube.

HD Remasters [OAV]

This channel has done slightly edited and cleaned up (compared to the old movie versions) episodes of both the 2000 version and 1993 version.

+ Every episode of the 1993 SDC OVA

+ Japanese audio with English subtitles that are not auto-generated and were done by TOMA fansub

- Missing (as of 08/22/21) episode 2 of the 2000 version

- Not in original aspect ratio 4:3; has a squished effect, but no loss of picture

- Colors are slightly blown out/very vivid, but is in HD!

This channel edits out the introduction of the sacrifice scene in the 1993 which isn't at all needed for watching and the credits are kept in. To my knowledge there are no other edits. Overall, I highly recommend this version for watching both OVAs. With this version as you get still the beautiful animation with the slightly better (in my opinion) Japanese voice acting. The one caveat here is that second 2000 version episode isn't there.

Archive.org

This set has every episode available to watch. If you want the full unedited episodes (sacrifice scene is included here) then this is your version. There are some notes here.

+ Every episode of 1993 and 2000 SDC OVA

+ Correct 4:3 aspect ratio, no loss of picture as well

+ HD! Looks VERY clean.

- English audio only* with no subtitles

This version is extremely clean and looks great... but is brought down a little by only the English version being available on both versions. (They add an extra syllable in 'Hierophant', huh??) The Archive set is recommended for making gifs or grabbing screenshots for art references. Or watching if you really don't mind the English dub!

*For some reason the first episode of the 2000s version is in Japanese? And with no subtitles I would just use the HD Remaster version to watch that episode.

These are the only two versions I know of. If there are any other ways to watch, please let me know! Start by watching the first episode of the 2000s version through the Remaster on Youtube, then go to Archive version for episode two (or just continue watching the Remaster version if it's available). After that consult the above for your preference and enjoy! If only there was a combination between the clean visuals of the Archive set and the audio and subtitles of the Youtube Remasters...

Some comparison images below the cut:

Top: HD Remaster [OAV] Bottom: Archive.org

-

Basically, decide if you prefer Japanese audio or English audio and if you care at the end of the day if it looks squished a little. Because overall quality isn't different besides the voices!

[puniper]

hi ani!! was wondering if you had a good recommendation for someone trying to get into astro boy? i see your posts about it and i want to give it a try! thank you for your time and i hope you have a lovely day~

waah thank you! And well there are plenty of ways to get into it

When it comes to actual astro boy anime series, there's 3 main ones: the 60s anime, the 80s anime and the 2003 one

The 2003 anime is the most recent, popular and accessible one, I recommend getting it from this blog https://astroboy2003sub.tumblr.com/ because essentially every version you'll find in anime websites has broken almost unintelligible subs half way through, the animation in it is honestly gorgeous and holds up better than a lot of modern shows right now

The 80s anime is also good and my personal favourite one because of how cheesy it is, however the 2nd episode of it is notoriously missing in most anime sites, there will be places that have it and others that don't (it is also the last version of astro boy Tezuka was involved with since he passed in the 80s sadly)

The 60s anime (the japanese version at least) is really hard to come by, I torrented it aeons ago from a site that went down and dont think ive found the episodes anywhere else...the anime itself is kind of a total mess but it's still funny to watch lol

A thing I do want to advice though is that please watch the subbed versions and not the dubs, I'm not saying this cause im some sort of sub over dub elitist but because dubbed versions of astro boy are always very heavily censored, have a lot of scenes cut out and the stories are straight up rewritten to the point you actually miss huge chunks of the show, the 2003 anime is infamous for removing/rewriting a lot of the heavier and most emotional scenes

There are also 2 major spin offs manga that are pretty good starting points:

Pluto by Naoki Urasawa, it's a re-interpretation of a chapter called 'The Greatest Robot on Earth' from the original manga, this manga centers around a robot policeman investigating a set of murders and honestly, its actually my favourite manga ever and the reason I got into astro boy to begin with, it is actually pretty mature and serious compared to any other astro boy related work also Atom still appears in it but is not the main character, an anime adaptation was announced a few years ago but we still don't have any info about it so..here's to that

also Atom looks very cute in it

and lastly there's Atom the Beginning, which is what most people have probably seen me talking about since right now its the only astro boy related series that has been active for the past years and it's still an on-going manga, basically its a story that takes place 30 years before the beginning of astro boy that focuses on Dr.Tenma (Atom's creator) and Dr. Ochanomizu (who ends becoming Atom's guardian since Tenma goes insane afterwards lmao) as university students researching AI, tbh I don't know how beginner friendly this series is because it has some pretty direct connections to the original AB manga and one of the best things about it is to catch all those references, but I have some friends that got into astro boy from it so I'll put it here too

also Tenma and Ochanomizu have this thing where they just squeeze each other's noses at random times and its cute and not weird at all!

i should mention the english translation is super behind from the japanese release and there's actually an anime adaptation too but it's like 90% filler and barely follows the story of the manga lol, still a good watch if you wanna see some animated nose honking

I should mention there's also always the original astro boy manga too but I don't actually know if its that beginner friendly since it's kinda messy to get into, since Tezuka rewrote and scrapped chapters so many times, nobody knows the actual chronology of the chapters and has a lot of consistency issues, still some chapters are REALLY good and some chapters are kinda insane lol

Keep in mind every iteration of astro boy changes the story a bit (or sometimes a lot) but its just fun to watch the stories be retold or interepreted in different ways

[meimae]

01/07/21

I'm finally on time for my June Immersion Overview! ...Well, at least in a different timezone I am! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

June was a weird month I suppose. I knew what I wanted to immerse in in terms of listening, but I was so indicisive for reading material. Everything seemed either too hard or too boring, so I just ended up dipping my toes in a variety of stuff until I ended falling back into the stuff I put on hold and have been dilly-dallying with.

It's really not for a lack of media, which makes immersion learning really good for Japanese since there's tons of it to consume all the time, I've just been kind of all over the place, not knowing if I like something enough to continue. Ahh, I miss the days when I could finish entire books and manga series in a month.

Anyway, overview time!

ANIME

Not feeling too good about anime. Maybe I'm not looking into seasonals enough, but I also dislike waiting for new episodes, because the immersion method really requires you to binge media to get better at comprehending the language faster.

HUNTERXHUNTER S2

I'm sorry, but that season was boring. The issues weren't even issues to begin with. I know that there are particularly outstanding arcs in HXH, but I'm not about to skip seasons because every minute counts as immersion.

GREAT PRETENDER

Club pick. I only ended up watching a few episodes. Wasn't really into it. I thought I'd like it because people were really into the animation and art style, but it's kind of meh.

DRAMAS

JDramas saved my entire immersion this month! I know a lot of people feel that the quality falls flat compared to what Korea has been producing, but there really are some gems here that I feel like people keep missing out on because they won't give it a chance.

恋はつづくよどこまでも

Unsubbed rewatch. Okay, I was dumb and included this last month, but I actually watched it very early in June. Anyway, this was 70% romance/drama, 30% medical drama so anything that I missed were mostly related to medical stuff that I wouldn't understand well in English either, so it didn't feel too bad of a watch.

ミス・シャーロック

Excuse me, there's a female Sherlock Holmes? Yes, please! I looove Sherlock Holmes, it's one of my favorite books and characters of all time, and the fact that Japan made a genderbent remake is giving me life. Love that they took inspiration from BBC Sherlock, too, which is one of my most favorite tv adaptations.

The portrayal of fem!Sherlock was very interesting and made perfect sense, really classy and very snooty and almost condencending, but now with realistic female perspective emotions. Ah, so good!

Watson or Wato, however, felt a little flat unfortunately. It did take a good look into the effects of PTSD, and mental health is always good for people to discuss, but it almost seemed that was all that Watson is, which s/he is not. The original Watson is brave and clever in a more human aspect, and would put a lot on the line to help Sherlock, regardless of his physical or mental state. It just didn't translate well, which is unfortunate. I guess the TV Drama Elementary version of Watson was what I was looking for, but it didn't end up that way.

5時から9時まで

Unsubbed rewatch. Kind of a filler drama, and just wanted to watch it to count as active immersion. The three guys in this show are cringe tbh: protag is a guy who can't take no for an answer, friend is a "nice guy" who thinks he's entitled to her because they've been friends for a while, and boss guy thinks it's fine to withhold the truth of him once being married. Female protagonist's personality started okay, but kinda broke down towards the end, and I'm not sure if the ending was to make up for that.

私たちはどうかしている

Uh, hello? New favorite drama! ヽ(^v^)ノ

Between the spicy family drama, beautiful garments and traditional 和菓子屋 in a modern setting, and the electric chemistry between the two main characters, which I'm not gonna lie was kinda toxic too, but for some reason I could not put this down and watched it in two days.

It's a combination of genres I love: "historical" fiction, romance, drama, mystery, and suspense. I'm not even going to discuss it anymore. Just go watch this show!

リコカツ

Interesting concept: two people meet, had a whirlwind wedding with many guests, and almost immediately after decide to divorce, but is too embarrased to admit it to everyone who wished their marriage the best, so they try to work things out while dancing around their feelings even though they are still married. Pretty cute, kind of frustrating at times, but you can't help but root for them anyway.

MOVIES

Why are these movies an 8 on MDL? lmao

君と100回目の恋

Interesting concept that got flushed down the drain in the first 20 minutes. Nobody even explained why the recording can do what it does, and the male protagonist also just gave up on his research just like that. It's implied that he redid things a hundred times, but bro, did you even try as hard as you think you did?

カノジョは嘘を愛しすぎてる

Another one of those standard template romance movies but now with a band as a costume. It's fine, not the greatest.

NOVELS

君の膵臓をたべたい

Finally finished! See stats and 感想 here!

本好きの下剋上 司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません

Was able to wrap up 第一部 兵士の娘I along with the audiobook! Stats and 感想 here!

Also started 第一部 兵士の娘II, but got both distracted and indecisive with my reading material. Also this thing is close to 200k 文字 what the heck. That's a chunky light novel, and if it's going to be like the first one, it's going to talk a lot about the process of making stuff - both interesting and tedious to read about.

三日間の幸福

This is turning out to be another "I Want to Eat Your Pancreas" moment where I just inch forward everytime but never finish, but I'll get there. I'm starting to form an opinion about this protagonist and it's turning out pretty sour, so it's kinda hard to read with that in the back of my mind.

コンビニ人間

Started towards the end of the month, so I haven't actually made a dent in it, but I heard that people in the immersion community usually pick this up as one of their first reads. It's actually really short (60k 文字), so if it's as good as people say, I hope I can sit down and finish it in a few days. Wishful thinking maybe.

VISUAL NOVELS

ファタモルガーナの館

Look man, I'm halfway through this, and between that and the fact that this is an unvoiced 敬語 filled VN which is interesting to read in, makes this really hard to drop even though every door so far has been the standard historical fiction tragedy. And yes, even the "big secret" about the white haired girl is nothing surprising given how heavily hinted it was. Even Morgana's story is what you would expect to happen given the setting and timeline.

Anyway, I'm gonna trudge on because again, it's not like I'm not gaining any language skill from reading this. It's just painfully predictable, which makes it really disappointing coming from a huge historical fiction fan.

白昼夢の青写真

Just trying this out because I'm tired of being held back by unintresting reads, and although the first case feels like it's gonna turn out cringey, I'm keeping my hopes up for the rest. Also, the art for this is really cute?

-☆-

That's it for June!

I also technically read a few chapters of 名探偵コナン, but didn't include it in my overview, because I felt kind of detached from reading it. Like, was I really about to reread something I read (English fan translated) 900+ chapters of for most of my life, well, because I now can read it in Japanese? So I put it on hold only because I don't know if I should reread all of it, because you know, Japanese gains, or just pick up where I left off even though this manga is my childhood favorite and my heart was already crying just rereading the very first case.

Honestly, I didn't know what I was expecting from June. I thought I would have been able to read more, but I just played catchup with some stuff and drowned in the JDrama pit. No regrets though, I ended up loving a lot of my picks this month.

Still hoping to balance out my reading and listening though, as I really feel quite behind with my reading skill. It's just so hard to find something I like so I keep dawdling about. Eh, I'll figure it out.

Thanks for reading! Updates in the future as always.

[twistedtummies2]

Moriarty’s English Dub

As of today, “Moriarty the Patriot” - my new favorite anime - has its own English Dub. As of the moment I am posting this, I have binged all eleven episodes of the first season with the Dub. I must admit, I was both extremely eager and somewhat worried about how the Dub would turn out: as anybody with even a modicum of interest in anime will tell you, the English Dubs for shows tend to be hit or miss. For every FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, you’ll have a Beyblade. And given how much I love(d) this series and its original voice cast (even if I couldn’t understand a word without those lovely subtitles), I was both excited to hear how new actors would handle them in my own language, and yet had some trepidations, worried the end result could prove vastly inferior. SO...the obvious question you readers are asking is...what do I think of it?

My overall opinion of the Dub is that it is a good one...GOOD, mind you. Not perfect, nor brilliant. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the original voice cast...but it’s not BAD, either. There are just one or two points where I feel the original cast is decidedly superior. The minor side characters and supporting roles of the show are mostly pretty good; the only places where I feel things don’t quite work are some of the characters who are meant to be kids, where they are...very, VERY obviously voiced by actors or actresses who, bless their talented hearts, just cannot sound like kids. XD Having established and settled that fact, let us consider the major characters. Of the Moriarty Gang, Howard Wang is absolutely spot-on as Louis: prim, proper, usually gentle, but with a coldness and viciousness to him in necessary moments. Chris Guerrero as Albert, meanwhile, is not quite what I anticipated: he has a lighter, somewhat more theatrical voice than I imagined. The more I hear of him, however, the more I warm up to him: he’s a case where the unconventional casting actually works in the Dub’s favor, bringing a new dimension and element of the character to life while still feeling like the one I’ve come to know and perceive from earlier interpretations. And just like the one from the original cast, I somehow never question him as a younger man, either. Clearly a good sign. Less spectacular are Caleb Yen and Christopher Wehkamp, as Fred Porlock and Sebastian Moran, respectively. Now, I should point out neither necessarily does a BAD job - there’s nothing wrong with their ACTING, they’re handling the characters well enough, and if I hadn’t seen the original, I might not have any issue (might not; hard to say for sure. In the case of Yen, the issue is simply that he sounds too old for Fred’s rather obvious youthful standing...and as for Wehkamp? To be perfectly honest, it’s hard for me to say just what my issue with his performance: while Albert’s voice has warmed up to me after seeing eleven episodes, Wehkamp’s just leaves me trying to figure that problem out every time I hear it. I don’t know what the matter is because, objectively, there shouldn’t BE any problems: the dialect makes sense, the quality of the voice is fitting, and yet, for some reason...I’m just sort of always aware of the fact he’s being dubbed, if that makes sense.  On the Holmes side of the spectrum, let me just start off by saying that Suzie Yeung is PERFECT as Miss Hudson. She is at least equal to her original Japanese counterpart, if not better. Dr. Watson is played by Ryan Colt Levy, who evidently is a big Holmes fan and was ecstatic when he got the part. Well, his passion is evident in the power of his voice, because his Watson is pretty perfect: he’s got something of a laid-back quality to his voice, which surprisingly matches the grounded, rational normalcy of John in the show, and there’s a quality to his voice that reminds me of some of my favorite Watsons in the past, most notably Jude Law. He captures both the sweetness and the tenacity of Watson in this version brilliantly. Again, most assuredly on-par with the original so far. Once again, a weak point here is Inspector Lestrade. He is voiced by David Matranga. He has both the same and the opposite problem as Yen’s Fred Porlock. The same in that his voice really doesn’t seem to match the age of the character’s design and demeanor; opposite in that, instead of sounding too old, he sounds much too young. Honestly, he’s my least favorite casting choice of the bunch, possibly: it’s just so distracting hearing that voice from this big, gruff fellow who is very clearly older than the tone seems to indicate. All this brings us to our two leads: Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. I am happy to report that both impress me a great deal. Holmes is played by Theo Devaney; he’s perhaps SLIGHTLY older-sounding than I’d imagine, but unlike Fred, it’s never to a degree that’s distracting. What I love about Devaney’s voicework is it really does match THIS Holmes, if that makes sense. The brilliance of this series is that, for all the changes it makes, Holmes remains basically the same character we’ve always known, at his core. Devaney’s voice matches that idea brilliantly; some of his lines and deliveries call such actors to my mind as Basil Rathbone, Nicholas Briggs, Jason Gray-Stanford, Barrie Ingham, and other great classic Holmeses of the past to my head...yet he still brings a unique spin all his own, his dialect having a roughness others lack, and keeping the energy necessary for this version. I can easily imagine his voice when reading the manga or especially the Conan Doyle classics. I do still prefer the original voice actor more, mostly because he was just so intensely exuberant in his style and I think captured Holmes’ mood swings more incredibly, but Devaney still does a grand job. So, we come to the main man himself: William James Moriarty. He’s voiced by Aaron Dismuke, whom I primarily know as the voice of Lucifer from “The Devil is a Part-Timer!” I wasn’t quite sure what to expect here, but...honestly, the more I listen to Dismuke’s Moriarty, the more I adore him. I’m not gonna lie, I think, astonishingly, I might like him MORE than Soma Saito, the original voice actor. Now, I don’t like the changes to some of his dialogue (”Come and catch me if you can, Mr. Holmes”...seriously, that line was IN ENGLISH in the first place, why change it?! It sounds all clunky THAT way!), but in terms of the voice and his performance, I think he hits the nail on the head beautifully. It is more or less exactly the voice I would imagine this Moriarty to have. I have no idea if he and Devaney were ever in the same room at any point, but the way the two characters bounce off one another is as powerful as ever...and for every line change that feels odd, there are line changes throughout this series (not just for him, but in general) that either have no effect and therefor are not very noticeable, or actually come across as BETTER than what was originally said. Which still doesn’t excuse them changing...you know...arguably the most famous line/moment in the entire thing, but...whatever. Win some, lose some. So, in conclusion...while I overall prefer the original subtitlted version to this dub, the dub is not necessarily bad. There are better ones, but there are certainly worse, and I would say this is even better than being “just okay.” I’m not sure exacatly where to rank or rate it, but I think the bottom line I can give is this: if someone wanted to watch the Dub of this show instead of subtitles, for any reason, I wouldn’t discourage them in the least. To me, I think that’s ultimately what matters.

[ressyfaerie]

OKAY YALL. 

I haven’t been paying attention at all. 

Do you want to be really angry,

Like really, really angry? 

I’m putting this in a read more since there’s going to be a LOT and it may start a FIRE.

It was a lonely snowy night in the north of British Columbia Canada.

Just kidding.

For real though- I had no internet! We could only watch TV on satellite (the only anime I watched was on YTV). If it snowed in the winter we had to go outside and brush the snow off the satellite to continue watching Beyblade or Inuyasha. 

So I was 5-6 when I first started watching Beyblade. Of course I LOVED IT. I would rush home to try to watch it everyday. Beyblade has just airing and it was a HIT. I watched season 1 religiously, I actually don’t remember watching much of V-force or G-rev but that’s probably because it wasn’t made yet lmao. 

I grew up in a small town, whatever you’re imagining, imagine it smaller. (I could write a whole essay on the social hierarchy of Port Ed in the early 2000s but I’ll keep it short for now) White kids= rich/ pretentious, Native kids=poor. I didn’t like the attitude of most of the white girls, so I mostly made friends with the native kids (I miss yall btw) but anyways, this is where you’re going to get angry.

So I didn’t know what Japanese WAS. Like I knew what Chinese was (Small town surrounded by racists? Who would have guessed?) I don’t even think I knew Japanese existed, but any other anime I watched (Sailor moon, Inuyasha, Gundam Wing) most of the characters were white representing or had extremely light skin tones.

So what the heck was 5 year old me supposed to do with beyblade? Which was a show filled with lots of different ethnicities? 5 year old me was obsessed with beyblade, tearing apart every episode I saw, so I gathered: Max=American, Ray=Chinese, Kai=Russian (Because that’s what matched with all their championships, makes sense to a kid right?)

But what WAS Japanese? I dunno? But you know who Tyson looked like? 

My chubby native friends.

THAT’S RIGHT

YALL ARE DEBATING BIRACIAL KAI

LITTLE ME THOUGHT TYSON WAS NATIVE FOR YEEEAAAARRRSSSSS.

I’m laughing as I write this, when I learned Japan was indeed a real place, it didn’t dawn on me immediately. It still took finding beyblade online when I was like 11, re-watching it and being like ‘huh’. (Note: Remember when beyblade was on youtube but each episode was like 4 parts? Good times.) 

So, on the topic of Kai.

First of all, I need to point something out that I deem obvious, but must be said. 

Beyblade (As well as many other shows from long ago (Yugioh, Naruto, Inuyasha, and Sailor moon come to mind), a lot of us latched on to these shows so hard because of trauma or lonely childhoods. Which means a lot of us find our connections to these shows or characters very personal, which is why it’s hard to break headcannons. It’s more than a fandom for us, and any of us who feel this way, are risking their comfort show to involve themselves in the fandom (This is why I believe a lot of beyblade fans don’t interact with fandom, and I go out of my way to warmly welcome all whenever I can)

It needs to be said, that you owe no explanation to anyone, and neither do I, nor do I apologize for my headcannons.  

With this being said, I knew eventually the fandom would blow up (as it has many times, over the idea of biracial Kai/ Kai with Russian ancestry/ Japanese Kai), now that it has hit so close to home, I feel the need to validate my decision to make Kai biracial in my two long main fics. However, it needs to be stated, I am not doing this to validate myself, but because I simply want to talk about it, I’m not explaining, or apologizing, simply stating some facts, and how I feel. 

For a lot of us, these characters are so personal and we’ve kept them for so long that they’re verging on OC’s, this is NOT YOUR JOB to point out! Although I believe my Kai is very close to canon, there’s many things that aren’t, regardless, myself and many others, still belong to the fandom. 

Back to my childhood:

FINALLY DIAL-UP INTERNET!

The first thing I did when I learned how to read and had private access to internet was google ‘Kai Beyblade’, if you asked, I probably would have said a child’s equivalent to ‘“fuck you that’s why”. 

I learned his last name was Hiwatari, and man, I thought that was SO COOL. But that wasn’t a Russian name was it? I dived further, I don’t think the beyblade wiki even existed at this point, I think I was reading everything off of wikipedia. What I read was: Kai’s father was Russian and his mother was Japanese. I didn’t think too much of it, I mean, it made sense. It would explain Voltaire’s connection to Russia. Later on I realised it made more sense for Kai’s mother to be Russian since the Hiwatari name is Japanese and would most likely come from his grandfather, and for some reason, I was convinced Susumu was Voltaire’s son. The idea of Voltaire marrying his son off to some Russian heiress made so much sense to me. I never read fics, my ideas were definitely influenced by wiki edits, I had no reason to doubt it, or think any differently, I think a lot of people followed the same footsteps. It’s interesting to think that’s how headcanons became universal back in the day. 

I learned the manga existed after a trip to Metrotown Vancouver where I bought every volume they had (3 lmao) (I still haven’t read every volume, and will when I can afford them). 

I just always assumed Kai was biracial, IT JUST MADE SENSE. Kai’s family’s deep ties to Russia, the reason why he knew Russian (regardless of the Abbey), his figure compared to Tyson’s in season 1, I had no reason to doubt it, and it seemed the Dub side of the internet agreed! 

When I wrote my fanfics at 18-19, 5 (years ago now, wow), I still assumed Kai was biracial. Only recently have I dived into the fandom and got into every side (Sub, Dub, Manga). I learned there’s 3 things Dub/Sub/Manga people will instantly fight over: Kai’s race, character’s names, and their ages. 

The reason these three things are so debated is because of the dramatically different storylines/ differences in language versions. The Dub and Sub are two completely different shows when played side by side. I am most familiar with the Dub, as it stays close to my heart, which influences most of my headcanons.

I still headcanon Kai as biracial. We actually don’t know much about his parents, and canon is very loosey goosey. We’re learning more in Rising, but I highly doubt Takao Aoki is going to be like “AND THEN KAI’S MOM WENT TO VISIT HER RUSSIAN FAMILY IS RUSSIA BECAUSE SHE IS RUSSIAN” I’m not going to go into super detail why I think it’s likely that Kai is biracial, but you know what? It doesn’t really matter. This fandom is old, and being from the early 2000’s that means the dub is much different, which means there are MULTIPLE versions of canons. I guarantee you, in every version there is something problematic, and one of the least important ones, is whether or not the fandom white-washes Kai by making him biracial (Maybe full Russia could be an issue, but you know what? Does it really matter?). You know what DOES MATTER. What they did to Eddy, they did that boy dirty. 

I mean they LITERALLY white-washed him. LIKE. 

Also changing Tyson/ Takao’s skin tone in G-rev/ V-force will forever annoy me; that might be an asian skin whitening thing though, still, problematic.

But anyways, in the end I’m sure the reason why the English fandom so frequently headcanons Kai as biracial is not because of white-washing, but because of the time the Dub was created. 

The early 2000’s was an interesting time. Some towns were still stuck in the 90’s, lots of kids had no access to the internet, and when they finally DID, they did not use it wisely. Misinformation was spread easily. Not many people in America read the manga, and very few people watched the Sub.

People like me, young and old, filled in the gaps that were missing.

It’s been 20 YEARS GUYS. A lot has changed. Headcanons that aren’t problematic will stick. As long as it’s not hurting anybody, or anyone else, it’s really not a bad thing. 

Our main focus should be to keep the fandom going! We can’t die, we’ve been together too long to die and I refuse to let it happen, where will I get my serotonin from?? 

Here’s a pic of my love to end it off:

Dumb idiot loser fuckin smiles fucking lunatic.

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 1 - There Are Monsters Among Us!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

First off, can we talk about the characters’ dub names? The dub doesn’t actively draw attention to its setting much (but then again neither does the original, really), but it also does not change the fact that this is taking place in Japan and these characters are actually Japanese, despite that we’re hearing them speak English. Some of them keep their Japanese names, too, even if maybe they have slight shortenings of them to be easier for a Western audience to remember. But then some characters’ names are randomly changed to completely English ones, even though these characters are apparently still meant to be Japanese and living in Japan. It’s just strange – if they’re okay with keeping some of the Japanese names, why not keep all of them?

(Honestly, despite my complaints, I am kind of a little glad that they changed Masaru’s name in the dub, because Marcus comes across somewhat of a different character to Masaru for reasons I will be discussing at length. In that sense, it’s convenient to have different names to differentiate them by.)

Kudamon:  “He’s a renegade to begin with. We have no choice but to dispose of him.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “The target is a renegade. We must catch him before he gets out.”

This is actually more reasonable than what Kudamon says here in the original.

Satsuma:  “The only ones who can keep Digimon under control… are Digimon!”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Only a high-level DATS agent can capture a Digimon.”

The original version of this line was already awkwardly expositiony, sure, but this one just doesn’t make as much sense. The point is not that Yoshi is a high level DATS agent, but that she has a Digimon partner.

The dub completely replaces the original’s soundtrack. I did a shoutout to the BGM here in the original, and I also want to do a BGM shoutout here in the dub! This piece here is very different sounding from Provocation Infinity but still gives a similar sort of actiony gung-ho feel appropriate for Marcus and Agumon being fighty dorks, and I like it. It’s used often enough in moments like this such that it’s the only dub theme aside from the evolution theme that I’ve become able to pick out and recognise the melody of, even though this is only my second time watching the dub. Though I don’t know what the dub soundtrack’s titles are (actually, after having a look, it seems like the dub OST was never released, so nobody does), I like to think that this one is probably Marcus’s theme based on the moments its used in, so I’m going to be calling it Probably Marcus’s Theme.

Marcus: “This is my training ground!”

This park is apparently specifically his “training ground”, even though it’s just an ordinary park that anyone can visit. Um, okay? (More on this at the end of this episode.)

Masaru:  “I’m the number one street fighter in Japan, Daimon Masaru-sama!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “One day, I’m gonna be a champion ultimate fighter!”

They’ve changed “street fighter” to “ultimate fighter”, which, okay, makes him come across a bit less like a delinquent, fair enough. But a noteworthy difference is that he’s only trying to be the best ultimate fighter. Masaru, on the other hand, feels like he already is Japan’s number one street fighter. This change still sounds fine and in-character enough on the surface, but it’s a meaningful distinction that will become quite relevant further in as we get more into Masaru’s character, so keep this in mind.

Marcus: “Fans all over will chant my name! They’ll say, ‘Marcus Damon is the best!’”

I get that what the dubbers are going for here is something equivalent in spirit to Masaru using -sama on himself. But there’s other, simpler ways to do that – just have him call himself “the great Marcus Damon”, or something like that.

As it is, what they’ve done here is make it seem like, apparently, Marcus has fans, or at least he wants to have fans. Which is not even remotely the point of his fighting thing in the original, nor will it be in the dub, either. He’s not doing this for recognition from others; this is something he’s doing entirely for himself.

Yoshi: “Raptor-1 can talk…?”

This was not a thing implied in the original – that apparently, Yoshi (and presumably therefore everyone else at DATS) hadn’t even heard Agumon talk until now. I guess they’re going for giving more of an explanation as to why DATS treated him like a monster, but I find it difficult to buy that Agumon really wouldn’t have said at least some stuff while trapped at DATS HQ. (“I’m hungry,” if nothing else, right?)

Lalamon: “Yoshi, he’ll destroy the human!”

Oh, boy. This is one of those English dubs that refuses to directly acknowledge the concept of death because apparently the poor kiddies can’t handle that or something. I will attempt to not rag on it every time it does so – only because that’d get really boringly repetitive – but I will be talking about it a lot in future episodes when death becomes quite a story-important thing that is happening.

For now, let’s just point out that it sounds really silly to talk like a human can be “destroyed”. There’s plenty of other ways to get across that Agumon is dangerous without directly referencing death that would sound more natural.

Marcus: “Then I’ll knock you out like I did these guys!”

Masaru did not mention the fact that he was responsible for beating up all the dudes this early on. I guess here in the dub, Yoshi just isn’t paying proper attention, because she’s going to continue to assume it was Agumon who hurt all the students.

Kudamon:  “He’s too dangerous.”

~~~~~

Kudamon:  “We cannot let this escalate.”

I am sad that the dub lost the fun “who’s too dangerous?” double meaning of Kudamon’s original line.

Yoshino:  “Hey, you! Get away from him! You’ll only lose if you fight him!”

Masaru:  “Huh? This isn’t about win or lose! This is about fighting man-to-man!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You can’t fight that creature! He’s too dangerous!”

Marcus: “Huh? Look, toots, I’m the dangerous fighter here! And I don’t need any babysitter to hold my hand!”

We really, really did not need Marcus being vaguely misogynistic by calling Yoshi “toots”, or by implying that she’s nothing but a babysitter. We really didn’t.

This also replaces Masaru’s original line that has that fun aspect of him not even caring about winning and just wanting to have a good challenging fight with a worthy opponent, so we lose that, too.

(Though, ignoring the misogyny, I do enjoy Marcus responding to “he’s too dangerous!” with “hey, I’m dangerous”.)

Agumon:  “Yeah! It’s man-to-man!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That’s right! This is between him and me!”

Agumon then also isn’t able to agree about this being man-to-man, and this just becomes a less interestingly nuanced “stay out of our fight”, rather than really about the kind of fight they want to have.

Masaru:  “Got it? Now stay out of this!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “This is a fight between men, so stay out of it!”

Having removed Masaru’s reference to men a few lines earlier, the dub does something which is going to be extremely rare by its standards and actually adds in a reference to men here. …Unfortunately, because they’d also added in Marcus’s random misogynistic lines earlier, this comes across much more like it’s about gender, and he’s just essentially saying “we don’t want any girls in our fight”. Which, no. Masaru talking about manliness is never actually that much about gender at all, despite the word he uses.

Masaru:  “I see you’re pretty brave.”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “I dunno what you are, but you’re goin’ down!”

We lose the sense of Masaru having respect for Agumon challenging him in place of some basic I’m-better-than-you trash talk. And this also adds in Marcus calling Agumon a what, rather than a who, indicating that apparently Marcus is paying some attention to Agumon’s species and is seeing him, at least a little, as not quite worthy of the same respect as a human.

After their big cross-counter…

Agumon:  “I wasn’t ready. But you won’t get me this time!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Hey! I wasn’t ready! I was waitin’ for you to say, ‘One, two, three, go!’”

The dubbers completely missed the point of the original, “I wasn’t ready.” Original-Agumon’s line comes across as “I wasn’t expecting you to be that strong, but now I’ve got the measure of you”, like he’s gained more respect for Masaru’s strength. Meanwhile dub-Agumon is just whining and acting like Marcus totally cheated rather than acknowledging his unexpected strength.

Agumon kicking Marcus in the crotch is cut, replaced with a rather cheesy-looking comic book POW sort of effect across the whole screen.

There’s a cute acoustic guitar BGM here for their bonding moment that I like, especially after recognising its melody and realising that this is a variation on Probably Marcus’s Theme! That seems very appropriate.

Agumon: “You’re… pretty good… for a human.”

Geez, what a backhanded compliment. Apparently dub-Agumon still sees Marcus as below him simply because he’s human, rather than fully acknowledging his strength regardless of species.

Agumon: “Let’s call it a draw.”

This line fills a silence, stating something that was already perfectly well implied in the first place by the fact that they’re no longer fighting and yet there’s no clear winner. It shouldn’t need to be said. In fact, it makes it seem a lot more like this fight really was just about winning or losing to both of them, when in the original that was never the point.

Rather than “Aniki”, which, okay, works fine in subs but can’t really be kept in a proper official English dub, Agumon calls Marcus “Boss”. I guess this is acceptable, but I feel like it would have been better for them to lean into the “big brother” meaning of aniki, rather than the “boss” one, for reasons I will be grumbling about a lot.

Masaru:  “Aniki?”

Agumon:  “Yeah. You’re the first person to acknowledge me as a full-fledged individual, Aniki.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Boss?”

Agumon: “Yeah. Y’see, you’re the only guy who’s ever matched me blow-for-blow in a fight before.”

So, in this version, Agumon gaining respect for Marcus has absolutely nothing to do with Marcus treating him like a person. It’s just because of his strength, nothing else. Way to lose that really fun little bit of nuance and character depth on both sides.

(Also, what does Agumon even mean, “before”? It’s not like he’d have been able to have proper fights that weren’t just defending himself while trying to escape until now.)

Agumon:  “That’s why, from now on, I’ll be your follower!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That makes you the boss. From now on, you give the orders and I’ll faithfully follow!”

Matching Agumon in a fight shouldn’t really suddenly make Marcus the boss who gets to order him around, should it? Plus, here’s Agumon explicitly saying Marcus can give him orders, which was not at all part of the arrangement originally. This whole thing has such a different tone to “you treated me like a person when nobody else did, so now I look up to you and will be loyal to you.”

Marcus:  “I never thought one day that I’d have an employee that’s as funny-lookin’ as you are.”

Oh, boy. Meanwhile, instead of “follower”, we have… employee. That is even more completely missing the point of the aniki-and-follower relationship of the original. If they didn’t like the gang connotations of “boss”, maybe they should have gone for “big bro” instead, perhaps? But no, they just doubled down on the “boss” in a totally different and inappropriate direction. Marcus has apparently just started up a small business.

The heartwarming BGM gets a record scratch as Yoshi reminds them she’s still there. I admit, it made me chuckle.

Yoshi: “So, are you gonna come quietly, or do I have to use force?”

Marcus: “Who’s she talkin’ to, you or me?”

I do enjoy this – a little implication that Marcus has some experience with being treated in a similar way, perhaps by the regular police.

Masaru:  “It’s the aniki’s job to look after his follower. I’m not handing him over to you!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I’ve never had an employee before, and I’m not turning my only one over to you!”

Instead of Masaru doing this out of feeling like it’s an aniki’s responsibility, Marcus is making it about himself. He doesn’t want to lose his new and only employee. Like Agumon’s just a possession of his now. Nothing about how this is something that should be expected of him as a boss.

Later, at the tower, as Agumon asks Marcus to help him evade DATS:

Marcus: “What am I getting myself into this time?”

I enjoy this too. More implications that Marcus is used to getting himself into all sorts of Trouble.

Agumon: “I’m starved!”

Marcus: “Well, suck it up and act like a real man!”

Again with the dub adding in references to manliness that weren’t there originally, as if Marcus actually has a concept of manliness that will continue to be a running theme. Haha, I wish. Get ready for me complaining about the exact opposite of this in basically every other dub episode.

Agumon: “I’m a growing boy!”

How does Agumon even know this phrase? This is an entirely human concept. Dub Agumon will be doing a lot of this, awkwardly invoking human ideas that he shouldn’t have any conception of.

Yoshi: “Yum. I love chocolate pudding – it reminds me of being a little kid again!”

Yoshino’s coffee jelly gets localised into chocolate pudding, because I guess coffee jelly is more of a Japanese thing that Westerners might be unfamiliar with? I enjoy the added detail that it reminds her of being a kid and that’s why she likes it.

Masaru:  “I don’t know anyone by that name!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “I have no idea who this ‘Raptor-1’ is!”

Marcus’s line loses the technically-not-lying and respecting-Agumon’s-identity of the original line. He does know who this “Raptor-1” that Yoshi’s talking about is, even if that isn’t actually his name.

Masaru:  “How’d you know my name?”

Yoshino:  “You yelled it out earlier for everyone to hear.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “How do you know my name, anyway?”

Yoshi:  “I know everything about you.”

No pointing out that he yelled it out earlier like a huge dork. Instead, she just really leans into the DATS-are-creepily-authoritative vibe that she already had a little of in the original.

Yoshi: “Born April 2nd in Tokyo, blood type B, Ootori middle school eighth grade.”

Him being born in Tokyo was not a detail mentioned in the original. And also probably not true in the original, since the series is set in Yokohama and there’s no indication that his family moved here. The dub is presumably still set in Yokohama even though it’s never mentioned, just because the scenery is that of Yokohama, so I guess they’ve just established some dub-only canon that the Damon family moved home at some point. This will actually come up briefly later. I am shocked that I’m saying this.

At least, props to the dub for mentioning Tokyo and making it pretty overt that, yes, this is set in Japan. (You know, with this Japanese guy called Marcus.)

Yoshi also does not explicitly specify Marcus’s age, only that he’s in eighth grade. Which (I’m pretty sure, though I’m unfamiliar with American school grades and may be wrong) would make him fourteen anyway, at least assuming he hasn’t been held back at any point. Keep this in mind, because this will also come up later.

Yoshi: “…and you now live with your mother Sarah and your little sister Kristy, who looks up to you even though you generally act like a jerk.”

First of all, how the hell does DATS have so much information that they even know how his sister feels about him?

Second of all, more importantly, way to just tell us that, hey, did you know, Marcus is A Jerk, hey, guys, you’re supposed to think he’s a jerk, because… he fights things, I guess?

The reality? Masaru is not a jerk. Not even slightly. He’s reckless and hot-headed and will fight anything that poses a challenge, but that is not even remotely the same thing as being a jerk to people.

But apparently the dub doesn’t understand this, and they seem to think that being a jerk is somehow meant to be one of his most noticeable character traits. And I guess they’re trying to present the idea that he’s going to slowly grow into being a nicer person through the power of Digimon and friendship? Which is not at all any kind of arc that Masaru is going to have, because he is not actually a jerk in the first place.

If it was just this one line that seemed to think this, I wouldn’t be that annoyed. But one of the biggest things I’m going to be complaining about with the dub is the fact that they actually do change Marcus’s character significantly to make him noticeably more of a jerk than Masaru ever was. We’ve already seen a little bit of this sort of thing going on so far in this episode, with how they’ve removed focus from the bits with Masaru treating Agumon like a person and instead made it all about fighting, and specifically winning those fights. But, oh boy, there’s going to be a lot more, to an extent that it has to be deliberate.

And aside from me just finding this very frustrating as someone who deeply loves Masaru’s character to see him distorted like this, I also can’t help but boggle at why they would ever want to do this at all. Why would you deliberately adapt a character – the main character – to be less likeable than in the original version of the work? How does it not occur to you that this is only going to make your new audience enjoy the work less? I do not get it.

Lines like this one here are even worse, because they blatantly violate “show don’t tell”. Along with making Marcus act like a jerk and showing us that, the dub’s narrative is also telling us that he’s a jerk and insisting we should think that about him instead of letting us make up our own minds. It’s so lazy and heavy-handed. There will be more like this and I do not like it one bit.

Yoshi: “I’m with the Digimon Data Squad.”

I guess the Data Squad really is its full name in the dub. Even though the acronym is still DATS. Don’t ask me how that’s meant to work.

Marcus: “That’s a great story, dollface, but what’s it gotta do with me?”

Can we not with the Marcus being casually misogynistic? Can we not? (Thankfully, this isn’t going to be a recurring thing. Other ways in which Marcus is being made less likeable will be, but at least not this.)

Marcus does not say anything about assuming Agumon was just a frog. Since Masaru having thought that is going to be relevant again later in the series, this is a loss of not just a moment of amusing dorkiness but something actually meaningful.

(One thing that is very clear about the dub is that, with a few exceptions, they do not appear to have watched ahead to see the whole series first and are just dubbing episode-by-episode. For a series like this with quite a strong overarching plot and lots of little things like this that get callbacks, that means that a lot of this overarching sense of cohesiveness will be lost, simply by accident, because they didn’t realise there was something important there worth keeping around. This is another thing I will be talking about a lot.)

Yoshino:  “As long as you keep running from DATS, Raptor-1 will only starve to death.”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “If you don’t return Raptor-1 to us, he’ll starve to death!”

This is a little different. Yoshino was only trying to get Masaru to come to DATS, supposedly to pick up some Digimon food. Yoshi, meanwhile, wants Marcus to bring Agumon to DATS. Which on the one hand is a more helpful strategy for what she’s trying to achieve. But on the other hand, he doesn’t bring Agumon, because obviously the dub can’t change the episode that much, so instead we’re just left with that awkwardly not being what happens despite it being brought up.

Yoshino:  “You…”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Thank you.”

The hint that Yoshino is gaining a new respect for Masaru from his desire to help Agumon gets lost here, in favour of simply a thanks-for-finally-co-operating. Might partly be just lip-flap’s fault – the Japanese “you” is two syllables – but still, Yoshi’s tone of voice could at least have done some of the work to imply the same as the original, and it doesn’t really.

Kudamon:  “This is the boy that put Raptor-1 under control? He doesn’t appear to have any special power, at any rate.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “Interesting that this is the boy who fought Raptor-1, because nothing about him indicates that he’s able to fight at that level.”

We lose any implication that Satsuma might have been telling Kudamon things about Masaru offscreen, and instead here’s dub-Kudamon simply refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes. You literally watched him fight Agumon on your screen. He very evidently can fight at that level.

Kamemon: “Enjoy.”

Marcus: “I’m not thirsty.”

Kamemon: “Suit yourself.”

Kamemon actually says words in the dub as he brings Marcus tea! This was very bizarre to me when I’m used to original-Kamemon, who almost never speaks at all.

Masaru:  “Just hand over what I came for.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Just say what ya have to say and stop wasting my time!”

Apparently the dub has forgotten that Marcus only came here to pick up Digimon food for Agumon, and suddenly he expects to be receiving a speech here when he shouldn’t.

Masaru:  “Renegades?”

Kudamon:  “Yes. Raptor-1 has already entered the human world and injured humans. He cannot be allowed to go free.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Why are you calling him a renegade?”

Kudamon: “Because Raptor-1 has already entered the human world and made contact with human beings, so he can no longer be allowed to go free.”

I would complain that it’s a bit much that Agumon’s getting in so much trouble simply for meeting humans in the dub, and not specifically injuring them like they were assuming in the original. But, as it turns out, the original is also going to call Digimon simply meeting humans a “crime” in the next episode, possibly as part of its early weirdness. So, eh, this isn’t really the dub being any sillier than the original here.

Satsuma:  “Daimon Masaru, you should work with us to create a bright future for both humans and Digimon!”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Please co-operate. The future relationship between humans and Digimon depends on you returning Raptor-1 to us.”

Also, apparently Sampson isn’t actually trying to recruit Masaru to join DATS with this speech. I can understand the logic behind changing that, since Satsuma was going about that whole thing weirdly vaguely.

That said, saying that the entire relationship between the two species hinges on this one Digimon being returned doesn’t make any sense. So I get the feeling that the implication of what Satsuma really wanted in the original line just went completely over the dubbers’ heads, and they simply thought they were translating his intent directly and made it sound rather silly as a result.

Masaru:  “What the hell is this? Stop pestering without even listening to what I have to say first!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Why not? Because I don’t owe you people a single thing!”

We lose the fun subtle Masaru-y nuance of him caring about being given a chance to express how he feels here. Though I suppose it’s also relevant and illustrative that Marcus is implying he would help them if he felt like he owed them, showing a sense of responsibility there.

Masaru:  “…but have you even considered why he suddenly showed up in this world? He admired this place! He admired this wide world, filled with things moving around that he’d never seen before.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Have you thought about why he came to the human world in the first place? What if he didn’t have a choice? Maybe things were bad for him back in the Digital World!”

This would be Marcus being sweet and thinking about how Agumon feels… if it wasn’t for the fact that Agumon told him he doesn’t know about anything except the institution, and therefore clearly didn’t deliberately try and run away from something bad in the Digital World. Pay attention to your foll – uh, employee, Marcus. Masaru’s line there had somewhat forgotten or misinterpreted what Agumon had told him, but Marcus’s is doing so to a much greater extent.

Masaru:  “But if he starts rampaging, then I’ll be responsible.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “And if he gets into any sort of trouble, I’ll claim full responsibility for his actions.”

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable translation, but the dub version of the sentence does not work nearly as well to foreshadow the thing that the original line is foreshadowing and this makes me sad.

Marcus: “But only if you give me some food for him!”

…This is immediately following the previous line. So I guess, since they never give him any food, Marcus doesn’t end up obligated to take any responsibility for Agumon getting into trouble. (Even though that’s still what he is going to do when they think Agumon’s attacking the hamburger shop. But this makes him come across like someone who’s less willing to do so no matter what and has less of a strong sense of responsibility.)

Kudamon:  “It looks like you’ll have to take responsibility sooner than you thought.”

~~~~~

Kudamon:  “Do you now see how hiding him has created a security breach for all of us?”

This change makes a fair amount of sense, since original-Kudamon was being unreasonable by insisting Masaru should take responsibility for Agumon’s hunger when that was really Yoshino’s fault. And it also fits with the fact that Marcus never actually promised to take responsibility since he wasn’t given any food.

Yoshino:  “So this is where you were hiding him. Since he’s nowhere to be seen, it must be him who attacked the hamburger shop.”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “So this is where you were hiding Raptor-1. A lot of good it did you, since we confirmed it was definitely him who attacked the hamburger stand.”

No, you didn’t! How did you confirm a thing that isn’t true? If this is Yoshi lying, that’s just a dick move; she doesn’t even have anything to gain from it. It feels more like this was the dubbers not paying attention and missing the original’s meaning, which is very obviously that Yoshino was assuming based simply on the fact that Agumon went missing. But he didn’t actually attack the hamburger stand! Did they not even watch ahead to the rest of this episode to realise that?

Marcus: “Why’d you attack a hamburger stand?”

Marcus asks this of Agumon after finding him with his head dorkily stuck in a trashcan, not really all that close to the explosions and flames. Way to jump to freaking conclusions after basically just finding proof that Agumon isn’t the culprit, geez! …Though I suppose that can be partly blamed on Yoshi inexplicably insisting he definitely was.

Agumon: “Huh? I didn’t attack anything, but a hamburger sure sounds good!”

Agumon should not know what a hamburger is. Again with his dub version knowing more human things than he should.

Kudamon:  “He hasn’t been tamed. I don’t understand why he’s fighting alongside human beings.”

This just makes no sense. What the hell does “tamed” even mean? Doesn’t it just mean “has become willing to work with humans”? Because if so, he evidently has been tamed, actually. Just sounds frustratingly like Kudamon trying to insist he Knows Better than this nobody kid, and I don’t think that’s meant to be his character.

Agumon:  “Aniki! He’s really strong…!”

Masaru:  “Doesn’t that just fire you up!?”

Agumon:  “Y… yeah!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “No! Agumon!”

Agumon: “Boss! I’m fine, but could you lend a hand?”

Marcus: “Ha! How about I lend a couple of fists!?”

The dub’s version of this exchange is kinda still cute, but it loses that fun nuance that Masaru loves how strong their opponent is, and that Agumon is learning to agree with that idea thanks to him.

Yoshi: “That thing will tear you to pieces!”

See, here’s a way to avoid directly using the word “die” or “kill” while still making it clear that’s what she’s referring to, without awkwardly acting like humans can be “destroyed”.

Masaru:  “When you’re in a man’s fight, you’re already risking your life! The moment you get scared of dying is the moment you’ve lost the fight!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Besides, the ultimate fighter is always willing to make the ultimate sacrifice!”

This significantly changes the meaning here, and instead Marcus is apparently consciously willing to get himself killed if necessary, even though the kinds of fights he’s been in before really aren’t something that’s actually worth dying for at all. Masaru’s philosophy of acknowledging but then choosing to brush aside the potential risk in order to fight better makes more sense, because he’s not actually intending to die for anything.

The dub’s changed version of this line will also not work for the callback that the original line is going to get later in the series. I’d talk a lot more about why not, but, spoilers, so I’ll save that for then.

There’s a brief snippet of music here during the Anime Sads that appears to be a sad piano variation of Probably Marcus’s Theme, which feels appropriate. I don’t remember it from my one previous dub watch-through, but I hope it gets used in some of the future much more substantial moments of Marcus being sad about things.

Masaru:  “You… How dare you hurt my follower!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s… It’s fightin’ time!”

We also lose another future callback here. But on the other hand, “it’s fightin’ time!” is going to become Marcus’s catchphrase that he uses basically every time he fights (a dub-only catchphrase that Masaru has no equivalent of, and that I’m really pretty happy with), and this moment when he’s avenging Agumon getting hurt is definitely an appropriate moment for it to start being a thing.

The dub’s term for Digisoul is, instead, DNA. Luckily for the biologist in me, who would otherwise be tearing my hair out over this, this stands for something entirely different from deoxyribonucleic acid, because boy would it being that kind of DNA make absolutely zero sense. It’s still pretty awkward that it happens to be the same acronym as a commonly-known thing that it could easily be mistaken for, mind you.

I don’t know why they couldn’t just keep the term Digisoul, though. It’s a perfectly good term! It can’t even be that the dubbers have some kind of oh-no-religious-references objection to using the word “soul”, because that word is also in the dub’s opening song that we’ll be hearing every episode.

Old man:  “By mastering this technique, your Digimon can Digivolve.”

Um, sure. The technique of waving your glowing hand over the Digivice is definitely something that needs to be “mastered”.

Marcus also yells “DNA Charge!” out of nowhere for the first time. But in his case, the old man never actually mentioned the word “charge” when telling him what to do here, so it’s even less clear how he knew that was what he was supposed to say.

Alas, the English dub does not dub the original evolution songs in Digimon. The evolution music instead is an instrumental version of the dub’s opening song, which, though I prefer Believer, is an acceptable replacement in terms of creating a similarly triumphant mood.

Marcus: “That’ll teach ya! Don’t mess with my employee!”

Oh my god, wow, way to completely unintentionally mood-whiplash the triumphant moment by reminding us that this huge powerful dinosaur is actually just your subordinate in the new small business you’ve set up here, Marcus. A small business of punching everything.

Agumon:  “Aniki! I’m hungry!”

Masaru:  “What the hell… That’s so anti-climactic…”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss! I’m hungry.”

Marcus: “What else is new? I’m just glad you’re safe.”

This addition is cute. Originally Masaru’s just referring to the anticlimax of Agumon devolving so fast.

Masaru:  “How about going for a hamburger?”

Agumon:  “Does that taste good?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “How about a nice hamburger?”

Agumon: “Ooh! With cheese, too?”

On the one hand, at least the dub remembered the fact that this Agumon somehow already knows what a hamburger is. On the other, this raises even more questions in terms of how he also knows that they can come with cheese.

Yoshino:  “But that one’s already injured 13 students!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “But Agumon still injured fifteen men!”

Remember how the original tried to calculate fifteen minus one and got thirteen? Well, the dub tried it and got fifteen. Somehow each of them managed to get this very simple sum wrong in a different way.

(And yes, the dub did also specifically have Lalamon sense fifteen humans at the park in the beginning. Actually, it flashes back here to a part where Yoshi was then relaying to HQ that there are fifteen victims, but that was before she saw that Marcus was still standing. I guess it’s plausible to assume that Yoshi herself forgot to subtract Marcus after that and this is her mistake rather than the writers. Not convinced that’s the case, though.)

Also, told you the dub would forget about the part in the beginning where Marcus yelled out within Yoshi’s earshot that he beat up the dudes.

Marcus: “Those were some punks claiming to be ultimate fighters who wanted to train in my area, so I fought them for it, and guess what, I won!”

This begs the question: how the hell is that park supposed to be Marcus’s training ground? Surely, it’d make most sense as a training ground if it was where people regularly come to challenge him to fights? Instead, he only fought the dudes there because he wanted to drive them away from his training ground, so that he can continue to train there, alone, in a perfectly ordinary park that isn’t a gym or anything like that. How is he supposed to train there without opponents? Does he just, like… punch the trees?

I understand if the dub wants to make Marcus have slightly less of a teenage delinquent vibe, but the resulting implications they have here instead are just amusingly nonsensical. It does not seem like they actually thought about this very hard at all.

Overall differences

Overall, the dub of this episode shows a pattern of things generally making a bit less sense and having a bit less nuance, and Marcus in particular being just a bit less interesting and distinctive than Masaru. This is going to be such a regular pattern for every single dub episode that I probably won’t even bother to remark on it in most of these summaries going forward.

In terms of more specific effect on how this episode comes across, I think the most noticeable shift is that the sense of Marcus’s empathy towards Agumon despite his species is watered down slightly. Perhaps most notably, Agumon did not become loyal to Marcus because Marcus treated him like a person, but instead just because he matched him in a fight, which is less meaningful.

The terms “boss” and “employee” also give something of a different vibe to their relationship than in the original. Obviously the dub had to localise “aniki” to something, but I don’t think this was the best choice. This’ll be a thing in every episode, of course, but I’m bringing it up here because this is where it starts.

Then there’s the part where one of Yoshi’s lines casually established that Agumon had never spoken before. As much as this doesn’t make any sense to be a thing – why would he not have spoken while being held in DATS? – I guess it makes it slightly more reasonable that DATS then sees him as just a monster? Though they should also be changing their tune quite quickly when they realise he can speak, which of course they don’t. I guess this could have been an attempt to justify the original’s issues with DATS’s attitude towards Agumon… but not a very effective one.

[masterhandss]

‘My Next Life as A Villainess’ Anime is over...

SO WHAT NOW???

A lot of us are disappointed that Katarina’s adventures are finally over, and a lot of us are gonna miss watching the wacky hi-jinks of our dense villainess. I’ve seen a lot of people say that they will stop posting or paying attention to hamefura after the anime ends, and while I might be the same to some extent, I just want to say that there are still a lot of hamefura things to look forward to after the anime ends!

These are actually some very obvious things to look forward to, but you know I’d still like to share them so you can use them to fill the hole in your heart that the anime left behind.

-------

Edit: (9/30/20) I added stuff, as well as a cut for all yall who says my posts are too long qwq

The Manga

Hamefura still has an on-going manga that is currently in Chapter 3 of the Light Novels! A lot of you already read it, and understand that it can get frustrating when there’s a lack of updates on the english side of things, but if you’re really curious, you can go over and check out the JP releases every month so you can have an idea of whats to come for the manga :DD (The fan translation of ENG Chapter 26 came out a few days ago so you know it’s not dead!!)

I’d recommend reading the english translation on Mangadex, since most translation groups officially upload their translation on there. 

The Spin-off (Hametsuo/Bakarina Alter)

It deserves it’s own category for just how unique it is in terms of its reception in the western crowd. I know a lot of people probably read it, but I guess people barely talk about because it’s not really that far into it’s premise yet. 

I just can’t stop recommending this manga to people (despite not going where I thought it’d be) because of how good the art-style is and how much promise it has. It updates monthly, which I know is a long wait, but it does pay off when you see the quality of everything. Plus it’s just fun to imagine how hamefura would go if it followed the typical “villainess otome isekai” format.

I actually love talking about hametsuo, so maybe my posts are woth the look ;; w ;;

The Light Novels

credits to @sparckle-art​ for the scans!

I’m happy to read that a lot of people are gonna go switch and buy the light novels after the anime ends! By the time the anime ends, the Vol. 6 of the LN would release a week later, acting kind of like a replacement of what is supposed to be a new episode for that week.

The fan-translated version of the web novel is available online, up until half of Vol. 4, but I still recommend buying the books on bookwalker (i don’t know if the sale is still there, but I’d recommend picking up the book regardless!). If reading the fan translation piqued your interest, then playing for the books would definitely worth your money if you ask me! 

An increase of sales might show them that there’s interest for this light novel, and might make them translate the JP novels even faster! (or maybe i’m just too impatient to wait 2-3 months for Volume 7 dshfjsfgs who knows?)

My only warning is that the tone really does shift post-arc 1 (Fortune Lover I) so if you’re looking for harem hijinks, from spoilers I’ve seen I think there would less of that and more of world building. (ps. please stop asking me where to read it ;;-;;)

Edit: Volume 8 is coming out in a few months, with Volume 9 probably being released at either Jan or Feb next year, then after that it’ll be a yearly update

StoryMe Otome Game

credit to the hamefura reddit discord for the screenshots!

I’m surprised a lot of people doesn’t know about the StoryMe game, despite it updating every week alongside the anime. Just kidding I didn’t either lol, I actually found about this thanks to the hamefura reddit discord server! StoryMe is a choose-your-own-adventure otome game, kind of like those “Episodes” or “Chapters” game that gets recommended on Youtube a lot. 

It’s still in japanese, which is probably why not a lot of people knows of it yet, but it seems like you can play as Katarina and romance anyone from the entire harem (yes, the girls too), so keep you eyes peeled for if ever it gets an english translation!

It’s basically the bluray Fortune Lover game with the DVDs, but instead of Maria, you actually get to play as Katarina!

(I’ll make a separate post for this later, maybe)

Edit: The game just came out in English in September 16, and just spat out a 11-episode update at September 30

tldr: go play it, it has 19 episodes out right now

Katarina’s Farm

It’s a newly announced mobile game with a web trial version that centers around playing as Katarina, trying to earn money and points for expanding your farm land, planting more expensive plants and getting the other members of the harem to join you! It’s a 2D pixel game that seems like it wouldnt take too much time to play (you can get the first 4 characters within 30 minutes of gameplay, but that might be adjusted in the mobile version) so I understand if it might not interest some people, but that’s still something to look forward to!

I made another post about it so check out the link to the web version here!

The Bluray Otome Game

While I can’t say this for certain, but maybe if there was ever an official english bluray release, it might include the Fortune Lover Male Capture Target Routes that are included in the game. Maybe someone will play it and translate it even! It would interesting to see how different the boys are, and give us further appreciation for Katarina’s influence and changes!

There’s a preview for a CG in Keith’s Route, which comes with the second bluray (no pv for Geordo ;; w ;;)

Edit: All the boy’s routes are out in Japanese

We don’t know if they’ll ever be released in English though, so hopefully someone translates them at least ;;w;;

The Manga and Yuri Anthology

Missing the hilarious and heartwarming antics of Katarina and her harem? Then you should check out the Manga Anthology (that has just been been translated in its entirety). It’s 14 chapters of absolute hilarity!

There’s also a Yuri Anthology, featuring the 4 girls of the harem! If you’re looking for more of that then, it’s an absolute recommendation!

Spin-off Visual Novel

Edit: They recently just announced a spinoff visual novel! It takes place after the Fortune Lover 1 Arc and features sexy pirates hgsjhgsdf

It’s just recently announced so there’s not a lot of info besides the company making it (it’s Otomate) and the fact that it’s gonna be an all new Bakarina adventure uwu

Bakarina Radio

I heard there’s a Bakarina Radio too, featurning the VAs of the anime cast. 

I don’t know if its a regular thing or a one time thing, but its still worth checkin out!

https//twitter.com/hamehura/status/1309831738525278209

The Second Season of the Anime

I seriously wasn’t expecting another season, considering how different the next arc is, but I’m happy nonetheless for more Bakarina! I hope this motivates the fans to continue supporting the series, as a bigger reaction will definitely lead to more content for us to enjoy! I have a theory about S2, which I think is worth the read :3c

Other Otome Isekais

There’s a lot of other Villainess Otome Isekai’s that are worth the read, and a lot of them as just as interesting as hamefura, despite the lack of a harem (from deep rooted revenge to hilarious and crazy villainess, there’s a lot!) The quickest recommendation I can give is just looking up “Akuyaku” and “Villainess” on Mangadex (do both btw they dont have the same results), but theres a lot that doesn’t get recommended so do your research! I swear it’s worth your time!

Anyways, I hope any of these fill the hole that the hamefura anime will leave in our hearts as we wait for season 2! (sorry for repeating the same line again hdsfgdjhsfg) Feel free to add anything like fanfic recommendations and artists, as I can’t cover everything on my own, as those really help provide hamefura fans with content :DD

[ngc-5194]

twewy anime episode 1: thoughts

i’m gonna preface this whole thing by saying i’m still going to be watching the whole anime.

i like their take on partner pacts and the animation is pretty. the music is nice. i’m always happy for more twewy content. i adore the different location titles. the Noise being 3D is cool and will certanitly help me get used to them being like that before neo: twewy drops. but i feel kinda iffy about a few things.

(also please keep in mind i’m basing my impressions on neku off of the translated version. i know there’s differences between english neku and japanese neku but,,,,,, yeah)

the pacing:

day one listen i know, i know, it’s gonna be different- cutting down a 25~ hour game into a few anime episodes is gonna be difficult. but there’s such a thing as cutting too many corners.

packing the first three days into one episode would’ve been fine on it’s own. i’m perfectly fine with them saving time for later days. day one being compacted to 7 minutes isn’t the worst thing in the world. it works fine length-wise but it doesn’t really feel like day one.

they spend most of their time on day one showing neku waking up. which is fine. it’s rather important to set up what’s happening in this story with the reapers game. but,,, wow they could’ve done it better by making it just a smidge longer.

like,,,,,, keep the scene of neku waking up. keep him reading minds by people walking through him, okay? but instead of just cutting to him by hachiko, keep in him getting chased by Noise. it’s a really minor change, but it affects a lot. it gives high stakes right off the bat, it introduces the Noise as something closer to what they are in game at this point. a threat. something to be feared since at this point in the game you can’t fight them. they just attack you, over and over and over again, and you can’t do anything about it but run. so just give them that same feeling in the anime- that’s it, that’s all i ask for to make day one better in this regard. day two ok, day two was,,,,,, hmmm

for starters: having them wake up in scramble crossing again is,,, a choice. it means that we don’t have shiki looking at the picture of her and eri. it means we don’t have them actually having to try to get to hachiko. it means we don’t have them using scanning as part of the mission (i’ll get to my thoughts about scanning in a sec). it means we don’t have shiki and neku starting to bounce ideas off of each other. it means beat and rhyme don’t like neku for him almost killing shiki. which, sure, them not liking him for that is valid, but that wasn’t the point.

the point was neku was unlikeable enough, standoffish enough, unwilling to trust others enough, that he turned down their offers of help and instead accuses them (shiki included) saying that they could all be reapers. he rejects their offered help, insults them and his partner, complains about their ‘nagging’, and says he doesn’t want to work with them because he feels they’d only drag him down. and this is all after their intro to him of him leaving his partner behind and forcing her to run after him. this is all after him being moody in the corner while the three of them share info and try and befriend each other. that is why beat doesn’t like him in the game. thus, beat and rhyme leave, leaving neku and shiki alone. neku’s already annoyed, both by the interaction with beat and him feeling like shiki doesn’t care because she’s looking at her phone over and over. he constantly ignores shiki, getting lost in thought while shiki tries to talk to him- tries to become closer friends with him while he in turn tries to cut her off, ignore her, keep his walls up. when he’s offered the choice to sacrifice her in order to help himself, he doesn’t hesitate. he takes very little convincing. that is how that scene goes in the game.

so lets look at the anime, huh?

beat doesn’t like neku at first because he doesn’t engage in the conversation. they meet each other while shiki and neku are having their own conversation. beat is the only one of the two to accuse the others of being reapers. not only is the mission no longer a puzzle, but instead just a fight that beat and rhyme also happen to be there for. meaning we don’t get them realizing that if one pair completes the mission everyone survives. when uzuki gives neku the mission it becomes more of a ‘he’s being possessed and controled by the Noise’ thing rather than a ‘he makes this choice for himself because he’s a flawed character and the Noise are drawn to that’ thing. (also since beat’s there he already knows hanekoma and hears what he tells shiki and neku??? i don’t- whatever)

can you see how that’s a little different? day three once again, having them wake up in scramble crossing is an interesting choice. but it’s fine. having them walk to A-East (or O-East now i guess??) instead of waking up there is a fine change to make, i don’t mind it. it gives them an excuse to not have to put the characters in a completely darkened room. what i do mind is the rest of the changes they made to cut the day down.

for one the tech is a reaper now??? and potentially part of the band???? when that’s not what his character was in the slightest??????

second, they changed the mission? the whole thing with the bat is neku accepts beat and rhyme’s help because they clear the mission after neku and shiki take out the big bat. which starts to show neku that it’s really not him against the world and helps him start to open up to the three of them. but no, just having shiki and neku take out the big bat is good enough i guess. also this means memes don’t exist which is a criminal offense /j

all, and i mean all, of this day feels too rushed. they sacrificed good pacing to have it end on a “dramatic” note, and i don’t like that. i really think ep 1 should’ve just been the first two days.

characterization:

neku yeah he’s really the only one on the list.

listen i know in the original he’s more socially closed off than the snappy way he is in the translated version, but the anime misses both of those marks.

he’s kinda just,,, a little quiet. he still openly reacts to people. which is much more than game!neku gave on the first few days. the point of the game is to see him grow. i’m not quite sure how the anime is going to pull off the same emotional pay off.

like,,, in the game you watch him go from a full on moody asshole, convinced he doesn’t need anyone else. he doesn’t want to talk to people for ten minutes, let alone have them drag him around for a week, interacting with them every day. but he grows. he changes. he learns that the world doesn’t start and end with him. he learns how to connect with others. he learns how to let others in again. if he was given the choice joshua gives him at the end of the game at the begining of the game, he’d have shot josh without hesitation. that’s the reason joshua chooses him. anime!neku gives me the vibes that no matter where in the story he wouldn’t shoot joshua. he clearly cares about the others during week one and,,,, i dunno, this point will probably get better.

various other things:

777 he gives them a level 2 keypin???? i mean i guess they’re not doing the reapers controling the walls but then it takes away the point of beat having a keypin in week 3 because neku will already have one/know what it is??? also 777 and the tech might be the members of the band? which,,,, :( i want bj and tenho

the picture of shiki and eri why did they cut shiki looking at the picture of her and eri? it’s important to her character and character arc. but they just,,,, drop it??? i don’t-

scanning here’s the thing, i’m fine with how scanning works in the anime. but i’m concerned about later weeks.

how is tabbo noise going to work? there’s no noise symbols floating around so they can’t float towards them while other noise symbols just hang around.

how is scanning joshua going to work? it’s harder to touch someone to scan their mind and have them not notice than it is to mentally scan them while holding a pin and standing about. (even if that person knows exactly what you’re doing bc he’s god or whatever- but that isn’t the point)

ok i’m done, thanks for reading if you managed to make it through my rambles <3

[officialinuyasha]

Hey everyone! We are a month away from Yashahime! October 3rd is coming up quick for the airing of Yashahime.

The deadline for the Rumiko Takahashi Q/A passed and we will be seeing which of our questions will be featured and answered on a Shonen Sunday magazine so I'm looking forward to see what Rumiko Takahashi has to say to us about InuYasha and Yashahime.

In a recent Yashahime Preview trailer we get to see a tiny bit of new footage. Attacking Roothead with Tessaiga and another of Towa's funny facial expressions. But most noteably it mentions that they have to get a Rainbow pearl to recover Setsuna's memories. My theory was right when I talked about the second visit to the Inu no Taishou's grave that the black pearl would give InuYasha flashbacks. In my full trailer analysis I mentioned that Setsuna's eye glowing reminded me of the Black Pearl, which I think a lot of us took that into thought but I also dugged deeper and remembered that the Black Pearl was seen giving InuYasha memory flashbacks. It also got me thinking a few times when I saw the different colored pearls on the website, the black one being at the very bottom. So the trailer definitely confirmed my theory that they would need a pearl to give Setsuna her memories back.

I do remember an early translation that talked about Moroha having a Shell that had a red pearl. That really caught my attention before we even got the trailer about Setsuna's eye. This is what the early art translation said about Moroha "When she puts on her lipstick that is carried in a shell with a red pearl" In the official English translation of the profiles color reveal showed in the Kaoru Wada livestream it says when she puts on Rouge she becomes Beniyasha. We haven't seen her put on red lipstick yet or rouge as in red blush makeup. What if the bow on her head was from Kagome's old school uniform? We will see! Now I don't know if the red pearl on Moroha's shell is just decorative or something also special, as if it's holding someone else's memories. Like, you guessed it - Possibly Moroha's memories, InuYasha or Kagome's. Again, pearls are also portals and could be holding many other secrets. Someone could be trapped there as well. Admittedly the first mention of Moroha's red pearl got my brain ticking about it very early on. Moroha's red pearl could even be one part of the many pearls that, when combined all together could make the entire Rainbow pearl in order for Setsuna to regain her memories. In order for them to get Setsuna's memories back - There is a chance that the Rainbow pearl could only be acquired when you find all of the different colored pearls.

When we look at the website there is 8 colored pearls. If you remember the colors of the rainbow has 7. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. These pearls seem to match quite closely with the total of 8 pearls when we include the black one.

It would have been cute if it was Izayoi's lipstick shell that was magically recovered after being crushed. Looking forward to how this all plays out.

Now, I constantly get asked this - "Are InuYasha and Kagome dead?" or "Why did they abandon their child? Couldn't InuYasha sniff her out?" I have answered these many times. My answers to these are - No, they are NOT dead. They were seperated and possibly sent to another dimension or sealed away. Their memories could have been taken too. InuYasha and Kagome did not abandon their child. Again, they were seperated. InuYasha also could have lost his sense to smell her out because of the fire and smoke. Even adding to the possibility of it being Root Head infested Sacred Tree smoke. Another idea, is that InuYasha could have lost that ability had it happened on the New Moon.

It was announced on the Ani-One channel that you will be able to watch Yashahime for free, if it will have English subs is something I'm wondering about as well. If not I will be looking at whoever anime provider has it first. They will definitely be getting my money. Make sure to subscribe to them, and keep checking AnimeLab, VIZ Media and probably Crunchy Roll. Considering we just had a CrunchyRoll x VIZ Media live stream for Yashahime September 4th.

On September 4th we had a livestream for Yashahime. Nothing too new in it, the guy that was talking spoke of Rumiko Takahashi's history in creating more than one hit series. As well as how successful and popular her work is. The nice thing to note that when VIZ Media did announce it they did show the four images of InuYasha and Kagome, Sesshoumaru and Rin that enough hinted to me that they were going to be showing us a bit of the livestreams from a month or so back but with some subtitles. So we did get some official subtitles for little parts of it. I liked that Kappei mentioned he changes it a little bit as human InuYasha when he talks. When InuYasha transforms back he says he imagines his demon blood inside of him erupts so he drops the voice a little lower right when that transformation happens to become half demon again. They also mentioned Rin's voice actor would make her own songs and sing about things like Jaken being green. She also confirmed this when her and Ken Narita were talking in their portion. I thought that was very cute. They did say Jaken was like Rin's father figure a couple times . Then Rin's voice actor mentioned she saw a thread online that said "Jaken is the mom" of Towa and Setsuna. They were cracking up. Her and Ken Narita wanted to make a parody about how Setsuna stole a piece of the fluffy from Sesshoumaru for her Naginata. As if Sesshoumaru was dead asleep when it happened, then there was just some random patch of fur missing. I thought that was hilarious.

It has been announced that Uru's song "Break" will be the ending song for Yashahime. We will get to hear the TV version of this October 3rd when Yashahime airs. Uru will be releasing the Full Ending song for Yashahime October 28th.

Like I thought after they finished the InuYasha no Tsubo posts, that they would be posting Yashahime ones. Here is the new post, confirming this. It says that they have reached the final round for InuYasha no Tsubo, if you don't know what InuYasha no Tsubo is it was character info at the end of each episode that the Japanese voice over versions. From September 8th they will be posting Yashahime. I will also be posting translations for these!

I want to thank each and every one of you. Whether you are a member of our Group, a subscriber or a follower. You are still giving us support and that means a whole lot to us. Yashahime is a month away from us.

[randomnameless]

what annoys you the most with 3H? The fandom or the missed opportunities from the game?

Oh.

The fandom takes the first place, because while it was funny to craugh seeing those bad takes, 2 years after the release of the game those takes are still endorsed and built upon and it’s just impossible to discuss about FE16 without being sure that the person you’re talking to is talking about the game, or the redshit takes.

Still, I firmly believe fandom wouldn’t be that cesspool of incessant drama if the localised version (especially NoA?) didn’t take wild directions with the game. It’s incomprehensible how a game in its OG version can be saying green but the localised version everyone talks about “corrected” it to “blue”. 

Scripts are more or less the same, but the directions given to the VAs?

rant under the cut about directions, voice acting and people arbitrarly pushing an agenda despite the media they’re supposed to translate/bring to non-jp crowds.

I pointed it in an earlier post (or earlier posts?) but as a french person I grew up with the 4Kids dub, which was infamous for, uh, “translating” things for western audiences, even at the cost of coherency and let’s not even talk about the source material this thing doesn’t exist. Remember the Shadow Realm from YGO? .

I watched a short anime a few years ago about the anime industry (Shirobako?) and I remember a character trying to become hired as a voice actor/seiyuu - she had to learn and to feel the character - she has to know the character as much as the author who created them. 

A few years ago, I didn’t feel as if the dubbing cast worked on their characters as much as the OG!voice actors. For a recet exemples I was rewatching a certain anime with the fr dub - basically a former underling fights against his superior who became a traitor, and even if his superior doesn’t regret turning into a traitor and ultimately became a giant fly, the underling always respected his superior and treated him with proper forms of adress. In the “early 2010 dub” I watched yesterday? Yeah no, guy’s talking to him as if he is talking to his friend in a pub.

Even now, while the quality of the voice acting has improved (and I feel like people take their jobs way more seriously for the dubbing industry) - i was the first surprised with SoV’s VA - we have now directions. Because the manga/anime/game isn’t, uh, good enough or whatever, the dubbing team decides to go off and do its own thing, regardless of coherence or, worse, what was the intent/core of the og game.

I am playing MH:Rise, the game is set up in a more or less traditional “ninja” village, with a lot of old japanese (? feudal? idk) aesthetics. The devs said they wanted to return to the roots of the saga and based new monsters on Yokais, mythological monsters from the japanese folklore. When you meet a new giant monster to hunt, you have small cutscenes to introduce said monster sung with a Noh theater aesthetic (i just looked up on wikipedia i thought it was kabuki but kabuki isn’t the only form of theater whatever the more you know). 

NPCs in the MH series speak their own language, often called the MHese (a bit like the sim language). IDK if it is because this opus has a japanese aesthetic, but you can pick a jp voice acting instead of the MHese (same voice actors but talking in a different language). Or you can pick the US/ENG dub, with, I suppose, US VAs. I’m not complaing about the lack of FR dub, I’m rather happy with it tbf. But, for some reason, despite the aesthetic, the yokais, the pagodas in the background, the samurai flagship cat, the katanas and whatever, I thought the Noh style cutscenes weren’t going to change, or maybe someone would try to sing in English. But it isn’t the case, the US/ENG version of those cutscenes aren’t Noh style sung, they were completely revamped, so no traditionnal songs and instruments in the background, instead have a dude describing the monster you’re about to face in a cheap National Geographic imitation.

Why remove this? Was it because US!Capcom thought the western world wouldn’t understand the Noh references (but could still understand the general “aesthetic”, just, ban on the songs?) or some shit? They couldn’t remove the flagship cat’s samurai armor to swap it for a GI uniform, so they banned the Noh cutscenes? Why?

It is the same shit NoA pulled out with the Fates localisation, Suzukaze became Kaze because... reasons?

Maybe I’m biased because I’m french, and apparently Wonder France is one of the biggest consumer of anime/manga outside japan, but the mere idea that something can be changed because it’s not “western enough so the audience wouldn’t get it” pisses me to no end, and this is why, in the beginnings of Internet (YT videos with 4 parts, megaupload etc etc) everyone I knew who watched anime ditched everything dubbed to watch the very same episode but subbed (one of my friends even worked on her english with subs!).

Back to FE16 because this is your question and I ranted enough, I cannot stress it enough regarding Rhea, but while I do not doubt Cherami Leigh made a great effort and worked her best with the tools given to her (to this day I still cannot fathom how she managed to dub Mae and Rhea, they’re so different or not seiros is genki!rhea if only leigh was given that script) Leigh!Rhea isn’t Inoue!Rhea. NoA (I harp on NoA but I suppose NoA oversaw the dubbint process/effort, NoE is inexistent) had an agenda and a reading of Rhea that isn’t the same as NoJ.

“You worthless piece of garbage” doesn’t exist in the og!script - but more importantly, delivering this, Inoue!Rhea isn’t furious, she is upset and desperate. Leigh!Rhea is furious, Cherami Leigh does an admirable job at conveying NoA!Rhea’s fury - but this is not the same character NoJ wrote. If NoA gave the same directions NoJ gave Kikuko Inoue to Cherami Leigh, I’m pretty sure the “Rhea BaD” crowd, the eating babies takes and whatever shit redshit comes up everyday would be way reduced.

Maybe @nilsh13 has redshit take saved talking about this, but if we’re not talking about the same character, what kind of discussion can even happen? (I’m sure someone someday pulled the “well i played the localised game so i’m not talking about the og script with you but with the localised script” to defend some smelly take)

Missed opportunities can be fuel for fanfics.

Discourse based on fandom drama (at this point NoA itself is part of the fandom with their “religious extremis/zealot” take)? Nothing can salvage it. I genuinely like to talk about FE16 (especially lizards), but since every topic became a landmind because of the fandom drama, even making posts in good faith can be used as a fuel for drama, or completely diverted from their original goal to suit, again, some faction war between lizards and a certain someone.

Tl; dr : Fandom.

[nordic-language-love]

Norwegian

Read 127 pages Odinsbarn (+ read aloud)

Read 4x articles (+ noted new vocabulary and wrote summary/opinion x1)

Watched 4x Kveldsnytt broadcasts

Watched 1x SKAM episode

Wrote 3x journal entries

Wrote story outline in Norwegian

Started writing task about vegetarianism

Langblr gang challenge: introduced myself + read aloud

Speaking practice: talked about health, nutrition and learning Japanese

Made nutrition vocab list

Japanese

Watched 3x Pokémon episodes (English subs)

Practised writing hirigana (drilled difficult characters) and katakana (ア-ノ)

Duolingo: Hirigana 2, Hirigana 3, Katakana 2,

Lingodeer: practised kanji set 2, hirigana and katakana

uTalk: Free Starter Words

Drops: Hirigana あ-お, か-ね and は-ん

Norwegian

I’ve mostly been doing bits and pieces here and there with Norwegian this week. I’ve not really noticed any progress or lapses in progress, although I keep doing this thing where I think I don’t know a word while I’m talking or writing and then just in the nick of time it pops into my head. So I guess my active vocabulary is improving? That’s always good.

I do feel like my vocab needs more work, especially when it comes to speaking. Last week my italki tutor suggested I pick a topic to talk about and write some vocab beforehand to practise, which is actually a pretty good shout. So what I might do is try doing some speaking at the start of the week, note down what vocab I’m missing, look it up and then talk about the same topic again later in the week. Looks like I might be talking about animals and pets given that’s this week’s theme!

Speaking of italki sessions, I fucked up and have managed to book myself two for this week (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but yeah I meant to space them out more lol). Different tutors for each session. I’m not sure whether I plan to keep using both or just stick with one or maybe shop around. I guess talking to lots of different people would mean I learn different things and I can practise talking about the same topic without them getting bored (or alternatively talk about different topics with different tutors and not feel bad that I’m forcing them to listen to me monologue about some shit they don’t care about), but it’s more difficult to build rapport with someone if you only chat with them once every other month or something, plus it’s more difficult for them to work out your learning style and how best to teach you effectively.

Japanese

I can now write all the hirigana from memory! There are still some kana I have to think about a bit, but I’m really proud of myself :) I also started learning katakana and I can now recognise most of them (although I do have to think a bit about them) and I can write the first 10 from memory.

This week I’d like to continue practising writing hirigana (maybe just the whole thing once every other day) and katakana (drilling each of the different characters with the aim of being able to write 20-30 from memory by the end of the week) as well as chill out with Pokémon (can I just say how much better literally everything is in the Japanese version? The voice acting, the theme song, the overall feel of the show... like the English dubs are so cringe sometimes)

Productivity Grid

I’m still working out how everything fits together with Finnish and Icelandic and Japanese. I’m considering putting Icelandic on hiatus for the time being as I’m not super motivated to learn it atm. I still want to keep up Finnish in a casual sense though. We’ll see.