#it also makes the english dub the superior version

[talk-danmei-to-me]

Qi Rong saying 'Was he blinded by your holy light, or was it some other holy part of you?' will never not be iconic.

[room-surprise]

Dungeon Meshi Anime Review, Season 2, Episode 14 review

This is technically the second cour of Dungeon Meshi, with a new opening and ending so we've made it to season 2, baby!

Happy Kabru day! I think Trigger did a great job with this so I don't have a lot to talk about.

Spoilers below!

The new OP is really nicely animated and very sweet, but I don't really like it. I think the song isn't as good as the first OP and the visuals just don't really excite or interest me the way the first OP did. It's cute though! I think it would have made a great ending...

The ending is wonderful like before, with more beautiful illustrations. Are these also by Kui? Will we get Kui illustrations for every ending? That would be so fantastic! I like this song better than the new OP song...

What the hell are Fleki and Lycion laughing at in the ending. Just pointing and laughing at a water fountain...

There my darling lad Kabru goes, killing again! Good for him.

Animated very nicely, conveys just how fast and lethal Kabru is against human opponents. I hope that anime onlies are now worrying about Laios and his party! That's what they should be worrying about!

Love that they managed to capture Kui's insanely wonderful fight choreography, Kabru switching targets last second after doing a fake-out, and then stealing one person's sword to use it to kill two other people... He's so slick, and Trigger captured it so well.

Sadly no improvements (extra clarity) was added to any of the talking scenes in this ep that start to explain Kabru and his party's motivations. I didn't expect them to change anything though, so it's still as good as it was in the manga, which is still pretty damn good... But would have been nice to have someone tighten up the dialog and make it flow more like human conversation.

Characters sitting around and talking about stuff that isn't monster biology or cooking is probably Kui's greatest weak points as an author, and I don't blame her at all, but it's the one blind spot she could use a liiiiiiittle extra help with. At least in the first half of the manga. Towards the end she gets way better at it. Practice does that to you!

EDIT: Trigger made Holm eat meat!!! He's a religious vegetarian!!!! Oops.

SO.... english dub issues.

The cast is still generally great and the dub script is generally superior to the Japanese subtitles, though it seems like the Japanese subs might be getting better? Or this episode was unusually bad in English so the Japanese subs seemed better.

Kabru's voice in English...

The thing about Kabru's character is that he changes how he talks and acts depending on who he's talking to. The Japanese version does this relatively well.

It's mostly about the pitch of Kabru's voice and how sweet his tone is. He's trying to make himself sound non-threatening, polite, and friendly. And then when he's not doing that, he sounds more stern and mature, talking in a deeper pitch without being so self-effacing.

The English version... is struggling a bit with this.

In the other episodes it sounded alright, but in this episode Kabru's voice actor, for whatever reason, seemed to be mumbling/slurring his words, not enunciating, and cutting off and shortening his words, shoulda, woulda, kinda, and talking in a more "relaxed" and informal manner

This isn't inherently a problem, but since nobody else in the anime so far talks like this, what does this style of speaking signify? Why is Kabru talking like this for this entire episode?

Is it because Kabru's from the West? Do all the people in the West talk that way? Will the elves talk like that?

Since they didn't match Zon and Leed's way of speaking to each other I doubt they'll follow through with this...

If it's meant to make Kabru sound "tough", why does Kabru do it the entire episode and not just with the corpse retrievers? Why does he keep talking that way while talking to his friends?

Even if sounding "tough" is what he's trying to accomplish, Kabru wasn't really being tough in those scenes, he was being tricky and conniving... And then with his friends he was being curious and solving a mystery.

It's not the worst performance I've ever heard, but it's a change/addition with no basis in the original version, so as with Leed and Zon, I'm left wondering "why are you doing this? What are you trying to tell us about the characters?"

I'll have to go back and listen to Kabru's earlier appearances to see if he sounds the same in those, but I really don't remember him talking this way before...

Kabruuuuuu

[grievedifferent]

How do you feel about the dn demo musical depiction’s of Light? Specifically this song where’s the justice, just out of curiosity!

oh man, this is hard for me, and i'm definitely in the minority here. this literally could be just said yes or no but i also cannot not write 100 paragraphs:

i've kind of avoided it really addressing any LA adaption of DN (the best imo was the one that came out when i was in HS but the big deal about that was that the english cast actually did the dub for it and it was a theater release, i also wasn't looking for "good content", i was looking for more death note content in america when streaming wasn't as accessible, manga had to be illegally torrented or bought from a bookstore, etc. i come from a different time of media in a way than what a kid these days would go into. my nephew just got into death note and watched the whole thing right away, whereas i was waiting for releases of episodes and books thus having to sub in any content while i waited for the real thing.

i think childhood restrictions versus as an adult, i can stream any specific death note content i want basically at any time, makes a huge difference in how i perceived this media, thus why i'd "give the original a pass" but even that is ... i mean, it changes a lot, i don't know if light was cast correctly (though i don't really mind their L, i do like that actor so maybe that's a bias thing idk) but basically ... i don't really like any iteration that's live-action of any series that is typically animated. yes, there are exceptions, i think also that there is a divide in animated media of like "this would translate well to the screen in a live adaption format" versus "this looks goofy as hell, we can't make it realistic without diluting it but we can't stay true to the source material without pushing it into almost a goofy uncanny valley scenario that takes away central focus". take a series like ... idk, dbz. that's so hard to make live-action. now, take death note. that should be so easy, ryuk is the most complicated part of this project imo, like most of this story is just two guys' inner narratives fighting (stares into the void of the silence that is death note if you remove the narrative). yet, it always fails, or just never lands, or stays in japan only, etc. americanized versions flop or are taken off the table before they're allowed to really make it through any production. even the bioshock live-action adaptions have been promised for forever (don't get me started on this one haha).

is this to say that i think no animated material should be translated to live-action? not necessarily. but if it was supposed to be live action in the first place, why is the media of animation even necessary? some stories, to me, have to be animated in the way some stories have to be games or have to be novels or have to manga or have to be movies. adaptions are great, i get that, but like ... they usually just miss the mark. it's so rare to get a "live one".

like, ouran should have been easy to make a live-action, but so many of them have failed. arguably, the stage play is solid, which also ... ouran kind of lends itself to that, right? i'm not really considering stage plays as a whole. imo they always have better casting at least aesthetically and the props / costuming / etc is always superior. the yyh live action stage play is way more structurally sound in its aesthetics than the netflix adaption.

here is also my problem generally with other people taking properties in general and remaking them: they're always through a fan's eyes. that's great, i love fans, but also, sometimes i think it's almost better ot have someone that isn't a fan. it allows the lens of fanon to disappear, the fog of headcanon or "i think". sure, some adaptions have had the creators come back, even the original casts, but it's always awkward, isn't it? why is that? because that creator has not cared or touched that property save for some promo images maybe yearly or some callbacks or something because they have moved on. coming back? they aren't in the mindset they were writing it originally. they'll likely want to rewrite and change things. sure, it's "canon" because it's that author, but their intent is likely different now, or they just simply cannot remember the series the way they used to.

so that brings me here:

i was also never a theater person, my taste in musicals is kind of weird maybe or just small ... but getting more diverse bc of otter who lettered in theater LOL so i have more understanding of like what is theater especially compared to like ... what is movie production and tv show production, etc, then splitting into animation versus live action, so. now we're here:

the actual musical. i think that most retellings of death note really just cannot capture yagami's character be it in the acting or the intention. he is written so specifically by ohba and drawn so specifically by obata which is then translated into an animated style that's supposed to reference obata (it falls in that early 2000s thing, give it a pass rip) and basically, aside from maybe glossing up the ending a bit in a way that i think is pretty pivitol (yagami is given no pity in the manga, he's put down more honorably in the anime, which idc about i like that he barks like a dog and cries in the manga, but what i like in the anime is the scene where his dying self passes his younger self ... it's very intense to me). so, then you take mamoru's interpretation of yagami, the first one we get that isn't just text, and it's literally perfect. brad comes in second and nails it. they are arguably different yet so similar, i describe brad as accurately making yagami sound more natural in english than most can when relying on a japanese source. he just gets it, and he intentionally does emulate mamoru. i've spoken to him about this actually.

now, while i might not be a huge theater musical person, i love music. it's my main inspiration! i listen to it daily, it's a huge part of my life, and i'm not a musician at all.

lyrically, i get it. it's a little pointed, but i understand the message. it's fine as a song on its own, it's not like bad to me, but i have such a hard time seeing light as a character that sings. ironically, mamoru and brad can both sing (mamoru sings a lot in his roles, but think tamaki from ouran, while brad was in a band for a long time!). so, in a way, it's not really right or wrong for me to say one way or another that light is a bad singer or a good singer. i can see him having to go to karaoke socially, so maybe he is a good singer, or picks songs just in his range to "appear good enough" to get the pass a pretty boy.

overall, i'm not like anti musicals, nor am i anti-stage plays of anime because i think they're very pretty to look at and some (like mp100's for example) have huge creator input (and he is fresh off that project or was at the time) with like actual mob's VA (who the creator has said is mob) playing mob in the stage play with content that is considered basically exclusive but canon, like they "did something" with that whole stage play to add to the experience of mp100 and made each show different, so like, go all the way or not, right? again, kny, every anime has had a stage play, and typically you'll just see higher production in japan, but i also come from a time where i was pirating live action cutie honey and mirrored animated lucky star on youtube before it was "youtube" as we know it, so maybe my experiences are so specific that it's hard for me to adapt.

i'm so manga and anime focused that it's hard for me to sit here and say "well, i disparage these versions" but i can be at least honest and say that none have (to me) held a candle to the original property. how can you? it's old now, so it's nostalgic, and it's iconic, so it has a lot going for it.

i actually also have to somewhat contradict myself here, i think if ohba went all in maybe something could happen because we see such solid continuity in the one-shots we get every 100 years from him, so idk. this is a rare thing to have, i think. like, look at rumiko and the follow-up series to inuyasha. she's done with inuyasha, so she didn't go back. eithe way, i don't think it would have landed well regardless if she was on the project.

tl;dr: it's not necessarily "for me" but i'm not anti any DN content. i'm just manga first, then anime second for my inspo. if i wasn't, i might go insane keeping track of the details of every iteration, especially playing not only the MC but also other characters (especially BB, he changes depending on where you're sourcing him from, which is why the novel is one of the few fanon pieces i accept as canon bc they make a point to mention it in the anime when it originally listed as "that case" in the manga when L refers to naomi and he working together in the past).

i get why we want more ... but i am also a person who's like "i've seen the story told the way it was intended, it was good the way it was, i liked it as it was, and it's okay for things to end". i'm like this with remakes, too. it's rare that a remake is necessary to me. but i understand the appeal as a logical person, it doesn't not make sense to me why it's a draw in for a crowd.

[thepersonperson]

I want to ask you a question, theres been a giant conversation in some groups about which version of jjk was better. The version we saw through the leaks or the finish version we have today. I would really want to know your opinion. If possible if you answer this question, can you hashtag it anon question so I can find it. I understand if not.

I don’t understand exactly what you’re asking.

By "finish" do you mean just JJK's end? Or do you mean the entire finished work?

By leaks do you mean the initial bad translation from Discord/Twitter vs the finished TCBscans fan translation? Or either of those vs the official (VIZ) translation? (I’ve been in the woods for a week I have no idea what’s currently going on in the JJK fanbase.)

(I'll try answering both interpretations below the cut.)

If you mean just JJK's end... Regardless of the version, unless there’s some serious revamping in the Vol 30 release, none of them really change my opinion on the ending.

If you mean the entire work... I prefer the TCBscans most of the time, but there are some instances (they are very scarce) where the VIZ is something I prefer.

My interest in leaks vs official is more about the translation process. Comparing quick, contextless translations to the cleaned up fan translations to the final product is fascinating. (I also enjoyed some of the chaotic fan reactions to leaks. It was kind of like a sporting event. I don't think I'm ever going to forget witnessing the JJK 255 leaks for the Gojo Post-Mortem Racist Reveal in real time.)

For example, when JJK 255 was officially translated, no one overseas really knew what the hell Gojo was talking about with respect to the linear/point movement powerscaling explanation he gave for himself vs Miguel.

Thankfully someone on Reddit was able to explain why John Werry cannot do his job properly.

This is an instance where the fan translation, or rather fan localization, is legitimately superior in every way.

When doing direct translations, you risk making little sense to the target audience if they aren't familiar with certain culture references. Localization tweaks the literal translation to get the mood or intent across.

For an English speaking audience that is likely unfamiliar with Chinese terms for martial arts movements, TCBscans localized this as a sprinter vs a marathoner. This effectively gets across that Miguel is the better fighter in short bursts while Gojo is the better fighter in the long run.

Incidentally, this localization made Gojo and Gege by proxy look more racist. (Gege never made the running comparison! That was the localizers!)

And that little bit of extra is something I prefer to the original script. Here you have this guy apologizing for being racist on accident and then immediately being racist on accident again. That’s just…so real.

Unlearning prejudices can take a while. Plenty of mistakes with microaggressions like that will be made along the way. Even though it’s not intended by the author, I really like that it highlights how clumsy this can be at times.

And that's kind of my approach to the different versions. I like mixing and matching things to get my preferred experience. I usually try to line it up with the themes of the original. But sometimes...VIZ botches the translation so bad that it's too funny to not consider canon. (Kind of like Destiel from Supernatural being canon in Spanish.)

This one is my favorite. (JJK Thorny Road at Dawn Ch 3 Pg 69. Yes, this is really on page 69.)

We get the bondage because John Werry forgot the lore of JJK. Binding Vows you see come from the word 縛り(Shibari). Shibari can refer to a specific type of kinky rope bondage from Japan. It's also a normal word used for regular non-sexual bondage. Depends on the context!

Localization could've gone with Shibari=Bondage, but they went with Binding Vows. It could've been to lessen that sexual connotation, but we don't really know. (This localization also helps with dubbing the anime. Shibari has 3 syllables and so does Binding Vows.)

The fan translation of this chapter gets across the original tone a bit better. Though this translation excluded anything that could hint to the use of Shibari, erasing Gojo's mention of binding vows in the original Japanese entirely. (Also I can't find the OG Japanese version of the light novel at this time, so please fact check trust me on this.)

“I came to this pub to challenge myself to only drinking non-alcoholic drinks and I can only go home when I get drunk.”

“Then you’re never going home for the rest of your life……”

“A self-challenge is only meaningful if you set some strict conditions, right? Ichiji, when you play video games, don’t you get delighted when your level goes up?”

“When I play video games, I don’t really commit myself to those kinds of challenges….”

So as you can see, both versions remove Gojo mentioning binding vows, but only one of them carries the tone of immaturity in the original Japanese. There's almost an innocence to him playing games sober in a place where adults are supposed to get hammered. That contrast does fit well with Gojo being perceived as a childish adult.

However, I prefer the John Werry translation because Gojo being a rope bunny is funnier. There's no real reason for me to believe this. Gojo doesn't speak sexually to anyone at all. Is he flirtatious? Absolutely. No matter what version you go with, it's pretty obvious Gojo is flirting with Nanami (especially in the light novels—Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust Chapter 2: Resurrection Doll) and Jogo. But it's pretty straightforward. Double meanings are more of Sukuna's thing.

The John Werry light novel translations are a much smoother and better read than the manga. I've yet to prefer a fan translation of the light novels to VIZ's. Like How are these the same person? There are still minor mistakes here and there like Utahime getting he/him'ed (JJK Thorny Road at Dawn Ch 4 Pg 41) and Gojo being called blond (see the above bondage passage)...but the dialogue is fire I think.

Anyways. I've never been one to say a single version of something is the correct version since they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the translation/localization will improve on the source material in unexpected ways. Even to the point where most of the fanbase will ignore the original. I can't really disagree with that. I see the different versions as something pretty flexible. How I interact with them depends on what I'm using them for.

If I want to argue on the basis of something being canon, I will go with whatever is closest to or directly from the original creator. It's much more convincing to people to use something official. If I'm creating fan content, I'll be much more relaxed about it.

This wasn't in your ask, but I think it's important to mention. The anime is also canon in its own way since Gege was involved with its creation and it often expands on the manga where it is desperately needed. It's just much harder to use it for an analysis because you have the whole new layer of Sub vs Dub and scrubbing for screenshots. Unless it's something very specific, I otherwise won't draw from it when yapping.

I hope this answers your question?

To summarize, I have a strong TCBscans preference for the manga and heavily favor VIZ for the light novels. If I'm going to make an assertion that needs a higher burden of proof, I'll go straight to the manga raws or interviews to defend my position. (And currently there is no version of JJK's end I prefer because I don't vibe with the content on a fundamental level. Maybe the anime version will change that.)

[icharchivist]

Hello fellow European,

I feel your grievances about the localization of Disney movies. First of all, I like most German dubs, they do great jobs, we have great voice actors and usually there's a lot of effort put into things. I generally feel that they hold up in a lot of cases. But I also noticed that in recent years, they got super lazy about the songs, especially. Like. They don't even rhyme. I almost liked it better when they altered the meaning slightly (like they did with most Renaissance movies) to make sure it stays in the meter and rhymes. Let It Go in German is a travesty

So I started mostly watching the movies in English, so as to not tear out my hair and then checking the songs out later

I gotta say, there was an uptick in the quality of Encanto, those songs were good again and I'm glad

However, the most interesting discovery of today is that one, yes, the French version of Zero to Hero is superior, I admit defeat, the German one is fine but not great, but, more importantly. There's no German version of I'm Still Here at all.

They just used the English song. That's so fucking lazy. I couldn't believe it at first, they've never done that, but maybe since Disney had basically given up on the film they weren't ready to put in effort? Or since nobody was singing it in-universe, they left it in like a music video?

But they translated other songs, like every song from Tarzan has a German version that's in the movie. Funnily enough, Phil Collins sang those as well. But those aren't diegetic either, so there's no excuse

So yeah, that's currently driving me insane

Happy Summer Belial anniversary though

HELLO DEAL EUROPEAN!!

i've heard the German songs were pretty decent in general but i didn't know that it seemed to take a dive in quality tho D:

i think the same reason as to why there was a dive in quality with French dub probably applies: less time in between the release of the English movie and the Dub for the translators to actually do their work.

Before the Internet became big enough for torrent movies to become a thing, at least with France, there was at least a 6 months period between the release of the movie in English and the release of the translated version in France. So it meant for 6 months, the translators AND the voice actors had a lot of time to work on their things and make decisions and stuff.

Once torrent became super big and it became easy to find a movie as it was just released in English with subs online (or, in case of French, having a French Canadian dub ready at the time of the release of the movie while our dub studios weren't ready yet), it became necessary for the European releases to align as close as possible to the English releases of the movie.

It means that any work of translation and voice acting were all in pre-production along with the work of the English studios, and it also means that it is less likely to rework on your translation or acting because everything has to be done quick to adapt to the ultimate release. If an English production would make a sudden cut right before release of the movie in English (like it was the case for Frozen and stuff), the adjustment for the French version has to be immediate.

I would be willing to bet the same thing happened to German releases.

Translation and re-dubbing are jobs on their own that takes a lot of time to be reworked, and it's typically the type of things that suffers from a rushed job.

The dive in quality in translation really started happening around that time where movies became a worldwide release event rather than allowing a few months for translators to do their jobs.

I still have some raising eyebrows moment looking at old translations at times, but it's clear people worked on it with like, intentions and meaning on their own. But once you look at mid 00s project and onward a lot of the most questionable decisions can easily be given to "the translators were hella rushed."

I also really dislike the French version of Let It Go, but in Frozen at least the one that REALLY annoyed me and missed the point to me was Love Is An Open Door, which was translated Love is a Gift. Which is like. Bro. Sweetie. It's a girl singing about how love must be an open door because she's traumatized by the way her sister has literally and metaphorically closed the door in between the two of them since forever. Come on. And other details of this song that drives me insane.

Encanto's french version... i watched the movie in French but i honestly don't remember the lyrics or song. I just remembered thinking the flow was extremely awkward in French though.

VERY GLAD you like the French version of Zero to Hero tho, i'm obsessed by how good it is personally, it's really rare i genuinely think a French song is doing a hell of a good job.

however, shocked to hear the Treasure Planet song wasn't even something they translated. It might not have been something Jim himself was singing but it was an important song for the flow of his character, which is why i hate the French take on it so much for just patronizing him while the whole point of the song is "i'm sick of being patronized". But not even showing the meaning of this song in German? That's such a shame.

I know in France we had another problem with the fact that it was a superstar's son who was tasked with making the translation and the whole mediatic buzz around the movie was all about the fact this famous guy did the song in French and put his own spin on it. Considering how often in the 00s they just kept the English song without changing it in some movies, i'd say the only reason Treasure Planet's song was translated is bc they had that one star to do it for them honestly. God this movie was really sabotaged from the inside at this point.

For Tarzan/Phil Collins's soundtrack movies tho it's totally because Phil Collins himself is a madman (respectfully) and is the one who insisted on singing the songs in as many languages he could. He's an outlier and shouldn't be counted as to why some disney that are non-diegetic gets translated and others don't.

Very glad to be sharing this very unique type of frustration that is just "wtf were the translators thINKING"

and Happy Summer Belial Day Release To U Too o7

[bradfoe]

Vampires at Universal, 1930

Last weekend (this is an article from 2015), the actress Lupita Tovar passed away at the age of 106, more than eighty years removed from her starring role as the female lead in Drácula. This distinction had made her one of the last surviving links to the early days of Universal Pictures, when its founder Carl Laemmle oversaw the transition to the new era of talkies. Universal was then earning a reputation for its horror movies and the worldwide success of Phantom of the Opera in 1925 only added to its growing association with Victorian monsters.

Universal had an inadvertent role, though an inciting one, in the birth of sound cartoons. Through the actions of independent producer Charles Mintz, to whom the studio had given a contract, Walt Disney was dismissed from the Oswald series just prior to the revolution he helped to unleash with Steamboat Willie. After that, Universal was quite slow to respond, trying some half-measures to keep up with its more technically savvy competitors.

In a sense, the jig was up. The studio had to respond with versions that had dialogue in those languages. And mind you, the art of dubbing had not yet taken hold. So, on October 10, 1930, filming began on a movie that perfectly illustrated a short-lived Hollywood solution. In most ways, it was exactly the same movie as the classic Dracula starring Bela Lugosi with his sweeping cape and leering glare. However, this alternate version had a Spanish-speaking cast and was titled Drácula. It made use of the same sets and a translated shooting script.

Lupita Tovar

The role played by Helen Chandler was performed instead by Tovar, who was recently signed on contract from Mexico to be a “Universal player.” In fact, the entire Spanish version of Dracula was shot at night, 7pm to 7am, after the English-speaking cast and crew were finished with a day’s work. They did not cross paths, working on opposite shifts. Tovar said she never once even met Lugosi. All of her scenes were filmed with a caped Carlos Villarías as the famous blood-sucking Count.

The existence of this nearly shot-for-shot counterpart, a sort of movie doppelgänger, has spawned a fairly lively internet debate about which is better, with a lot of momentum pressing toward the lesser known “Spanish Dracula” on account of a crew that, it is rumored, was competing to make a superior version at night. A century later with side-by-side comparisons online, the debate has hit high gear, but the famous performance of the undead Lugosi does not lie down easily and so the argument continues.

Regardless of which version is better, a certain respect arises from knowing that the Spanish-language shooting schedule enforced a vampire lifestyle on all its cast and crew. There is a ‘Method acting’ purity to this version: everyone involved slept during the day and then went to work at night. Just knowing that makes it seem intrinsically more authentic. Here is an edited clip from Drácula, released in 1931:https://www.youtube.com/embed/MoO_QWF7q8Q

Perhaps less well known is that Walter Lantz, who inherited the responsibility for producing the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, might also have been up late some of those nights while Conde Drácula, played by Villarías, was readying for his closeup on the legendary Stage 28 at Universal. This revelation comes to us from a 1978 interview with Manuel Moreno, in which he disclosed that the Oswald production schedules were so challenging to maintain that Lantz would work at night even after a tough day at the studio.

“Lantz used to come at night, and he’d stay there all day Saturday,” said Moreno. It is easy to get the impression that Walter, lacking a precise production discipline, may have brought the cartoons across the finish line by fusing the elements together himself, working alone in the editing room. Considering how loose and improvised we know these early Universal cartoons were—recollections exist of animators stating how nonspecific their scene directions could be—it would make sense that Lantz used the quiet of his nighttime work to assemble his vision from among the individual parts.

Manuel Moreno, a leading animator at Universal, seen here reflected in a mirror at his desk.

In a way, the knock on Lantz has always been that he delegated creative vision for his cartoons to his directors for most of his career. However, the situation would have been different in a year like 1930, when he was a new producer charged with keeping Oswald relevant in light of innovative new sound cartoons coming from Disney. The technical challenge was paramount and Lantz had actually proven himself quite a whiz with hybrid cinema techniques on his prior Dinky Doodle films for Bray, so he was versatile and up for the task.

In 1930 he was still actively a director in addition to being a producer. He was young and hungry and he was the force moving the Universal Cartoon Dept. into the sound era. However, Lantz was not hard-charging and uncompromising like Disney, so maybe some of the magic of his process only manifested as something special if he could bring it all together with the final edit and post-synch. The orderly sophistication of the Disney method was challenged at Universal by a more slapdash approach. And because of the tight budgets Lantz was given, his pragmatism was always a factor in the making of his cartoons.

Bill Nolan was the other producer-director working alongside him, but Nolan was chiefly there for his prodigious ‘pencil mileage’—as one of the fastest animators in the industry—and not necessarily for his management skills. Eventually, as Lantz became the undisputed boss, Nolan moved on and Moreno unofficially became the manager of the animation staff, basically a surrogate who was taking on directing responsibilities. According to Moreno:

“The sound recording was always supervised by Lantz. I had nothing to do with the recording because I couldn’t afford the time, and there wasn’t much that I could do, with Lantz there as supervisor. He knew exactly what the story was about, because he had been with it all through its construction. And the sound effects were no problem: a lot of times [story man] Vic McLeod would record the sound effects or [Pinto] Colvig would… Lantz did all the editing and patching the sound together, synchronizing the tracks”.

It seems that Lantz developed a business practice of being involved in the initial story meetings and then supervising the recording sessions at the end. For the middle of the process he appeared to be mostly hands-off. There were no “sweatbox” reviews of the pencil animation to ensure quality and continuity, as with Disney. That would have been too costly and, in any case, Moreno felt that “we were practically always behind schedule.” The animators really only had one shot at any sequence.

Lantz felt the stress of his situation, especially because his Universal budgets decreased year to year, but he was remarkably easygoing in spite of it and he negotiated the setbacks quite capably, keeping Oswald in production for nearly a decade. It is interesting to think of Lantz returning to Universal at night, editing and completing the cartoons. Lantz was technically adept and perhaps he liked the solace of quietly working alone without distractions.

Walter Lantz at the Movieola

I suspect he developed this nocturnal habit by 1930, growing his proficiency with the finer art of comedic synch-sound. Since this was a paradigm shift that shook the industry, failure to adapt was not an option. Musical director Jimmie Dietrich helped him with this process during regular hours, but it may have been at night that Lantz honed his craft, running the strips of film elements back and forth. Although Lupita Tovar never met Bela Lugosi, it is possible she crossed paths with Lantz. It is fun to speculate about such a thing, though we will never know.

A connection we do know is that Manuel Moreno and his brother George were amateur film enthusiasts and, during the early 1930s, they shot a home movie of the Universal animators clowning around on Stage 28, the legendary ‘Phantom of the Opera’ set that was repurposed for many classic monster movies. Judging from a copy of this home movie that I own, “The Gang at Universal” — as they are referred to on the title card — had a blast using the opera house façade for their filmed gags.

As an animated homage to this famous stage of horror, the 1930 Lantz cartoon Spooks is an outright spoof of Phantom of the Opera, possibly even made to be shown in front of the featured “international sound version” released that same year. Oswald meets the phantom in the cartoon and then vanquishes him by answering a riddle (“Ouch!”) that was the punchline to a popular American joke at the time. Enjoy watching this cartoon. And imagine Walter Lantz working the vampire shift.https://www.youtube.com/embed/oR067Tv7-SI

Manuel Moreno was interviewed by Milton Gray in January 1978, in Santa Ana, California. Excerpts above are from this interview, a copy of which exists in the Manuel Moreno collection archived at Stanford University. The frames of Walter Lantz and Manuel Moreno are taken from a “Going Places with Lowell Thomas” short titled Cartoonland Mysteries (1936) from an HD transfer by Steve Stanchfield. For the top image, I stitched together Bela Lugosi and Lupita Tovar, day for night, forever linked and yet never to have met.

[topapk]

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[beansterpie]

Thank you so much for the link! I've been looking for something like this for ages (I tried looking some of this up on the internet archive before but I didn't manage to find it at the time 🤔 also @marley-manson, here, if you're interested!)

Also, is it just a case of the internet archive's digital library being formatted from left to right, or did VIS print the manga back in the day in a western format too?

And thanks for chiming in with some pics from the official VIS version! It's interesting to see how they handled the dialogue, and also the little changes they chose to make in certain places.

Like the VIS version of the title page gets the overall message across, but it does lose the vibe of Kurita and Sena just excitedly/timidly extending a request for others to join them in playing American Football, only for Hiruma to come in with the final line and make it a violent demand lol. But I guess with translation, small things like that are difficult to maintain while keeping sentence flow. (also let Hiruma say fuck!! Or more like, 'MOTHERFUCKER!!!' in the case of this title page lol)

RIP poor Sena, only just met his new classmates and they've already scoped him out as gopher material.... :') And yeah, 'go buy me/us food' is a common bully trope in Japan for suuuree, I just figured for those who didn't know that, the line 'go buy us bread' would sound pretty odd. (yakisoba bread is delicious btw, it's basically a hotdog bun stuffed with yakisoba lmfao, just carbs on carbs with umami flavor. EXtremely satisfying.)

Hiruma's speech patterns are so funnyyyy, I love that 糞 is dubbed with ファッキン (fucking), and that he's so consistent about it too. But yeah you're right, I mean I think kuso-(noun) can be pretty biting, but it also depends on context and like, tone. And ファッキン used in Japanese certainly doesn't have the same bite as it does when used in English, so I guesssss I can understand why they settled with 'Damn'. Still, let Hiruma say fuck!!!

Regarding the whole Shumu thing, it's interesting VIS went with 'manager'. It makes sense, and the shumu role doesn't end up being important enough to justify trying to clarify it, but I do wonder how they did Hiruma's dialogue later on when he manipulates Mamori into becoming their manager by saying that it was unreasonable to expect Sena to be able to take on both shumu and manager responsibilities? (I guess they could just have him say that Sena couldn't take on all manager responsibilities by himself or something).

LMAO the 'Renraku-sama' bit always had me go ????? I was like 'is this some sort of reference or idiom that I'm not aware of?' but no it was just some kind of confusion with the word for contact info. I also wonder if they didn't realize that うん is a sound of agreement? Like 'uh-huh' (though the usage is subty different). Or if they thought having Sena agree there made him less sympathetic...? Idk but odd change.

But yeah I have no doubt that the VIS translation is overall superior to the fan scans, even if they occassionally end up sacrificing small things in the name of sentence flow and readability. And I've heard that certain lines are translated in really clever ways!

I'll still use the fan scans for my readalong posts just because I think that's the version most people are familiar with, but it'll be great to have the VIS version handy (up to a certain point lol) for reference! Anyway thanks for the lovely and thorough response, I'm glad people seem to be into this!

ES21 japanese volumes - part 1/??

Sooooo I recently got my hands on the complete Eyeshield 21 manga series in Japanese and as someone who's only ever read the story through fan-translations on dodgy websites online, I wanted to go through and "live" blog about it, so to speak. I thought it would be interesting to see the changes between the languages and where the fan-translations likely fail with mistranslations. (No shade btw, I think fan-translations are great both as a hobby and the fact that they're doing their work for free, but it's also a reality that the vast majority of fan-translators are amateurs, many of whom don't fluently speak the language they're translating, so there's bound to be mistakes!) Also, I wanna know what they're originally saying because I’m nosey <3

I know the official English translation by VIS is allegedly pretty decent, bar the toning down of some things (like Hiruma's language lol) so if you've had the chance to read the official version, feel free to chime in on differences with the fan-translation that I'll be referencing, or potential differences between the Japanese version too!

And finally, while I am half Japanese and grew up there, tragically my language skills are imperfect. I speak it, but my vocabulary isn't very robust, so I do look up the definitions for a lot of words and kanji, as well as more nuanced connotations or references that may go over my head. Bilingual problems <3 But again, it's good practice for me and I think it'll be kind of fun!

Right off the bat, this page. What it’s saying is essentially, “You better come out and play (in the) American Football match!” But because Japanese syntax is different from English, it’s structured like “American Football Match you better play!!” The translator was confused by the final line, because in Japanese a way to say ‘participating in a match’ is by using 出る which means to ‘go out’— sort of like ‘go out (into) the match’. Maybe a better option would have been ‘get the fuck out and play!!” or just “you better fucking play!!”. It still keeps the overall sentence structure which sounds awkward in English, but at least it gets the meaning across.

(I’m not gonna get into every little mistranslation btw, because that would take forever, but I felt that was a good way to explain how frequently there are little mistakes like this.)

Putting the rest under a cut because I imagine this will get long

Look at our boy <3 So as you know, we start our story with Sena Kobayakawa timidly seeing if he passed his high school entrance exam into Deimon High School, with his childhood friend/older sister figure, Mamori Anezaki lending moral support.

In the third panel, what Sena says is actually “I feel like I’ve been praised for the first time in 10 years—” (maybe they changed it because that was too pathetic 😭) Then in the fourth panel, what Mamori says is more along the lines of “And to think you were a total mess in math and English… It’s all thanks to Mamori-sensei!”

Also I want to point out that Mamori is a little cheekier in the first few chapters. Like obviously still kind and nurturing in personality (her name is literally ‘to protect’), but she teases Sena and feels more like an older sister than like, an overprotective mom lol. Miss that for her 😔

Then along comes our kind senpai to accost our clueless protag...

There’s no mistranslation, but I just wanted to mention that the way Hiruma talks in Japanese is so funny? Like in panel 1, he’s speaking with a dramatic affect, he sounds like some sort of npc in a jrpg giving the protag a quest. And then in panel 2, his ‘of course!’ is this shortened, slang version of the word that sounds almost cute and very modern after the previous line. Hiruma uses a lot of slang in general, though I can’t say if any of it is like, common or used by teenagers (of the time, anyway) or if it’s just Hiruma-isms.

(Look at Kurita doing the sign of the cross in panel 3 😂)

I can’t believe Hiruma managed to physically emulate the experience of contracting some shady internet virus…..

Something that’s done with Hiruma’s dialogue a lot (it’s done w/ other characters too, but most often with Hiruma) is where there’ll be a word/term in kanji that means one thing and pronounced in a certain way, but then the romaji (so the phonetic pronounciation, basically) next to it says something different. Now, in some stories (like Berserk for my pals out there), this is used to create poignant, layered meanings in the text. In ES21 however, it’s mostly used for sports manga flavor. For example, in the above page in Hiruma’s spam fax message, he uses the word 作戦, which means tactics or strategy, and is pronounced: “sa - ku - se - nn” さ-く-せ-ん. But the romaji next to that word reads タクティクス which is quite literally just the English word ‘tactics’ spelled phonetically in Japanese lol (aka a loanword).

He does this A LOT, most frequently with sports terminology, where the kanji are pretty dense, technical terms, and the romaji a loanword version of the same meaning. (though now that I think about it, it might also be because while パワー (power) and スピード (speed) are frequently used and well known loanwords to the average Japanese person, タクティクス (tactics) might be more obscure, so the kanji is there to like, clarify the meaning? 🤔)

Also I love all the early 2000’s tech we see in the early chapters— flip phones and fax machines galore! Even within the later segments of the series, the flip phones start to magically get more advanced, but in my heart ES21 takes place in like, 2003. If they ever do a remake of the anime (which is unlikely to say the least) I’d want them to maintain the early 00’s vibes. It just wouldn’t be the same if everyone had smart phones.

Skipping ahead a few pages, I remember this bit never really made sense, but I got enough of the general gist that I kind of shrugged and moved along. But!! the translation is just making stuff up here?

So for context: it’s Sena’s first day at Deimon, and Mamori (who’s a grade above him) advises him to make proper friends this year, since he has a history of only ‘hanging out’ with shitty bullies who used him as an errand boy.

In the English translation, Sena seems to get a text from a mystery number, telling him to pay up for a bet we never saw happening. He goes to meet up with the texter, who we assume at this point is a previous aquaintence, since he had Sena's number? Maybe one of those bullies that Sena hung out with from middle school? They make Sena go and get them an unspecified thing, but because Sena ran there and back so quickly, they don't believe that Sena actually went, and is lying when he says they were sold out. They drag Sena to a small shed to beat him up, and in the last panel of the third page, Sena says that he's been their errand boy since kindergarden?

So for a number of years I was under the impression that the Ha-ha brothers knew Sena from before the series, even though that never seemed to come up in the rest of the story.

But in the original version, Sena is actually getting a text from Mamori-- which makes sense because it was established earlier that his cell phone is brand new and he only has Mamori's number in his contacts. Mamori's text says: "If someone tries to make you run their errands, tell them 'let's decide by rock-paper-scissors!'" Sena is understandably kind of embarrassed by this, and mutters to himself that he's not a kid anymore.

Then it cuts to Sena being picked on to be an errand boy lmao. Presumably this is because Sena just looks like an easy target to bullies, not because of any previous aquaintence rip. The blond bully tells Sena to go buy them bread (which might sound weird, but Japan has a lot of tasty snack breads that they sell everywhere). In panels 2+3 of the second page, Sena timidly tries to bring up the rock-paper-scissors thing, but is intimidated into giving up and just doing what he's told.

Again, they don't believe that Sena actually went all the way to the school store and back with how quick he was, so they decide to beat him up in the shed. As he's being dragged, Sena says, "It really was sold out! I've gotten used to being an errand boy since kindergarden, so I've just gotten fast--!"

So yeah, if there were any other people who've only read fan-translations and were confused by this bit, there you go.

oh you just know it smelled like ass in here.....

(I never noticed the shotgun propped against the desk on the right before lol, idk why I'm surprised, but Hiruma really just left his Actual Guns lying around huh?)

(2nd pic - Kurita: "New club applicants!!?")

There he is!! Our boy Kurita!! I do miss when he occassionally had like, more human features lol. As much as I love his big ol' smiley face, it does rub me the wrong way when the fat characters (because Komusubi falls into this too) are the only ones with anpanman faces.

(anpanman, for the uninitiated)

(Kurita: "To literally clash with the opponent in order to pursue a goal together with everyone-- that moment is exhilerating!")

Aw look at Sena feeling inspired! Honestly I really love how Kurita is Sena's first friend he makes in the series, and that vibe in the early chapters where it's just Sena, Kurita and Hiruma is so much fun <3

(P1: Kurita: "Way to go Sena!" Imaginary Coach: "It's thanks to you that we could participate in the Christmas Bowl!" Mamori: "You're so cool Sena!"

P2: Mamori: "You have to make the first move!" Sena: "U-um!"

P3: Sena: "Can I... be the team shumu*?" Kurita: "WHAAATT!? O-OF-OF COURSE!")

*Ok soooo I don't fully understand what a shumu is lol, or how you'd translate it to English. The word itself apparently means 'person in charge' so? The fan-translation just calls it the manager, but based on something Hiruma says later, I get the impression that the shumu and the manager are technically different roles? But when Mamori becomes the manager later, she takes on a lot of what are allegedly 'shumu tasks', along with Hiruma, so idk. If anyone's read the official VIS translation, feel free to chime in on how they did it, because I'd be curious to know!

That being said, adorable of Sena to think he could have handled that responsiblity at all 😂 our boy has many talents, but being smart and organized is not among them.

Ok fun feelings are over, it's time for pain.

(Sena looking at his contact list, having just added Kurita's number, then wham D: )

The three bullies from before were waiting to get revenge. The dialogue is a bit different in the original. Juumonji (the blond one) actually says: "That fatso a friend of yours, Sena? Tell me his contact info-- if you do that, we'll let you go." To which Sena timidly and reluctantly agrees. Then Kuroki (the dark haired one) says: "But do you think one bat will be enough? With that brute strength..." In the final panel, Juumonji says: "It's better with just one, since we're gonna call the police beforehand." Togano (with the glasses): "The police?"

Juumonji: "As long as we get him wrapped up in the fight, it'll be fine. We'll say we got these wounds from being assaulted by the fatso with the bat -- We'll get him disqualified from the American Football tournament." One of the others: "Ooohh, smart!"

I guess the overall sentiment isn't that different, but knowing that the initial demand was for Sena to hand over Kurita's contact info with the promise that they would spare him if he obeyed-- and that at first he agreed-- makes his change of heart feel even more significant.

(Sena: "IF YOU'RE GONNA HIT ME, THEN HIT ME!!! I'LL NEVER TELL YOU (Kurita's info)!!!")

Tell 'em Sena!! A part of me sort of wishes the story maintained this serious story beat instead of undercutting it with humor in the next panel (not shown here) but at the same time, ES21 is overall a more lighthearted, comedic story which I love it for, so I don't think I'd like it getting too angsty. I'll always have Berserk in my corner if I want some actual angst lol.

(1st pic: various sounds of surprise or pain, and in the last panel: "Oi, don't let him get away!"

2nd pic: Sena -- "No way!!!" Hiruma: "Hm? Oh it's that guy" )

Lol I do love the little details Murata included, like Kuroki taking a swing at Sena as he's biting Juumonji's hand but then totally missing in the fourth panel because Sena's so fast. Also I'm always on the lookout for the kinds of stuff Hiruma buys, snack wise. We know he loves sugarless gum, obv, and drinks coke based on that one time he bought some for himself, Kurita & Sena, but what else are in those bags? I want to know!!

--------

And lol apparently I'm only allowed 30 images per post rip, so I guess I'll end this here. I guess I can.... reblog and continue? Or I might just make another post for the next part 🤔 Besides this got way too long, so I'll have to be more brief in future posts lol.

I'm honestly not expecting more than like, five people to interact with this lol, but if anyone is interested in specific points of the story they want me to look at, please feel free to ask!

[molinaskies]

On Sonic's Emotional Characterization

Sonic X Episode 39 - Sonic and Eggman solo conversation

So, I’ve finally gotten around to watching the original Japanese cut of Sonic X after being raised on the English dub, and I know I’m not the first to say that the original is superior to any other version. I was pretty certain I felt this way for a while into watching, but the above scene solidified this opinion.

This scene in its intended state is so important to the show as it, for the first clear and objective time thus far, reminds you that Sonic’s still a kid despite having the world on his shoulders.

It also showcases that Eggman is an extremely complex villain with boundaries and limits that he will never violate, but that’s not the point I want make right now.

Right now, I want to focus on Sonic’s feelings, because (and this is no secret) Sonic Team used this show to show that Sonic has them – we’re just almost never allowed to see them.

Sonic enjoys the genuine quality time the current adventure forces him to have with his long-time friends – time he normally wouldn’t take out daily because he’s not one to adorn such vulnerability. He’s the kind of person who takes what he gets without impeding his own lifestyle or going out of his way, which works for him because he knows he gets to see his friends again but having everyone live under the same roof and bond on a level never reached before has clearly affected him in a positive way. Once they return home, our core group will go back to their normal lives and that closeness won’t be so easily accessible – in a way, Sonic will be forced to face his emotions more directly and admit to himself just how much his friends mean to him (a thought that scares him because of the life they all live, and how high the stakes are).

The other half of this idea are Sonic’s new human friends, especially Chris, who Sonic knows he’ll never see again once their worlds divide. The Thorndyke and Co. hospitality is heartwarming and tender, which anyone would likely enjoy and appreciate, but also extremely practical as Chuck is intelligent and insightful, Ella and Tanaka are supportive and encouraging, and Chris is decisive and caring. Despite his recklessness and tendency to cause trouble, Chris saves Sonic’s life multiple times because he’s so quick and willing to act.

Allow me to also outline how immensely different Chris’s character is in the original cut. He’s less whiney, more level-headed, and experiences a lot more growth as a character and showcases a lot of internal moral turmoil – he’s no longer a plot device to give Sonic grief (his Japanese voice actor, alone, helps a lot). Chris’s big moments in the show (appealing to Shadow in the SA2 arc, breaking free from Eggman’s trap to take the Chaos Emeralds away from the Egg Fort II) actually feel natural and true to his character because he has a lot more of these moments on a smaller scale in the original cut (emotional dialogue is significantly changed or outright removed in the English dub). The bond between Chris and Sonic, here, is genuine and more realistic because of this improved characterization. The adoration and platonic love and care between these characters actually have ample time to develop because Chris’s natural dialogue gives his character and this dynamic more time to shine. I come to bat for Chris because Sonic’s justifiable connection to him is extremely important.

The reason that Eggman confronts Sonic on this front is that he recognizes the bond Sonic’s formed with Chris and his other friends, Sonic’s overall emotional immaturity, and the fact that preparing to take action now will save Sonic, his friends, and both dimensions a lot of grief in the long run. You can argue that this entire encounter is undone by the next episode, where Eggman’s moon repairs turn out to be a plot to trick everyone into adoring him, but I’d argue that Eggman could have bluffed his way through this conversation without commenting on the fact that they need to return home (hell, that’s what the English dub does, and it works well enough as an excuse). In fact, Eggman didn’t even need to have this conversation, period, but he does, and this is why.

I’m compelled to share these thoughts because I’ve seen a lot of contention lately around Sonic’s characterization - namely the fact that Sonic is intended to be an “emotionally awkward, shy, and reserved” character (in main-line canon or otherwise). I’ve seen this commentary mostly in the IDW-sphere, where Sonic (per SEGA direction) is the nicest he’s ever been – to a fault, by design – and where he’s displayed a “softer” relationship with Amy. These factors, I’ve seen argued, make IDW and Sonic X (regardless of the cut) inauthentic characterizations of Sonic. I, however, find this entirely unfair.

As confident and collected of a character as Sonic is, he has always been a character who feels so, so, so immensely. What recent English game scripts butcher and what a lot of people seem to miss outright is that Sonic is highly emotional but doesn’t have the emotional maturity to comfortably process or showcase his more negative (anger, sadness, fear) and complex (romantic love, admiration) emotions. He knows they’re there, but usually refuses to address them. We see signs of these feelings in games and external media, but – again, by design – Sonic suppresses those feelings to focus on what he loves - his speed, his freedom, world peace, and his friends.

Something else important to note is that Sonic’s emotional intelligence is unparalleled to anyone else’s in the series (besides, maybe, Amy, Rouge, or even Eggman). Sonic has proved consistently his ability to diagnose emotions in others and will address his own complex emotions to empathize only when it will directly benefit someone else. Sonic’s advice to Merlina at the end of Black Knight is a wonderful example of this; other examples include Sonic’s insight on Chaos’ emotions in the final story of SA1, IDW issue 1 where he recognizes Tails’ hesitance, Sonic’s willingness to support Chris through his meltdown near the end of Sonic X season two (where they run away for some time before Sonic returns home), and when Sonic hones in on Rouge, who is portrayed as being impacted the most by Shadow’s existence and character, at the end of SA2 to comfort her and give her Shadow’s ring.

In fact, SA2’s ending also showcases Sonic’s tendency to focus less on himself (especially in front of others) when Amy checks in on him while he’s reflecting on his own; his immediate response is to suppress.

Sonic is a fifteen-year-old with the responsibility of the world’s peace and his found family’s happiness on his shoulders. He bears that burden alone and it clearly affects him, but he’s not at a point in his life where he’s ready to confront his heart. He just knows that it’s big, that it’s in the right place, and that it’ll be there for him when he’s ready. Whether that’s Sonic’s healthiest option can be debated, and I’d argue that he should let the people he wants to be closer to him in (Amy is a strong example, but that’s another essay that’s been done to death – perhaps another time), but the fact that he’s an emotional and reserved character is not.

TL;DR - please watch Japanese Sonic X. It’s so much better. Also, Sonic is a softie, confirmed.

I wrote a sequel to this topic discussing where Sonic's emotional troubles come from if you're ready for another novella.

[themightyaliendwarf]

I was watching a video where the subject of sub vs. dub in anime was raised, and it just struck me. You see, I think the majority of people who even consider this issue to be relevant consider English to be their native language - at least, that's what purely anecdotal evidence would lead me to believe.

English is my second language and I've never understood, why I should choose English dub over the original version - it doesn't make it "more localised", I don't have problems with reading and anime VA'a, for me, always seems to sound really out of place. Even if the dub is fine, it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps it's because of the difference in how mouth movement is animated in Japan vs. more in the West. Maybe it's because of the energy and line delivery - I'm not 100% sure here.

And then I started to wonder: have I ever thought that a dubbed version of anything was better than the original? Obviously, I grew up watching cartoons in my native language, so I'm biased here, but then there are shows I watched later in life and, for one reason or another, I chose the dubbed version.

So, let me just drop this nugget: Avatar the Last Airbender? The Polish dub is superior to the original and that's not an option - it's a fact :P You can love Dante Basco, but Leszek Zduń sounds better. You can check out how he sounds here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qFQy40SxFk

Also, this will only be understood by my fellow Polish people, so I will just mention this name: "Asterix i Obelix: Misja Kleopatra". If you know, you know. It's perfect.

But in all seriousness, I do think it's always good to familiarise yourself with the original version. You might just learn something new and find out that not everything is in the way you thought it was.

[shihalyfie]

@sage-striaton replied to your post:

Idk how people can say Frontier has characters that lack depth. Imo it’s a very psychological season. The whole adventure thing is aimed to making them grown in their behaviours and feelings, it’s a big metaphor of their development

I’m sorry for hijacking your response to my post to segue this into another rant of mine, but I want to emphasize that one of my goals with this blog (if I can be said to have any) is that I really, really, really want people to re-examine whether they actually believe in the rhetoric that’s been dominating this fanbase for two decades, or whether there’s more to it. This is especially in regards to the fact that we’re talking a series deliberately written in such a way that it’ll change meaning and nuance as you get older, so it can “grow up” with you in a sense, and yet it seems like -- especially in regards to Adventure through Frontier, due to their position as the oldest series that the majority of the fanbase was elementary or preteen age during -- people are still regurgitating the same rehashed twenty-year-old ideas like they’re undeniable law. It’s one thing if they’re saying it because the series didn’t sit well with them the first time and they don’t want to watch it again, but we’re reaching a recurring problem where it’s sort of “brainwashing” even people who don’t actually believe it but feel compelled to go along with it, or wouldn’t feel that way if it weren’t for peer pressure. Obviously, there are dissenting opinions, and ones that are even very loud about that, but that pressure remains.

The mainstream opinion in the fanbase is that Adventure is untouchable and impervious to any criticism, 02 is its inferior sequel with half-baked characters, Tamers is an auteur work that’s the “deepest” of the original tetralogy due to being dark, and Frontier is devoid of much substance at all. Even those who don’t really believe in this will still be pressured to go alongside it, those who like 02 or Frontier will be pressured to consider it a “guilty pleasure”, and it’s only very recently when certain events revealed that the idea of 02 actually having quite its own fervent and passionate fanbase that likes it on its own merits became properly recognized. (I have actually noticed a huge uptick in 02 fans, especially casual ones, being more shameless in talking about liking it in the last two years; you’re still going to get the obnoxious person “reminding” you how bad it apparently is if you bring it up, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be.) I’m not talking about whether something is a “good” or “bad” series -- that concept doesn’t really exist to me as much as whether it’s “to one’s tastes” or not, and I think one of the joys of this franchise is that it has things that cater to people with vastly different preferences -- as much as a lot of potential for analysis and intimate thought about these very fascinating series. Even if 02 and Frontier were as shallow or half-baked as they were accused of, I wouldn’t think it’d be shameful to like them for one’s own reasons anyway, but what frustrates me is that I just don’t think that’s true in the first place!!

Not helping is that there’s still a refusal among the fanbase to admit that there were substantial differences in American English dubbing (especially in regards to Adventure and 02), which I don’t mean as a bad thing in the sense that some people prefer to stick only with that dub and consider that version what they want to work with, but in the sense that the treatment of them as “the same thing” has been horribly detrimental when two people, one coming from that dub and one coming from the Japanese version (or a dub more closely based on it), will end up often having an argument doomed to go nowhere because they were never talking about the same thing to begin with. Recently, a friend admitted to me that although they’d switched to the Japanese version a long time ago, they still couldn’t get the image of Daisuke and Takeru having an inherently hostile relationship (they don’t) out of their head due to the influence of that dub, and although they consciously knew better -- at least enough to admit this to me -- it wasn’t helped by the fact that the fanbase itself continues to reinforce this image because of how normalized it is to treat the dub version and the Japanese version as “virtually the same” and for Western fanbase discourse to assume you should be projecting those takes into the Japanese version. If you’re hanging out in English-speaking circles but are working from the Japanese version or a dub directly based off of it, you do actually have to filter out a lot of takes you’re hearing because they won’t actually apply to the version you’re watching, but not a lot of people realize this.

All four of Adventure through Frontier share tons of key staff, especially Seki, known for her focus on wanting the kids in the audience to be able to empathize with and relate to the characters on screen. All four share some of the best character work I’ve seen not only in this franchise, but also in kids’ media in general, and I also stress that a lot of this has a ton of nuance that isn’t always apparent unless you read between the lines. I do understand that a lot of this probably went over our heads as kids, and I won’t say that the choice to execute it this way should be impervious to criticism, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to call attention to the fact it is there, and much of it becomes recognizable once you see it that way; for instance, so much of "it's contradictory character writing!" comes from the fact that the series tries to represent humans in their inconsistent, messy ways, and while it'll feel "messy" from a writing trope perspective, when you think about it as "since this person has this mentality, does it make sense to approach this with this mindset?", suddenly it becomes very consistent. The supposedly “shallow” 02 and Frontier characters will act in ways that match existing psychological profiles meant for actual humans to terrifying degrees, in ways that you might actually recognize even better once you’ve hit adulthood and start intimately understanding things like depression or anxiety in ways you might not have before. Shockingly, “having heart, important themes, and kindness towards the human condition” are completely valid reasons to uplift a creative work in ways distinct from technical writing or cerebrality or how many tropes they subvert or whatever.

On the flip side, people praise Adventure and Tamers for being the naturally “superior” works with better writing, but when it comes to talking about why the writing is supposedly better, a good chunk of the reasons stated don’t actually explain anything substantial, or go back to actually being passive-aggressive dunks on the other series in some form -- it’s because 02 and Frontier’s character writing sucks that badly, or because Adventure had the “best plot” (which may be true if by “best” you mean “easiest to understand”, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who might not be very happy about how its story progression is just a boss rush), or because Tamers is the “deepest” when by “deep” they actually mean “cerebral, dark, and unsubtle about it” without any further meaning (as if Adventure and 02 were idealistic series that never went into anything nuanced and not, say, the fact they went very viciously deep into societal issues between parents and children, psychological horror, and intimate takes on the human condition). I’m personally saying this as someone who does think Adventure and Tamers have a lot to praise in terms of their approaches to realism and the unique aspects each bring to the table, and I feel that people like this are doing them more of a disservice by not bothering to uplift them for any reason that isn’t actually just inherently condescending. I mean, even taking this outside of the original tetralogy for a bit, when I was plugging Appmon earlier, there’s a reason I focused more on its theme and character writing and the use of “dark” writing to convey its sheer range, rather than trying to boil it down to a shallow “it looks cheery but gets really messed up later!”, which is unfortunately an argument I’ve been seeing about it lately.

In the end, when I write my meta, I write it "making a case" for my point of view, and I welcome others to disagree, but if you disagree, I really hope it'll be because you personally disagree, and not because the entire fanbase has been saying otherwise for twenty years and I sound like a radical. I’m not saying that everyone’s consensus takes are completely unfounded, but frankly speaking, this fanbase has some really bad takes, and in the past few years I’ve found it freeing to not only “say what you feel without worrying what others think”, but actually go out of my way to outright try and purge all the preconceived notions and pick only the ones I agree with because I actually agree with them. I encourage you to do it too! And if you do, you might find things about something you like that you didn’t realize before.

[paint-n-thinner]

ok ive rewatched the chip and dale movie to decide on my feelings towards it, but this time i watched the spanish dub (latam) and already one of the issues i had with the film was resolved. The english voices for chip n dale in the english version were dull af but the vas for the spanish dub are 100% better, chip actually has emotion and its just so much better. Obviously the most ideal thing would be them having their og chipmunk voice but this is good too.

The animation is still meh for me, its not disgustingly bad, but i feel like if they rendered the models a little bit more for the '2D' characters and gave them a few more shadows and highlights, then it would a bit less obvious that they arent actually 2D and just cgi. Still though they should've just actually just animated chip in 2D, all the other characters could be cgi but since chip is literally the protagonist AND hes 2D they should've just put in the effort.

Also peter pan being the villan sucks bootyhole, fat cat (THE MAIN VILLAIN IN THE 90s CARTOON) should have been the villain, its on theme with the rescue rangers and makes more sense.

All in all the movie wanst bad, but is not amazing either, it was enough to tickle my brain with the references. I feel like the best way to watch this movie is if ur drunk/high while doing so. Also latam dub is the superior version, watch that instead of the english version.

[princesssarisa]

Snow White Winter: "My Favorite Fairy Tales: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1986 anime series episode)

My Favorite Fairy Tales wasn't a series I grew up with, but other people of my generation undoubtedly did. It received both British and American English dubs, and in the US at least, it was released on a series of VHS tapes. Its incidental music was also reused in the later, far superior anime series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics. While its 11-minute version of Snow White is nothing outstanding, it still deserves an overview, so I watched both of its two English dubs.

Predictably for such a short adaptation, the storytelling is simple. It opens with Snow White's birth, followed quickly by her mother's death (which here happens not in childbirth, but when Snow White is fifteen, not long before the main storyline), her father's remarriage, and the magic mirror's reveal to the wicked Queen that Snow White is the fairest in the land. No proof is demanded from the Huntsman of Snow White's death, and the suffocating bodice and poisoned comb are both cut, leaving only the poisoned apple. When the Prince discovers Snow White's glass coffin, he neither asks the dwarfs to give it to him nor kisses Snow White, but tenderly lifts her in his arms, and as he does so the piece of apple falls from her mouth. The Queen's demise is creative, though: a bit like a cross between her death in the Disney version and in Snow White and the Three Stooges. When she hears the news of Snow White's wedding, she changes back into her old hag form and flies forth on a broomstick with a magic sword to kill Snow White, but a bolt of lightning strikes her and she falls from the sky, then crumbles to dust.

The story is told by a voiceover narrator (a woman in the British dub, a man in the American dub), with only occasional lines of dialogue from the characters. Meanwhile, the animation is slightly crude, yet charming in its own way. Snow White is appropriately pretty and innocent, the brown-clad dwarfs are charming little chubby-cheeked gnomes, the Queen is appropriately sinister in both her regal form and her witch form, and the Prince is handsome despite his long, very '80s mullet of blond hair. The influence of Disney's Snow White can definitely be felt, though. We particularly see it in the design of Snow White's dress, in the adorable animal friends who flock around her, in the scene where the Queen dips the apple into her cauldron of poison, and of course in her death by lightning bolt. The American dub goes shamelessly further by giving the dwarfs their Disney names: Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey, Doc, Sneezy and Bashful. These names aren't used in the British dub, and since none of the dwarfs show any of the character traits associated with them, I think we can safely assume they're not called by those names in the original Japanese version either.

The differences between the British and American dubs are fairly interesting, because they use entirely different scripts. Besides blatantly borrowing from Disney, the American dub also adds more humor than the British dub does: for example, the American magic mirror's voice is cheeky and irreverent, calling the Queen "Queenie" and saying things like "At best you never looked too great," while the British mirror's voice is dignified and classically poetic. The American dub is also more squeamish about the subject of death than the British dub. Where the Huntsman is explicitly ordered to "kill" Snow White in the British version, the American version has him ordered to "make sure she never returns," and where the British dwarfs sob in grief after Snow White is poisoned, place her in a "coffin" and hold a "funeral" for her, the American dwarfs don't cry and simply place her in a "special bed" (although it's still clearly a glass coffin) because "they refused to believe she would not one day awaken." The American dub also gives the Queen the name Esmeralda, while in the British version she goes unnamed as usual.

For older lovers of fairy tale retellings, this is a Snow White for completists only. But for small children, it would be a decent introduction to the tale before they move on to more sophisticated versions. At any rate, it's far from perfect, but it's worth seeing.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @superkingofpriderock

[catie-does-things]

So by dint of the number of ML posts you make I finally decided to look the show up and give it a shot. I watched a couple of episodes in English before switching to the (in my opinion) superior French version.

I’m not fluent in French but I have enough relatives who lived there on top of a couple years of French classes to know when translations are...erroneous.

The transformation phrases obviously are considerably less colorful in the French but I also noticed Hawkmoth simply refers to himself as Le Papillon...which could be “the butterfly” or “the moth” probably depending on how dramatic Gabriel’s feeling...

You seem pretty well informed on the show’s background. Do you know if Hawkmoth is an invention for English speaking audiences, because we wouldn’t take a villain named The Butterfly seriously? Or did they think we’d be bored without something more colorful, as is presumably the case with “spots on” and “claws out” rather than “transformez moi”

I don't know why they changed the transformation phrases in the English dub, but as for Hawk Moth, yeah, I think they just decided Butterfly didn't sound sufficiently menacing in English. Which, to be fair, it really doesn't.

The show in general makes use of a lot of puns in the akuma names and Chat Noir's dialogue, so they sometimes have to get creative translating those as well.

The most critical difference between the French and English versions of MLB imo is that Jagged Stone has an American accent in the original French version, as opposed to the British accent they gave him in the English dub. An outrageously exaggerated American accent. American!Jagged is canon, don't let the fandom forget it.

[helenfl92]

Yashahime meta/analysis

Will Kirinowa become a thing (part 1)?

So after watching the last episode of Yashahime I decided to write my own meta/analysis about who the main couple from Yashahime will be. And before antis will jump at my throat, I will say that I don’t condone pedophilia in any way, shape or form. But just like Sesshomaru and Rin, I think Kirinmaru and Towa will become a couple in the future or at the end of Yashahime (when Towa will be of age). Below I will explain why I think so. 1) Their first appearance:

So Towa first appears in episode 1 of the series and the first shot of her it's her back. Then in the next shot her face, it's obscured to the viewers, with a small point/circle of light on her right cheek, while her left cheek it's illuminated by the light. Also, she appears in a submissive position (kneeling and with her hands tied behind her back). As for Kirinmaru, the first shot of him (in episode 7) it's sitting on a chair like a throne. When his face, it's shown, the first thing it's shown, it's his mask which covers his face, with the exception of his left eye which it's like a black hole. In the last shot, his left eye, it's shown, with the left side of his face covered in shadow, while the right side (which represents his true self... more on that in part 2) it's illuminated by the moonlight. Also something to point that here, it's the fact that Kirinmaru made his official appearance during a night with a crescent moon. The crescent moon being the symbol of the dog demon clan. So when they are first introduced, they are in opposite position to each other. Also it’s a coincidence that Kirinmaru’s left eye was the only one shown through most of season one, while Towa’s left eye was the place where the silver pearl was and will start to glow when she used the power of the pearl? As opposite to Kirinmaru’s first shot of his left eye which seemed like a black hole. 2) The eye color:  So, according to the color wheel, the opposite color to green it's red. Kirinmaru does have green eyes while Towa does have red eyes. This is another element that puts them in contrast to each other. Coincidence or foreshadowing? 3) The chinese astrology: So, according to Chinese zodiac’s relationships, certain animal signs are highly compatible and harmonize well together, while others find it impossible to get along with each other no matter how hard they try. One of the incompatible pair it's the dragon and the dog. So in episode 5, when Myoga was talking about Kirinmaru, he appeared as being depicted as a dragon (in Myoga's flashback...which was more like a mural picture than an actual representation).   And as of the last episode of season 1, it was pretty confirmed that Kirinmaru's true form it's that of a dragon. 4) First meeting in the feudal era Their first meeting it’s rather peculiar, to say the least. So first of all I would like to bring up the fact that this is the first episode since he appeared in the series, that find Kirinmaru outside in the broad daylight, unlike the other episodes where he was seen in a dark room. So Towa and co. are chasing the last loser (sorry, I meant peril),Totetsu, who runs to seas to get help from his superior, Kirinmaru. Of course Kirinamru is not happy about the uninvited guests, so after he uses a psionic attack on his underling and threatens him, his underling makes himself scarce pretty fast. As soon as his underling it's out of the picture, his attention it's focused on the girls.

Well, and this is where it gets a little bit nonsensical, to say the least. Kirinmaru uses another psionic attack to knock down the girls from Takechiyo's back and Moroha still ask him who he is.  😑 I don't see the sense of this question since he attacked them. I mean it's pretty obviously at this point who he is. Well, after this moment that made no sense to me, whatsoever, Towa asks him about the dream butterfly (since in the last episode Konton told them that the dream butterfly was designated by Kirinmaru... and Towa took it at face value, no questions asked). Of course, Kirinmaru doesn't oblige with a reply, so Towa uses her best weapon for feudal era....talk-no-jutsu (because this helped her so much in the past 😒), trying to convince Kirinmaru return the dreams and the sleep to Setsuna.

So I think every watcher out there had this face when Towa used talk-no-jutsu on Kirinmaru. Followed by an argument between the girls where Setsuna and Moroha didn't want to engage Kirinmaru because there was no reward for them. Up to this point only Towa wanted to solve the matter of the dream butterfly. Kirinmaru, who, at some point had enough of their bullshit, challenge them to a fight (due to the prophecy), even if Towa it's reluctant to fight him (due to her pacifist nature). Moroha and Setsuna are taken out pretty easily, while Towa it's the last one to face him and manage to leave him with a souvenir, until she it's also defeated. I won’t enter in details regarding the fight between Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru because is not important (maybe only the final of their fight). What I found strange about this episode is that Kirinmaru mostly acts like a teacher rather than an enemy. During the fight, he comments on the girls's weaknesses and uses very weak attacks (compared to what he uses in episode 24). 5) Osamu Kirin

So because of the fact that Towa always got in fights, while in the modern era, she changed schools often. Osamu Kirin it's the goofball English teacher (and homeroom teacher) from the christian academy Saint Gabriel (Saint Gabriel it's a saint in both the orthodox and catholic religion and the both of them are religious christian minorities in Japan, so yeah....), the last school where Towa got enrolled before she left in the feudal era. Their encounters are pretty brief. The first time, when Towa arrives late at her classes, he keeps her after school and say something pretty strange to her: When in Rome, do as the romans do.  Meaning that if you are in an unfamiliar place, you should behave like how the people behave there. And the second time when he tells Towa to stop daydreaming and to focus in classes. The first one was an useful advice for Towa since she went to the feudal era and had problems adapting there. And also he was the only teacher who didn't call Towa's adoptive parents to talk to them about the fact that she was late in her first day at school due to getting into a fight. Pretty strange right?  🤔 Everything seems normal with this teacher up until to episode 23.

So in this episode, Osamu Kirin goes to the airport (I wonder why... though I may have an idea that I will bring up in part 2) where he met with Sota Higurashi and his daughter, Mei, who came to pick up Moe. After asking about Towa, Osamu Kirin asks about the grim comet out of nowhere. Sota asks him where it's the comet because he can't see it. So this leads to my theory: Osamu Kirin it's Kirinmaru in the modern era. The first hint would be their names which are similar. Then the fact that only Osamu Kirin can see the grim comet, but a normal person can’t. Lastly, in both English dubbed and Japanese version Osamu Kirin and Kirinmaru do have the same voice actor (also in Miraculous Ladybug, in English version Gabriel Agreste and Hawkmoth have the same voice actor or Vergil and Urizen from Devil May Cry 5 and in the first given example they were the same person). And I also believe that there, it's a telepathic connection between Osamu Kirin and Kirinmaru. Like Wolverine in X-Men: Days Of Future Past type of thing. Also, I believe, there it's a time loop (more on that in part 2). So I think this analysis/ meta t's pretty long already so I will stop here for now. The next points that I want to bring it up will appear in part 2. So, see you all in part 2. 😌

[mst3kproject]

Attack from Space

What, you thought I was out of Star Man movies?

In the distant Sapphire Galaxy, the ferocious Superians (I think) have set out to conquer our universe, beginning with the planet Earth.  The High Council of the Emerald Planet doesn't like that, so off goes Star Man to suss out the Superian spies who are sabotaging our space programs.  This story intersects with that Dr. Yamanaka, a rocket scientist who has been kidnapped by the aliens and brainwashed into building them a fleet of super-spaceships.  It's up to Star Man and Yamanaka's two brave children to save the day!

You guys, you're not going to believe this but I think this movie had a fucking budget. I mean, it wasn't a big budget, but there's much more action and plot and much less of children in shorts running around pointing at things!  There's two different miniature space stations and a rocket ship that's better than the one in Radar Men from the Moon. There's a single plot that runs all the way through the movie and what's more, unlike the other Star Man movies it's not immediately obvious where 'part one' ends and 'part two' begins.  When I think about it, it's probably the point where the rocket blasts off from the secret alien base, but that is purely a hindsight thing.  This may be the best put-together film of the whole Star Man quadrilogy!

Don't worry, it still sucks.

Also in hindsight, I realize that the aliens are probably supposed to be the Sapphirians, seeing as they're from the Sapphire Galaxy.  But the actors keep sounding like they're saying Superians, which also works, since they're supposed to be a 'superior' race... and a couple of times I swore I heard Severians... like they're going to be severe with us, which they were when they started blowing up cities.  Now I'm really confused.

Anyway, like the other films in the Star Man series, Attack from Space begins with a narrator giving us the backstory.  In Evil Brain from Outer Space, this served to gloss over the robot assassin killing Ballazar and his minions preserving his brain, which is something I really would have preferred to watch. In Attack from Space, it just tells us that the, um... Silurians?  Are on their way. There's a brief time-killing interlude in which Star Man has to pass on destroying their space station because of the inevitable meteor shower, but then we get on to the idea of alien agents on Earth and the story proper starts up.  So for once, the narrator doesn't outstay his welcome.

Besides the whole actual budget thing, the other way in which Attack from Space surprises is by making a fairly superficial but apparently sincere attempt to be feminist.  This is the first Star Man film in which we've seen women among the aliens. The, er, Cyberians?  Are a mix of stiff Japanese extras and a few very embarrassed white guys whose lip movements suggest they're speaking English but saying something totally different from the lines that have been dubbed overtop.  The women we see appear to do desk work and monitor radio signals, kind of like Uhura on Star Trek, but it seems they can also serve as security guards, since Dr. Yamanaka's teenage daughter manages to pass as a guard just by stealing a, uh, Spherian? Uniform.

Yamanaka's daughter (according to IMDB her name is Kaoru... I think the narrator might have identified her as such but the name is never used again) is actually one of the most skilled and proactive of the human characters.  She's not the one who comes up with the escape plan (her father's assistant, who was given a name but I can't remember it, did that) but she is essential to its execution and to the eventual positive outcome.  In the final fight she makes a noble effort to save herself and actually manages to hold off the attacking, uh... Sumerians?  Long enough for Star Man to get to her. It's not the same as giving her a personality but it is definitely something, especially in a genre that's usually so relentlessly male.

But as with the other films in the series, most of Attack from Space is just a relentless parade of what the fuck.  There are fight scenes set to circus music.  The, um... Submarines?  They have two different uniforms – the 'rocket ship' version is a standard Japanese Alien silver baked potato jumpsuit, while the 'formal' one is just a re-used Nazi uniform, complete with heil Hitler salute!  There's a 'Death Star' but it's just a planet where the rocks are on fire.  There's a bit where they throw a dude over the side of the space station.  Are we meant to think he just floats around in space forever, or does he fall to earth in a fireball like what happened when Mike dropped the Hubble Space Telescope?!

The two space stations are plastic model kit wheels barely better than their counterparts in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! and don't stand up to anything like the amount of scrutiny the camera subjects them to.  When Star Man tears one apart with his bare hands, it doesn't look remotely like a feat of strength – it just looks like a dude ripping apart a structure made out of wire coat hangers. Outer space is very windy and surprisingly breathable.  If it were just the, uh, Siberians?  Who stand around on the outside of their space stations unaffected, I might buy that, but humans do it too. Either way, it was nice of Star Man to politely shut the airlock door behind him after he busted his way in.

The fight scenes are delightfully silly – badly choreographed, badly executed, and badly shot, and because of it utterly hilarious. There's not a single punch that looks like it lands.  The best bit in the whole movie is when Star Man kicks a guy up the stairs with the power of reversed film (this is the obvious choice for a MST3K stinger)!  On the other hand, there are also some rather surprising bits where Star Man picks up a gun and shoots some aliens, which seems very un-superheroish of him.

The movie's scientist, Dr. Yamanaka, lives in a bunker on an island and wears a lab coat all the time.  This is explained as being because of his work in rocketry, which is top-secret and dangerous and therefore must be kept away from population centres and the employees well-protected... but it's such a mad scientist trope that it's still a bit of a surprise that he's never revealed as working for the, um, Sulfurians?  The whole time.

I don't know if it's worth it to try any sort of actual analysis on the Star Man series as a whole, but I do want to note that out of four movies, three of them involve a threat to the Earth that comes not from humanity, but from an outside force.  The Salamander Men, Ballazar's Brain, and the... um... Sirenians?  Are all alien creatures that want to take over the Earth as the first step to a greater series of conquests.  In Invasion from Space we were told that Earth is 'the richest planet in the galaxy' but this idea doesn't come up in any of the other movies.  So why do all these would-be galaxy-conquerors want to start with little old us?

Well, there's the obvious fact that we wouldn't have a comprehensible movie if they didn't, but let's look for a reason in the universe of the stories.  One might be tempted to speculate that it's because Earth is easy to conquer by the standards of these spaceship-building, atomic-weapon-mastering, sorcerer-summoning aliens, but that may be a premature conclusion.  All these beings seem to have heard of Star Man, after all, and if they've been keeping up with his adventures as we have (which we clearly have, as Star Man is allowed to address the UN at one point) then they must know the Earth is under his protection.  There must be something else that makes the Earth special.  What is it, exactly, that we're rich in?  It can't be minerals, because none of the aliens are ever seen mining.

Considering that both the, uh... Shakespeareans?  And Ballazar's Brain are seen to have Earthling scientists working for them, I would humbly speculate that what Earth is rich in... is humans!  In Atomic Rulers, the human Magolians (or whoever they were) were able to figure out how to blow up the planet all by themselves, which is something none of these aliens ever even tried! Dr. Kurokawa and his brother of Evil Brain from Outer Space were somehow essential to the invasion plan, even though we never really found out what was up with that.  In Attack from Space, the aliens kidnap and brainwash Dr. Yamanaka and his family to build spaceship engines for them.  They never say they couldn't have done that on their own, but they don't seem very interested in trying.

Maybe this is why the Emerald Men (at least I can tell what their name is) think they need to keep sending Star Man to Earth.  Humans are a resource that needs to be nurtured, not conquered, and someday we can help the entire galaxy to advance!  Or is it more sinister than that?  Do humans need to be kept isolated and protected, so that nobody – including us – can use our remarkable brainpower for evil?  We are very good at evil.  With the right tools, we could be an unstoppable force even greater than that of the... Saggitarians?  Even Star Man would be unable to stand in our way!

I dunno about you guys, but that makes me feel pretty special.