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kenkamishiro · 4 years ago

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Lost in Translation: Choujin X chapter 1

Fun fact, I was planning to do fan translations for Choujin X with a scan group until it could get a simulpub release, though I didn’t expect it to get one from the very first chapter lol. I’m happy though since it means everyone can read it right away and it doesn’t mess up my schedule.

So instead I’ll be making comparison notes between the EN and JP text to supplement the official translation. I’m not doing this because the official TL is bad (I actually think it’s pretty solid and I hope it will maintain this quality) but because it’s inevitable for something to be lost in translation, and it’s nice to have that additional context for theory crafting and whatnot.

If you want to read it on Twitter instead, the original thread is here, but this is the proofread and way more detailed version 😄

This translation isn’t wrong, but there’s an emphasis on それ (which is TLed as ‘it’) that connotes a stronger, “other, that thing” feeling that isn’t present here. The general idea behind this sentence is: That [becoming a Choujin] resembles more of a disease [than a transformation].

Ely talks like a tomboy, she uses rougher speech patterns and the pronoun オラ (ora), a derivative of the masculine 'ore'. But it's a bit old-fashioned (eg. すまなんだ) which makes sense considering her upbringing with her grandfather on a farm. Hence her country bumpkin speech pattern in English.

Not sure if I should use Ellie or Ely? Ellie makes more sense based on the kana, but Ishida explicitly called her Ely so I might stick with Ely for now... (also istg that blond guy with the huge chin is a reference, I've seen him somewhere)

Tokio, I know your teacher is annoying, but it's rude to call her that lol. This is basically the oppai equivalent of paisen (senpai backwards, it’s slangier). Similar thing actually happened with Ely describing her dream hubby as Goldilocks instead of blond; ‘kinpatsu’ (blond hair) was inverted to become ‘patsukin’, hence the translation as Goldilocks.

Kurohara Tokio (黒原トキオ) and Higashi Azuma (東アヅマ). Kurohara is a common surname, means 'black fields'. Tokio is in katakana, so it’s hard to say what kanji it could be. 'Toki' could be 時 (time) or 外喜 (outside + delight). The 'o' can be the common male name suffix 男 (boy).

But when I think of Tokio, I think of TK's song called 'tokio'. You can read the translated lyrics here. If these lyrics end up being relevant to Tokio's character development I will eat my shoe lol.

Higashi means 'east'. Azuma (which can also be romanized as Aduma, it’s a softer ‘zu’ sound which is why Tokio called Azuma ‘Aju’ earlier in the chapter before correcting himself) is an archaic form of ‘east’. So...this guy is literally East East. The Choujin X equivalent of Moon Moon 😂

Someone also informed me that Higashi Azuma is a station in Tokyo, though the kana are slightly different (アヅマ／あづま vs. あずま). They effectively sound the same though nowadays, if I have to be honest. It’s like comparing the difference between 애 and 에 in Korean.

Tbh this is minor, but worth mentioning just cause it changes the meaning a bit. Tokio is saying something more like, “Why are we even talking about this [the roly-polies] again?”

I think I heard people talking about how the official TL doesn’t match the original text, but personally I really like how this was translated! Sis is using the expression 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」, which literally means “boiling the dirt under someone’s fingernails and drinking it”. By taking the dirt/grime under the fingernails of someone that you admire, and boiling it and drinking it like a tea, you can become more like them.

But because idioms don’t tend to directly translate well between languages, translators often have to adapt it so that the meaning still remains the same. In English the closest idiom we have to this is “rubbing off on someone.” The “holding hands” bit was added to replace the physical aspect of “taking the dirt from someone’s fingernails” and also contribute to Sis’s sassy and very informal way of speaking.

So Sis is saying in JP (ignoring her personal speech style for now):

You should take the dirt from under [Azuma's] fingernails and boil it so you can be more like him.

And now in ENG it becomes:

You guys should hold hands or something, then maybe he’ll rub off on you.

It now sounds natural in English, still carries the same meaning as the original text, and also suits the character’s speech pattern.

Moving on, in that same panel the literal TL of Tokio’s dialogue is, “Policeman Azuma got dispatched again today,” emphasizing Azuma’s heroic deeds along with his family connections to the police. Another thing I want to note is that this is the second time Azuma has been called 偉い (erai) so far - noble, and now great guy. I’ll just dump the general English definition of 偉い from Jisho here so you get the general idea:

Great; excellent; admirable; remarkable; distinguished; important; celebrated; famous; eminent

But you can tell from how people describe Azuma as 偉い that others look up to him, think he’s a great person and Mr. Perfect. Always being placed on a pedestal by others. (What are the odds this will affect his mentality after the Choujin serum?)

The meaning is still pretty much the same, but I’ll offer a slightly different perspective. Sis mentions that if she were Tokio, she’d burst from the [Azuma] complex. (Clearly Tokio and Azuma's relationship is gonna crack at some point)

Tokio mentions an idiom about hawks (taka) before recalling his childhood memory about vultures. Vultures are called 'hagewashi', but in the chapter it mentions they can also be called 'hagetaka' (buzzard/condor, literally bald hawk).

The kids call him names like "Hagetaka Tokio" and "Hageo". But Hagetaka Tokio only really works in JP cause Hagetaka kinda mimics his last name (Buzzard Tokio doesn't give the same vibe). Same with Hageo. Hage-o = Bald-o = Baldy.

I also think Buzzard was chosen over another name for a vulture like Condor because Buzzard can pass off as an insult.

I would have translated this as, “I wanted to be a lion too...” but this is just personal preference.

A continuation of the 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」 expression Sis used earlier. Without the adapted idiom the exchange goes something like this:

Tokio: My sister said I should bring home the dirt from under your nails. Can I have some?

Azuma: ...huh? What for, that’s scary. No way.

Tokio: I have to boil it and drink it, apparently.

Azuma: Don’t even think about boiling or drinking it.

But since the 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」 expression was modified to make it sound natural in English, it means this conversation has to be modified too.

JP: My sister said I should bring home the dirt from under your nails. Can I have some?

EN: My sister says we should hold hands...so I can be more like you. What do you think?

The “dirt from under your nails” part got adapted to “holding hands”, hence how the 1st line from Tokio becomes, “My sister says we should hold hands...so I can be more like you.” “Can I have some?” makes no sense now in this context now, so it was changed to “What do you think?” as a question to Azuma to keep the similar conversation flow going.

JP: ...huh? What for, that’s scary. No way.

EN: Huh? What’re you talking about? No thanks.

Azuma’s next line is similar enough to the JP text except for the removal of “scary”. I think the reason it was most likely removed is because leaving it as it is could be constituted as homophobic (2 boys holding hands, absolutely nothing scary about it as bible thumpers would like people to believe).

JP: I have to boil it and drink it, apparently.

EN: She said to hold hands so you’ll rub off on me.

Tokio’s response to that is explaining what he meant by his proposal. In the original text he lays out the latter half of the idiom (he doesn’t even realize it’s an expression, poor boy), and in English he does something similar by going into why his sister said they should hold hands (so Azuma can rub off on Tokio).

JP: Don’t even think about boiling or drinking it.

EN: C’mon. That’s not how things work.

Azuma’s then rebuts Tokio’s proposal as ridiculous. In the original text he drops a typical straight man response (don’t do *insert whatever ridiculous thing the idiot suggested*). But since Tokio’s proposal in English isn’t as preposterous, his rebuttal is toned down in response by telling him not to take it literally.

Ultimately, even though a lot of this dialogue was changed, I still think it was successful in maintaining the original’s intent. Tokio takes his sister’s sarcastic suggestion literally and brings it up to Azuma, who dismisses it as silly. It would be nice if we could keep the expression as it was in Japanese, but in instances like this where it’s played off of in multiple lines, that’s easier said than done.

軟体 isn’t an actual word, it’s made up of the kanji soft + body. So kinda like Elastigirl, but Flexi was chosen instead. It doesn’t sound 100% right, but I don’t think I could come up with anything better.

Replacing the しい in 楽しい with the C plus that elongated pronunciation makes Johnny sound even more like a stereotypical Yankee, which is why he sounds like that in English 😂

Random but I found it interesting how Azuma called Johnny a youkai (妖怪) instead of something like bakemono (化け物) or obake (お化け) since they’re shapeshifting monsters.

Tokio is worried that if he doesn't do something right now, he's going to lose his friendship with Azuma. The sentence is fine as it is though.

Azuma’s line can also be worded as, "No hard feelings, okay?"

Bestial = 獣化 (juuka) = beast+change = beast transformation

That’s it from me, if you have questions about the TL feel free to send an ask or reply to this post, I promise I’ll check my inbox more often this time 😂

#Choujin X #Translations #fyi i also went into the holding hands TL #tl;dr i don't think it's bad and suits it well #but that's just my opinion

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shunkani · 4 years ago

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Chapter 132 Levi/Hange Analysis

Summary: An attempt to explain the sentence in chapter 132

Levi: I see your one sided love with Titans still goes unrequited, four-eyes.

Hange: ...We’ll be getting along soon enough.　（…すぐに仲良くなるさ）

Disclaimer: this is just interpretation and not meant to be taken as official proof of romance between Levi and Hange in Attack on Titan. This is theory and nothing else. I’ve read multiple tweets and essays to compile my own thoughts.

I personally do not have any qualms with other ships, and this essay doesn’t discredit other Hange or Levi CP’s. Also, sorry but this essay has no pictures.

Lesson_____

A quick Japanese lesson (and language comprehension); I will try to make it painless. I make no assumption on the reader’s Japanese level/English grammar understanding and will be talking about it as is.

When は is combined with another particle, it puts emphasis in a way such as English has intonation. Since Japanese does not stress tone (like how one says the words sarcastically/meaningfully/sadly/cheekily) it uses particles to do this job.

So, when Levi says, ��相変わら��巨人とは片思いのままだったなクソメガネ“

It means literally, “As always, still an unrequited love with Titans, four-eyes.”

Naturally, “Your love for Titans is one-sided, as usual, four-eyes.”

In Japanese, using には or とは creates a third, invisible option that is outside of the realm of the sentence.

When you use に or と or even は by itself, it creates a one dimensional statement. When used with other particles combined with は it creates another, outside dimension to the sentence. A third suggestion or comparison. は can be used as a comparative or stress particle as well as a topic marker.

quick example.

I didn’t go to the library with him. ->彼と図書館に行かなかった.（ Forward statement. It is as it is. ）

I didn’t go to the library with him. ->彼とは図書館に行かなかった（Implying I went there with someone else, but not him. ）

Just like you’d expect, English speakers understand the implications of stressing “him.” Just as Japanese speakers understand the implications of とは etc. If we stressed library(図書館には）instead of “boy” (彼とは）then it’s implication is that we didn’t go to the library with him, but maybe somewhere else. I hope this is clear.

____

Okay, on with the analyses. Just a note again, but I’ve naturalized any Japanese so that it’s not literal, but the meaning is the same so it’s easier to comprehend for native English speakers. I’ve changed “I” to “we” considering I formatted to fit essays.

From ストリキーネさん’s essay

Like others have said, Levi’s words feel like his true confession. Whether it’s romantic or not, it’s up in the air, but while making small talk and commenting about his long time comrade in arms, it seems like this comment is loaded with unlabeled feelings, like “You gross me out, but I feel something special for you and I get you.”

It feels natural to say “You still have unrequited love for Titans.” right after the banter of Hange and Pieck’s exchange. {note: 巨人に片思いのままだな is using に here, not とは, so it feels natural to say に）

So why did he use “とは” and not ”に”？

If there’s official announcement that say’s there’s no meaning to it, or that it’ll be corrected in the official volume, then this sentence will be meaningless. But if it’s intentional or even unconscious decision, we get the impression that he is recalling a third person (”me” ie Levi) among Hange and the Titans.

Moreover, hearing “four eyes” was unexpected and we can only imagine it was surprising for Hange too. Since we might have never expected that we’d hear “four eyes” in the original manga again, it’s perplexing, but feels filled with something like nostalgia.

With Hange taking over as commander and the world rapidly changing, we get the feeling that there’s a distance between them, at least from what is shown to us from the story.

Because of this short exchange about Titans, all at once we are brought back to “An eccentric, Titan-loving section commander,” and “Captain who’s fond of four-eyes,” and it’s moving.

There’s a little pause (note: talking about the “...” before Hange starts talking) at the end of Levi’s lines and the start of Hange’s dialogue. One wonders if it couldn’t be a mix between surprise and relief on Hange’s end.

Also, as many others have said, Levi is answering Hange’s “I’d prefer if we live here together,” from the forest, to the best that he can. There was no reason to look back at that scene in relation to this because Levi seemed to have brushed off Hange’s shocking statement, but since everyone was referencing that scene, a second re-examination was in order. (Note, the author actually said something a little more personal, so I condensed it to match a more essay-like statement)

Levi could have been surprised.

Someone who he’s known for a long time, and supported each other, and can admit that (Hange) can be troublesome sometimes, but also they hit it off well, yet each of their own responsibilities have become heavier and the world is in this state... in a situation like this, when suddenly alone together in a quiet forest, he might think Hange has stopped thinking if seriously suggesting to run away and saying things like “let’s live together.”

Under circumstances like this, if it were us, we’d likely want to do it, but remember we have responsibilities, maybe we don’t know what the other person feels, perhaps we’d rather we never heard it, so we pretend not to. In Levi’s case, perhaps pretend to sleep (pretending to not be able to hear it) or when he wakes up, change the subject completely.

It’s unlikely that Levi could give an answer on the spot, and would want time to figure it out.

(There’s more to the essay but it’s thoughts on relationships between people and some other things that don’t apply to the quote)

ーーーーー

Notes concluded from various twitter surfing:

Many JP fans think Levi’s statement alluded to the forest scene. It’s like his clumsy answer to Hange’s proposal, since he didn’t give a direct answer. Actually the essay above felt his answer was cold and ignored Hange. But Hange doesn’t seem displeased about it.

As many have said, Hange and Levi are definitely “adults” in this world. They both understand it’s not feasible to do the things they want to do, because their duties supersede that. Hange carries the immense duty of commander, and both hold the responsibility to stop Eren or fight for humanity as a whole.

It’s rather evident to me, even as an ordinary reader, that Levi did not want Hange to go. In fact, Hange says, 行かせて, “let me go.” and anticipated Levi would try to stop Hange. Mind you, it’s not “release me” but “I have to do this, so don’t stop me.” It took him three panels, focused on his dead-like eyes to finally say “Dedicate your heart,” something he’s apparently never said before. To me, “Dedicate your heart” is a self-sacrificing quote when applied to the Survey Corps. Pretty much “go in bravely, and don’t expect to come back.” Levi is a “Live and come back’ type. The strange thing is that Levi puts his hand on Hange and says it.. in Hange’s place..? It’s a salute before battle, but here it feels like a gentle sentence. Why it was delivered that way? I hope that Isayama will answer these questions in future interviews.

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

Another thing, Levi says みててくれ to Hange, a now deceased person. Levi has never asked anything from the dead. He’s mentioned fulfilling his promise to Erwin about killing Zeke, but some have found it strange for Levi to ask Hange to “Watch me (kill Zeke.”) (edit: the point is that Levi asked Hange to keep watching him, so it seems that his promises and goals may have changed)

One user said something pretty sad. “For Levi, I think Hange is treated as a MIA. Even if there’s no chance of survival, if Levi looks at Hange’s death, Hange has ended for him right there. So since Hange hasn’t ended, he said “ watch out for me.” That’s the reason why Levi, who’s looked at dead soldiers in the eye, didn’t look at Hange.”

It’s simply, Levi didn’t say “Rest in peace,” or “Goodnight.” but “See ya, Hange. Keep looking out for me.”

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

Going back to the quote about Titans, the summary is, that in Japanese, Levi’s speech seems incredibly nuanced because he uses language that suggests that Hange and him have come to a mutual feeling, and it’s simply by stating “with Titans” (but there’s a mutual love with me). That’s why the above essay questions if this isn’t a misprint or mistake, or perhaps it’s nothing at all. (I want to point out, that one user suggested it could refer to Eren, but it seems unlikely)

This is his “answer.” And Hange says...”...We’ll get along soon enough.”

There’s a “...” before Hange says that, indicating a pause, whether out of surprise by being called “four-eyes”, or carefully thinking on how to respond to “とは”

Some other notes before I close this up, I thought this was a nice thought on LeviHan:

Hange was introduced while talking and having contact with Levi and Hange exited while talking and having contact with Levi. Really, Hange’s story started and ended with Levi.

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

I apologize if this seems everywhere, I’m not particularly fond of writing, but for Hange’s last chapter, I feel like English speakers should get in on what Japanese levihan fans were saying.

終わり

#levihan #snk132 #essay

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fostersffff · 3 years ago

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Robot Carnival Review

When I first started my blu-ray collecting kick, Discotek was hyping up their release of Memories, an anthology movie organized by Akira’s Katsuhiro Otomo. While doing research on it, I saw it was recommended in the company of Robot Carnival, another anthology movie Otomo was involved with, with more animators and thus individual shorts, and a unifying theme of “robots”. As a robot enjoyer, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with this, and I was right! This was a joy from start to finish, where even the weakest segment still had plenty to offer. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, it’s available to stream for free on RetroCrush and YouTube!

Additional note before I get into talking about each short individually: with the exception of Cloud, the music for every short was composed by Joe Hisaishi, who has way more range as a composer than I would’ve ever expected, considering I knew him exclusively as the Studio Ghibli composer. Additional additional note: I watched the anthology in the original Japanese order, the version on RetroCrush and YouTube uses an alternate order from the international release.

Opening/Ending (Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of Akira and Atsuko Fukushima, key animator on dozens of anime projects, including Akira) - A mobile fortress (literally the above Robot Carnival logo) traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland, bringing death and destruction wherever it goes. The Opening sets the bar for what you should expect going forward in terms of production values, and the Ending is a nice send off for the whole thing, but I don’t really have much else to say about these shorts.

Franken’s Gears (Koji Morimoto, Director of Memories: Magnetic Rose) - A mad scientist attempts to bring their robot to life, succeeds horribly. I think of all the shorts in this movie, this one has the most impressive mechanical animation. The whole thing takes places in the scientist’s lab, and the emphasis really is on all of the ways the environment is struggling to bring the robot to life, to the point that once it does so, it begins to crumble and break apart. But the animation on the scientist himself is also really charming; the way he moves almost makes him look gooey, which is apt because my sister pointed out he was probably designed after a snail, what with the big orb on his back.

Deprive (Hidetoshi Omori, Animation Director for Char’s Counterattack) - A super android has to mamoru his imouto from an invading alien robot army. One of my favorite shorts in the anthology, this was an entire action movie expertly condensed down into not even ten minutes, complete with an awesome soundtrack. I’d actually go so far as to call this one perfect for what it is, but it’s not much more than that.

Presence (Yasuyomi Umetsu, Character Designer and Chief Animation Director of Megazone 23 Part II) - A man builds an android for companionship, and he gets more than he bargained for. Longest piece in the compilation by a mile, and the first one with voice acting. Despite enjoying some of the other shorts more, I think I would call Presence the “centerpiece” of this anthology, as it’s definitely the most story-rich. It even has some prescient worldbuilding: the people of this setting do not see robots as sentient beings, which is shown right at the start when a bunch of kids knock the head off of an android and play with it while absolutely no one in the crowded plaza reacts. This sets the tone for the main character’s interactions with his creation, and provide additional context for the things he does besides the obvious explanations.

This was also the first short where I noticed something off about the animation, where it seemed to animate too well in for certain movements. As it turns out I was right; the liner notes explain that the director was using this project to experiment, and he would animate different movements on different frame counts. It’s not terrible, but it is a little distracting to see how smoothly something like a simple head turn will animate while more complex motions look more standard. Also, unrelated but fun coincidence: the liner notes also explain a reference in the script to a story called Daddy Long Legs, about an orphan girl who receives funding from a wealthy philanthropist she never meets, which explains a reference that went over my head Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Star Light Angel (Hiroyuki Kitazume, Character Designer and Animation Director for Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and Char’s Counterattack) - What could have been the most effective piece of robosexual propaganda ever made: a girl and her friend are at Tokyo Disneyland ROBOT WANDERLAND and are having a wonderful time, until she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, at which point she retreat into the park and winds up on a virtual reality ride. Meanwhile, a robot performer attempts to find her and return the locket she dropped while she ran past him. This is tied for my favorite, alongside Deprive, because I’m a big sucker for romance and the main song for the short is so perfect for the content. I was also delighted to find the explanation for this short was that Kitazume, who’s work up to this point was all mecha anime like Aura Battler Dunbine and Zeta Gundam, really wanted to try to flex with character expressions, and it came through brilliantly as the range and level of facial expressions was the first thing I really took notice of in this. Funny enough, though, Kitazume also apparently said he considers this and Deprive to be the weakest pieces of the anthology, and I suppose he’s right in that they have the least meat on their bones and are also probably the least technically impressive, but still: my two favorites!

Cloud (Mao Lamdo, a prolific animator on many projects, but probably best known for this) - A robotic boy wanders past a series of ever-changing clouds. Cloud is definitely a stand-out short for a number of reasons, from the way its animated to the incredibly tangential connection to the “robot” theme, and to be perfectly honest I got a lot more out of it after I read the liner notes. The short was adapted from a self-published book Mao Lamdo had written years prior that had nothing to do with robots, and his interpretation of the short and the change to making the main character a robot was that it represented his frustration with the trend in the anime industry at the time trending towards a being obsessed with the mechanical world, while he still preferred to draw and animate nature. As I mentioned at the top, this is also the only short to not have music composed by Joe Hisaishi, instead the piece used is by Isaku Fujita, and as far as I can tell, this is his only credit. Still, it’s a good credit to have; Lamdo said the song evoked the idea of having a conversation with God and asking the big questions, which I can completely see.

Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: “The Westerner’s Invasion” (Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Director of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA and Golden Boy) A terrible steampunk mech invades a Japanese town, and is warded off by a team of youths piloting their own terrible steampunk mech. I watched this one with the English dub first and then again in Japanese because it’s been a fuckin’ minute since I heard a dub this racist, complete with changing r’s to l’s and vice versa, only to be cracked across the skull by what I am certain was a Japanese man doing his very best to phonetically read English in the Japanese version. In spite of that, though, this is easily the funniest short for all the right reasons, and it kinda clicked once I found out that the director was also responsible for Golden Boy; it’s that exact kind of humor, complete with a protagonist who could very well be Kintaro Ue’s ancestor.

Chicken Man and Red Neck, a.k.a. Nightmare (Takeshi Nakamura, director of Catnapped! The Movie) - A robotic magician wreaks havoc on a city by transforming everything in sight into robotic monsters, and a vagrant gets caught up in the chaos. I initially wrote down “this one has the energy of a Don Bluth movie, particularly In the Dark of the Night from Anastasia”, although the liner notes say he actually was inspired by Night on Bald Mountain, which is definitely a more flattering inspiration and more accurate, to boot. I think of all the shorts in this anthology, this one gets the prizes for “best overall animation” and “best use of robots”, and it also has the most intense PS1 RPG sounding music, which once again speaks to Joe Hisaishi’s talent as a composer for doing that a full decade before the PS1 even existed. Also, fun trivia, the director turned down an offer from Hayao Miyazaki to be animation director on Castle in the Sky to make this, which… was maybe not the best career move, but still this was a terrific short and I’m glad to have it.

Again, the movie is easily accessible for free streaming, and I’d heartily recommend you check it out if you haven’t already. But if you’re into collecting physical media, the blu-ray is crammed full of tons of goodies, including the liner notes I’ve referenced, art galleries for each segment, and a lot of other production materials. Discotek also announced they’re doing a 4k UHD release of this soon, which won’t include all the extras due to the way UHD discs work, but I gotta be honest, this would be worth double dipping for if the resolution bump is noticeable enough.

#Robot Carnival #Katsuhiro Otomo #mecha #giant robot #robot #robots #anime #animation #blu-ray

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tijuanabiblestudies · 4 years ago

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So as somone who loves the music of GORILLAZ with out knowing lit. ANY ONE THING abt the band and its lore please feel free to info dump to me what you feel are the best and/or most important things for me, the uninitiated but curious, to know?

maggie you cannot just ASK ME THAT while i am CONFINED TO MOBILE. THUMB-TYPING IS NOT MY FRIEND WHEN THERE IS HEAVY-DUTY INFODUMPING TO BE DONE.

nevertheless, i shall try.

let's start with Murdoc Niccals, the bassist. he's the guy with the green skin and the beatle haircut. huge narcissist and all-around prick. according to the lore he literally sold his soul to the devil to become famous. he's the one who started the band

HOW he started the band was by hitting 2-D (nee Stuart Tusspot) with his car. 2-D is the skinny blue-haired lead singer whom i and legions of other fans am thirsty for. he is whatever the unmuscled version of a himbo is. very dumb, very sweet. murdoc habitually treats him like shit but it's a rather Complicated dynamic that is unfortunately very shippable. i've been known to read fic of them, but these days i mostly prefer to ship 2-D with...

...Russel Hobbs, our dear sweet underrated drummer. he's the big bald black dude with the all-white eyes. the eyes are the result of him having been possessed by the ghosts of his friends who were killed in a drive-by shooting (you know the ghost rapper in the clint eastwood video? yeah). he is very smart and very sweet and has, both in his backstory and the general lore, Been Through Some Shit. i want to hug him a lot.

the band's first guitarist was 2D's then-girlfriend, Paula Cracker. she left the band after she was caught cheating on him with Murdoc in the bathroom of Kong Studios (the band's HQ), whereupon Russel punched Murdoc in the face and broke his nose, a lore tidbit which i hold dearly in my heart due to reasons.

after Paula left, the band put out an ad for a new guitarist. shortly thereafter, a large Fed-Ex crate was delivered to Kong Studios which turned out to contain a ten-year-old japanese girl who was very good at both guitar and martial arts. the only word of english she spoke at the time was "noodle," so that became her name. later it turned out that she'd been a brainwashed child supersoldier; she had some kind of amnesia and got her memories back between phases 1 and 2 (that is to say, between the first and second albums; the revealing of new story content tends to center around the releases of their albums, as one might expect), at which point she also recovered the ability to speak english. noodle is the most sensible one in the band but also a weirdo in her own way. one of the coolest things about following the band in realtime, for me, has been watching her grow up. in phase 1 it felt like she kind of existed in a cute-little-sidekick niche but in phase 2 she took charge--like, the album Demon Days was her baby, she wrote all the songs on it and everything, and that was when she was only 14/15. she's wise and funny and badass and you can probably tell she's my favorite from the absurd number of words i have written about her.

...so that's the basic Who These Fuckers Are rundown. the book Rise of the Ogre is a comprehensive resource on the lore of phases 1 and 2; for everything after that, i think there are fan-made youtube videos and stuff that can explain it. i need to watch one myself one of these days; my latter-day knowledge is a bit patchy.

#reject false icons

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entamesubs · 4 years ago

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens Episode 12 Sub Release

Hello, hello! First release of this brand new sub group.

Sub file only: click here! Video torrent (720p): https://nyaa.si/view/1274377

All subs are soft subs.

If there are any corrections you wish to make, please put them through the submit box! For questions, use the ask box, but please make sure to read the FAQ first.

Below are extended translation notes for this episode, so spoilers ahead.

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とんだカッパの川流れ (tonda kappa no kawanagare)

“Even kappas can be washed away by the river.”

I touched on this briefly in the subs with a small TL note, but what Sushiko is trying to say here is that they were careless and only wanted to help, but ended up contributing to Yuuga & co’s plight. She has a tendency to speak in weird sentences or puns (as evidenced by another TL note later in the episode).

お前の後ろだ (omaeno ushiro da)

We had a whole episode on this that I think explained a lot of it, but I want to say that he’s basically trying to tell Kaizo that his name is “Omaeno Ushiro”, but unfortunately it really just sounds like “behind you!”.

偉大なる俺様のターン (idainaru ore-sama no taan)

I translated this as “It’s the Great Me’s turn.”

I wanted to highlight just how highly Roa was referring to himself. If it was just a simple ore-sama that I think a lot of us who watch anime are familiar with, I don’t think I would have added the extra ham in the translation. However, Roa is using a sort of adjective here to directly mean “the Great”, and that’s 偉大なる (idainaru).

To give some context, 偉大なる is what you would use to refer to people like Frederick the Great, or Alexander the Great. I don’t think I would have done Roa justice if I left it at just “it’s my turn” or some variation thereof. He’s really full of himself!

神々しい (kougoushii)

Another word that Roa uses to refer to himself. The simple definition would be “godlike” or “divine”.

In my first draft, I translated his “divine draw” as “godlike draw” in order to follow the same translation I used when Roa says “I... can charm everyone... with my godlike qualities”, but it sounded a little too weird. Just know that both in that line and the “divine draw”, he’s using the same word.

“Would having it really make you feel more ‘majestic’?” (Original translation has been changed, thanks to corrections from Anons!)

This was a weird sentence to try and parse for me. Yuuga is basically asking if that’s really all Roa wants (like “do your ambitions only stretch this far?” kind of feeling).

The exact Japanese is 「そんなものが君の威厳なの？」(sonna mono ga kimi no igen na no?)

Translated literally, it could be “Is that really your dignity?” 威厳 means something like majesty or dignity. “Is that it?” would have been another way to translate this, but considering Mimi’s “adultlike” comment afterward, I chose to use some more big words to give off the same feeling that Yuuga was.

Safe to say Yuuga was not at all impressed!

Hero of the Dawn - Lydacross

I actually heard this as “Rider Cross” and it is still the name I used in my raw drafts of this episode. Thankfully I found the brain cell to go on the wiki and found it already translated as “Lydacross”, which makes more sense.

You may notice that I decided to go with “Hero of the Dawn” as opposed to “Brave of the Dawn”. This was just my own personal preference.

But even without summoning Sevens Road Magician, he can still kick his ass!

This is very obviously not really what Luke says.

The original Japanese is 「だがセブンスロードを出さなくてもこれなら存分に暴れられるぜ！」

I highlighted the part that I actually paraphrased. Luke actually says “even without [his ace], he can still rampage freely”. I translated this literally in my first draft, but felt as though it didn’t have enough impact. Part of translating is making sure your audience actually understands the words you’re trying to put out.

So in the final version, I changed it to something more colloquial that any English-speaker would recognize in the same tone.

そのときに手巻されたんですね — He rolled his own road.

God I really hate sushi girl.

She’s making a pun here with 手巻する (temaki suru). You may recognize this as a style of hand rolled sushi, which is exactly what she’s referring to. 手巻する can also mean “to handmake” or something to that effect.

Basically, she’s trying to say “he forged his own road after all” or something akin to it. She’s just going about it in a roundabout way and referring to sushi because why wouldn’t she.

I translated it as “he rolled his own road” as an attempt to mimic the pun.

It’s a beatstick style!

Some TCG slang. “Beatstick” refers to monsters with high ATK. A “beatstick style” would be to try and get out high ATK monsters to “beat” your opponent down. A kind of brute force strategy popular in the old days, before the hand traps came into my house and killed my family.

Yuuga isn’t someone who would cheat even if hell froze over!

Luke actually says something more akin to “even if the galaxy turned upside down”, but I felt like “even if hell froze over” conveyed what he meant better for an English-speaking audience.

Goha Duels vs Rush Duels

A minor note, but by “Goha duels” they mean master duels (5 monster zones, 5 spell/trap zones, normal rules, etc).

Nick vs Nikku

Obviously Nick/Nikku is a pun name on the word for “meat” (肉, niku). The reason I decided to translate his name as “Nick” and not “Nikku” was mainly because he just looks too American to have a name like “Nikku” LOL

Luke vs Rook

And finally, the big one.

I tossed around Rook vs Luke in my head for a long time, and while I know the previous subbers who did episodes 1-11 romanized it as “Rook” (mainly because his entire name is a shogi reference), I much prefer Luke due to it actually being a name. It is also what Konami uses officially.

That’s really all there is to it.

#yugioh sevens #yugioh #ygo sevens #sevens #sevens spoilers #e012 #entamesubs release

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g-r-a-g · 5 years ago

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On Tentative Mother 3 Naming

Note: this was originally written some years back, then pulled for Unspecified Reasons.1

First and foremost, you should probably read Tomato's official MOTHER 3 translation notes, because he is a consummate professional. This also, unfortunately, means that he is often too busy being professional to do write-ups on personal side projects, especially ones that are finished. I myself would love to see notes covering beyond the beginning of the game. On the other hand, his site is still awesome overall. Gotta love stuff like the Super Mario Bros. manual write-up. Fascinating stuff.

So yeah. Please allow me to lay my credentials on the table. I was the translation guy for the now-long-since-defunct mother3.org translation, which got started a good bit before Starmen.net decided to enter the game and essentially blow us the hell out of the water. Long story short, most of our team was frankly not ready for the project, though the hacking talent (Jeffman, if memory serves) turned out to be super awesome at things. I emailed the project leader at the time, volunteering "I'm majoring in Japanese here in college," with all the linguistic skill level that that level of confidence would imply, and that was essentially enough for the project at the time. It wasn't an especially fancy group at the time, and they were looking for pretty much any talent that could conceivably help out on basically any level.

A word of caution: none of this is organized in any meaningful way, and my memory of a project that was now about half a decade ago3 is gradually fading, so I may have some factual errors or conflations. There are almost certainly cases where I take credit for something that wasn't, strictly speaking, me, but I'm not in contact with any member of either translation team at this point, and much of the pre-merger stuff was pretty much just me translating and/or tossing out ideas to the rest of the team. I do apologize in advance if anyone else from either team sees something I inaccurately take credit for. Furthermore, I think that it's been long enough since the release that I can probably safely talk about What Could Have Been without having to worry about sparking any alternate-continuity concerns, given that the Starmen.net translation patch is very nearly official canon at this point, at least among the people who actually care about the series in non-Japanese-speaking countries.

Also, I make no guarantees that any of this will be even remotely interesting.

So here we go.

Enemy names

A lot of people seem fond of a lot of the enemy name translations, and they're generally among the things I'm proudest of. A lot of them were just plain tough to translate, because, despite the overblown stuff you've no doubt read by Tim "I'm in love with my own importance for Living In Japan" Rogers and decided to think better of,4 Itoi really is a pretty good writer and likes to play with portmanteaus and other wordplay.

These aren't in any real order other than when my memory gets jogged. It's also partially that I'm looking at them in the order they're stored in the game data, which is all jumbly.

Mr. Generator was, at one point, going to be called Gene Rator. This was kind of a tough one for us5, as the name in Japanese, Jenetta-kun (ジェネッタくん) was kind of a play on words inasmuch as it was a modification of "generator" but done so as to sound like a name or something.

The Oh-so-Snake was going to be the Vanelizard early on. This requires a bit of explanation: there was never any real clear indication of what "Osohe" (オソヘ) in the original was intended to mean, so we interpreted it as a sort of inversion of "navel" (おへそ), and wound up with "Vanel." This also worked nicely, because the boss enemy was named the Osohebi (オソヘビ), with "hebi" meaning "snake" in Japanese. In the end, though, "Vanel" was nixed and it's unclear whether that's even a bad thing. Granted, this is all what-could-have-been stuff, since a large part of this stuff has essentially become canon by this point.

While everyone seems to love the name "Navy SQUEAL," the fact is that the Pigmasks don't really have special names at all in the original Japanese. This guy was originally just something along the lines of "Submarine Pigmask," which obviously isn't memorable or delightful at all. In the mother3.org days, we were going to use "Pork Trooper" (you know, like storm troopers) instead of the more literal "Pigmask" (ブタマスク) and have different names for the different ranks rather than the eventual, more direct translation. The change back to "Pigmask" was probably for the best in the end, though I'm really glad they kept "Navy SQUEAL," since that was one of my favorite name change ideas in the whole project.6

A lot of the enemy name translations were just things that fell into place. There's nothing in the Japanese that would suggest "Top Dogfish" ("Nushi Wanwan"/ヌシワンワン) for the tougher version of the Dogfish ("Wanwan Fish"/ワンワンフィッシュ), but a bit of knowledge of common (if slightly outmoded) English expressions leads that sort of thing to seem a natural fit.

Another one that seemed only natural was the Beaten Drum, which (if memory serves) translates more accurately as "punctured drum." On the other hand, I was too enamored with my own cleverness to realize that my original "Wailing Guitar" was nowhere near as good as "Gently Weeping Guitar," given Itoi's fondness for the Beatles. Tomato definitely made the right call on that one, unambiguously.

One enemy that I'm not really satisfied with the name of, in either my own stuff or the final translation patch, was the Bitey Snake ("Kamu toki wa kamu hebi"/かむときはかむヘビ), which I'd translated as "Snake that Might Bite." Both of these have issues in terms of accuracy of the translation, though given the actual picture of the Bitey Snake, that seems almost fine. The issue is that the name translates most accurately to something like "a snake that will bite when it's time to bite" or "that bites when the situation calls for it" or something equally unwieldy to express in English. That one was frankly a mess and I can't really think of anything that would have actually worked better than Tomato's "Bitey Snake."

One that I still actually prefer my original name for is the Ten-Yeti, which I'd originally translated the name of as "Cowabungable Snowman." Yes, the word is kind of dated (to say the least) but I'm apparently not the only one to have missed the intended wordplay involving "ten-eighty" (which, to be fair, works better in Japanese: compare テンエイティ and テンイエティ, though that didn't stop me from missing it entirely in Japanese too). Maybe it was meant as a nod to Nintendo's now-essentially-defunct snowboarding game series.

Speaking of silly and awkward puns, the Boa Transistor is victim to those on both ends. Obviously the English name is a play on "boa constrictor," but for the longest time it was just such a challenge to think of a decent translation for the Japanese "Hebii Metaru" (ヘビーメタル), a play on "hebi" (snake) and "heavy metal." Eventually I decided to pull the trigger and write in "Boa Transistor," which I'd thought was just unforgivably contrived, and it was received way better than I'd expected by basically everyone.

Barrel Man ("Taruman"/タルマン) was originally going to be "Casked Man," because, once again, I was a little too in love with my own cleverness. You see, because it is a play on "masked man," and there's a masked man in the story, and oh I'll just show myself out

The Pseudoor basically named itself — the Japanese name ("Tobira-modoki"/トビラモドキ) basically translates to "pseudo-door" and it was only a small jump from there.

The Sara-Sara-Sahara was frustrating, because it was clearly meant to resemble plates ("sara"/サラ) but the silliness of the name was just lost in English. The mother3.org translation had been using "Desert Plate" but that name is arguably hard enough to catch at a glance that it probably wouldn't have been much better in the end.

The Artsy Ghost was originally going to be the Abstract Ghost. The name ("Geijutsu na obake"/げいじゅつなオバケ) really does translate to "Artistic Ghost," so "Artsy Ghost" is a more accurate name overall, but I just liked the ring of "Abstract Ghost."

The Whatever was originally going to be called the Halfhearted Attempt. Probably a better translation of the original "Tekitou" (テキトウ) in the end anyway.

The Really Flying Mouse is worth noting just because of the Japanese name, which took a minor liberty with grammar to be pretty clever ("tobimasu tobi-mausu"/トビマストビマウス — literally it means "flying flying-mouse" but it's fun to say).

The Return of Octobot was one of my favorites (and I was glad that it got kept for the final). The Octobots all have weird names in the original Japanese, and the Japanese name in MOTHER 3 ("Tako Fu Tatabi"/タコ・フ・タタビ) basically translates to "Octopus Again," though with needlessly weird spacing to make it look/sound unnatural or foreign or something. I figured that "The Return of Octobot" was sufficiently cool-sounding, and I guess other folks agreed.

I'm ambivalent whether the change from our "Loose Screw" to "Screwloose" even makes much of a difference. In the original Japanese, there wasn't any pun of the sort involved, so it's not like either one is more accurate.

On the other hand, the Punk Rock Lobster became the Rock Lobster, making the clearly intended pun more obvious, though I still think those sunglasses are less rock 'n' roll and more punk rock.

Items

The Pasta with a Past is just about the only food name worth mentioning, really.7 The original Japanese "Wake-ari Pasta"/わけありパスタ wasn't really a joke in the name: the phrase "wake-ari"/わけあり refers mainly to the sort of mildly damaged goods you'd find at a store with a handwritten price tag and a minor discount. It literally means, essentially, "there's something about this item." On the other hand, the item's description is where it becomes a joke, stating that an "unspeakable circumstance" surrounds the pasta, rather than the usual meaning. While the innocuous name couldn't be translated while keeping the joke, a bit of wordplay was entirely within the bounds of possibility for the English version.

The Bufferizer and Defense Spray were originally named the Beefener and the Turtler, mostly because the actual items were named like energy drinks and there's no clear right choice. "Turtler," incidentally, was derived from fighting game terminology (e.g. to turtle, being the action of playing very defensively). On the other hand, the final version's Defense Spray is a neat call-back to EarthBound/MOTHER 2.

Characters

First and foremost, the mother3.org team had noticed that the game, much like EarthBound/MOTHER 2, allowed for a substantial number of "Don't Care" names to be stored. In the final game, this was only used for favorite food and your special PK power's name, but all of the characters had the same number of slots available for "Don't Care" names; they were each simply filled with a bunch of copies of the official name. We basically tried to take advantage of this as a sort of personalized easter egg, with each member of the team basically getting their own "set" of names to assign. These were generally named after friends and family, though I tried in vain to use my own set to follow a clever theme of some sort. Naturally, I never thought of anything particularly good.

Hinawa is named after a type of gun, along with Flint (Flint being named for flintlock guns, and Hinawa being named for matchlock guns, in Japanese). Obviously, while Flint is a nice, manly-sounding name in English, Hinawa is simply a no-go. Until the translation patch projects merged, the plan was very definitely to rename Hinawa to Amber, in order to provide a name that was actually a name in English, as well as keeping to a motif of some sort (in this case, types of stones). Un(?)fortunately, in the end the official translation wound up being Hinawa, though this was, in fairness, because the Starmen.net translation team preferred, whenever possible, to keep the names accurate to Nintendo's official translations they'd made public at various points.8

Ocho the octopus was originally Hachi (ハチ) in the Japanese. While the story of Hachiko is famous enough (and was even made into an American remake-of-a-movie movie starring Richard Gere), we9 figured we could do better for the English release. For one thing, the pun between the name "Hachi" and the fact that it means "eight" would be lost. For a while we just sort of hoped that maybe "Octo" would be an acceptable name, but it was pretty obvious it was kind of lazy and didn't have much cleverness or even giving-a-crap to it. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon an Addams Family retrospective around this point, and found out that, at least at some point, Pugsley had a pet octopus named Ocho. Perfect!

Following this "replace one old pop-culture reference with another" pattern, a lot of people have noticed that Achato and Entotsu (アチャト and エントツ, with the latter literally meaning "chimney") were renamed Bud and Lou, after Abbott and Costello. Incidentally, the original characters were also named after comedians from the early to mid 20th century: Achako and Entatsu.

Fassad's English name has a surprisingly unexciting origin. The Japanese name Yokuba/ヨクバ is basically derived from the word for "ambition" or "greed" ("yokubari"/欲張り), and that just didn't work in English. So I asked a friend of mine, one night, to help bounce ideas back and forth. I figured he was studying Arabic in college and could help out, so I asked him what various words were when translated into Arabic. After a couple of nonstarters, I tried, "What's 'corruption' in Arabic?" and his answer, "fassad," sounded sufficiently Arabian-y (given the character's appearance), as well as just being ever so perfect on multiple levels (given its Arabic meaning as well as the fact that it sounds a whole lot like "façade," which is ridiculously appropriate on, itself, at least two different levels). And that's why Ben Cocchiaro is credited under "Special Thanks." Thanks, Ben.

Frankly, we never had anything good lined up for Kumatora. We had her name as "Jackie" for a while, since it kinda sorta sounded like maybe it could also be a guy's name (c.f. Jackie Gleason), but we never felt particularly confident in it. "Violet," though, was picked for her cover identity later on, because we figured it had a "good, diner-y sounding" ring to it. We kept that in the end.

Salsa's name was kept, though the pun on "saru" ("monkey") was lost, so we figured that we should probably keep to some sort of name motif for his girlfriend-monkey too. "Saruko" just didn't work, so I wound up suggesting "Samba" for her name, partially inspired by Samba de Amigo. This is another case where one motif was switched out for another with the translation, though this one was kept in the end by the post-merger team.

There was a brief time when we considered changing Lighter's name to "Bic" or "Vic," but we eventually thought better of the idea. It's not as though EarthBound/MOTHER 2 wasn't full of silly names like Mr. Spoon, either.

Places

For the longest time, the Sunshine Forest was just called the Terry or Telly Forest, because of the way the Japanese name was written ("Teri-no-mori"/テリのモリ). At some point along the way, I got bored and looked up whether "teri" was even a word, and it turned out that it meant "sunshine" or "clear/dry weather," and there was a sort of collective OHHHHHHH among the team. Given the idyllic setting of the prologue, it seems only natural that that was the intended meaning. Tomato initially opposed it, but eventually relented, since it did make more sense as the name of a place.10

A lot of the other place names were way more contentious, though. The name of the town was the source of some reasonably substantial debate within the post-merger team, since the mother3.org team had been using "Dragonstep" for its translation of the admittedly fairly ambiguous "Tatsumairi"/タツマイリ. Tomato vetoed it based on the fact that the Japanese is far from 100% clear on what the name's derivation would be, and looking back the "Tatsu"="dragon" thing really only applies to very limited contexts in Japanese. Still, between that and the money being called DP (for "Dragon Points") Tomato thought it was just too blatant as dragon-related foreshadowing, and I eventually conceded the point, since he was the guy with professional experience and who could actually, you know, speak Japanese fluently at the time.11

Most of the place names were, at one point or another, going to be translated into at least some semblance of English. Tanetane Island ("Tanehineri"/タネヒネリ) was going to be something like "Twisttrick Island," given that "tane" can mean "a secret" or "a trick," and "hineru" can mean "to twist," or "to puzzle over something." On the other hand, Twisttrick kind of sucked as a name, so the Starmen.net team rightly chose to discard it. Plus, in the debug menus it was already referred to as Tanetane anyway — the final Japanese name appeared to be a fairly late change.

The Sunset Graveyard was, in the mother3.org translation, going to be the Chowding Graveyard, because of the original name "Misoshire" being an apparent play on "miso-shiru" (miso soup), treating it as a verb instead of a noun. If memory serves, this is another case where we wound up going with an internal debug name instead in the end. "Chowding" wasn't very good anyway.

Looking back at the notes, it's clear that we just didn't have any good ideas for a lot of the places in the game, though we probably would have worked something out in the end. Honestly, though, the Starmen.net team's approach of leaving all but the most egregious obviously-meant-as-wordplay names intact was probably the best option in the end.

So that's about it, really.

I just want to finish this up with a big ol' THANK YOU to everyone who did the real work and heavy lifting on the patch, especially Tomato for his insanely great translation work, and the hackers who found a problem that we thought at first would be literally impossible, and then fixed it, to a degree that their fix went beyond the impossible. Thanks again to Ben Cocchiaro, all-around swell guy and owner of an Arabic-English dictionary, for helping to provide the ridiculously appropriate name of a major character in a cult hit, and thanks to @gigideegee, whom I promised via Twitter that I would actually write all this stuff up, and that gave me the motivation to do it because TWITTER PROMISES are SERIOUS BUSINESS. I also highly recommend her great webcomic, Cucumber Quest, especially if you liked her older "Let's Destroy Metal Gear!" and the like.

Thanks for reading.

I applied for a job at Nintendo of America, and hoped that they wouldn't find out about my Sordid Fan Translation Past, so I pulled the page. Given that they just sort of suddenly stopped responding to emails at one point in the application process, TECHNICALLY they have not turned me down for the position. ↩︎

"Localization" is a fancy term that means changing a name or a joke so that it makes sense in the target language, especially when it comes to wordplay in the source language. Sometimes the changes are also just kind of arbitrary, though that can at times be in order to avoid potential lawsuits and the like. ↩︎

!!!. Actually, looking at the files I still have on my computer, they generally show a "last modified" date in April of 2007, so that'd be about five years ago now. Dang. ↩︎

Factual errors I can think of off the top of my head in his EarthBound/MOTHER 2 article alone: the phone call asking for your name happens on a specific tile in Summers, not "at a number of steps that's about halfway through the game," and there's no obscene pre-set name set. The guy's a prolific writer but he needs an editor and a fact-checker, because the editor will already be busy enough trying to cut 60–70% of the length of any given article he writes. TAKE THAT, FAMOUS PERSON! SAYS RELATIVE NOBODY ↩︎

By which I mean, over the course of this write-up, primarily me, because after the projects merged Tomato basically took over all translation duties, and before the merge I was basically the guy doing all of the translation stuff for the mother3.org project, if memory serves. ↩︎

Your run-of-the-mill, never-studied-Japanese anime fan will probably pitch a fit for my suggesting this, but English is a WAY richer language for nuance, wordplay, and just generally enjoying words. Japanese nuance can be hard to translate in certain circumstances, but 90% of English-language movies are subtitled into Japanese with what are basically just factual translations of the content of what each character said, with virtually no effort taken to preserve nuance and color. In other words, you're damn right I'm proud that I made a pun that was impossible in the native language, but that works perfectly. ↩︎

With the possible exception of the Fizzy Soda, which was called the Extreme Soda in the mother3.org translation at the time. There, now you know the entire story of that one. ↩︎

This includes places like Nintendo Power previews of the then-not-yet-canceled 64DD release, as well as the bits and pieces of text in Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. ↩︎

See footnote 4. ↩︎

Have I mentioned what a consummate professional and just generally swell guy he is? ↩︎

Whereas now I look back on my attempts at translation in the various files I still have stored on my hard drive, wondering what on earth was I even thinking? at roughly one in three lines. Funny thing, language acquisition. ↩︎

#mother 3 #mother3 #translation #fan translation #EarthBound

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the-currian · 4 years ago

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Music Shuffle Tag 🎤 🎶

Task: It’s easy! Put your music library on shuffle and list the first ten songs. Give a few personal liner notes, if you’re inclined.

Tagged by @fieryanmitsu! Thanks for the tag, Mitsu dear~ It was interesting to see what would pop up considering my taste in music is pretty diverse.

I don’t really have a particular music preference. I welcome music of all genres so I usually just add whatever I’m vibing with to my music library and never organize it lmao. In general, I listen to a lot of American music, OPM, and K-pop. Recently I’ve also started getting into J-pop, besides anime OST’s.

1. Replay (누난 너무 예뻐) - SHINee: Oh god first song and my status as a 2nd gen k-pop stan is already exposed HAHAHA. This is really a feel-good song for me. Love love love this group - they’re one of the reasons I got into k-pop. SHINee is the first boy idol k-pop group I listened to. Stan talent. Stan kings. Stan SHINee 🙌

2. Romantic St. (낭만길) - Girls’ Generation (SNSD): Make way for the Nation’s Girl Group 👑 I am a SONE through and through - SNSD is my favorite k-pop group of all time. They’re a very versatile group, but my favorite songs from their discography are often their ballads. This one, in particular, is one of my favorite songs of theirs to play while I’m at a cafe. The vibe is really laidback and romantic.

3. Runaway - Avril Lavigne: The queen of punk-pop! Listening to Avril’s songs takes me back to high school when I really empathized with Avril’s songs. This one in particular really hits hard. Also can I just say that Avril is AMAZING in concert?? The Black Star Tour was definitely one of my best concert experiences.

4. Someday - Clara Renée & Michael Arden,The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Studio Cast Recording): I am a theater kid. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my favorite non-princess Disney movie. I totally get why this was cut out of the original movie, but I absolutely loved this in the stage play ❤

5. 21 Guns - Green Day: I think this is a song that everyone vibes to. It bands people together - it has a universal message that can connect with anyone on a personal level, no matter your interpretation. And it makes for a really nice chill song you can bop your head to.

6. Power Up - Red Velvet: Red Velvet is like the only non-2nd gen k-pop group that I actually keep up with. This song is such a summer bop!! It’s so fun and bubblegum pop, it always gets me in a good mood.

7. The Great Escape - Girls’ Generation (SNSD): Okay but SNSD’s JP discography is soooooo good compared to their Korean discography?? Not that their Korean discography is bad, but I prefer their dance tracks / mainstream singles in Japan more than their Korean ones. idk I just vibe with them more. Also, Jessica’s vocals in this song are EVERYTHING.

8. You Were Beautiful - DAY6: Okay when they came up, I realized that I lied. Besides Red Velvet, DAY6 is the other non-2nd gen group that I stan. I was never one for k-pop bands, but these boys are so freaking talented!! Their vocals?? Their songwriting abilities?? Their personalities?? Their musicality?? I am overwhelmed by their talent. Also I appreciate that they have English releases of some of their songs so I can accurately sing along to their songs lmao. This is a song I listen to when I chill - usually when I’m doing something like reading a book.

9. Sana - I Belong to the Zoo: Ooohh an OPM entry!! “Sana” can mean “if only”, “I wish”, “should have”, and other variations depending on context. This song really hits me in the feels. It’s a crying song for me hahaha. Like a song that I croon at karaoke when I’m drunk HAHA. “Sana sinabi mo para di na umasang may tayo pa sa huli.” “If only you said so, so I wouldn’t have hoped for us to be together in the end.” Songs in your mother tongue just hit different, you know?

10. [君へ送る唄] - みきなつみ - MIKINATSUMI: This song is one of the reasons why I wanted to try to get into J-pop. Really laidback song, stripped down, with great vocals and a great meaning. I can’t remember where I heard this song, but I heard it and was like, wait did YUI release something new? Her voice really sounds like YUI’s in this song, and the only Japanese artists I really followed were YUI and Asian Kung-Fu Generation. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out about this artist. Her songs always give me a sense of nostalgia even though I literally just discovered her a few months ago.

Hmmm I think most people I want to tag were already tagged so whoever sees this can try it!

#personal #ramblings

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imperfekti · 5 years ago

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Tenipuri Party: Echizen Ryouma profile translation

TN:

In the absence of an official English version, this translation is intended to help those who can’t read the material in the original language. Please support Tenipuri by getting your own copy of this book - it is worth it! There are various ways of purchasing it even for those not living in or visiting Japan.

The pictures I have included in this post do not show full pages.

On Echizen’s style of speech: he uses boyish style with pretty straightforward and brief sentences. In Japan it wouldn’t be considered exactly polite in style, even if the content is not exactly rude.

I’m still working on Japanese, so there might be mistakes. Please let me know if you spot any translation errors so I can fix them here!

U-17 Japanese representative, middle schooler Seishun Gakuen tennis club player 33,432 votes

Leading to the stars, going beyond Tenimuhou - the samurai that conquers any heights!

Message

You’ve always been looking at me, haven’t you. I’m grateful for that. Thanks. Regardless of the ranking, I’m your number one. Right? Cheer for me more and more. Because I’ll take you along and go even higher.

Profile

Middle school 1st year / December 24th / Capricorn / O type / 151 → 152.5 cm / 50 → 47 kg / Left handed

Special techniques: Twist serve, Drive A, Drive B, Drive C, Drive D, Cool Drive, Muga no kyouchi, Tenimuhou no kiwami, Samurai Drive, Hope (kanji: Hikaru Dakyuu)

Play style: All-rounder

Family: Father, mother, female cousin, cat (Karupin)

Father’s occupation: A temple’s substitute head priest

Hobbies: Clearing borrowed games, watching cat videos

Favourite saying: All or Nothing

Favourite color: Silver

Favourite foods: Fried fish (the type with not much bones), Chawanmushi, famous sweets

Favourite book: TENNIS LIFE (an American tennis magazine)

Favourite music: J-pop

Preferred type of person: Someone who looks good in a ponytail

Preferred date spot: Santa Monica Pier Pacific Park

Most wanted thing right now: A smart watch

Weakness: Early wake-ups, paparazzi

Elementary school: Los Angeles State Saint Youth Middle-school

Committee: Library committee

Strong subjects: English, chemistry

Weak subjects: Home-ec (cooking), Japanese

Often-visited place in school: Under the big tree behind the school

Uses allowance on: Fanta

Skills beyond tennis: Being liked by animals, peeling fruits cleanly, horseback riding(?)

Routines during tournaments: Soaking in an open-air bath

Favourite anniversary: Any day as long as there’s tennis

Preferred travel destination: Snow viewing onsen

Present for a special person: Just tell me what you want

Interview

“As long as I can play tennis, I don’t care which team I play for”

Congratulations on being reinstated as Japan’s representative! For Echizen-senshu, what was the experience of fighting as an American representative like?

What was it like…? Normal. As long as I can play tennis, the country is irrelevant.

Did you have a strong desire to play on the same team as Ryouga-senshu?

No, I wanted to play against him. But in the end, he was being evasive and escaped.

Where there any impressions you had looking at the Japanese team from the outside?

They’ve changed a bit, somehow. Fuji-senpai, Atobe-san, that person called “the child of god”. And… Akutsu-san too. Not bad, everyone.

Is that the reason you returned to Japan’s team?

Not really. It’s just that when I thought about who were the people that made me strong… If you’re fighting together with someone, I guess I’d do it here.

Sometimes, a samurai-like aura can be felt around Echizen-senshu.

Hmm… I don’t know since I can’t tell myself. When I was fighting the French prince, I guess it was said that he was a knight and I was a samurai. He was a troublesome guy, but the match with him was fun. Well, I’ll win next time too. The horseback match was a tie, but next time I’ll win that one too.

Party Talk

Q: Is there any table with players you’re interested in? A: Not really… But I guess there are strong looking guys at the German table. Well, I’d beat all of them.

Q: You offered Fanta to Tokugawa-san, didn’t you? A: He drank it in one go. I wonder if it was that good.

Q: Could it be you’re having taiyaki for the first time? A: Yeah. Why is it shaped like a fish? I’ll eat from the head side.

Q: Your suit is wonderful. Did you tie the necktie yourself? A: …How about not treating me like a kid? Well, I had it tied for me.

Q: Ah, suddenly a cat is clinging to Echizen-kun...! A: The Australian rep’s cat? There, there…

Fashion

“When we met by coincidence the other day, you were wearing a T-shirt with a strange design. What country’s brand was that?” (Yukimura)

“I’ll give you some hand-me-downs next time. But maybe they’ll be too big for you, Chibisuke?” (Ryouga)

“Koshimae is always wearing a cap! Lend it to me too!” (Tooyama)

“Basically I like clothes that are easy to move in. I guess I wear half-pants and shorts a lot.” (Echizen)

“Heeey Echizen! Are you wearing the socks we bought for color variation when we went shopping?” (Momoshiro)

Album

This is an album that happened to be in my backpack when I came to Australia. I think I got it after the nationals when I was leaving for America. Look at this and remember, they said. …But email and phones exist. Mada mada ne.

Room

Looks like stuff from America has increased While I was gone, mom and the others have rearranged my room, and exchanged stuff like the TV for a new one. The stuff I was made to take to the camp has also increased. I always play tennis at home too, though, so I’m only in the room when I sleep.

History

Age 0 December 24 Birth

Age 5 Eats his beloved dried kombu at home Lives together with Ryouga for a short while in Los Angeles During elementary school, wins American Jr. tournament 4 times in a row

Age 11 September Graduates from Los Angeles State Saint Youth Returns to Japan with his family Goes to an onsen for the first time, likes it too much, sticks to using a bathtub (*1)

Age 12 April Enters Seishun Gakuen's middle school department, becomes a regular in the tennis club At a family restaurant, orders a kid’s meal recommended by Momoshiro Victory at district preliminaries finals (Fudoumine), wins against Ibu in S2 Loses to Tezuka at the courts under the overpass

June In Tokyo prefectural quarterfinals (St. Rudolph), wins against Yuuta in S3 Victory of the tournament (Yamabuki), wins against Akutsu in S2 Struggles with classics at the end of term tests, study session at Fuji’s house

July In the first round of the Kantou regionals (Hyoutei), wins against Hiyoshi as the reserve player Second round (Midoriyama), wins against Kiraku in S3

July 24 Wins against Kirihara at a tennis club in Kanagawa

July 27 Tournament victory (Rikkai), wins against Sanada in S1

August 17 Nationals tournament second round (Higa), wins against Tanishi in S3

August 19 Quarterfinals (Hyoutei), wins against Atobe in S1 Semifinals (Shitenhouji), has a one point match with Tooyama that ends in a draw Drinks “Cola” in the yakiniku battle

August 21 Loses his memory during the training with Nanjirou in Karuizawa

August 23 Nationals finals (Rikkai), arrives at the stadium by Atobe's helicopter Regains his memory through playing against his past rivals Wins against Yukimura in S1, wins the nationals championship

August 26 Goes to America

November Returns to Japan, participates in the U-17 camp Doesn’t play against Minami in the friendly-fire matches, loss Participates in the mountaintop training With Tanishi and Kenya, finds a secret passageway at the depths of the cave Protects Tokugawa, has to leave the camp; goes to America together with Ryouga Beats 24 American representative contenders, becomes an American representative Does BBQ with Kiko and Dudu, fries fish

December U-17 pre-world cup begins Faces Tube Republic, wins the first match U-17 world cup begins Match against Sweden, wins against their captain (*2) Calms his worries, returns to Japan’s team and becomes a representative Beats Aramenoma in an unofficial match Gets lost with Tooyama in the athlete village (*3) Quarterfinals (France), wins against the Prince in S3

TN:

*1 I don’t really understand the sentence fully, so this is a bit of a guess.

*2 In the magazine release, this match was against Denmark, but was changed into Sweden in the volume release.

*3 Literally “becomes a lost child”.

#my translation #prince of tennis #new prince of tennis #echizen ryouma #echizen ryouga #tenipuri party

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shinonometrash · 3 years ago

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Jasper Lane’s Main Story: English vs Japanese version, full summary, comparisons & thoughts. Part 1 of 3. (TW: rape, sexual assault, drugging)

So! Jasper’s route has finally been released in English as of August 31st, 2021. It seems that Voltage is following the same release order for consorts and events as how items were released in the Japanese version. I spent wayyy too much money to binge the entire route in a day...and get all the premium content...(honestly the hardest part about binging a route isn’t the love passes, it’s getting all the spirit points. Ugh.) I took note of a lot of different things in this and wanted to make a post going over all this information. Sorry this post took me so long to make, I had to go back and reread a lot of Jasper’s story in Japanese to refresh my memory as well as make sure I didn’t miss any big details since I had read it first back in May, and my Japanese has improved a lot (I think) since then. It was unfortunate and I didn’t really want to, lol. But! Now it’s his birthday (9/11)! I get to post this on his birthday! Happy birthday, asshole! This post is why you and your route suck! I’m probably only going to be able to post this first part today though, because honestly this post is taking much more time than I expected.

The biggest thing is going to be that

Jasper’s English (Court of Darkness) route does NOT contain any major triggering content. You’ll probably still want to punch him, though.

So, if you’re looking to find out about that, there you go. Anyways.

I’ve broken this into four posts, three that contain summaries of each chapter, regardless of changes, and one that only contains the changes.

(As of the date of posting, 9/11/2021, I have not completed all the posts yet. Please check back later and I will add the links to the rest of them as they are posted.)

This post is part one including the summaries. Part two in currently progress. Part three in currently progress. Post with ONLY comparisons and thoughts currently in progress.

Since I had contacted Voltage about the triggering content in Jasper’s route (and made a very lengthy Tumblr post about it) and they told me they prefer to remove potentially triggering content from stories in the localization process, rather than simply adding trigger warnings, I was more or less expecting this. Although...I didn’t really expect it to be to this extent, nor did I realize how I was actually going to feel about it...! Of course, the CoD did a fabulous job with the content they were given and what they were told to do, as always, and I completely understand why they changed what they did. Like. Seriously. They did the best they could do with the absolute mess of a route they were given. But, like, the route was an absolute mess to begin with. So there’s only so much that can be done to fix it...💀 Anyways, please know that any of my complaining is not directed at the CoD team because they’re wonderful!! Support them by buying in game content if you’re able to!! They recently released a special VIP pack that’s honestly an AMAZING deal. This is just a criticism of the route itself and my thoughts on it, not on the CoD team.

Now, onto the main point of the post...the English and Japanese versions of this route are very different.

Warning: This post contains major spoilers about Jasper’s main story as well as potentially triggering content including but not limited to rape, sexual assault, and drugging.

In addition, I am not including any CGs in this post as I’m not trying to break Voltage’s policy.

Please click under the read more to continue.

Okay, so first off this is probably going to sound incredibly self centered of me, but I sort of get the feeling that my post about his Japanese route had some sort of influence on the changes in his route...? Not sure how big of tabs Voltage keeps on Tumblr...but it seems like nearly all of the main points I was specifically really mad about got changed--and I’m sure they must have definitely seen my post...? Also, this too probably sounds silly, but I was kinda happy reading some of the dialogue that was nearly the same as the way I had translated it. Part of me was still afraid that I had no idea what I was talking about and just looked stupid writing a long post with misinterpretations of lines💀

Pre-notes: 1. For those who named their cat something else, Robin = MC’s cat. 2. In the direct quotes, anytime you see “---” it’s just me cutting out a part in the dialogue that I deem unnecessary for comparison purposes. 3. I bolded whether there’s differences in the chapters or not in each chapter summary, in case you only want to read the summaries for the chapters with the differences. It’s pretty much going to be the same as reading my other post, then, but I explain more of the chapter here, usually.

Chapter 1-3

Literally so dull. Nothing really of note. Pretty much the same between the English and Japanese. Jasper asks about her hands and she’s like “omg he’s so nice he was worried about my hands!!”, she meets Sherry and they become friends, the headmaster tells her she has to learn magic if she wants a chance at going back home. They go to the runes and learn about the history of Saligia. Guy grabs her again, she escapes.

Chapter 4

It starts to get a little bit more interesting here. Overall, nothing seems too different between the two stories yet. Jasper invites her to the rooftop for a tea party. Jasper is desperately trying to get MC to interact (in a positive manner) with Guy, she asks Jasper to have tea with her instead. Sherry and Rio mention a ball. Toa and Guy get into a glaring match. Toa leaves. You know, the usual. Jasper whispers something in Guy’s ear and they leave, and everybody follows them because...you know. They discover that Guy’s room has been trashed. Toa walks in and asks what’s going on, and then falls silent when he sees Guy’s room. Guy is like “Toa, you left before me, did you not?” and Toa is like “What are you trying to imply?” then they glare at each other until Lynt is like “Are you trying to say that Toa is the culprit? He would never.” Fenn agrees. Roy says they should investigate, and Toa says he will also investigate, since he is the dorm prefect after all. Afterwards, Jasper asks Guy if he thinks Toa did it, Guy says “No, Qelsum isn’t that stupid.” Guy says they need information. He sends Jasper out to investigate, tells Jasper to be sure not to be seen. Fenn, Violet, and MC go out for food or something, and MC runs into Sirius, literally. Fenn is like “what are you doing?” and MC says she ran into somebody but turns around and there’s nobody there. I guess it’s trying to imply that Jasper is stealthy and can hide away into the night or something?? But then that’s it.

Chapter 5-6

No overall noticeable changes. It’s time for the ball! Sherry lends MC a dress and they head to the ball. She sees Jasper in the hallway closely inspecting wine, without Guy. She calls his name and he startles. He tells her he’s selecting a wine for Guy because Guy is very selective and will not consume anything that Jasper has not prepared. Jasper essentially says that Guy is his reason for living. Then they go into the dance hall. And Guy is all like “why did you come in together?” then they say they ran into each other by chance. Guy goes to take a sip of the wine, looks startled, and then ends up spitting it out into a handkerchief. He claims he choked on the wine. She finds Jasper in the hallway again, looking at the wine, and calls out. Again, he startles. She wonders why. She tries to ask, but then he dodges the question by telling MC that the dress looks good on her. He invites her to dance and says he’ll teach her. They head back to the ballroom, she asks him some various questions and they all basically end with him saying that he serves Guy or whatever, and she’s thinking all like “work, again...?”. Jasper then tries to make her dance with Guy instead of himself, and when she says she’s going to leave he grabs her arm. There’s a few choices you can make, but one of them is “Please let go of me.” And then! And then! This man literally looks at her and asks “Why?” Yikes!! And she asks why he’s asking why, and he says he doesn’t want her to go, so she agrees to stay a little longer. (Mistake #1) Then he shoves her off onto Guy again. After dancing with Guy she goes out to the balcony and runs into Aquia, and Aquia pricks his finger and it starts bleeding. She tries to look at it and it somehow brushes her lips and at that moment Guy and Jasper come out and ask what’s going on. Aquia apologizes (he did nothing wrong!! >:( ) They then discover that Aquia’s wound has magically healed somehow. Then here’s the scene with Guy: “That girl, I want to know everything about her.” Jasper: “Oh my, have you fallen in love?” Guy: “Something like that” Jasper: “Congratulations! We must celebrate this wonderful occasion!” Guy: “That’s enough now. Investigate that woman’s power.”

Chapter 7

No major changes between versions. But...Ughhhhhhhh. We’re gonna meet Sirius in this chapter. But first some humor. They go to the S rank lounge, I believe after the ball. Jasper offers to make coffee. Literally ALL the valets suddenly RUSH to Jasper’s side to ask him to teach them how to brew coffee. So there sitting in the S rank lounge with Jasper brewing coffee while all the other valets are like 👀👀👀👀 lmaoooo. Aight and so the humorous part ends there, sorry! That’s it! Now we must move on. Fenn says he wants to go out drinking and asks Jasper if he’d like to join, Jasper declines saying he has other matters to attend to. We learn that Hawke, Jasper, and Lance are all drinking buddies. MC is all like “oh thank god, that means he does get time off!” -_- So then Toa laughs and comments how close Jasper and MC are, and is like “wow imagine using your valet for something like that” and then tells her that she’ll be a tool for Avari if she sticks with them, and that it’s not too late to switch to Qelsum’s side instead. (She does not switch. Mistake #2. Arguably her biggest mistake in this entire route, if you ask me.) Guy interjects and tells Toa that MC is his, and Toa is like “lmaooo then why does she seem closer with your valet than you?” and then they glare at each other. MC gets annoyed and leaves. Jasper asks where she’s going. She says she’s going back to her room to see Robin. For some reason, Jasper seems disappointed about this? Afterwards, she goes to her room for a bit but then decides to go explore the town with Robin. Uh oh! Robin goes missing.

She starts looking for Robin and runs into this sketch looking dude. He asks her where’s she’s going, she says she’s looking for her cat. He’s like “oh that flying thing?” and she’s like “Yeah!” and then is like “could you just tell me which way he was headed? I can get there myself.” but the guy insists that she should follow him instead, because the streets are dangerous and she might run into dangerous men. The man is then like “I’m Sirius.” (which, when I first read the Japanese, I thought he was saying “I’m serious” lmaoo) and then he frickin grabs her hand and drags her off!!! Yikes!

Chapter 8, 1st Interlude, and Chapter 9

Okay so we’ve got the most significant changes in these chapters. Like. A LOT. This is what the majority of my previous post focused on: the drugging, sexual assault, and morning after. They basically did their best to make this consensual. It went very similar to what I had predicted, although played up a bit more cringe-y than I had expected...or maybe I just hadn’t thought about how cringe-y it would be. There’s literally so many changes that it’d be a bit of a pain to summarize all of them between the versions, I’m just going to put the actual dialogue/stuff from the stories for a lot of this so you can see the differences more directly. (The Japanese will be roughly translated by me, of course.)

Chapter 8

So Sirius starts walking and walking and walking and she asks where they’re going but he keeps insisting it’ll only be just a little longer or that it’s a shortcut and stuff. Ughhhhh...Then she’s like. This man clearly has no idea what he’s doing, I’m going to run away after all. But then he suddenly tells her they’re going to take a “break”. He drags her into the bar before she can protest or try to run. She tries to say no to a drink, but then he asks if she does drink and she’s like “well I do, but...” and you start seeing the differences here. In English she makes a comment of “Ugh, if only he wasn’t so charming.” Sirius further insists only one drink, even though MC tries to say she needs to go find Robin. He then just straight up orders drinks for them, despite her protesting. She then agrees, and then mentally apologizes to Robin. (Mistake #3) And we start seeing the biggest differences about right here...

For this chapter, let’s play a guessing game on which one is the Japanese version and which one is the English version, shall we? :)

Away from the table, Sirius plants a palm on the counter. Two of the usual are set out before him, bubbles frothing over the top. Sirius glances back and finds MC staring at the patterns in the wood grain. Sirius: Much obliged. Tavern Keeper: Mm-hmm. Scooping up the fizzing, popping tumblers, he tosses a wink at the tavern keeper. Then, he strolls back to spend time with his new friend. - Away from the table, Sirius plants a palm on the counter. Immediately two of the usual shot glasses are set out in front of him. Just to make sure, he looks back at MC, who is staring at the table. Sirius: Ah, thanks. Tavern Keeper: Mhm. Sirius skillfully drops the tablet he had hidden between his fingers into the shot glass of the opposite hand. Then, feigning a nonchalant look, he returns back to the table.

Did you guess which one was which in this part? :) And yes, my friends. In the fucking CANON MAIN ROUTE, it deadass has a line saying that our love interest puts a drug in our drinks. And yet...the Japanese fans still love him! Ugh. Also, that “skillfully” bit really concerns me. That kinda implies that he’s done it multiple times before, does it not??? Honestly I’m not really sure why it says it was a shot glass in the Japanese, though. I thought they were drinking like cocktails, not taking a shot. Maybe that’s why they changed that bit...? Now the stories are the same again for a tiny bit. Some time has passed that they’ve been in the bar/tavern and MC chugs her drink and slams it down on the table. She seems drunk. She’s rambling about Guy and Jasper. Like “I’m not an object!!” “and he’s like “Yes, yes, you aren’t an object.” then like “Who goes around saying stuff like “you are mine” and “give me your power”?? Like seriously! Who says that sort of stuff! It’s so messed up!” and he just listens along, amused. He then says that it’s good to drink sometimes, and she agrees, and then he asks what she wants to do. She notes how she’s only had one drink, yet her head feels a bit fuzzy already, and how it made her very talkative. She says she wants to go home. She reveals that her family died, and that she has a hair clip in her hair from her mom that’s very important to her. She mentions how there are still good people in this world, though. Sirius tries to order her another drink, and here’s where stuff deviates again.

Sirius: Another of the same, if you please. MC: What, no! I’m fine MC: So hey, you’ve been fantastic company but I really need to go find Robin. (Man I got way too into that conversation.) (Robin must be out there looking for me.) MC: Thanks for the drink, though. You’re a really good listener. And also...really, really pretty. MC: It’s been great meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime? MC: Like...when I’m not looking for my cat. That’d be...nice.” (I have no filter. No filter whatsoever.) MC: Right, so...Bye... He stands up right as I do. The rickety old table wobbles between us and I pitch into his arms. Sirius: Steady on. Sirius: I might almost think you’ve fallen for me. (Fallen for him? But I’ve only just met the man.) Sirius holds me steady as I smile up at him, feeling silly but bold. He’s even more handsome up close. MC: Like I said, very attractive but...gotta go. Sirius: Hold fast. MC: Haha. Did you just pick me up?! Sirius hefts me into his arms like I weigh nothing, and for a moment I feel like I’m being carried off into the sunset. An electrifying thrill runs through me as I sway against him, adn then I realize we’re moving. MC: Where are we going? Sirius: ... MC: The look he gives me then makes my eyebrows shoot up. I nod and let him carry on. (English version, Mistake #4) When I next open my eyes, I’m being placed down on something fluffy. (I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. I should leave well enough alone but there’s something about him...) I peer at the unfamiliar ceiling overhead while Sirius stares down in my eyes. Sirius: No need to hurry. Sirius: The night’s just begun, after all. (Wait a second, aren’t you...?) The seductive smile on his face comes closer. For a split second he reminds me of someone, but it must be my imagination. - Sirius: Bartender, another of the same. MC: Ah, no, I’m good! MC: I really need to go find Robin. (Yikes, I got totally absorbed in that conversation.) (Surely Robin is looking for me, too) MC: Thanks...for talking with me...and listening... MC: Thanks to that I’ll be sure to...remember this... MC: From now on, I’m going...to study...more seriously...for sure.... (Wha...I’m so dizzy...) MC: Sorry...I’m...leaving now... Sirius: Whoa, hold on. MC: Ah... Unsteady on my feet, Sirius picks me up and holds me in his arms. I feel swaying and I open my eyes slightly. I’m being carried somewhere. MC: Where...are we going...? Sirius: ... Strangely, it feels like the ceiling has gotten awfully high... The next thing I’m aware of when I open my eyes is being placed down on something fluffy. (Where am I...?) I gaze at the ceiling above me and Sirius looks into my eyes. Sirius: Let’s take it slowly. Sirius: The night has just begun, no? (Huh...?) Laughing mysteriously, the man’s face comes closer. For a second, I think he looks similar to someone. But it’s just my imagination, right...?

I’m sure you can guess which one is which. One is extremely alarming, the other is cringe. It’s clear they did the most they could to try and make it consensual between them, and ended up doing exactly what I thought with having her make several comments about how attractive he is and then add some playful flirting between them. 😖 Alright! Ready for the next part?

1st Interlude

I just read the normal first interlude in Japanese before typing out this post and...god, I thought the premium interlude was bad. So, one more time, trigger warning for sexual assault. Damn I really don’t want to write this part, I’m so tired from writing the rest TT (I saved this for last, unfortunately.) I’m not translating all of these so I’ll do a mix of translating exact lines and summarization. In all the stories, first she calls out Jasper’s name at first, confused, and then Sirius looks shocked. And she’s like, how weird, why would I call him that...he’s clearly Sirius...and then they all start to deviate. ><

Normal Interlude

Japanese version (this is the worst one): MC: I’m sorry...I must’ve gotten drunk, sorry for the trouble... Sirius: So you’re apologizing in this situation. (This...situation...?) He kisses her. (Wha...I’m being...kissed...) I’m aware of it, but my body feels so heavy, I can’t resist it. With my arms pinned to the bed, I’m forced to accept the kiss. He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. -- Sirius: Is it only your lips, or...? His finger runs along my knee, tickling it. With his other hand, he skillfully slips his hand into my shirt. Sirius: No need to be alarmed. Sirius: I simply wish to confirm. (Confirm...?) Sirius: So soft and smooth, you feel nice to touch. Sirius: But, I don’t feel anything from just touching you... Sirius: Is it different depending on where I touch? The sensation of him stroking my skin falsely spreads through my whole body while his fingertips make their way down to my lower limbs. I move my shoulders to try to tell him “I don’t want you to touch me!”, but it doesn’t matter as his fingertips continue to try to uncover something. MC: St...stop it... Yelling out makes him stop--at least, that’s what I had thought. However, the thing that stops him isn’t my voice. He removes his hand that was feeling around in my shirt and then starts to think about something. (Is he...searching for something...?) Sirius: ...so it can’t be transferred through the skin, hm. (W-what...?) It’s finally over--is what I thought, at least. This time, he drops kisses on my ears and collarbone. When he puts his hands on my thighs again, I want to run away immediately. (Why...? Why is this happening...?) MC: Is this...is this a dream...? Sirius: Yes. It’s a dream. So, goodnight. Sirius: You’re about to reach the limit, aren’t you? (Limit? What is he talking about?) Even if I wanted to think about it, my head is too fuzzy and I can’t think of anything. I don’t like it, but...what is it I don’t like? Surely it was something important, but I can’t remember. Before I could say “I’m sorry, I’m really sleepy” my consciousness blacks out. She passes out and Sirius says something about how interesting it is, and that he must report his findings to Guy.

English version: MC: Sorry, I can’t believe I called you by the wrong name. Sirius: Is this the time for apologies? (I guess not...?) He kisses her. (We’re kissing. I’m kissing Sirius...) He’s certainly attractive enough. I’m not attached to anyone here, and yet...Why is it that I keep thinking of Jasper? He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. -- Sirius: Is it only your lips, or...? His fingers walk along my knee, tickling me. I shiver and grin as he gives me a considering look, then slips his hand inside my shirt. -- Sirius: I only wish to see what you’re capable of. (Strangest bedroom talk ever.) Sirius: You’re exquisite. Soft, smooth, perfect to the touch... Sirius: But I seek other responses. Sirius: Tell me, is this where you want to be touched? He peers down at me expectantly, hands petting along my skin as if to encourage me to speak. I squeeze my thighs together, hoping he’ll continue without the need for words. He raises an eyebrow. MC: Sirius, I need... At first I think the sound of my voice has given him pause. Then I realize something else has happened. He tidies my open shirt a little and frowns thoughtfully. (What is he doing? What is it he’s looking for?) Sirius: Hm, no transfer from the skin. (Uh, what?) My mouth falls open. Has the moment been ruined somehow? If so, what’d I do? But then he plants tiny kisses over my ears, neck, and cheeks. His hands sweep over me once more, but far more soothingly. Still, I can’t get the image of Jasper out of my mind. (I can’t be doing this. It’s not fair to be thinking of one man when I’m with another. I need to sort my head out.) MC: Sirius, I can’t do this. I’m...I think I’m developing feelings for someone else, so it wouldn’t be fair to you to do this... Sirius: Well, well. There’s an unexpected turn. ...All right. We’ll think of this as nothing more than a passing dream. Sirius: This never happened then. Good night, MC. (Good night? But we’ve only just...) Suddenly I feel very drowsy. A second ago I wanted nothing more than a crazy, one-night romp with a man who has crystalline red eyes. Now I can’t think of anything but how comfortable this bed is. She passes out and Sirius says something about how interesting it is, and that he must report his findings to Guy. --

Yikes!!!!! I was so shocked when I read the normal interlude!! Especially the Japanese version!! Now for the other one...

Premium Interlude

Japanese version:

MC: I’m sorry...I must’ve gotten drunk, sorry for the trouble... Sirius: So you’re apologizing in this situation. (This...situation...?) His voice is close. But besides that, I don’t understand the situation very well. Sirius: Is it hard to open your eyes? MC: Yes... Sirius: I’ll make you feel better right now. (Feel better...?) She sees him put in eyedrops. She tries to ask but her voice is really quiet and her throat is dry. MC: Excuse me, could...could I have some water?” Sirius: I’ll give you some right now I felt something cold touch my lips and water poured down my throat. MC: ...nng (No...it’s something else. I’m...being kissed...) I understand that, but, but I feel too drowsy to be able to resist. With my arms pinned to the bed, I’m forced to accept the kiss. He says “what is this power?” and then she sees an aura flare up around him. She asks if it’s magic, and he says that it’s interesting, and then asks if it has to do with the length of time or the type of physical contact. (What...this kiss...) It’s a kiss that makes me feel as if I’ll be swallowed by the torrent of pleasure. (I’ve never experienced something like this...) Sirius: Ha...ahh... MC: ...mm, Sirius... His lips pull away with a wet sound and I sigh. Sirius: It’s as I thought... MC: Stop...it...already... Sirius: Shhh... Sirius: Be quiet. I’m going to make you feel better. He wipes his finger along my wet lips and pushes it inside my mouth. My shoulders jump and I shiver and inhale sharply, feeling like I’m being bitten on the neck by Sirius. MC: Mnn... Sirius: Suck... He moves his finger around my mouth and I move my tongue as I’m told. Sirius: That’s it good girl... Sirius: ...so it can’t be transferred through the skin, hm. (What...is he talking about...?) Sirius: How about...here? He removes his finger from my mouth and strokes my knee. MC asks if it’s a dream, and the rest of the interlude ends the same way as the normal Japanese interlude ends.

English version:

MC: Sorry, I can’t believe I called you by the wrong name. Sirius: Is this the time for apologies? (I guess not...?) I can almost feel his voice vibrate against my skin. Shivering at the sensation, I let my head fall against the pillows. Sirius: Would you rather keep your eyes closed at the moment? MC: Mm. yeah. I like the sound of your voice. It...reminds me of someone... Sirius: Then keep them closed. Sirius tells her to hold on a minute and puts in eyedrops. MC says her throat is dry and asks for some water. He gives her water, but she realizes that it’s not a cup but rather him giving her water from his lips. -- They kiss. (Who taught him to kiss like this?) It’s like some dam has burst within me and a tide of pleasure is threatening to sweet me away. (I’ve never experienced anything like this. Is this magic, too, or just him?) Sirius: Mm..Yes... MC: Ah...Sirius... A wanton moan escapes me as he gives me space to breathe. The thing is, in my mind’s eye I keep seeing someone else. Sirius: Quite as I suspected. MC: That was incredible. What was-- Sirius: Shh. Hush now. I’ll fufill that yearning of yours. He rubs his thumb against my dampened bottom lip then slips it inside my mouth. My shoulders jump as he moves his lips and teeth over my neck. Sirius: Suck. I obediently swirl my tongue over his thumb, taking it in further. Sirius: Good girl. -- Then she says she can’t do it because of having feelings for someone else, just like in the normal English and the rest of the interlude continues the exact same way.

I can’t believe Voltage was really like “hey, pay us and we’ll make the content less rape-y for you! :)” Big yikes lol. I’d only read the premium at the time of my original post, and I thought that was bad enough to write a post about it. That normal interlude though? YIKES. Like...gahhh I know I already said this same thing like three times earlier but I’m just so grossed out!!

Also, a quick note. The CG for this has Sirius laying on top of her while she has her eyes closed. This is because she’s UNCONSCIOUS in the Japanese version. I was wondering how they were gonna get around it, but like not long before it came out I was like “oh they can just have him comment telling her to close her eyes or something” and I guess that’s more or less what they did...?

Chapter 9

Okay so I realize I did make a slight translation error in my original post about the ninth chapter. She does indeed say “I don’t have a headache” rather than what I had thought it said which was “My head hurts, but it can’t be a hangover.” which is what they went with in the English. “My head doesn’t hurt, though, which suggests I don’t have a hangover.” The rest seems about right, though. Anyways, so this chapter starts the morning after the events of the first interlude with MC waking up in the strange bedroom. While not technically as big of change as in Chapter 8 and the first interlude, this is also one of the most changed chapters between versions.

The Japanese version:

(Where am I?) I open my eyes and am unable to move at first. ---- (Robin and I got separated in town...so I was searching for him) (And then...ah, yeah, I met Sirius) (He was showing me the way...and then there was that bar on the dark street where I was only going to drink one drink, and then...) .... ....... .......... “Shit, I can’t remember anything...” I’m not sure how I got to this room or what happened after I blacked out. My head doesn’t hurt, so it’s not a hangover. I only had one drink, that’s the one thing I CAN remember. “No way...” Nervously, I run my hands down my body. The hem of my shirt was untucked, all the buttons completely undone, and my skirt was rolled up past my thighs. (I want to think it’s just from how I slept...I really want to think that, but...) Being drunk can make you roll around and do that. I can’t hide how anxious I am about this unexpected situation. My heart thumps painfully in my chest and my legs shake. ---- (Huh? A tattoo?) I see Sirius taking a shower in the other room, with a tattoo spread across his back. (That would mean Sirius and I...) Looking at the bed with disheveled sheets, I wrap my arms around my body and hug myself tightly. “Maybe...maybe we just slept, that’s all...” (It’s a pitiful excuse, I know.) (Oh my god!! I need to go find Robin!!) Remembering something very important, she runs out of the room. ---- Sirius: “Ha, she ran away.”

English version:

Where am I? I open my eyes and stay perfectly still for the first few minutes. ---- (I got separated from Robin in town and while I was looking for him I, ended up lost.) (And then...Oh right, I met Sirius. Man, he was attractive.) (He was showing me the way, then we paused for a drink, and then...) Then...Hmm. What did happen? I’m drawing a blank here. “What the? I have no memory of last night.” I have no idea where this is or the events that led to me waking up here. There are flashes of groans and sighs, but that’s all. My head doesn’t hurt, though, which suggests I don’t have a hangover. Not that I’d expect to have one over a single drink, but I remember that drink being similar to a potion. “Uh-oh. Did I hook up with someone?” I carefully pat myself down. My shirt’s untucked, the buttons are undone, and my skirt’s hiked up around my thighs. (Then again, I could’ve just slept weird. Here’s hoping.) I’ve definitely rolled around in my sleep while drunk before. Still, I never thought I’d have to do a walk of shame in another realm. My heart pounds as I look around, trying to figure out who I spent the night with. (Did I somehow manage to book a room for myself? With what coin?) (It’s like everything that happened since I got here caught up to me all at once. What did I do...?) ---- “What was that?” (A tattoo? It was a gorgeous one, if so.) (The question is, how acquainted did I become with that tattoo last night?) The rumbled bedding comes back into view as I put my head in my hands. “Maybe we just crashed here together after our drink.” “...” (Pitiful excuse, but I’ll take it for now.) (Wait, Robin! Oh god. I have to go find him.) I run out of the room as soon as I remember. Given how little of the situation I remember, it’s probably better if we put that night behind us. ---- Sirius: “Alas. She has absconded.”

Then after she leaves, it goes about the same in both versions. She finds Robin at the gates, is rushing to Toa’s class, gets stopped by Jasper. His voice reminds her of Sirius. He then teases her for being late and is like “You said you were going to go back to your room last night, but it seems like you went out and had fun instead.” and she snaps at him and says she didn’t. He acts surprised. She apologizes and walks off, embarrassed. He laughs.

So. Yeah. One of them, MC wakes up confused after being drugged and raped and is trying to process that and then remembers Robin, runs back to the dorms, and has to deal with Jasper teasing her saying she went out and had “fun” which triggers extremely fresh, bad memories. While the other one...MC is like. Did I hook up with someone?? Whoopsies! Hm, I wonder how I did that. Oh but that Sirius guy was SO hot. Oh shit! I have a cat that’s missing! Gotta go. And then Jasper teases her but she just gets upset because she feels embarrassed about hooking up with someone. Neat. Also, what is with Voltage and their obsession with using “abscond”???

----

Are you feeling uncomfortable right now? A little horrified that Voltage would write a story like that, and romanticize it? Awesome! Me too! Let’s take a break here before moving on. Thankfully, the next parts won’t contain anything near as triggering as the first interlude and chapter 9.

(Next post currently in progress, will add link as soon as possible! This is taking much longer than I thought it would to write;;;)

#jasper lane #jasper court of darkness #court of darkness #court of darkness jasper

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bananban-feature · 4 years ago

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Henry Lau

One of my biggest kpop idols (literally in the sense that I really look up to him even though I don’t stan and know all about his activities) is Henry Lau.

Even though Super Junior was popular in the Philippines during my childhood (I didn’t stan SuJu though), I never really learned that there was such a thing as Super Junior-M, the group in which Henry belonged. I first discovered Henry when he guested in a show I always watched, 2 Days 1 Night Season 3. His entertainingly weird and fun personality and his incredible talents got me so interested.

TALENTS AND SKILLS

I keep mentioning my preferences on all my blog posts, but I’ll say it again. I’m a big fan of all-rounders, multi-talented and self-producing people. And Henry happens to be one of the G.O.A.T.s according to my book. I love that he screams “Asian Achiever” vibes because he’s excellent in many things, no doubt making his parents proud. He has talents in music and performance (singing, dancing, playing instruments) and can speak four languages! What blows my mind about all his talent is that not only does he have talent, he actually is on a very high skill level in each of these things! Don’t show Henry to your Asian parents because the standard is being set too high.

Languages

Henry is a native English-speaker (he’s Canadian), fluent in Mandarin / Cantonese (he has Taiwanese / Hong Kong parents), and obviously, as a kpop artist, he is also fluent in Korean. It’s said he can also speak Japanese and French.

Singing, Dancing, and Writing/Composing Music

How can I even start? Maybe you should listen to his most popular song, It’s You, from the OST of While You Were Sleeping (I loved this show and I didn’t even know it was Henry’s song!). He has such a beautiful voice! I’m not even kidding, I love his vibe. I really love him in Begin Again!

Of course as a member of any boy group, it’s expected that he would have dancing skills. But Henry takes it to the next level and actually gives astonishing performances.

Quick recap, are the requirements of being a top kpop idol being met by this guy? Singing, check! Dancing, check! Stage presence, check! Visuals, yes, check! I mean, look at his pretty skin and pink lips...

Not bad. He really is complete in terms of the kpop idol checklist!

And yet, he still takes it up a notch. As I have mentioned many times, I am a big fan of songwriters and self-produced idols. Henry has written/composed a bunch of things, and now he writes his own songs!

He’s also acted, but I haven’t seen the movie (A Dog’s Journey).

Instruments & Classical Music

As if we don’t have enough reasons to love Henry, he can also play multiple instruments! Obviously, I am a big big fan of people who play instruments, because it really takes hard work and skills to be able to play them well. He can play violin, piano, and guitar. I guess, there could be more but that’s just the ones I really know.

You know a lot of kpop idols can play piano or claim they can play violin when they actually just play simple notes (like maybe, my level ehem). Henry isn’t one of those. As a person who was also classically-trained***, I can tell you Henry is really highly-skilled. (This is what impressed me the most about him!) Bruh, classical music isn’t easy! And yet his skill level is could’ve-gone-to-classical-music-school-if-he-wanted-to-but-instead-he-went-kpop! What can we expect, though, he started at age 5. But dear, his skill in this area as an all-rounder is so impressive.

*On TwoSet Violin: I am a really big fan of TwoSet. I stanned them hard! I know that last year they released a review on Henry’s playing. I literally watched it as soon as it came out cause I was excited to see Henry in Twoset. Some fans took it as an actual roast video. But they aren’t really roasting him as a person and even as a performer. They made that very clear. They were simply reviewing it from a classical professional’s point of view. In fact, they said that they are actually impressed that he’s actually good in playing even though he’s an idol, and he’s even better than many pop violinists they’ve seen. Although they pointed technical stuff about his performances, they kept praising Henry’s playing throughout the video. And no, it’s not just because they’re simply afraid of the fans. It’s because it’s true. They even explained some mistakes in the performances and recognized that it could’ve been nervousness. Nobody’s hating on Henry, ie. they’re not enemies. Even if he might have pre-recorded some of his violin performances, it does not diminish Henry’s violin skills. (In fact, this is confirmed by our favorite world-class violinist, Ray Chen. Henry has the skills!) And who the hell hates on someone this good at playing instruments while also being good at singing, dancing and other things?

***You could say I’m classically trained cause even though I keep skipping years, I did get classical training on my instruments and my main genre is still classical. If you’re curious about my classical instruments: I play the piano. I studied violin for a time, but I did not really pursue it as much as I wanted to. I am now studying classical guitar. Not saying I’m good at my instruments at all, but at least I got some classical training.

PERSONALITY

I honestly haven’t watched a lot of variety shows with Henry in it. I’ve only seen him on an episode of 2 Days 1 Night long ago and just recently an episode of Happy Together. But his 2D1N episode left a mark on me that made me love him. He was crazy, almost in like a 4D childish way, and was really funny. Super outgoing too. He seems like that extra friend who’s super fun to be around with! I really loved him there. He also seemed really kind and approachable in Happy Together. So yes, I like his personality.

Anyway, that’s that. I just remembered him ‘cause he’s on Weverse. (And I’m now on Weverse. Haha)

#Henry Lau #kpop #all-rounder

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gaymer-hag-stan · 5 years ago

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Throwback Thursday [1/6]

Hi!

I've been testing out my very very VERY mediocre editing skills just for fun but I thought I'd share what I made anyway.

For the following six weeks, starting today, I'll be sharing the small videos I've made, filled with all the greatest hits of the past by my favourite K-pop girl groups!

These groups are very important to me because, through their music, they've kept me company on countless bus and train rides as well as when I'm feeling down or lonely or just bored. Ideally I'd love to make them a proper tribute video but for now that's as far as I go lol.

I hope you enjoy these little throwbacks as much as I did!

[WARNING] The video and audio quality is mostly... Bad, so if you wanna retain your hearing, don't watch this with your headphones too loud!

1. Tell Me - Wonder Girls - 2007

Tell Me is so addictive and fun! I love every part of it. Sunmi's husky verses, Sohee's "OMONA", Yeeun and Sunye giving it their all in the chorus and, of course, Yubin's rap. Oh Yubin's rap! The styling is scary but the song is too good that makes me ignore the hair and outfit (and makeup...) choices... Wonder Woman Sohee saving the day is iconic though.

2. L.O.V.E. - Brown Eyed Girls - 2008

Brown Eyed Girls are rarely praised for their softer, less powerful songs but L.O.V.E. basically put them on the map so it deserves credit! I'd still choose bold and dark BEG any time of course but still.

3. So Hot - Wonder Girls - 2008

Leave it to the Wonder Girls to release a song parodying their immense success! They were still the top girl group at the time so releasing this after the massive hit that Tell Me was was honestly pure genius! Again, the styling is questionable but Sunye looks great with that hairstyle!

4. How - Brown Eyed Girls - 2008

Brown Eyed Girls were still trying to find a balance between being extremely talented and releasing public-friendly songs and How was definitely a step in the right direction! I love Miryo's raps in this very much. She's also rocking that short haircut as well!

5. Nobody - Wonder Girls - 2008

Full disclosure but I prefer Tell Me over Nobody. In any case, it's Wonder Girls' greatest hit and for a very good reason too! I included the English re-release because I feel like Wonder Girls are not given the credit they deserve nowadays for literally putting K-pop on the map...

6. Gee - Girls' Generation - 2009

Gee is iterally that bitch. Love it or hate it, it not only skyrocketed Girls' Generation to the top of girl groups but also set the golden standard for what a successful top boss bitch girl group looks and sounds like. Gee is literally the reason every single girl group has cutesy concepts nowadays and Girls' Generation is the reason every single company creates nine-membered girl groups. It is also the very first K-pop girl group song I ever listened to!

7. Honey - KARA - 2009

I'm probably one of the very few people that actually enjoyed KARA's "Fin.K.L. ripoff" debut but seeing them do a 180° in 2008 and then further establishing their girl-next-door image with Honey in 2009 and finding success was just as satisfying! Nicole's rap is the highlight for me.

8. Fire - 2NE1 - 2009

What a great way to debut! Fire is a classic because it immediately sets itself apart from any other K-pop girl group hit song released up until that point. And what's even more satisfying is that the girls feel believable. They're not faking it or trying too hard to look badass, they simply are. 2NE1 had unbelievable charisma that seriously can not be replicated. Ever since they disbanded it's been really hard for me to listen to their songs because it really hurts knowing that there will never be more. They were my favourite group after all..

9. Hot Issue - 4Minute - 2009

Oh my god, 2009's batch of new girl groups was so powerful? Like 2NE1, they also presented themselves in a very powerful but not forced way except they always felt a little more... I don't know, more traditionally feminine? More sexy maybe? Hot Issue is a good example of that.

10. Tell Me Your Wish (Genie) - Girls Generation - 2009

Genie is that song I think I mostly asociate with Girls' Generation, despite Gee being their magnum opus. Maybe it's because it's "that song that came after THE song" but instead of replicating Gee it does every single thing Gee did for me but even better! I think that may be the reason they chose Genie as their Japanese debut over Gee. I think they come across a lot more bold in this too, and not because of the suits. They feel and look and sound confident. Like "Yeah bitch, we're literally the best girls ever." Remarkable!

Okay so that's it for this week!

Thank you for reading~

#Girls' Generation #2NE1 #4Minute #Wonder Girls #KARA #Brown Eyed Girls #Kpop #Girl Groups

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atlantisdaysandmore · 5 years ago

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"What have I gotten myself into. . ?"

As promised, I will now blabber about my new AU which is an unholy mash of American Gods-esque AU, Good Omens-esque AU and Crime AU. So, this'll be darker than AD but still gonna be as fun.

Okay, so the Titans here are more or less literal deities and spirits, like from American Gods and Good Omens. They used to be powerful but years of not being worshipped and sacrificed to have weakened them however, some Titans, like the ones in the main cast, have found. . . Unsavoury but efficient ways of staying alive and getting sacrifices.

There are also different versions of the Titans around the globe. There is an American Gojira, a Japanese Mosura, a German Ghidorah Trio, an English Rodan, an African Anguirus, etc. It's not that they're all different aspects of the same person, but in some cases it is. It's complicated.

Connor Ray hasn't exactly been doing well lately. First of, he and his family get into a car accident that kills his adoptive brother and sends hus adoptive dad on a downward spiral which results in his adoptive parents' divorce. Then he accidentally gets into a fight with some jerks but because the law seems to hate him, he's the one that ends up getting arrested and stuck with the most annoying cellmate (for a guy named Kevin Goldman, he ain't exactly bright ) for three years. Then he finally gets out of prison and finds out his mom is missing.

His only hope of finding her? A tired yakuza boss named Mr. Jira who might have an idea on where she might be, all Connor has to do is just be his errand boy and he'll help. . . Yet, a man, who is apparently Goldman's brother, named Mr. Hydra (Why they have different surnames, Connor doesn't know) also seems to know where his mother is and claims his other brother named Mr. King knows, too. But honestly? Connor just wants this to be over so he and his family can be close to normal again.

The Apocalypse is coming and everyone is just waiting for the top two Apex Titans, Gojira and Ghidorah, to duke it out. The titans are ready to pick sides and fight to the death though, two moth siblings aren't looking forward to it. Oh and the Antichrist has been misplaced.

Meanwhile, Maddison Russel is trying to live a normal life but it's been pretty hard ever since Andrew died. She tries to make things work though and well, even though her mom is missing, at least her brother's there and - oh hey, that's a neat, if weird-looking dog. Oh well. It's her dog now. Also, why does Maddie have powers now?

The Cast (so far):

Connor Ray - a young man who just wants to get his life back on track but well, it's pretty hard when your mom's missing. Aloof and quiet but helpful and reliable. Has little tolerance to nonsense and dumbassery but well, he has to learn to be more tolerant when since the people he's working with aren't exactly the most orderly and the sanest of people. Has wanted to strangle at least one of those said people at least once

Maddison Russel - a young girl who's trying her best to make things work in a bad situation. Sure, one of her brothers is dead, her parents are divorced, the other brother was in jail and her mom is now missing but hey, at least her brother's released and her dad's at AA and getting better so there's a chance that they can be a happy family. Though, ever since her birthday and getting a new dog, weird things have been happening around her. . . And she may be the cause. . .

Naaaah.

Mr. Jira - Apex Titan and the Terror of the Deep. While still respected and fear amongst his fellow titans, Jira became a nobody to the humans. . . That is until he decided to get involved in the Japanese Underground. He's done a lot of questionable stuff and dangerous jobs in order to climb the ranks and also appease himself, some he prefers not to disclose. Hell, you can even say he has some regrets but you can't be too sure. Now a leader of his own gang, Jira is now one of the most feared men in Japan, even if he's still a man of mystery and unpredictability. However, one thing that's for sure is that he is a man of his word. . . As long as Connor fulfills his end of the deal.

Miss Luna - Beta Titan and Goddess of Infant Island. Luna is a seemingly sweet lady who runs charities, a hospital and an orphanage but she also does a couple of unsavory things like murder to keep herself and her brother, Battra, alive. She doesn't like doing this, hell, it's something she deeply regrets, to be honest but well, one must make some sacrifices to survive, both figuratively and literally. She cares deeply about everyone and Connor is no exception and well, she can't help but worry about him and well, it doesn't help that she's suspicious on what her husband is planning. In her eyes, Connor isn't ready yet. He's far too young to be a part of whatever scheme Fate has in store. She was the one assigned to keep an eye on the AntiChrist. . . Except she lost her and has been watching the wrong girl for years. For some reason, though, Mr. Jira isn't even the least bit mad at her for it.

Mr. De Avila - Beta Titan and Fire Demon. De Avila went through many hurdles which he managed to overcome them and survive with a smug grin on his face so being forgotten by humans is just another challenge for him to overcome and so far, he'd like to say that he's doing a good job at that. A freelance assassin among other unsavoury things, he's done a lot to keep himself alive, mostly sacrificing victims to himself and Titan clients who don't want to get their hands dirty. He doesn't exactly like what he's doing nor does he hate it but as a generally scrappy and bloodthirsty person, the thrill he gets out of the hunt and the fight is something he definitely enjoys. Despite being loyal, albeit to whoever's in charge, He likes to say that he's neutral but in the grand scheme of things? He's starting to side with the Ghidorah brothers, both out of personal and practical reasons

Mr King - Apex Titan, Eldest Ghidorah Brother and Golden Demise. The most mysterious out of the three brothers, mostly since no one has seen him in a long time. Okay, so his brothers and Avila know where he is but it's not like they'll spill. Even then, guy doesn't stay in one place. Some of the few things everyone knows about him is that he's cunning and ruthless, someone who one should be cautious with. You can't be sure what he's planning. While he's the one pulling the strings, he usually has his henchmen do errands for him yet Connor has gotten his attention. Why? Connor doesn't know and he has a feeling that it's not for a good cause.

Mr. Hydra - Apex Titan, Second Eldest Ghidorah Brother and Golden Demise. The most brutal out of the brothers, Drake likes a good hunt and likes taking his time with it. He tends to act like a horror movie killer, intelligent, silent and deadly. Except he doesn't do villainous monologues. He's not much of a talker, really. However, while he can plot in he shadows with his older brother, Hydra prefers being in the field, not liking to be cooped up. Despite being the most murderous out of the brothers, he's somewhat willing to talk and can even negotiate and deal, even if he's not as charismatic as his younger brother or as smooth as his older brother but his boldness makes up for it. Though, he still has secrets hidden that he believes Connor doesn't have to know.

Mr. Goldman - Apex Titan, Youngest Ghidorah Brother and Golden Demise. The most off-putting out of the three. He's not exactly creepy in a stereotypical way but to those that don't know him, he has some sort of odd aura to him and his friendly and cheery personality isn't helping while to those that know him andd his brothers find his sunny disposition compared to his brothers' colder dispositions kind of unnerving and suspicious. Then he starts cheerfully sharing all he knows about you and oh god, how does he know that? Like his brother Hydra, he prefers being on the field though, he usually keeps to the shadows but if he wants to be caught, he let's himself be caught. I mean, that's how he found Connor, after all. As of now, from what Connor has heard, he broke out of prison some time after Connor was released and is currently catching up with late work because older siblings are jerks like that.

Mr. Blade - Delta Titan and a Living War Machine. A brutal and wild titan who, like De Avila, has gone to assassination and bounty hunting to keep himself alive though, he serves the Ghidorah brothers rather than going freelance. He finds every aspect of his job fun, the hunt, the fight, the kill, the blood, the fear, everything. Sure, he may not be the most competent or the brightest but he's still a trusted ally to the brothers and threat to Gojira. He's surprisingly friendly, though, usually having a nice conversation with you as if you were an old friend, though sometimes while attacking you. He doesn't take humans seriously, though, seeing them as easy prey and Connor is no different. Feeling's mutual, though.

Battra - Delta Titan and Nature God. You wouldn't think Battra was Miss Luna's brother as they don't look alike or act similarly. He's more rude and chaotic as opposed to his sweet and orderly sister but Battra also means well. . . Even if he doesn't do it right. He helps run the orphanage with his sister and is a wild older brother figure to the kids there but he also helps his sister with the shady stuff, mostly since both of them need to survive somehow. Doesn't care much about Connor or what Mr. Jira and the Ghidorah brothers are planning, unless they're gonna destroy the Earth or something. Was supposed to help his sister with the Antichrist except said Antichrist got misplaced so he has to go look for her whilst his sister helps Mr. Jira out.

Anguirus - Delta Titan and Right Hand of Gojira. He's a cheerful and helpful man. . . Even if he's the right hand man of the most feared man in Japan. He's a loyal man who's stuck with Mr. Jira and Miss Luna through thick and thin, even if it has almost and did kill him in the past but hey, he always gets better. Though, despite his pleasant attitude, he's still someone who isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty, especially since that's kinda his expertise. He's got to stay alive somehow, you know. He's usually there to help Connor out but these days, he's too busy helping Battra to help Connor.

And that's the AU so far but there might be changes and additions in the future, who knows. This is gonna be fun, though.

#Apocalypse How #godzilla #rodan #mothra #king ghidorah #anguirus #battra #king kong #three guesses as to who Connor Ray really is lol #this is gonna be sooo fun #and dumb #also yes Battra and Anguirus are gonna be Aziraphale and Crowley #are they together? who knows but they do get along when theyre not bickering

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shielddrake · 5 years ago

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Final Fantasy XII: A Retrospective Review

So, I received Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age for Christmas last year.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. I have played almost every game with that title that has been released…at least the ones released in America, since I sadly do not speak Japanese. So it’s not unreasonable to assume I would want a remake of one of its games. I have quite a few, in fact, including V and VI on my iPhone, III and IV on my DS, and I and II on my PSP. Final Fantasy IX was the first game I put on my PS4 when I got it (yeah, I admit I put a PS1 game on my PS4 before anything else) and I thoroughly enjoyed replaying VIII when its remaster came out last September.

Final Fantasy XII, however, is a bit of an exception because, my Internet friends, I have a confession to make: Final Fantasy XII is my least favorite in the franchise.

Now I wouldn’t say that FFXII is a bad game. Far from it. It’s a very good game. For the most part, I completely understand why so many people love it. I just don’t feel the same way.

When I first played the game when it was released, I was not too thrilled with a lot of the gameplay decisions and where it ended up going story-wise. At the time, I concluded that while it was a good game, it was a poor Final Fantasy title. And this is taking into account the fact that I had played and beaten both Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Advance several times before playing FFXII. Both of these games are quite different from the main FF series, but are great in their own right. I basically consider the Ivalice Alliance as a separate spin-off series, sort of like the Crystal Chronicles games or the Dissidia series.

But FFXII was not that great, in my opinion. I didn’t feel invested in the characters, I was not a fan of the combat or license board system at all, and I felt the story was incomplete at best and annoyingly vague at worst. There were a lot of missed opportunities for the use of the characters. I was neutral about the graphics, which, although beautiful, I felt did not really improve on what was presented in Final Fantasy X, and I didn’t like that a lot of the regular trends known in the previous installments (the summons being the main example that comes to mind) were thrown out for something completely disconnected. I finished the game just feeling a mix of boredom and irritation, to be perfectly honest. The only thing I can recall even remotely liking was the music, despite it not being composed by Nobuo Uematsu, my favorite composer of all time even to this day.

Needless to say, playing The Zodiac Age was not on my list of priorities, and I’m not sure I ever would have played it had it not been gifted to me.

All that said, I received the game and felt that, well, maybe since I have it anyway I would give it another shot. Let’s see if FFXII is as bad as I remember. Maybe a retrospective review would be a good thing to post on the twelfth anniversary of the game’s original release, so why not?

* Looks at the dates and realizes Final Fantasy XII was originally released 14 years ago, not 12. *

Uh, never mind. Clearly I’m way too late for that party.

Anyway, as I started playing, I decided that there were two big questions that I wanted to answer with this retrospective review:

1.) Is Final Fantasy XII as bad of a game as I remember it being when it was first released?

2.) Would I change my claim about Final Fantasy XII being my least favorite game in the franchise?

Obviously the game has been out for a long time, remake or not, but I want to warn against spoilers here just in case. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience after all. With that, let’s get started.

Statistics

I just wanted to start this review with a few facts about my playthroughs (yes, the plural is intentional).

I played through The Zodiac Age twice, once for about 42 hours in length and the second for about 47. I used each of the jobs in the zodiac job system in each playthrough, but in different combinations and on different characters. Of course, I couldn’t account for every possible combination. That would take a very long time…

The party was at level 46 on my shorter playthrough and 51 on my longer one. I did not complete all of the hunts, although I fought more of them the second time through. I did not try to get any of the special gear like the Zodiac Spear, mostly because I don’t know how. I also did not get all of the espers, because other than the required time you have to summon Belias to get into Giruvegan, I never used summoning.

I avoided any guides or other playthroughs for the game, relying on the game’s directions and my memory from my previous plays…fourteen years ago…to guide me through the main part of the story. Yeah, I haven’t played FFXII since it was released in 2006, maybe 2007, give or take a few months. So, if I got confused or lost during the course of the game, it was because I either missed directions or the game was not clear on where I needed to go.

At the time of this review, I have not experimented at all with Trial Mode or played through New Game Plus.

Graphics

This section will be short, since I don’t have a lot to say about it.

The graphics are very good. As I stated above, in the original I did not feel the graphics were all that different than Final Fantasy X released four years prior, and my opinion of The Zodiac Age hasn’t really changed. According to the Final Fantasy Wiki, the game was given “high resolution upgrades to backgrounds, character models, 2d parts, and movie scenes.” To be honest, I didn’t notice much of a difference, although that might be because I didn’t play the game often enough to have the original graphics etched in my memory.

However, that does not mean the game looks bad. On the contrary, it is still a beautiful game, despite a few small glitches such as Balthier’s dialogue not syncing up to his lip movements or Basch’s hair not moving, Those are minor nitpicks. The game is still lovely to look at.

Sound and Music

Again, the music for this game is excellent. As I mentioned before, the music was probably the one thing I would praise about the game when it was originally released. The Zodiac Age somehow manages to make it better by providing a rerecorded soundtrack that makes a lot of the notes sound less harsh. There is the option of switching it back to the original version, but I preferred the new one. Basically they took the one thing I liked about the original game and made it better.

The voice acting I am pretty neutral about. For the most part, I don’t think anyone’s voice work was either bad or good. Other than the overuse of sighs, of which I get most annoyed by Ashe’s because she sighs all the time, I don’t mind the voice acting very much.

The only one I have a problem with, and this was also the case when I first played FFXII, is with Fran’s voice. I always feel bad criticizing a voice actor because they put a lot of training and passion into their work, but I just can’t help but be really annoyed at the choices SquareEnix made when casting Fran. She sounds so different in the English version compared to the Japanese one, and I don’t think it fits the character at all. Viera, all viera, are supposed to be these rather ethereal beings akin to the elves in The Lord of the Rings. So why, then, would the translation team have Fran be given a voice that makes her sound like a nasally four-year-old? According to the Wiki, the translators wanted to “sell the new take on the viera,” but it just falls flat.

Miscellaneous Gameplay

Okay, I only made this section so I can briefly go over some of the extra gameplay components the game has, both old and new. First, the good.

The high-speed mode is great. I always thought the characters moved so annoyingly slow! This fixes that problem and honestly saves a lot of time. I feel like it sheared off a couple of hours off the game that are just empty time needed simply to move from place to place. I used this in the FFVIII remaster as well for the same reason. I basically never turned it off. It didn’t affect cutscenes, so that wasn’t a problem. Also, the sound effect of four people running in high-speed mode is strangely hilarious to me.

There is a transparent overlay map now available. I find this to be much more useful than the minimap alone, which was constantly moving and incapable of helping me orient myself. Previously, I was frequently frustrated and getting lost in pretty much every area, dungeon and town when I played the original version. The overlay map was especially useful in places where direction was important, like the part in the Tomb of Raithwall where you need to turn the statues to face the blade. I could never tell which way to turn them and needed to bring up the main map over and over and over again. The overlay map resolves makes this and general navigation much easier.

My only complaint is that, although it is transparent, it does take up a lot of the center of the screen, but that is a small price to pay for the relief of so much frustration. There are times when the overlay map isn’t useable, namely in parts of Giruvegan and the Bahamut, and then the frustration rises again, which only emphasizes how nice the overlap map is the other times.

Autosave feature. Need I say more? Thank you, SquareEnix, for an autosave feature! Especially during some of the hunts.

And now the bad, which can be lumped into one thing: minigames. Or I guess they’re minigames. They’re small quests that are required to further the story that are not combat based. The yell at the guards to make them move game while stealing the Dusk Shard, AKA the dumbest guards ever. The have Vaan declare he’s Basch in front of people in Bhujerba to get the Resistance’s attention, which unless you had already played the game you don’t know to do in front of the guides, leading you to just listening to Vaan spout annoying nonsense while literally nobody listens. The exchanging information quest in Archadia to get chops to be allowed to ride a flying taxi, which is only slightly less annoying this time around because they reduced the number of exchanges you need to do from nine to three. I guess they realized how tedious it was. I disliked all of these when I first played the game and they were superfluous and dumb and add nothing to the experience this time around too.

Character Progression and Combat

Now we get to the parts where I feel I can really say something constructive. I was initially going to have these be separate sections, but they are so closely related to one another that it seemed silly to split them.

There is something I want to make perfectly clear, that I must admit came very much to my surprise: The combat in The Zodiac Age is nowhere near as bad as I felt it was when I played the vanilla game. Before it felt like a boring slog just to get from one quest to another, but I found that not to be the case this time around. I think the changes to the license board helps with the combat be more dynamic and require a bit more strategy since not every character ends up being the same. I’ll get to the license board in a moment.

With the job system in place, you have to think more about how you’re going to approach an enemy rather than having everyone just attack the whole time. I mean, you can still do that, but your white mage is not going to be as strong as your knight, so having the white mage do only physical attacks doesn’t work quite as well. And with the option of giving everyone different abilities, it means that every character has a different role to play in battle.

The ability to add a second job later in the game adds to the diversity you can bring, since you can make any number of combinations of jobs and really none of them are bad. You’re also not limited by which characters can have which job. Once you pick a job for a character you are stuck with it (at least on the PS4 version) but that does not lock the job away from other characters. You can have two white mages, two knights, five red battlemages, or make every character a bushi if you so desire. You can have someone balanced, someone focused on only offensive spells, someone focused on healing, someone just for physical attacks, a tank…the possibilities are huge!

The gambit system is still in place, and I still am not a huge fan. If I have to micromanage a character’s actions, I’d rather have a system that allows me to input commands individually like in previous Final Fantasy games rather than allowing an AI to do it. However, I understand that the combat in FFXII is fast-paced enough that it makes that sort of system more difficult, and I managed to deal with it fine. I wish I didn’t have to buy gambits for every single miniscule action though.

On the other hand, I did find having multiple gambits useful for the various abilities each character has, especially since the job system allows for more individualized characters. This time, I felt like having several gambit slots was actually worthwhile because I had the characters able to do more things under specific circumstances, especially for spellcasters. This made it seem like it was worth the license points to spend on gambit slots from the license board. So while I still am not fond of the gambit system, I found it overall less annoying than before.

Obviously the license board is the biggest change to The Zodiac Age. The job system is excellent this time around, compared to the complete lack of a job system in the original version. Normally a blank slate for character progression isn’t a bad thing. VI, VII and VIII all had no job system as well, but you could still customize the characters to fit with a play style that you liked. Vanilla FFXII didn’t allow that. It was far too easy to make every character identical, so it ultimately didn’t matter which character you had in your party. This time, the available variety made it much more enjoyable to play and experiment.

The board was also improved on in that it was much more logical within each job. Before, the board was literally just a board, with every license just kind of lumped together. The license for a helmet was next to a license for the fire spell. It never made much sense and it seemed hard to predict what adjacent licenses you were unlocking. This time, armor licenses are together, sword licenses are together, magic licenses are together, and so forth. Some licenses in the same category are spread apart, such as the technicks, but for the most part there is at least some sort of logic to it all, making it much easier to plan character growth instead of it feeling random.

Later on, it is possible to make the characters very similar to one another, so that everyone can cast white magic, use the same technicks, wear the same gear, etc. This is especially easy if you pick secondary jobs that are opposite the first job (for stance, adding a foebreaker job to a white mage). This doesn’t happen until late in the game though, so it doesn’t feel nearly as cheap. FFX did the same with the sphere grid, but you had to be pretty far in the game before that was possible. Same thing here.

I feel I should mention the quickenings and summons, even though I never used the latter in battle. The mist abilities now have their own gauge rather than using MP, which is a nice throwback to the limit break bars of some of the previous games. I definitely prefer it that way. I found myself using quickenings less frequently than during my first playthrough, but that might be because the game was made to be overall a little easier.

Story and Characters

While the job system was the big change for The Zodiac Age, and certainly for the better, I feel I still need to talk about the story and the characters even though nothing about these parts of the game have changed. The big reason for this is because the story was where I had the biggest problem with the original version of FFXII, and therefore will probably have the biggest impact on answering my two burning questions at the beginning of this review.

That being said, if I were to go into all the details about the story and characters and what I think of it, this review would probably be three times as long as it already is. To add to that, since the game has already been out for twelve fourteen years I’m not sure there’s a whole lot I could add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said, other than to point out how I would change the story to make it what would be, in my opinion, better.

Perhaps if people are really interested in my in-depth analysis of the story I can do that in another post, but for the purposes of this review, I’m just going to give summarized version here.

1.) Reks should have lived, or been replaced by Vaan, or have both in the party.

2.) Vaan is not as annoying as I previously thought, but he needed to have a more concrete connection to the plot.

3.) Same for Penelo. Still kind of preachy, but seemed more like a Jiminy Cricket character this time around.

4.) The Strahl needed to be stolen somehow, both to give Balthier a better reason to go with the group and to give a better excuse to not just fly somewhere.

5.) That said, knowing the whole plot of the game makes Balthier’s behavior throughout the story make more sense. Better foreshadowing, in a way.

6.) Fran’s storyline needed to have a more satisfactory conclusion. It just sort of ended.

7.) Basch and Gabranth needed to have more personal interactions throughout the story to make their final moments more satisfying.

8.) For that matter, have more personal interactions between the party and both Dr. Cid and Vayne. We meet both of them a total of two times…over the course of a 40-hour game. Too disconnected from the party’s actions to give much motivation for us to defeat them.

8.) Why did they not use Vossler’s actions as a bigger plot point, with Basch trying to stop Vossler from doing what Basch was accused of? It’s sort of there, but it ends far too quickly. Big missed opportunity.

9.) More judge fights! We fight a total of three, Ghis, Bergan and Gabranth. I wanted more judge bosses!

10.) To add to that, have more context for some of the bosses. It kind of felt like so many of the bosses were there just for the sake of being bosses, and there’s only so many times I can say to myself, “It’s probably a guardian of whatever place.”

11.) I still don’t get the love people have for Ashe. I just don’t get it.

12.) And finally, Larsa should have been the main character. End of story.

…Yeah, that’s the summarized version.

Conclusion

All things considered, I definitely had a different experience playing through The Zodiac Age compared to when I first played FFXII twelve fourteen years ago. And ultimately this is why I decided on playing this game again. I wanted to see if my opinion had changed, if I could look at it from another perspective rather than just negative memory. And although some of my feelings haven’t changed, it’s good to look back on something and see that maybe it isn’t exactly as I recall it.

Let’s go back to the big questions I proposed at the beginning of this review.

First, is Final Fantasy XII as bad of a game as I remember it being when it was first released? No, it’s certainly not. I think the changes made to the license board made the combat more enjoyable for me, and by extension it seemed less of a hassle and more of an actual game. I enjoyed running around and exploring more, and the bosses and hunts were more entertaining as well. While I’m still not fond of the gambit system, I wasn’t as irritated by it and actually found myself experimenting more with it.

Second, would I change my claim about Final Fantasy XII being my least favorite game in the franchise? Eh, probably not. Again, even with the alterations made to the game, there are still a lot of things that I personally was not a fan of, especially involving the story. I’m one of those people who love the story of a game more than anything else (which is clearly why I prefer RPGs to any other game genre). Since the story is still the weakest aspect of FFXII, in my opinion, especially compared to other Final Fantasy games, the game overall doesn’t grab me as much as some of the earlier ones. It’s still a good game, but not great. To be fair, short of completely overhauling the storyline and characters, it would the difficult change those aspects for the better in just a remaster. This makes me wonder how the FFVII remake is going to go, but the jury’s still out on that one.

With all the various opinions and thoughts about what makes a video game good, it’s hard for developers to create what might be considered a perfect game for everyone, and the Final Fantasy franchise is no exception. That doesn’t mean a game cannot be corrected to make it better than the original. That’s what is good about patches and remasters. It gives the developers another opportunity to improve on what was criticized. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age definitely succeeds in this, even if there are still parts that are not quite as good.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Kingdom Hearts DLC to play and then proceed to tear apart.

#final fantasy xii #ffxii #the zodiac age #retrospective #review #my opinion

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wittypenguin · 5 years ago

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“Kaijû daisensô“ (1965) or Invasion of Astro-Monster

Literal translation: “War of the Monsters” and also called “Monster Zero” and it was occasionally advertised as “Invasion of the Astros” and then the movie starts and it says that the title is actually “Monster Zero” just to really confuse the audience.

As if the above title confusion wasn’t enough, there’s this little bon mot.

In Germany, this movie was released under the title «Befehl aus dem Dunkel» (“Order out of the Dark”), originally the title of a SciFi novel by German author Hans Dominik, published in 1933. Although the movie’s plot has nothing in common with this book (which prefigures the political effects of a mind reading device), it was even billed as “based on Hans Dominik” and the name of the author (who had died in 1945) was widely used in promotion.

For the complete list of variations of the title, head HERE.

New cover illustration by Benjamin Marra — — — —

The story here is one about the importance of ‘heart.’ ‘Soul’ seems too much, as this is all about space and religion is only briefly mentioned twice, and the use of ‘heart’ does harken back to Metropolis, where the mind and hands needs heart to be truly human. So, let’s say “heart,” rather than anything such as ‘emotion’ or ��instinct.’

The main thesis, if you will, is that technology removes human nature — ‘heart’ — from life, or at least is antithetical to it. During the initial discussion of rocket mission details with the Global Space Agency, there’s a bunch of images of a teletype, an adding machine, and then the precision of the space ship’s location is calculated to three decimal places. The Xilians (natives of ‘Planet X,’ a newly discovered satellite of Jupiter, which makes it a moon, not a planet, but whatever) use numbers to name things: places are referred to as M3-X7, and they are terrorized by Monster Zero. Facts are fed into their computer, which then provides plans and procedures to go about completing tasks in every facet of life. Women all look the same (tropes of how ‘all Xilians look alike’ being beside the point) because apparently the most beautiful face is the only one to have. To disobey this computer is to be sentenced to die. When plans are changed, approval of the course of action is seen, not as an ‘improvement’ per se, but as a reduction of errors. Yet, this hidebound approach to things is their ultimate undoing, for a simple change in plans for us would for them necessitate a massive alteration in calculations, such is their reliance on logic. Life is all about flux, we are allegorically told, and to approach life without emotion is to be no longer truly alive.

Yoshio Tsuchiya [centre, gesturing] in Kaijû daisensô (1965) — — — —

There is a distinctly binary reaction to something that Godzilla does in this film, and it apparently reduces people to one or another camp: delighted and happy, or filled with the anger of a million red-hots suns going super nova. At the conclusion of a battle on Planet X, Godzilla does a little dance, which includes a pose that is still seen today throughout Japanese pop culture; I think even the video game character Mario does it. Imagine ‘dabs,’ but with decades of staying power. Here’s the cast of the film doing it in a promotional shot.

I happen to like the shē (or ‘Sheeeh!’ or シェー if you prefer) dance. It’s one of the few times I’ll disagree with a director (Ishirô Honda was once heard to say in an interview “I didn’t invent Godzilla for this”). Godzilla, although a symbolic representation of nuclear war and its destructive power, had gained a personality in the last two films before this, and here we see it manifest itself in a way which is similar to the manner of a fractious and mischievous child. He isn’t supposed to be child-like, I’ll grant you; he’s supposed to be terrifying and scary, just like nuclear war and the destructive power thereof. However, this film very much represents the beginning of writing the stories so that they are more ‘family fare,’ so aiming the character more in a direction which is appropriate for the kiddies does mean he becomes more ‘cute’ and less ‘terror-inducing’ as a result. Things change and adapt to the times, and this is another example of it.

If you want to complain about something, how about the plot holes you could drive an 18-wheeler through sideways and think ‘damn, is this plot hole ever roomy!’

The first one renders the entire first hour a waste of the Xilian’s time. Here’s a super limited version.

An Earth rocket goes to investigate Planet X, and discovers the people living underground in fear of King Ghidorah. They have learned that Ghidorah was defeated recently, could they please have Rodan and Godzilla to drive him away? They offer Earth a cure for cancer in return. The rocket flies back to Earth to deliver the request, and the Xilians show up shortly thereafter to help with the transporting of the two kaijû back to Planet X. Once there, the pair defeat King Ghidorah and he flies away. The rocket returns with our astronauts to Earth, with the cure apparently recorded on tape. When the tape is played, it informs the Earth’s people that they are actually a colony of Planet X now, and they must all co-operate with the stripping of its water resources for the Xlians’ use, as water is precious to them. The invaders use the three monsters to help with this, as they now have them all under their mind controlling power.

I’m 95% positive I had one of these as a kid. Mine was only about 6 inches across, though. — — — —

Why did they bother with all of the subterfuge? Why not just show-up on Earth, take control of Rodan and Godzilla, and then demand water in the first place? It took an entire bloody hour of unnecessary song and dance to get to the point that they could have done from the outset!

Obviously, the reason is simple: the first hour gives us the opportunity to see Godzilla and Rodan fight King Ghidorah in ¼ gravity on a foreign body. Also, SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE…

Another possible complaint: How about the lack of Mothra to defeat King Ghidorah? In the last film, Mothra was also required to defeat Ghidorah, and it was that trio of heroes that repelled the evil, golden, two-headed dragon. Where’s our favourite Queen of the Monsters, that heterocera, Titanus Mosura? THIS is something to bemoan, people.

Ghidorah really gets a chance to spread his wings here, though. His heads all bobble away, his wings flap, and we have a great opportunity to look at him moving around and crushing stuff. His scales are wonderful and seem entirely independent of each other, in the way chain mail is. This danger from without — space debris or warheads on nuclear missiles, perhaps? — is new and terrifying.

Godzilla here is almost too mobile: he has lost that reptilian quality and is moving more like a human would. I do not like this.

Nick Adams is the Token White Guy, but does some great work. He’s got fantastic energy, and creates some excellent chemistry with his fellow actors. He’s really engaging, and his physicality really makes things work. If you choose to listen to the English audio after watching it in Japanese first, his rural US accent may come as a big surprise after hearing his Japanese dub.

Both Kumi Mizuno and Keiko Sawai [left to right] are excellent in Kaijû daisensô (1965), and I would have liked to see more of their involvement in the story. — — — —

The restaurant set with night sky backdrop [above] and classical music is fantastic! It was probably used as the backdrop for the sequences on the planet’s surface as well, but it looks incredible during this extended scene.

There’s also some great model work for a new army vehicle equipped with A-wave and sound transmitters. They look really detailed and complicated.

Overall, this is a great film, with very silly ideas, and about half of the science (especially about locating the existence of planetary satellites through rotational and gravitational anomalies) being spot-on! Do not plan a trip to Planet X using this film as a model; it should only be used for entertainment purposes. It does that very well.

★★★★☆

#Godzilla #Gojira #Rodan #Radon #King Ghidorah #Criterion Collection #Dear God What Have I Done to Myself?

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