I cleaned my place up today. Finally. I've also posted pictures to my .Mac homepage. You can also see my current collection of anime.
Speaking of anime, FLCL (Fooly Cooly, Furi Kuri) premiered on Adult Swim last night. I was reading the Adult Swim forums and have to say frankly those people are mostly idiots. I say that in the nicest way possible. They keep asking for a subbed version of FLCL or some other show. Not understanding how lame that is. You would lose most of the key audience (the ones that buy stuff instead of downloading fansubs off the internet) if something was shown subbed. However, it would be nice if Cartoon Network showed FLCL or some other anime with the Japanese audio track encoded as SAP and the two subtitle streams (Dialog and Titles/Songs only) as Closed Captioning encodings (CC1/CC2). That'd be a good compromise. Or the people that complain about not having a subbed version could just go out and purchase the DVDs which also include textual (translated) copies of the Magna scenes, Direct Commentary and a music video (right side, DivX 3.11) of the ending theme song Ride on Shooting Star by The Pillows. Quite awesome. Back to the point. I wonder how many people that love their precious subtitled versions of anime notice that the japanese audio isn't lip-synced to the video? I also wonder how many have no idea how many video jokes/sight gags they miss by reading the subtitles (stop, go, rewind is not a way to watch anime). I'm not sure why people are so against dubbed versions but readily accept fansubs by people that know little to know Japanese (or English) or do not know the "proper" way to translate Japanese idioms to English/American Pop-culture anime. Remember, it's the idea that counts, not the actual spoken dialog. As long as you can convey the idea then dubbing is more than acceptable.
Over the years, dubbing has gotten much, much better. The only company that repeatedly does a horrible job at dubbing (Read: writing the script when it's not needed) is FUNimation. They often rewrite entire passages, or worse, add dialog to make a cheap joke where none was before. It really saddens me that they got the Kiddy Grade license. I was really looking forward to the dub until I read this new.
On another completely different note, I have mentioned before I do not like the Apple Store Biltmore. Well, I've got even better reason now. I was in there on July 25th and purchased $161.01 of stuff (ADC to DVI adapter and UT 2k3). I checked on July 28th and it said the Apple Store Biltmore charged me for that amount, and then for $585 for stuff I did not purchase. I did not complain too much because it didn't cause insufficient funds or any other bank charge. I would have been livid if it had. I called them that monday and they told me they would call Apple Corporate and see what's up and then call me back. No call. I called on that Thursday and they told me they got an email that it would be taken care of. On Monday (yesterday) I called them back again and they told me that it should be refunded by today and if it isn't on the account by tomorrow I should contact them again. Well, it's 11:30pm and it still isn't there. And it looks like I'll have to buy yet another AC Adapter for my AlBook. It'd be the fourth one. The other ones all split apart at the place where the cord meets the part that connects the round thing inside the AlBook (for lack of a better description).
Posted by rosyna at 11:31 PM
| Comments (10)
Related:
- Betas, Twitter and WTF - Feb 16, 2010
- Quick Status Update - Feb 12, 2010
- It's Winter, Right? - Jan 26, 2010
- Hiya Kids, it's Theming Time! - Oct 06, 2009
- Mighty Mouse with Some Theme Sauce - Jun 02, 2009
I have a friend that insists on watching everything with the subtitles. Drives me insane, you miss more than half of the humor and most of the time the voices sound worse!
Posted by: dave on August 6, 2003 12:53 AMHave you even seen FLCL subtitled? I also saw that it was on Adult Swim last night, and it is continuing evidence that there just aren't any decent voice actors in dubbing. You lose *so much* of the vocal and expressive range in the process (particularly with a character like Haruharuharuka). Every dub voice actor I've heard has about two modes - dead with no emotion, or yelling like a hyper banshee. Meanwhile, it is sad but they do change the script frequently on dubs, and you lose a lot of nuances in the process.
As for the lip sync issue, it's hard to have proper lip sync at all when you're at 10fps or so. :) However, at least in the original Japanese the lips are moving for the correct length of time to match the speaking - dubs tend to hurry up the speech a lot to fit a translation in the same timespan as the original dialogue.
Also, you may be interested to know why lip sync is so much worse in anime than in US animation. In the US, the animation is produced first, then the audio done afterwards. This way the US voice actors can match exactly what's been animated. In Japan, the voice acting is done first, but the cell animators don't pay as close attention to the audio as they create the cells.
Sigh, I'll get off of my soapbox now...
Posted by: Joshua on August 6, 2003 7:36 AMIn any professional US animation, vocal tracks are layed down first and then the animation is synced to it. I really don't know anything about anime, but this one inaccuracy leads me to believe that everything else you said is wrong or stupid or a combination of the two.
Posted by: chad on August 6, 2003 5:01 PMInteresting ducting on the engine. Is that for a supercharger?
And a fireplace? Don't you live in Arizona? :)
Posted by: Ken on August 6, 2003 6:56 PMIf you bought your AC adaptor retail, you get a 1 year warranty. Hopefully you kept the receipt, etc.
Posted by: Bill on August 6, 2003 9:22 PMI may be wrong - that was what I recall reading. However, now that you mention it, things like Robin Williams' ad libs in "Aladdin" would not have been possible if it had been as I described it. I accept the smackdown and complete loss of credibility. Won't be the first or last time. :)
However, I still can't help the fact that my ears bleed when I listen to dubs. *shudder*
Posted by: Joshua on August 7, 2003 7:34 AMDisney does dubs right. In HS spanish class, we used to watch the Lion King (in, like, spanish... TRIPPY.) The cool thing was the lip sync was really good. Diz might well have redone some of it to make it work. Very classy.
Another voice sync thing... I heard that millions of dollars worth of Shrek got re-rendered because Mike Meyers decided to switch to an Irish accent halfway through.
Posted by: jay DUB on August 7, 2003 5:00 PMIdiots? Nah. Some people would just rather see the show the way it was intended to be, rather than watching it with entirely new actors.
Posted by: Reilly Graham-Wood on August 8, 2003 3:06 PMive been an FLCL fan for about a year and a half, and it was a few days ago when i saw an episode of FLCL dubbed. the dialodge and voices gave it a completely different spin.... good or bad, thats really for you to deside. but you should see both versons to really judge...
and too miss. rosyna, if you dont want to see the REAL verson, why bother watching it at all?
Posted by: jovanna on August 19, 2003 9:23 PMI think dubbing allows it to be more accessible to people who aren't motivated enough to read subs.
I should go look for a job at Sync-Point (the company who dubbed FLCL) because I used to dub cartoons and movies in spanish. I've done a lot of voice work in english for Disney, Universal, etc. too. Some examples of stuff I've done in Spanish: Fievel Goes West (Fievel), and Casper The Movie (Casper)
The FLCL dub does feel like it's lacking a lot of the emotion and nuance in the Japanese track. But that's the way the business is. Bigger companies with a more solid international market put much more effort into localization and direction for the voice actors. The big projects I've worked on were high quality, but the smaller ones such as TV Shows and movies that bombed were just tedious. Some of the scripts were so bad for the lower budget dubs that we had to make dozens of edits WHILE we recorded. So I went in to work and I just wanted to get through it. Sure it's an art, and I'm good at what I do, but it really is a matter of priorities.
Posted by: Alex on May 6, 2004 2:40 PM