Petit Gargantia (Blu-ray)

Another sterling example of why it's dangerous not to finish a project I was invited to work on.

One of FFF's last projects was a Blu-ray version of the Suisei no Gargantia series, using UTW-Vivid's subtitles. FFF released all the TV episodes, but the specials, the Petit Gargantia shorts, were left unfinished. I was tasked with QCing and cleaning up the shorts, which had been "blown up" from UTW-Vivid's 360p scripts. This involved adapting the typesetting to the larger canvas and dealing with the different color palette in the Blu-rays: no biggie.

However, the Blu-rays included an extra short, Petit Gargantia 14. It had been translated but not typeset. Because it had a lot of signs, no one was interested in typesetting it. FFF was shutting down, and the original typesetter from UTW had moved on. So it languished for two years. Finally, I got fed up and decided to typeset it myself. It's done, and I'm releasing the Petit Gargantia shorts under the FFF label. I thought seriously about releasing number 14 as Orphan, because the typesetting is frankly substandard for FFF, but I feel that FFF did the bulk of the work on the episode, in particular, encoding and translating, plus all the signs I managed to steal from the first thirteen episodes. And I'm a member of FFF... at least until now.

Petit Gargantia is a series of deadpan dialogs among chibi versions of Chamber, Ensign Ledo, Amy, Ridget, and the other girls in Ledo's orbit. It comments peripherally on the main series until the last episode, which is an excuse to think about Gargantia-based parodies of other famous series and to skirt the edges of copyright laws. It's all silly, and you can watch all 14 episodes in under half an hour.

The specials have been included in other Blu-ray releases of the main series, but the PGS subtitles in those rips don't do Petit Gargantia justice. Enjoy.

Subs Versus Dubs: The Debate Renewed

Korean drama Parasite's underdog win at this years Oscars has triggered anew the debate about subtitles versus dubbing. As this article in Vox explains, the subs vs dubs argument has now spilled over into the film scene, to the amusement or chagrin of anime fans, who thrashed this through decades ago, without reaching a conclusion.

I'm not going to rehash the arguments about anime. Between fansubbing and later simultaneous streaming, subtitled anime has basically won. Most Japanese anime is released in the US with only subtitles. Dubbing is expensive - script development, additional actors. The margins in the licensing business won't support the extra costs, except for massive mainstream hits, which are few and far between, or studios with money to burn, like Disney.

Fifteen years ago, when the sub versus dub argument in anime was still raging, I was decidedly anti-dub. I had watched too many dubs that were marred by bad acting and/or inaccurate scripts. (Besides, I'm an editor, so I wanted there to be words for me to work on.) Now, I'm more open. A good dub makes an anime accessible to a wider audience. I don't feel there's any sacrilege in replacing the Japanese voice actors, if the underlying meaning of the lines is preserved. As Miyazaki Hayao remarked, anime in dubbed in Japanese too.

For me, an example of a good dub is the Disney/Ghibli Howl's Moving Castle. The English voice cast is superb, and the script follows the Japanese pretty well. Of course, the Japanese voice cast is superb too. I've watched Howl's Moving Castle both ways, and I like them equally. On the other hand, the dub for The Tale of the Princess Kaguya bothers me considerably - not because of the voice cast, but because of the script. (I documented my misgivings here.)

I consider foreign-language films to be a completely different case than anime. An anime character has no "real" voice. It may have a familiar voice, through repeated viewing, but everything is dubbed. The mouth movements are somewhat abstract, and they can fit reasonably well with different languages. If Japanese anime is dubbed into English, or US animation is dubbed into Japanese, the key question to me is the quality of the script and the performances.

On the other hand, a film actor does have a real voice, and that's the voice I want to hear. I don't want any dissonance between the mouth movements or the facial expressions and what I'm hearing. The "one inch barrier," as Parasite's director Bong Joon-ho called it, is no barrier to me. I read fast, and I don't find the subs distracting. For me, the dub is the barrier and the distraction. If I'm expecting to see and hear Jean-Paul Belmondo or Toshiro Mifune, and instead I see that face speaking English, the movie's spell is broken.

Fortunately for me, English dubs of foreign-language films are rather rare. The US market for such films is small, and the incremental expenses for dubbing are not supportable. The reverse is not true. US films, particularly blockbusters, are frequently dubbed for overseas markets. (Disney's Frozen was dubbed in at least 30 languages, for example.) Japanese seiyuu often have dubbing credits on their resumes; it's no different than anime work, really.

Will the paucity of English dubs change over time, perhaps triggered by Parasite's success? I'm skeptical. Unless or until a foreign-film turns into a US-based blockbuster and spawns a franchise, economics will dictate subtitling. I hope it stays that way.

Senya Ichiya Monogatari Blu-ray

Here is the Orphan's third version of Tezuka Osamu's 1969 "erotic cartoon" Senya Ichiya Monogatari, usually translated as 1001 Nights. The first was based on topfh's excellent but upscaled DVD rip; the second on a high-definition web stream; and this one on the UK Blu-ray. Each version has improved over the previous one, but as with Cleopatra, three versions of the same anime is a lot. I hope this release is definitive.

I'm not going to rehash my previous blog posts about Senya. It has the virtues and defects of later Tezuka Osamu "entertainments," with a lot more nudity and sex. The plot meanders all over the place, and the movie could have been shortened without much loss. However, the stylistic variability helps to keep it visually interesting, and the individual set pieces are usually engaging. There are frequent "easter eggs" to reward the movie buff. For example, the titanic confrontation between the three-eyed giant and the equally gigantic bird Loplop is a direct tribute to the fight between King Kong and a pterodactyl in the original 1933 movie. For me, it's best to treat Senya Ichiya Monogatari like a chapter book, taking it in small doses. This helps to tame its extreme length and makes it possible to appreciate the scenes and set pieces individually.

So what's new in this version that makes it worthwhile to download and watch it yet again? Several things.

1. A long and informative interview with Yamamoto Eiichi, the director of both Senya Ichiya Monogatari and Cleopatra. Yamamoto has great stories to tell about the movies themselves and his collaboration with Tezuka Osamu. His portrait of Tezuka is not always flattering, but it's always interesting.
2. The original trailer. This makes it clear that the erotic content was front and center to both the creation of and the marketing campaign for the Animerama movies.
3. The commentary track by Helen McCarthy, author of the excellent and informative The Art of Osamu Tezuka. She provides insightful comments on the movie and its individual scenes. She is particularly good in highlighting the (for the time) innovative imagery.
4. "Remastered" video and audio. Frankly, I don't find either of them an improvement over the prior releases. The video did not look good at "full HD", despite the alleged remastering, so this release still uses 1280 width.
5. Official subtitles. And therein lies a story.

The official subs for Cleopatra are quite good, so I had high hopes for the official subs for Senya. The fansub translator, convexity, thought they could be the default... until we looked at them. They're terrible: stilted, awkward, and, most surprisingly, full of grammar and translation errors. A sample:

• "Miriam" is translated as "Milliam." There's no excuse for this: Japanese has an "r" sound but no "l".
• "He might've been a guinea pig in his before life." Not "previous life"?
• "This will do to every women." Uh, "This will do for any woman" or "This will do for all women"?
• "So shall be it." How about something in English like "It shall be so" or "So shall it be"?
• "They both said same thing." What happened to "the same thing"?
• "We both seem lost." This is a fine sentence, but it's clear from context that the line is "We both seem to have lost."
• "All hell is going to break lose." No, it's loose.
• "I'll witness like that." Do they mean "testify"?
• "So what you say a big thing is this, huh?" I'm not sure I can even parse this one. Maybe "So this is what you meant by something big, huh?"

I could go on and on.

Accordingly, Orphan's fansubs are the default subtitles. For those who want to get the full BD experience, the official subs are included in two versions: untouched PGS and extensively edited and styled. This means the movie has six tracks:

1. Video (default).
2. Japanese audio (default).
3. English commentary audio.
4. English fansubs (default).
5. Edited and typeset English official subs.
6. Original PGS official subs.

The interview and trailer have four tracks: video (default), Japanese audio (default), edited and typeset official subs (default), and PGS official subs.

For this release, M74 obtained the Blu-ray, ripped and OCRed the official subtitles, and encoded the movie and features. ninjacloud retimed the fansubs and the features; Yogicat retimed the official subs. I edited the official subs and features and typeset (mostly in the trailer). BeeBee QCed. The fansub credits are unchanged.

So here's the Blu-ray version of Senya Ichiya Monogatari. Even if you found the previous versions sufficient, you'll want this version for the extras and the commentary track. You can get the release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.