Anime – Page 4 – Wis[s]e Words

Close but no Kill Me Baby — Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan — First Impressions

Published on July 10, 2024Leave a comment

To be honest, I sort of knew who the Shinsengumi were — late 19th century fascistoid thugs who for some reason are very popular BL fodder — and I assume the Tama river is the one in the background here, so this sort of mangled allusion in my subtitles doesn’t bother me. I’ve watched too much fansubbed anime and read too many scanlations to even notice this sort of thing anymore:

School girls apparently crossing the Tama river, smiles as pure as shinsengumi troopers

But it is indicative for the quality of the subtitles, when one of the first things you see is an unaltered reference not too many people outside of Japan will understand. It and similar references, as well as a fair few misspellings as well as typeset errors, with words running into each other e.g. showed that whoever had translated this, had done the bare minimum with results barely above machine translation quality. Subtitles which apparently were forced on Crunchyroll by the Japanese distribution company Remow, also involved with last season’s Ooi Tonbo! whose subtitles were not great either. All of which has overshadowed Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan‘s premiere quite a bit. And this for a series with a lot of hype behind it: “the new Lucky Star or Nichijou” it was supposed to be. Now completely hobbled by being too cheap to get proper translators involved.

Nokotan making her entrance into the classroom, her antlers too big for the door, destroying the wall

It all starts when Koshi Torako, former deliquent turned perfect student at a prestigous high school, finds a girl hanging by her antlers from the powerlines at the side of the road. She rescues her and hopes never to see her again but guess who turns up as a new transfer student? Shikanoko Noko — call her Nokotan — makes a devastating impression entering the classroom, but Torako is the only one who finds anything strange. That of course Nokotan sits next to her is bad enough, but she also sniffs out — literally — Torako’s deliquent past. What will this do for her carefully cultivated reputation?

Yes, poor old Koshi Torako — Koshitan as Nokotan immediately calls her — is stuck being the straight man in a zany comedy in which Shikanoko is the agent of chaos ruining her life. A tried and true concept for a comedy anime, but does it work? Not quite for me. It all feels a bit try hard and artificial. There were a few good jokes that landed in this first episode but nothing as funny as the choco cornet discussions that Lucky Star opened with.

A Guilt Free Harem — Giji Harem — First Impressions

Published on July 6, 2024Leave a comment

I like harem romcoms but is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It’s hardly mature to enjoy the idea of multiple cute girls (or boys) fighting over the protagonist, right? Not to mention that either you have to keep the battle going forever or somebody has to win and that always makes me feel sorry for the losing heroines. But what if you could have a guilt harem? A harem is which all the girls fighting over protag-kun are actually the same person:

Rin in all her personas surrounding a flustered looking Eiji

Giji Harem (Pseudo-Harem) starts with Nanakura Rin, a first year high school student who likes acting and is looking for the school’s theatre club when she asks Kitahama Eiji, a second year for directions to the club room. He tells her he’s actually the club president but also the sole member of it, only to guide her to a room full of club members and the real president. She thinks he’s a bit weird but he must have made a good impression as after the opening has played, we see them sitting together as he complains about wanting a harem. Which is when Rin launches into her first persona, a devilish flirty girl, followed by tsundere-chan. For this she actually puts her hair into the traditional twin tails. More characters debut in the next few sketches, the quiet, capable but standoffish cool-chan and the big eyed, baby talking spoiled-chan. Apart from the pre-opening scene throughout these sketches we see that Rin and Eiji are already incredibly comfortable with each other, that Rin enjoys doing these skits as much as Eiji enjoys the flirting from all these characters.

Rin shouts that she cannot do her act in front of other people as it's embarassing

In one of the stories this episode Rin has to actually choose which cooking is better between Eiji’s and another club member, who already won the club president’s vote. She’s very happy when the dish she prefers is indeed his, but gets embarassed when Eiji asks her to have spoiled-chan vote as well because now it’s a draw. The president then explains to the other member that’s just a little act Nanakura does sometimes. Just one of the hints dropped that their little play acting is noticed and recognised for what it is.

Rin needs an excellent voice actor to pull all these quick character switches off convincingly. Fortunately, Hayami Saori is more than up to the job. Her opposite number, Okamoto Nobuhiko is no slouch either. In a series that stands or falls with the quality of voice acting, to have the leads played by such distinguished veterans is excellent. I do feel sorry for whoever is doing the translating, having to get the flavour of Rin’s various personas into the subtitles. I had been a bit worried about how the animation would stack up compared to the manga, with the trailers not being that encouraging, but so far it has worked well.

Don’t get too nostalgic for fansubs

Published on April 27, 2024Leave a comment

Every time an official translator does something remotely interesting, some anti-localisation chud shows up and laments how fansubs have disappeared, because these people knew how to translate properly, giving you exactly what the funny cartoone characters were saying, without using their misguided creatifity to improve things. Oh for the days of fansubs like this:

In the end into a community that seems very strange I joined, says this school girl character from Tesagure Bukatsumono episode 2.

Goddamn that was rough. The first episode of Tesagure! Bukatsumono — a 2013 part improv slice of moe comedy show — had not prepared me for how bad the subtitles would be in the second episode. Not that official subtitles can’t be bad, but when they’re this bad people notice. Clearly this is somebody who just took what was said in Japanese and dumped it into English, without activily understanding what was said or how it should work in English. For context, she’s talking about joining a strange school club and that’s how it should have read: “in the end I joined a strange club” or I ended up joining a strange club”, depending on taste. Not this monstrosity, with its sentence structure taken literally from the Japanese. I kept watching to see if it got better and sampled some later episodes, but unfortunately, it didn’t.

A shame, because that first episode was funny. But with this being the only fansubs available and neither Crunchyroll nor seemingly any other legal (English language) streamer having it available, I doubt I will ever watch more of it.

No overdrive, just undercooked — Highspeed Etoile — First Impressions

Published on April 21, 2024Leave a comment

It’s a bold strategy to start off your first episode emulating the most boring bits about Formula One. Let’s see if it pays off.

Some racing cars trying to overtake each other

Spoilers: it didn’t.

It didn’t because the people involved with Highspeed Etoile seem neither to know nor care about how to make a race look interesting. This is no Initial D. There’s no sense of speed, no tactics or strategy at play here. There’s just the King and Queen, who, the commentators tell us, have been number one and two whole season with nobody else getting a look in, and they’re just faster and that’s it. The only real tactic on display during the two races in episode one and two is that the Queen has a team mate who cuts off anybody who tries to overtake him in third place, so that she can fight her battle with the King in peace. That does not for interesting racing make, having all the competition stuck behind you having to ride the Dick train.

Richard is keeping all the other cars in a single file behind him.

It’s not inherently a bad idea to introduce your cast and setting through a race: gets the adrenaline pumping, gives you some idea of who these people are through how they race, uses the commentators to inclue you on the strategies used and background of the race. Initial D did it all the time even with terrible nineties animation and CGI. But here it just feels like toy cars running on a toy track with no sense of personality for either the driver or the car. There’s no weight to it. I thought that maybe things would’ve improved with the second episode when I sat down to watch it this morning, as that finally introduced the actual protagonist, but most of the episode consisted of similar dull racing as the first. Worse, said protagonist turned out to be such a rookie that she didn’t realise she was lapped by the race leaders! I understand making her the underdog outsider, but this was just embarassing.

Yankee with a heart of gold — Wind Breaker — First Impressions

Published on April 7, 2024Leave a comment

No better protagonist for a yankee anime than a guy who has no problem beating up half a dozen thugs only to get blushy and tsundere when their victims thanks him:

It's not like I saved you or anything!

Yankees are what Japan calls a certain kind of teenage criminal: violent, engaged in petty crime, but usually with some code of honour guiding them, thought his of course is more usual in fiction than real life. Managa and anime have always had a soft spot for these people, so aggressively doing their own thing in a society that values conformity above almnost anything else. Sakura is the perfect protagonist for this sort of series. Slightly dumb, overtly focused on violence as a solution to all his problems. Not sadistic, just obsessed with proving he is the strongest as the only way he can get any respect. Having always been judged a criminal, up to no good because of the way he looks, he felt he had no choice but to fight to earn his place int he world.

A crowd of shadowy figures is looking at the camera calling the protagonist gross

All of which is revealed or implied in the very effective first minute and a half of the episode, where Sakura is walking a metaphorical tightrope as he recalls the disgust and anger of his class mates, teachers and family. No wonder he wanted to transfer to the worst school in Japan, a school with a reputation as yankee heaven, where he can fight as much as he pleases to become the strongest. Reality turns out to be slightly different however, because somebody already had gone through this story two years ago and they reformed the school to the point where the juvenile deliquents now guard the peace in the city. As the women he rescues tells him, this means that he will never reach the top, as he’s alone. But alone is what he has always been, so he doesn’t understand what she’s trying to say at all.

Sakura is carrying around enough psychological baggage to make for a satisfying protagonist and that other necessary element for a yankee series, the extreme but stylish violence is also tackled. The fights here operate on the kung fu movie principle, where mobs of adversaries politely wait their turn to be beaten one by one by the hero. There is however some element of realism in these fights: when a sneak attack gets Sakura cut on the ankle, the wound does debilitate him enough that he momentarily cannot defend himself.

I really liked this first episode; I always love a good yankee series and this looks to be an excellent one.