This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Oh WhyNot, you and your rainbows.
Release format: MKV (146 MB, 10-bit)
Japanesiness: No honorifics. I don’t think the show even had any.
Note: The release is only 13 minutes long.
Group website: http://whynot.doesntexist.com/
8thsin’s translation critique: http://8ths.in/winter-2011-anime-subtitle-comparison/#Romae
Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: N/A
Karaoke.
Ending. No opening in this episode. I usually despise this rainbow shit. But I thought it worked all right here. People have been telling me differently though, so maybe I’m going blind.
Typesetting.
Why?
Why purple? WHY?! (Yes, the obvious response is “WhyNot?” hurr hurr, but my response to that is “Fuck off, you blind retard. This shit sux.”)
Actually, it’d be more like. “Where…” (previous line) “am I?!” because “Am I?!” doesn’t make sense as a sentence in this context.
I’m going to save this image for later.
Wow, it’s not purple. What happened here?
Script.
Why “epilation” and not “hair removal”?
Nobody knows what the fuck epilation is.
No man knows what the fuck epilation is.
No straight man knows what the fuck epilation is.
Okay, this is Rome and they’re all gay. You got me there. Point, WhyNot.
Wow.
Why is there no overlap text? Come on.
This is the first time I’ve seen possess spelled like that, but I also don’t hang out much with people whose family trees don’t branch.
Take out the excess description and bring this back to its roots to the see the problem.
It reads “Everything that I have learned pale in comparison to this!”
Because “everything that I learned” is considered singular, it should be pales, not pale.
“Everything that I have learned during my years of travel to Athens pales in comparison to this!”
Watchability: Watchable.
Overall grade: C+
The ending kara was okay. Unfortunately, there were some script errors and the typesetting was extremely underwhelming.
Ummm… Do you really consider the rainbow karaoke appropriate here? I mean – especially for the bottom line? I think it actually sucks with all the grey figures in the back…
“Appropriate”? Well, no. “The best use of this kara that WhyNot’s had so far”? Yes. You gotta understand, they put this shit in every show and this is the only one where it’s been somewhat suitable.
To be fair, I actually thought it was a good contrast to the mostly greyscaled ending. Of course, I’ve been told my taste in karaoke is shit, so take it as you will.
Personally, I thought the rainbow kara was more suitable for their Uta no Prince-sama releases than it is for this.
The rainbow was super awesome, man!
I like how there’s a poster for the live-action Thermae Romae on the wall there.
Seeing an ancient Roman use “avant-garde”, which came into use in the 15th century, was kind of a turn off. They could’ve done a better job matching the Roman character dialogue to the right time period. For instance, changing avant-garde to any number of common words that mean “modern/innovative” and “the good ole days” to something akin to “traditional values”.
The Roman Empire collapsed before English even came into play as a language, so I don’t see the problem with avant-garde being used.
So your argument is that there is no problem using *any* English (French in this case) phrasing, no matter how far outside of the time period it is?
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t sub the entire series in Greek because English didn’t exist in 128 AD. I’m saying that the English we do use should not deliberately be outside of the speaker’s time period. It makes no sense.
Let’s say you’re writing an English script for a TV show set in the same time period as this series. Would you have one of your characters say the word “avant-garde”? The answer is “NO” because that would just be stupid.
The first sentence should read “I’m not saying that we should” not “shouldn’t”. Can’t edit posts, argh.
I’m saying the argument that because a word was used in the 15th century, that makes it too “new” for the show is silly. I’m almost 100% certain other words were used in this release that were created after the 1400’s, so why aren’t you picking on those? At what point is the English considered acceptable? 11th century? The 8th?
You can use an older style of language for editing this if you wish, but you have to be careful. This is a comedy, so you never want to diminish the quality by making the script stiff and formal.
I’m not picking on the other words because they’re words that have to be used simply because it’s English. Do you expect me to pick at words like “the”, “and”, “be”, etc? There are no alternatives. Avant-garde is a word that belongs in a very specific time period. It’s current usage didn’t come about until the 19th century, which makes it a terrible choice to use in a series set in ancient Rome. There are many more appropriate alternatives. I’m surprised that you don’t understand why using it is bad.
About not making the script too stiff: I think there is a lot of potential funny to be made by creating a stark difference between how the Romans and Japanese speak. There’s not much of a difference in this script aside from the Romans being unnecessarily long-winded.
And romans used to speak greek?!?!?!?!?!
Isn’t Hadrianus called Hadrian in English?
yes, Hadrian or Hadrianos in English, Adrianus in Latin.
On purple text: those with bad eyes (severe blurring and, most importantly, double vision, the latter fairly difficult to fix with corrective lenses) CAN’T SEE IT AT ALL. It blends with light colors, it blends with dark colors, it somehow blends with wavelengths you can’t see at all for the sheer thrill of seeing you squirm as you pause and backtrack to read that strange purple smear of color you noticed that just might have had some value in it.