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Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (239 MB, 10-bit)

Japanesiness: No honorifics.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/xxt0S8wM

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

 

External links.

Group website: http://commiesubs.com/

IRC channel: #[email protected]

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://www.subcompare.com/robotics%3bNotes/

Commie’s fansub reviews: http://notredreviews.wordpress.com/autumn-2012-reviews/

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening. It’s text on a screen — functional, and that’s it.

Rating: Okay.

Ending. The colors sometimes change, which is good. But I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning behind each individual change.

Rating: Okay.

 

 

Typesetting.

I had to turn the subs off on this one just to check what was originally to be in English and what wasn’t. That’s one of the most (if not the most) important ideals of typesetting — to make the English signs fit in as naturally as possible.

Overall, this release has generally good typesetting.

 

Script Review

Karaoke.

I’m not entirely sure what they were going for here, but it is not what is traditionally referred to as “English”.

 

 

Main Script.

This does not read right. The intent here is to stress that there is only one option left.

“Then we only have one option left.” or “Then we have but one option left.”

Though it was fully pronounced in the anime, Commie shortened it to KB here. Not a bad choice at all. There was no value (for this scene) in having KILL-BALLAD instead of KB, so the abbreviated name was a good option to shorten line length and make it seem a bit more natural (because we sure as hell abbreviate a lot when we speak).

Too long by a handful of syllables.

“Are ya stupid? A camera’d be useless even if it were just used fer decoration!”

Thanks for subtitling this.

No really, I actually enjoyed seeing this written out. Choosing whether to subtitle noises is often a context-based choice and it worked quite well here.

Goddamn I fucking loved this line.

It’s one of those that could have gone many different ways and come out just fine. But this just hit the scene spot-on.

I assume this was supposed to be a pun? If so, it didn’t work. I get that the Passion refers back to the passion fruit bun he just consumed. However, the “Accord” part comes out of nowhere, perhaps in reference to the “agreement” part of the line?

I’d need to know what was being punned in Japanese to rewrite this, but here’s a pun that ignores the second part of “Passion Accord”.

“Very well. It appears we’ve reached yet another passionate agreement.”

Aww. And they had such a great translation earlier.

This line just hurts to read. It’s a generitranslation that we’ve all likely seen before. And generitranslations are almost never good. Why not something like,

“Tell me the truth. What does Aki think of you?”

My fix is a conservative take on the line, because I’d need some more context on the exact meaning Japanese line before messing with it any further (after which I could naturalize it harder than Ellis Island). But I think it fits better for now.

While this is a technically correct sentence, unless this scene got 500x more philosophical here than it was before, the line should be “Maybe I’m just a replacement for her sister Misa?” (Question mark optional.)

Not feeling this line. I’d ask a TLC for a few more vocab words to work with here (or if I knew more of the story, I could skip the translation check), but as it stands I guess I’d go with this,

“Taking care of Aki and Misa? He’s a regular knight in shining armor.” (I interpreted this as very, very dry sarcasm.)

An accent on “will” is necessary to reflect natural speech.

As a translation for “Kane!” I fucking dig this.

You figured out how to use semicolons before, so why not here?

First word repetition in back-to-back lines should be avoided whenever possible. And I guarantee it’s possible here.

“Well, what matters is that the repairs are finished now.”

“All that’s left now is to conduct the start-up test!”

Drop the “really” here. Its addition makes the line seem too forced, which leads to an awkward reading.

 

Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Visual grade: B

Script grade: B

Overall grade: B

So far, you’d be fine with either Commie’s release or WhyNot’s. I’ll give the nod to Commie here though because I fucking hate rainbow karaoke. Of course, these aren’t the only groups on the show, so we’ll see if the others can pull off a better release.