This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Commie set the bar really low, but I underestimated FFF’s limbo skills.
Table of Contents
Release Information
Episode details.
Release format: MKV (386 MB, 10-bit)
Japanesiness: No honorifics.
English style: American English.
Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/sgHzVNdb
Speed: Quick (<48 hours)
External links.
Group website: http://fffansubs.org/
IRC channel: #[email protected]
SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://www.subcompare.com/btooom!/
Commie’s fansub reviews: N/a
Visual Review
Karaoke.
Opening. The reason I liked this better than Commie’s was mostly the font — I felt it fit the theme of the story a lot better. Commie’s color changes were better, but this had more impact, which is why I prefer it.
Rating: Good.
Ending. Can’t say all of the color changes made much sense, but whatever. The whole thing was playing it really safe. Wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good either.
Rating: Okay.
Typesetting.
Script Review
Karaoke.
If you have Engrish in the Japanese part of your script, people are gonna pick up on that right away. And if you don’t somehow manage that properly, there’s gonna be a disconnect where people don’t think you even bothered translating this properly.
If you have “story” in Engrish, work it in to your English somehow. It doesn’t have to be “story” itself; anything that relates to the word will work. Just shove it in.
Main Script.
Ah, sentence fragments used in narrative. While grammatically incorrect, these are a legitimate means to add effect to a scene. Here, it’s intended to read out like a policeman going down a criminal’s history, and that’s completely fine.
What isn’t fine is when the (intentionally incorrect!) grammar goes from intentionally fragmented to unintentionally.
In this case, each thought deserves its own “sentence” and stringing them all together with commas is a bad thing.
“Started with pickpocketing and larceny.”
“Ended up killing, then raping, three women.”
Why would you say “Age” here? This isn’t how people speak.
“Fourteen, huh?”
Not gonna count this as an error, but c’mon, this is a common cop scene. Take the opportunity to spruce it up a little.
“The media’s gonna be all over this.”
You mean “overly compassionate”. This doesn’t work as-is. I mean, people will get what you’re saying, but the term is off.
I’d go with something different myself, like “That bleeding heart?”
That first line didn’t seem right on its own, but the second line is what clinched its out-of-whack status. “they’re still alive” is not a logical argument vs. “why is it bad to kill things?” Rather, I’d bet the first line was supposed to be,
“What’s wrong with killing them?” <- In its original form. I’d change it to “What’s wrong with killing frogs?” though, just because specificity is usually beneficial to overall script quality.
God fucking dammit. I fucking hate dictionary translations. There is no goddamn fucking reason to have “Anyway” in this sentence here. None. It kills the value of the sentence’s message by diluting it with unnecessary, stupid, unnatural language.
“What’s wrong is wrong!” There. Fucking improved.
Pretty fucking certain he means “Let him know how you feel.”
Glasses-fag ain’t thinking that Kosuke should put on puppy dog eyes here.
>your ones
GBreadFox, you fucking FOB piece of shit. Humans shorten this.
Your ones -> Yours
“Yours are better suited for this.”
This is the first line of the release that I actually liked. And it’s also the last.
“show-up” is not the right term to use here. “You’re making me look bad!” would be more appropriate and in-line with what you were trying to get across here.
Not the right phrase. If you want to use “a little” then have him say “I just took a little tumble.”
You should’ve closed these italics tags, just like your mother should’ve closed her legs. Guess fucking up runs in the family.
More like “The kid and I were thinking the same thing?”
This follows from “The kid was thinking the same thing” and “I was thinking the same thing”
Obviously “Me was thinking the same thing” is completely wrong.
Is this supposed to be English? This must be a variant of it that I’ve never seen before.
Thanks for the specimen, FFF.
This says absolutely nothing.
You can’t live life like an adjective. Make it an adverb, dipshit.
“Live life boldly, just like a game!”
Another FFFuck up.
You mean “case”. That isn’t a trunk, fuckwit.
Results
Watchability: Watchable.
Visual grade: B
Script grade: D
Overall grade: D+
Goddamn. The Btooom scripts aren’t even that difficult, so why can neither Commie nor FFF handle this shit? It’s fucking pathetic.
Well, the choice between the two is pretty obvious, although choosing between shit and shittier isn’t exactly the best choice to make. Go with Commie for Btooom.
Is it a tragedy that almost every season we have to choose between bad and worse for almost everything?
Could be worse, you could always have no subs at all!
So.. you weren’t around in 2007 when you had to rely on top-tier groups like YaMom for a speedsub of “decent” series like Heroic Age or the last episodes of Seto no Hanayome.
Things are much better now than they were a few years ago.
ZOMG, everyone’s so newfag in here.
I remember a time when series weren’t subbed purely because they were that bad and fansubs weren’t all that popular >.>
If we’re going to talk like that, I remember a time when the only internet was dial-up, 4chan didn’t exist and the only anime was shounenshit airing on TV with overdub over the English dub.
We have it pretty good right now. Go watch a Hadena release to see the standards fansubs used to adhere to. It’s like a window into the past.
Well that’s disappointing.
retarded review
i kinda disliked the font that FFF used.