26 Shortsub Reviews

February 4, 2015June 12, 2014 by Calyrica

This post was written by Calyrica. She is not Dark_Sage.

It’s that time of the year again! Animebytes is freeleech, so I grabbed a bunch of shit, watched it all today, and thought I’d share the spoils!

Before we begin, I want to talk about two things!

1. I want to QC all the BDs of all the shows I haven’t watched. If you run a BD group and want a QC, PM me on IRC and tell me what you’re working on. If I haven’t seen it, I’ll do it. I joined two groups yesterday and am totally up for more. I don’t care how old or bad the show is. If I could handle going through 8 eps straight of Sekaitsuyo for FFF on Monday, I can handle anything! (Please do not ask me for TS or KFX.)

2. If you like rhythm games, the iOS/Android Love Live game, School Idol Festival, is super fun. My friend code is 261018412, so add me if you play!

Okay, on to the reviews!

So the first bunch of stuff was by Anime-Addicts, a group I hadn’t heard of. So I popped on the video, and…

You’re kidding me, right?

This one, too?

And this one? Well, maybe I can try to see if there’s anything in English later on…

Nope. Doesn’t look like it. Crap.

So that was like 10 of the 26 things I downloaded that I couldn’t watch. Luckily, there were some other things.

Like DameDesuYo’s “Onee-chan ga Kita EX”. Since I just joined them yesterday, I crossed my fingers that they were a decent group. So far, so good!

They certainly can typeset. And I didn’t have a single script complaint in the entire 3 minute episode! Looks like a winner, guys!

Karaoke did leave quite a bit to be desired, though. I could hardly read the English.

Next was a ridiculous show called Usaru-chan, subbed by Diffusion. There were a lot of signs in each short episode, but rarely was anything besides the episode title even translated. This could even use a better font, in my opinion, something rounded and bolder?

But what the show lacked in sub quality, it made up in content. Oh, Japan. This was actually a pretty quirky and fun show for 4 episodes that ran 3 minutes each.

Next is Sorette Dakara ne by some idol group called AGC38. There were two watermarks during the whole thing in opposite corners, but I doubt that DOMO put them in. They did put their own credits in another corner at the start, though.

I find it amusing that they even list a typesetter, since the most important sign of the episode isn’t even done. For a ten minute show, I don’t know everyone’s names well enough to be able to recognize the kanji, so please put it in!

This was the other sign that needed typesetting.

What was typeset? This. And this is how it was handled. I can give them some points, as trying to find a font that matches umbrellas like this? Not gonna happen.

But this is just laughable. Not a hard sign to do at all, since it’s static and the font is generic. At least try, guys.

But you know what? The worst part is this. Instead of translating the ending song, they left this message up for the entire ED. Really?

And I suffered through this only to find it was already on my MAL. Turns out I had already watched it but bleached it from my mind because the typesetting was so bad. The actual English of the subs were fine, though, else I’d have complaints listed here.

I then moved onto two sets of three episode shows with episodes at one minute each, and they were both subbed by JnMBS. This one is called Romantica Clock, and the other is called Sugar Soldier. Both had the same horrible styling and types of errors, so I’ll just show you the horrors of the first set.

Ending punctuation was rare with these subs.

Very rare. And the subs themselves were worded very awkwardly.

Simple things were missed, such as verb tenses and who/whom differentiation.

Commas were also quite rare.

And the typesetting was… laughable.

But the worst part of these subs was that they tried so very hard to get their message across and failed miserably at presenting it in an understandable fashion. Yes, this probably the translation. Yes, I can kind of understand what it’s supposed to mean. No, it’s not English in any sense of the language.

They can’t even manage a four word long line!

So I don’t expect them to get longer lines right.

Their concept of sentences themselves aren’t quite concrete, after all.

Thank goodness each episode was only a minute long. Here’s the credits from the other show so you know who to blame for this filth.

Next, I watched a short called Meisou Underworld by Kiteseekers. This was actually really good, both the subs and the source.

I mean really impressive shit right here. Notice how the lines on the text isn’t part of the font, as the Es have different lines on them. Someone went and did them by hand!

They also did another short called Moonrakers, and their font choice for typesetting left a lot to be desired, but the subs otherwise were solid.

I then watched what’s been released of the Kyoukai no Kanata specials by Mezashite, which I enjoyed 10 times more then the actual show.

But unfortunately, Mezashite cannot comma properly.

Do they know what a comma is?

Oh, they know what a comma is, but not how to use one properly. Gotcha.

They also don’t realize that “anyways” is not a word.

And unless they slipped into British English there (possible), they misspelled “judgment”.

The next show I watched was probably the most enjoyable for me of all of them. It’s called Otome Nadeshiko Koi Techou, and it was subbed by Migoto, who cannot typeset.

And who also have major issues with the fact that this chick is adopted, and thus refers to her parents by their name instead of just “mom” or “dad”. Really, all she’s saying is “My adoptive father”.

Again, typesetting is kind of poor.

Even their styling was a failure. I’ve recently learned about using fonts that have an included italics style, because if you don’t, shit like this happens.

The phrase is “in the meantime”, and I think if you don’t know that, you don’t know enough English to edit.

Commas after conjunctions, guys. They should not happen.

AGAIN?!

So Mognet subbed a song, and they didn’t do a bad job on it. It’s just… this part was kind of shit. More blur everywhere, please.

But their karaoke was great. The syllables fell and became leaves on the ground. Nice touch. The problem is that the font can be hard to read when there are capital letters. T, J, and I all looked identical.

I went to watch this Archetype Forces special thing that was 20 minutes of CG. The beginning wasn’t translated, and I was pissed.

Live evil, come on. You can do better than this!

At this point, I recognized the shitty dialogue font and realized I had already watched this, so I didn’t continue any further.

I don’t know who subbed these nine episodes of Bomahead, but whoever did does not know how to use Aegisub. Here alone we see capitalization and punctuation fails, and these are the most minor of issues.

Lines by default are \an2, which center. This was a conscious decision by someone.

Not to mention the English is completely nonsensical. And every line scene bleeds. And the line changes do not match the audio. Little things like someone’s answering of “Yes” are skipped in favor of putting the next line on the screen. It’s frustrating.

I mean, this is probably the best line of the entire series.

Because we have stuff like random capitalization infecting the entire show.

And you want to know something? None of this is the typesetting. These are lines that are spoken over a full second later and hardly overlap at all.

The show was entertaining, but so hard to sit through.

Part of my binge included some really old stuff, like we’re talking pre-WWII stuff. This is an example. I’m assuming none of these are fansubs, but official subs ripped from VHS, because there’s no way in hell anyone would release stuff this poorly styled. I mean, look at the margins here or lack thereof!

And the unnecessary repeated lines!

And the poor English! If you don’t get what I mean, it should be “every day”, not “everyday”.

And this is apparently a full sentence. Wow!

Great phrasing and comma-ing. Oh, wait.

I found this funny for some reason. “Can we go to the movies?” While an athlete is being featured on the screen.

Thank fuck. Don’t watch this.

Here’s another one with all of the same issues! And guess what? It’s even worse!

I mean, there are all of five lines, so that part isn’t bad. The content is what’s bad.

Oh, god, I can just about imagine what’s going to happen here. Don’t do it don’t do it! (It did it.)

No, no it’s not.

Thank god.

This one wasn’t even on MAL. I wasted three minutes of my life watching this horrible purple and black piece of history.

I mean, the purple made these subs completely unreadable. Hurts my eyes.

And they translated every little thing.

But their “karaoke” was kind of cool. And by “their”, I mean the studio’s. Because the sub’s karaoke doesn’t exist.

Finally.

How many of these do I have?!

Oh, god. This is the worst one. Bouncing ball karaoke, duplicated nonsense lines?

Oh, finally, something different!

So this is called “Memory” and it was subbed by Jollyroger. Here are the people to blame for this. (There are more credits on the next screen, but those are just like encoder and shit we don’t care about.)

It was trippy and poorly subbed. This line was missing both a comma and an apostrophe.

Yes, because I was going to sell this piece of shit.

This was called Salmon-chan, and it was treated pretty well for something with hardly any dialogue at all. And by that, I mean the typesetting was good, because the script obviously isn’t. First line and missing a comma.

This typesetting isn’t as good, I guess. I take back what I said.

Oh, hey, they can treat the dialogue somewhat decently, though. Maybe I’ll just blame the QC and praise the editor.

This was typeset well.

As was this.

And this.

And this. There are like five screens like this.

This font should have been better.

Crap, another oldsub. I hope this one isn’t as bad as the others.

Okay, this name looks American. What am I watching? Oh, it’s called Genesis. Okay.

Oh, like literally Genesis. I get it. But they need to learn how to use quotation marks.

Like seriously. But it was actually pretty fun to watch. It was the Creation story, except God made Eve first. Totally funny shit.

And that was what I got of my freeleech. A few halfway decent things, but mostly horrible shows subbed horribly.

41 thoughts on “26 Shortsub Reviews”

Xythar

June 12, 2014 at 4:42 pm

Actually, I would warn rhythm game fans away from Love Live because the game has a stupid system where grinding matters approximately 100x as much as skill in terms of determining scores. I’m sure people who enjoy grinding/collection games will enjoy it, along with Love Live fans, but as an actual rhythm game I found it sorely lacking.
Reply
- Cezar
  
  June 12, 2014 at 4:54 pm
  
  Grinding, huh ? Haven’t done that since Diablo 2.
  Reply
- Calyrica
  
  June 12, 2014 at 5:04 pm
  
  I don’t mind the grinding as much as the waiting to restore LP bullshit, but then again, I do have a handful of games on my iPad that I just rotate through. By the time I get through the list, they’re ready to go again.
  Reply
  - Xythar
    
    June 12, 2014 at 5:09 pm
    
    Funnily enough, Love Live is actually one of the least offensive F2P games I’ve tried in that respect. Take Cross x Beats for example – a far superior music game in every aspect, but songs cost like 4-7 tickets out of a maximum of 10 and they get replenished at the rate of one every half hour – and if you want more, you’re basically paying arcade prices for them. It’s pretty ridiculous.
    
    It’s just a shame the actual music game elements of LL are overshadowed by card collecting and whatever. The Konami games where you buy your songs outright (jubeat plus, reflec beat plus, pop’n rhythmin) are still by far the best ones I’ve tried on the platform.
    Reply
- Blah
  
  June 12, 2014 at 7:14 pm
  
  I would say it’s more how much money you’re willing to put into it and your luck more than grinding when it comes to the scoring aspect, but if you only care about the rhythm game part (for example, if you just want the challenge of full combo-ing everything), you can easily unlock and play all the songs without having to care about the scores.
  Reply
  - Xythar
    
    June 12, 2014 at 7:24 pm
    
    I did this for a while but I got to the point where I’d cleared the 4 or 5 songs currently available and it wanted me to grind up to level whatever to unlock more. At least, I think to unlock more. I dropped it when I fulfilled one requirement to grind to rank 11 and was rewarded by being told to grind to rank 14.
    
    Not much point in playing songs more than once or twice if the scores are useless, after all.
    Reply
    - Blah
      
      June 12, 2014 at 8:01 pm
      
      I suppose, but if they’re in it for the rhythm game aspect and if they like the songs, they’d gladly play songs multiple times. The rank ups come naturally even if you’re playing casually anyway. But yeah, this game was mostly meant to rake in cash, considering how much Japanese people are willing to spend for cards of their favourite 2D idols.
      Reply
kokujin-kun

June 12, 2014 at 5:58 pm

>Please do not ask me for TS or KFX

What’s the point? (hides)
Reply
sjoe

June 12, 2014 at 7:35 pm

I think there’s a small typo here –
>Their concept of sentences themselves aren’t quite concrete, after all.
isn’t*

And I always thought “anyways” was the americanised version of “anyway”. Both Oxford and Merriam-Webster seem to recognise “anyways” and point out that it’s valid in certain American dialects. After a bit of digging, I came across this on StackExchange – so I’m not sure if I’d say “anyways” is invalid. But in any case, “anyway” definitely seems to be the better choice in that particular context.
Reply
Etoce

June 12, 2014 at 7:37 pm

Spelling “judgement” the British way was intentional because “judgment” is stupid.

And Caly, I love old-fashioned prescriptivism, but things like using “who” in places where traditionally “whom” is used has long since been considered acceptable. And rules about things like “anyways” and comma-after-a-conjunction really only apply to the written word — people pause after saying conjunctions and people definitely say “anyways”.
Reply
- Nevreen
  
  June 12, 2014 at 7:50 pm
  
  >Spelling “judgement” the British way was intentional because “judgment” is stupid.
  
  I do this too!
  Reply
  - qwerty
    
    June 12, 2014 at 8:40 pm
    
    I was under the impression that “judgment” is correct, and “judgement” only came into being because people couldn’t spell and thought it looked more natural.
    
    I mean, almost all official documents, announcements, professional works, etc. I’ve seen use “judgment”.
    Reply
    - Calyrica
      
      June 12, 2014 at 8:45 pm
      
      I was under the impression that “judgement” is the British spelling, but it sounds like you’re right.
      
      http://grammarist.com/spelling/judgment-judgement/
      Reply
      - Nevreen
        
        June 12, 2014 at 9:45 pm
        
        I still maintain that “judgment” is stupid and will continue to abuse my editorial privilege to insert “judgement” in chinese cartoons.
        Reply
        
        FalseDawn
        
        June 13, 2014 at 7:38 am
        
        Well, as a spelling “judgement” has been around since the 1800s, though more popular in Brit than American (because, y’know, we’re awesome).
        Reply
        
        Calyrica
        
        June 13, 2014 at 9:37 am
        
        Just because it’s stupid does not make it wrong.
        Reply
        
        Googol
        
        June 13, 2014 at 9:43 am
        
        I was under the impression that anything in English can and will become standard in a matter of years anyway. There’s no academy applying strict rules, hence transitions from “judgment” to “judgement” and many others happen. I don’t see, at this point, anything wrong in using either of the two variants.
        Reply
        
        Calyrica
        
        June 13, 2014 at 9:55 am
        
        “in a matter of years”. You realize it’s more like “in a matter of hundreds of years”, right?
        Reply
        
        FalseDawn
        
        June 13, 2014 at 10:01 am
        
        Not necessarily. The OED has accepted lots of words in recent years that have only been in circulation less than a decade, like selfie, but through popular usage, have merited a place in the dictionary.
        
        Admittedly, it’s more likely to take a great deal longer for spellings to change, but as both spellings have already been in use since around the 1800 mark, I’m not sure you can argue that one :D
        Reply
        
        Calyrica
        
        June 13, 2014 at 10:06 am
        
        That’s what I mean. New words are added frequently, but words are not easily changed.
- sjoe
  
  June 12, 2014 at 7:52 pm
  
  Wow, I didn’t even know “judgment” was a word! Looks really weird.
  
  And I always thought “anyways” was the americanised version of “anyway”. After a bit of digging around, I came across this. Also, Oxford and Merriam-Webster seem to recognise “anyways” and like you said people definitely use it. So it looks like “anyways” isn’t exactly invalid. But in my opinion, “anyway” fits the bill far better, at least in that particular context.
  Reply
- Calyrica
  
  June 12, 2014 at 8:07 pm
  
  I’ll give you the “anyways”, but I really don’t want to.
  
  The comma-after-a-conjunction is still unacceptable, because the conjunction implies the pause. You almost always pause when you use a conjunction, so adding the comma is double-pausing.
  
  And I get the whole speech vs. written word debate, but the thing is that even though we’re working with dialogue, we’re still writing it down. Therefore, we do have to adhere to rules. Maybe not the strictest of the rules, but we do have to adhere to what we all learned in English 101.
  Reply
  - Calyrica
    
    June 12, 2014 at 8:13 pm
    
    Actually, there’s no reason for me to give you the “anyways”. It takes longer to write than just “anyway”, so why would you waste the time to use it?
    Reply
    - Etoce
      
      June 12, 2014 at 8:34 pm
      
      “Anyways” and “anyway” are different — “anyways” is more casual and cutesy in a bad way.
      
      As for the comma-after-a-conjunction thing, there isn’t always a pause after a comma. Compare:
      
      1) So, what are you gonna do? (pause)
      2) So what are you gonna do? (no pause)
      
      I feel weird arguing for the acceptability of comma-after-a-conjunction (and comma-before-a-then-after-an-if-clause) because I normally do “fix” them, but I’m not sure what happened here.
      Reply
      - Calyrica
        
        June 12, 2014 at 8:36 pm
        
        Yeah, and there’s really no reason to feel overly defensive about it, since it’s the most common error I see in well-done subs.
        Reply
      - Xythar
        
        June 13, 2014 at 1:21 am
        
        Those two are actually somewhat different in meaning. Without the comma, it’s a lead-on from whatever was said previously – basically “Given that, what are you gonna do?”
        
        With the comma, it’s just an interjection, like “Oh”, “Hey”, or “Man” and doesn’t really carry much additional meaning. In this case, the “so” isn’t being used as a conjunction at all – it just happens to also be usable as an interjection. It’s not something you can do with other conjections like “but” or “and”.
        
        And to follow up what you said before, commas have specific uses in grammar, but denoting pauses isn’t one of them. If the pause is particularly long and you want to draw attention to it, use ellipses.
        Reply
        
        Xythar
        
        June 13, 2014 at 1:57 am
        
        I guess one way to make the difference clear is that it’s acceptable and even normal to start a conversation with “So” in spoken English, eg you approach your friend and say “So, how’s it going?”. This is functionally equivalent to “Hey, how’s it going?”
        
        However, it makes no sense to use “But” or “And” in the same situation (your friend would be wondering if he missed something) as they only work as conjunctions.
        Reply
        
        Calyrica
        
        June 13, 2014 at 9:38 am
        
        Thank you, Xythar. <3 I couldn't phrase it right!
        Reply
    - FalseDawn
      
      June 13, 2014 at 7:52 am
      
      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anyways?s=t
      
      Why argue against it? I personally hate it (though partly because I’m a Brit and would much rather use “anyhow” as my non-standard weapon of choice), but I wouldn’t deem it as being ‘wrong’.
      Reply
  - FalseDawn
    
    June 13, 2014 at 7:50 am
    
    They aren’t conjunctions though, they’re adjuncts. Read the grammar perspective on commas in relation to these here:
    
    http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/commas_after_a_sentence_introduction.htm
    
    As you can see, having a comma after one-word adjuncts can be omitted or not, depending on what an individual editor prefers. For instance, in that very article, it states you should omit a comma after “yesterday” but further down the page lists it as an example WITH a comma :D
    
    So yeah, it’s not one of those rules that has to be strictly adhered to.
    
    It’s like saying you must have a comma before “too” when actually it’s up to the individual writer/editor whether they do or not.
    Reply
    - Xythar
      
      June 13, 2014 at 8:08 am
      
      Man, I hate how CR in particular does that for every single “too”, even in two-word sentences like “Me, too.”
      
      Or even worse, something like “That applies to you, too, but not in this case”.
      Reply
      - Xythar
        
        June 13, 2014 at 8:09 am
        
        Actually I’m going to revise that second example to “That applies to you, too, Takeshi, but not in this case.”
        
        So awful.
        Reply
      - FalseDawn
        
        June 13, 2014 at 8:23 am
        
        I know plenty of subgroups who do it too. I think it’s down to Americans trying to enforce strict punctuation rules on something that isn’t always needed. In fact, I never use a comma in front of “too” if I can help it because I just don’t believe it’s needed in any situation.
        Reply
Justinnnnnn

June 13, 2014 at 9:50 pm

Damn, some of those are really obscure pieces of anime (and look really bad), props to you for being able to watch it all I guess :P
Reply
Period

June 14, 2014 at 5:02 am

Osu still best rhythm game.
Reply
- Xythar
  
  June 14, 2014 at 7:16 am
  
  Nah.
  Reply
bobski

June 19, 2014 at 3:19 pm

Gotta love people who waste their time reviewing subtitles just to criticize half of them for things that aren’t even valid criticisms. Like criticizing them for not following writing rules that aren’t even technically incorrect in the first place. Especially since subtitles are not freaking books, they’re just transcribing spoken word and dialogue.

Great job, Calyrica!
Reply
- cheshyre
  
  June 19, 2014 at 6:21 pm
  
  Even in conversational English, a lot grammar rules still hold, so most criticisms that would be valid for written English are also valid for conversational English. Just because subtitles are supposed to be spoken dialogue and spoken dialogue doesn’t always sounds like it comes out of an English textbook doesn’t mean you can just throw grammar rules out the window. Calyrica pointed out mostly errors that everyone would consider objective, not just subtle phrasing nuances. Please explain what you feel she pointed that was not “technically incorrect.”
  Reply
  - begna112
    
    June 19, 2014 at 11:51 pm
    
    The ones that his group did were all correct ofc. (¬‿¬)
    Reply
line0

June 29, 2014 at 9:51 pm

> http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/KiteSeekers-Meisou-Underworld-CM-1280×720-H264-76886C24.mkv_snapshot_02.04_2014.06.12_11.44.32.jpg
> Notice how the lines on the text isn’t part of the font, as the Es have different lines on them.

are you sure those aren’t just random contextual alternates? it seems strange to me they’d go through the effort of drawing those manually but then not bother with either the pattern (lines have even weight and are rarely vertical) or with finding a font that even remotely matches the original.
Reply
- line0
  
  June 30, 2014 at 9:18 am
  
  ok, seems like i was wrong, it’s actually fbf’ed clips. strange.
  Reply

41 thoughts on “26 Shortsub Reviews”

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