This release should have a trigger warning, because it made me want to shoot myself. After this review, Cthune will probably wish I had.
Table of Contents
Release Information
Episode details.
Release format: 720p MKV (522 MB, 10-bit)
Japanesiness: No honorifics. Hina-chan as “Hina, dear”, Ma-chan as “Massy”.
English style: American English.
Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/WZiW35uh
Speed: Quick (<48 hours)
Translation style: Original TL. I think. Pretty sure. Yeah, we’ll go with that.
External links.
Group websites: http://cthuko.nyaa.eu/ https://caffeine.moe/
IRC channels: #[email protected] #[email protected]
Visual Review
Karaoke.
Opening.
Webm link
Rating: Good. The “no no no no” was a cute touch. Reminded me of middle school before I discovered roofies.
Insert.
Rating: Matcha Pass.
Ending.
Rating: Yuck. This must be–
Oh, I guess it wasn’t an accident. My mistake for having faith in you, Cthune.
Typesetting.
It’s intensely forgettable.
See? Goddamn, did I describe that well.
Encoding.
This release physically hurt to watch.
I rarely complain about encodes, but goddamn what a buzzkill watching Cthune’s version was. This is a 522-MB release. Shouldn’t we be getting better visuals than a fucking 144p Youtube stream?
Every frame is washed-out, low-quality Minecraft garbage. What makes it so much worse is that Funimation of all people companies didn’t have these problems in their version.
Differences not clear enough? Here, have a screen comparison: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/111229
I didn’t pay shit for this and I still demand a refund. What a fucking waste of my time.
Script Review
Karaoke.
This doesn’t make sense. Why would something sweet drive someone nuts? “I like songs so sweet I get a sugar rush” would be fine. Hell, you could even throw in something about diabetes if you wanted to get sagey with the script. But this? No.
Generally, lines in songs don’t exist in a vacuum. So why are you translating them like they do?
uncool -> lame
At least try, Cthune.
The song’s fun, so why is the translation so stiff?
*reason and laws
Main Script.
I’ll never understand the rationalization behind localizing character names (Ma-chan -> Massy) and then leaving shit like this in Japanese. At least commit to your memesubs and throw in a Hail Mary or something.
I call bullshit.
Funimation: “In this age of regressed communication methods, messages don’t always get delivered.”
Oh wow, look at that. She wasn’t actually saying that communication is for losers. Thanks Funi-chan Funi, dear, I quite enjoy watching releases that make sense.
“Hiyoshi” adds nothing here, other than questions about why you didn’t phrase the sentence so it does.
Takumi of the black coats sounds like an MTG card. No idea what Cthune was going for here. Had to shrug it off as “Oh just another anime thing.” which is not really what I’m looking for in a translation.
“Stupid!” for a straight-up “baka”? Last I checked, this wasn’t Throwback Thursday.
“Idiot!” or “Dummy!” would be more in-line with current translation standards.
You mean “vigilantes”, like you had elsewhere in the release? Did neither group provide a QC for this joint?
persons, unless there was some fusion-ha shit going on behind the scenes.
Here’s some advice for your script team: If a human would not say the line under normal circumstances, fucking rewrite it.
Get that tatted on your temples. I’ll be here, hoping the skin breaks.
Better than dangerous two, I guess.
You know Cthune, if you had more lines like this… well, I still wouldn’t recommend your release. But, like, I would almost regret not being able to.
Results
Watchability: Unwatchable.
Visual grade: F. I refuse to watch something this low quality. What a fucking joke.
Script grade: B… minus? Yeah, sure. That works.
Overall grade: F. Across my ~1,000 fansub reviews, you can count on one hand all the releases I gave an F due to their visuals. Well, add a middle finger to that count. And then another one in my next post, cuz Commie’s is just as bad. Yeah, I’ve got a fucked-up hand, thanks for noticing.
Under no normal circumstances should you watch this release. Go with Funimation/HorribleSubs for The Rolling Girls. At least they aren’t spreading digital ebola.
Aren’t Japanese TV broadcasts just fabulous?
(fuck bitrate-starved mpeg2)
But Sereft delays releases for months, so her editing must be good… right?
>her
Well, the script hardly failed. Sure, there were some problems, but the biggest issue was the absolutely broken encode.
Yeah, that rollercoaster scene was a bit… ummm… unpleasing to the eyes.
And it looks like I’m not the only one who thought they didn’t mux the ED font correctly.
Well that was unfortunate, I thought they did a decent job with the first ep.
I don’t care about the visuals, and their subs are still better than Horrible’s Funishit and Commie, so…
Put together two of the best groups still somewhat alive and this is what you get, just disappointed, and don’t these two always used honorifics? Why not now?
Because honorifics are fucking stupid, and have no place in a translated work, by definition.
Twns, dear, please.
Oh shit, he called me dear. Can someone add in honorifics so I can be sure I’m not married to PP? Context alone isn’t enough for me.
I’m gomennazis, Sir twns, ma’am.
I’m not sure why you’d use MBS when it looks so bloody bad.
Because waiting for the BS11 broadcast would delay the release by 1 (one!!!) day!
Yeah. Kaylith/caffeine’s Sora no Method was delayed like 3 days just to get a better channel to encode from, so I’m surprised they didn’t go extreme autism mode here as well (unless the encoding was on Cthuko’s side of things?)
Either way, they’re slower than Commie by a day or two anyways, so if people are going to pass up on Funi and Commie for them, they might as well take their time and go crazy with Kaylith-tier typesetting / wait for a better channel if available.
Because caffeine doesn’t do things the way I did. That’s why. It almost appears as if they’re aiming for speed moreso nowadays, but then I barely follow the scene and the airing days.
Hell, this is the first time I’ve been here in like a month, so much random shit to read back on.
They’re still slow as fuck, if they’re aiming for speed they’re not doing a good job.
Still waiting Saekano.
Dropped, escro’s doing other shit this season, no time for it. I wanna do something next season though, got my eye on some shit.
You, you, Bad Job Media.:<<<<<<<
;_;
>It almost appears as if they’re aiming for speed moreso nowadays
What gives you this idea? The other channels for rolling girls were also shit, and it was a joint so they kind of have to fall it with what Cthuko wants, too. Their Koufuku Graffiti releases are slow and absolutely filled with quality, especially that typesetting.
I guess I’ll ignore the fact that dumb mistakes keep slipping through every episode of Koufuku then. :)
You were the best, mate :(
He knows.
I think ep 2 was literally just edit and backup timing (and some kfx) from caffeine’s side. One QC was out and the other one was busy and dying.
The encode was handled by Cthuko, but the encoder quit after ep 2 anyway, so I’m not even sure who’s encoding the rest.
Oopsie, I may or may not have forgotten to edit the insert song. My bad~
And no, we meant ‘vigilance’ corps. ‘Vigilante’ was only used once this episode, and only to describe the people /in/ the vigilance corps.
Aaaand no, ‘namandabu’ isn’t Japanese. It’s an actual mantra that people repeat during meditation, widely used throughout Buddhism.
Why didn’t you localize that?
^
I demand pure translations for my very Western series.
Based on what? You got someone reading the manga to work out the terminology? Cuz I heard jikeidan in that line, and Funimation has it that way too.
l2deen pleb
So now we need a bath script to set the cthune subs on the funimation video source…
…This makes me glad I haven’t started Rolling Girls yet.