This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

It’s sad that the most original anime this season is based off books written by a guy who died 50 years ago. (Note that I am going for more of an “educational” vibe here, so don’t expect too much sagey writing.)

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (410 MB, 8-bit), 1080p MKV (700 MB, 8-bit)

Japanesiness: No honorifics. Western name order.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/krGKx6Lz

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

Translation style: Official subs.

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening.

Rating: It’s Funimation, so you know it sucks.

Ending.

Rating: Same.

Typesetting.

[HorribleSubs] Ranpo Kitan - Game of Laplace - 03 [720p].mkv_snapshot_09.35_[2015.08.31_14.22.57] — I don’t even know wtf a scramble intersection is.

Spoiler for

The typesetting blends about as well as rocks.

Other.

It would be hard to parse what exactly is being said, and by whom, without pausing half the frames in this scene. Funi needs to stop holding onto subtitle standards developed in the 80’s.

Script Review

Main Script.

Like I mentioned earlier, these critiques are gonna be sort of bland. On the upside, it took me only like an hour to write all this shit, which is a damn good confidence booster.

ESLs, feel free to ask for any further details around these lines and the issues/fixes. For full explanations, I’d need to write a couple paragraphs on each (which would get really boring for you and for me), so I’m happy to help if you need a bit of clarification on these.

Fisthead-kun’s not actually offended, nor is he playing at HR. Try “uncalled for” instead of “inappropriate”. Carries more of the (almost comically) exasperated tone that needs to get across.

“poses as a” -> “only plays at being”

The tone needs to be far more dismissive than it currently is. Also, he wouldn’t be posing as “a” Robin Hood; he’d be posing as Robin Hood.

“gimmick” or “trademark” is what you want. “policy” is pretty nonsensical here, even if it was said in Engrish.

“Akechi… You really try to avoid cases you have no interest in, don’t you?”

You generally wanna avoid throwing “not” in a sentence more than is actually needed. Reason being, you don’t want your readers to constantly try and calculate what’s being said.

For example, I did not not not not not not masturbate to this.

Though in the above example, you probably didn’t need to math it up to figure out what I was saying~

This is translations speak. While it’s technically not unheard of for someone to say “Hey, about that __…” there are generally better ways to word it.

For a simple spot fix, changing “about” to “regarding” or something would suffice, but I’d rather just revamp the entire sentence.

If you haven’t guessed already, this review isn’t gonna be so much about the “wrong” things as it is about simple areas of improvement.

While this is a perfectly acceptable sentence in English, the “in the case file” piece should be moved further up in the dialogue to prevent needless confusion. As-is, the line could legitimately be read as “the missing girls went in the case file to places”, which makes no sense.

“There was a list of places in the case file where the missing girls often went.” (Okay.)

-or-

“In the case file, there was a list of the places where the missing girls often went.” (Better.)

“Girls are almost like God to me.” -> “Little girls are sacred to me.”

“Hence, I never harm girls…” -> “Hence, I would never harm them.”

When he’s saying “girls”, he means in the literal “little girls” sense, which is sorta the whole theme of the episode.

*You’ll

“You’d” is too uncertain here; he’s giving instructions.

“today again” -> “again today”

After giving it a bit of thought, I think the logic behind the current sentence works better than the revision. But language ain’t quite as pure as I am, and “again today” is the far more common phrasing of the sentiment. Yay, conversational English!

You’ve got two options here: “the love of a family” or “familial love”.

Though when I say you have two options, the first one is your only real choice, cuz “familial” is about as common as a tolerable tumblrina.

“Your days of suffering are over.”

“suffering time” seems like the title of a budget horror game.

“He was acquitted and released based on a psychiatric evaluation.”

The use of “then” is entirely unnecessary here; we already know it happened in the past.

Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Overall grade: Pass.

While native speakers may note a few things are off in Funimation’s take on Ranpo Kitan, the general experience is much more tolerable than most of Funimation’s simulcasts.

If you can ignore the standard Funi-tier visuals, you probably won’t mind that this is your only option for the show.

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15 thoughts on “Officialsubs Review: [Funimation] Ranpo Kitan (Episode 03)”

QQwerty

August 31, 2015 at 5:57 pm

Wait, opening credits are translated? Why?!
- Dark_Sage
  
  August 31, 2015 at 6:00 pm
  
  Funi sometimes translates the credits. Not often, but enough so that I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it for 1-2 shows a season.
  - QQwerty
    
    August 31, 2015 at 6:13 pm
    
    But what a damn waste of time and effort. Not to mention it’s hardsubbed, so all it does is cover up more of the screen, and significantly.
    
    I’m just, what— why…?
    - Qrius
      
      August 31, 2015 at 10:26 pm
      
      Yeah, crediting people who put a lot of work into creating the show is sooo dumb…
      - QQwerty
        
        August 31, 2015 at 11:13 pm
        
        No, /translating/ the credits and covering half the bloody screen (ding ding, hardsubs!) IN THE EPISODE is stupid.
        
        People want to know who to thank for this episode can easily get this information somewhere else. When’s the last time you paid attention to opening credits in anime?
        
        Don’t tell me you were like “Ah ha! The executive producer is Kenji Shimizu! I love that guy!” or “I knew it! That girl is voiced by Hitomi Ohwada! Sweet!”
        
        If you have a proper argument, I’d like to hear it.
        
        Welp
        
        September 1, 2015 at 1:30 am
        
        Then translating opening and ending is dumb as well?
        You can find the lyrics on internet.
        
        QQwerty
        
        September 1, 2015 at 1:54 am
        
        Except that (at least some) people want to see the lyrics of the OP and ED while it’s playing? Again, I ask the same thing: when’s the last time you paid attention to translated credits and cared?
        
        The whole “it’s on the internet anyway” wasn’t even my main argument. The point is that it’s unnecessarily in the way (hardsubs) and I don’t think anyone really wants it there. If, in some case, someone really did want to find out who voiced whom or animation directors or whatever, this information could easily be found online. Compared to lyrics, you know, which make the most sense when you’re watching the damned thing.
        
        coldhell
        
        September 1, 2015 at 11:08 am
        
        Funi uses NCOP/EDs for their BDs and hardsub EN credits above them. They need to translate the JP credits at some point, right? Usually the blending is bad compared to the orignal credits, but it doesn’t look so messy like their simulcasts.
        Credits aren’t entirely useless, but people who watch English subbed releases usually can’t understand the orignal credits and the EN ones are poorly done, so in the end no one cares for them. I won’t be surprised if some groups start cleaning the credits (the content aware tools do 90% of the work these days), but I guess when every BD is shared, no one cares about the credits in the TV releases either
        
        Kristen
        
        September 1, 2015 at 7:14 am
        
        To be quite honest, translating the OP/ED is highly overrated. People ask for it, but it’s hardly ever read. To be quite honest, a lot of the songs have similar lyrics. Lots of talk past tense about promises and you, saying you were the only one you could see, and talking about a future together.
        Personally, I believe that more people would rather see a romaji lyric to sing along with than an english line.
        
        That said, the main issue here is hardsubbed clutter. Funimation could have easily avoided the clutter by having a line on top saying “Translated credits available at http://www.funimation.com“. Does it look silly? Sure. But looks a lot better than what they have now.
        
        anon
        
        September 1, 2015 at 12:11 pm
        
        >I don’t care about the people who actually created the anime, which means nobody cares.
        Great argument.
        
        QQwerty
        
        September 1, 2015 at 3:57 pm
        
        Except that wasn’t my argument. Try again.
      - pengu
        
        September 1, 2015 at 7:11 am
        
        unpopular opinion: I really don’t care about those people and it would annoy me to no end if I had to look at this mess every episode
        >waiting for bds
        
        With the studios nowadays sometimes airing poorly made/ half finished shows on tv (Durarara x2, Psycho Pass, Wizard Barristers) and changing so much in the BDs, I gave up on watching TV anime since last season anyway.
        I’d rather wait a year and then watch the BDs.
        no regrets
        
        anony
        
        September 2, 2015 at 6:35 pm
        
        What he said, sprinkled with a generous dose of apathy about currently airing anime.
Denmark

September 1, 2015 at 7:25 am

All songs have almost the same, dumb lyrics.
WTB romaji in simulcast.
lolwut

September 6, 2015 at 6:16 pm

>Funi needs to stop holding onto subtitle standards developed in the 80’s.

This is the thing that annoys me most about their subs. In some other shows it’s been even worse, where they have multiple characters talking over one another on and off, sometimes interspersed with brief moments where there’s just one person talking. The position of the different subtitle lines was jumping all over the place, making it hard to follow who was saying what.

Hell, even those fruitysubs fansubbers used to make in the early 2000s, where every single line was colour-coded to the character, were better than this!

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