A review of a show I haven’t seen! (Besides this ep, of course.)

Since I never drop a show, you guys are starting to make my on-hold list longer.

Dmon

Filesize: 269mb
English: American, honorifics

Karaoke

Just the ED. It was hard to read.

Typesetting

Not a lot of room, so acceptable.

Everything was typeset here. Very nice!

Same here.

This looks very nice.

As does this, though the font seems a bit too informal.

It sticks out, but there’s not much that can be done here. It looks as good as can probably be done. Maybe some more blur?

Not a lot of room here, either.

First untypeset signs. They all say the same thing and are shown a bunch, so I don’t blame him for skipping it.

So what does her shirt say?

There’s no room on the teacup to translate it.

The font is a bit too bold and the color is off.

Nicely done.

Maybe a bit more blur?

Okay, here’s where things get to be a bit tough. Doki, didn’t modify these signs at all. Dmonhiro covered up the original English translation here and the sign below. It’s very subtle and hard to see unless you click to zoom in, but there are clearly \clip backgrounds.

Same as above note. What I can’t figure out is if you’re going to redo the text, why not make it darker here to be easier to read?

These were the original two signs.

This was left as-is.

They didn’t mess with this one, either.

This looks very nice.

Again, this looks nice.

This is brilliant and must have taken a very long time, but totally worth it!

Again the color doesn’t quite match and the font is too bold.

Script

This isn’t an error, but I want to point something out.

Japanese tends to favor !? over ?!. This is noted in many signs throughout anime.

Fansubs tend to favor ?! over !?. However, both are valid.

The interrobang is actually its own punctuation mark: ‽. But it looks ugly and is hard to read.

Some people might think this is a clever edit. I’m just reminded of the horrible Final Fantasy: Advent Children localization: Dilly dally shmilly shmally.

This could be a character tick or it could be a mistake. I don’t know enough about the character to tell.

I think this should be split. Three sentences in one line is not a good idea, even if they are short.

 

Doki

Filesize: 259mb
English: British, honorifics

Karaoke

Doki’s standard ED style. Because black totally goes with this ED.

Also, this is a comma splice.

Typesetting

No typsetting.

I didn’t grab the exact same screen as with Dmon’s release, but everything was typeset in both.

Um, I think this might be something that needs typesetting.

This too.

That font does not match at all, but besides that, it’s pretty good.

The font doesn’t quite match again, but it looks good otherwise.

Didn’t snap a shot of Dmon’s title screen, but it was fully translated and typeset. Doki’s wasn’t.

Doki chose to cover up the sign.

Doki didn’t translate any of the boxes either, probably for the same reason.

First of all, what does her shirt say?

Second of all, “anyhow” isn’t a word.

Again, no room, so I don’t blame them for skipping it.

No typesetting.

Um, okay. It looks kind of weird, but I guess there’s not a lot of room?

I like that they centered this.

This was the only sign in this sequence that needed typesetting.

Kind of small, but not a lot of choice.

Very nice.

This needs a fancier font, though.

Didn’t snap Dmon’s of this, but it says “Next Episode” and he did typeset it.

Okay… look. I know that previews aren’t that important — I don’t actually watch them — but this is lazy. Instead of doing the typesetting thing, they just translated them all at the bottom. The problem? They overlap constantly. I managed to grab this screencap because it looked the least cluttered.

No typesetting.

Script

I’m not sure if this is a British thing or not, but it just sounds bad to me.

head –> top

Comma after ‘on’.

She must refer to herself in the third person, but only Doki’s script referenced this.

Again, anyhow isn’t a word.

Here’s a lesson on how to deal with ‘onii-chan’. Also, when I was briefly in Doki, this is what they taught me. So I don’t know why this happened here.

If she’s calling him by name -> Onii-chan.
If she’s referring to “her onii-chan” -> brother.

This is a mouthful.

> I really want to take the time to listen to you…

Not to mention it leads into this:

First line should end with a comma. Second line shouldn’t have ellipses.

I honestly don’t mind Dokis obsession with ellipses, but that doesn’t mean they can ignore what happens when sentences are joined by a conjunction.

By the way, this happens a lot in this release.

And this is where the third-person stuff becomes a problem.

Onii-chan = third person
you = second person

Since they’re referring to the same person, they have to agree. And here? They don’t.

What did I say about ‘anyhow’?

An ‘if’ statement ends with a comma if something follows it. I believe something did.

Look. This third person thing is cute, but it sounds like a non-native speaker came over to the US and tried to talk, especially since she refers to herself here as “I”. Just make Onii-chan –> you and be done with it.

I get that you don’t want repetition, but this isn’t a good line.

> I personally made them for you!

I think he’s mocking her way of addressing him. It works here, actually. The problem is that it often doesn’t throughout the rest of the script.

…

Get rid of the “like”.

Here’s how you use ‘please’:

Please give me more miso soup.
More miso soup, please.

Numbers 1-10, multiples of 10 up until 100, and other large, easy numbers should be spelled out.

Needs a comma after ‘okay’.

This isn’t the best way to phrase this line.

> If that’s the case, how about rice balls?
> If that’s the case, should we go with rice balls?

etc

Another one of Doki’s conventions that I remember is that words like “Hm”, “Ah”, “Um,” etc only have two letters. Yet this has three.

Not to mention this progression of lines is very difficult to read.

It should be:

phrase one, and phrase two, and phrase three.

Same thing with “Hmm” here.

Also, the TL note is very small and hard to read.

Switch the second and third clause.

He may be my brother, but if we love each other, it doesn’t matter!

If you’re really attached to this order, get rid of the second comma.

Dmon treated the stuff in parenthesis as a separate line and styled it as such. I can’t decide if I like this better or not.

Comma splice.

 

tl;dr: Dmon wins both in the visuals and the script. But if you’re really intent on keeping the third-person weirdness, go with Doki.