Review Queue Spring 2014

~Spring 2014 Edition~

 

Fansub Reviews Left:

[Commie] Captain Earth
[WhyNot] Captain Earth

[HorribleSubs] Gokukoku no Brynhildr

[Commie] Mekakucity Actors
[MekamekaSubs] Mekakucity Actors

Review Order (usually determined by the poll):

  1. [HorribleSubs] Gokukoku no Brynhildr
  2. [Commie] Mekakucity Actors
  3. [MekamekaSubs] Mekakucity Actors

 

Translation Parties Left:

N/A

Review Order (usually determined by the poll):

  1. N/A

 

Out-of-Scope (releases that I will not review for whatever reason):

165 thoughts on “Review Queue Spring 2014”

  1. And queue is up too. Now you can stop visiting this page, seeing Winter 2014 when it’s nice and springy out, and thinking I slit my wrists due to watching one subtitle release too many.

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      • Solar, you and your buddies need to sub Akuma no Riddle. There aren’t any real groups subbing it and my magic time and space calculator (MTaSC)has determined that Anime-koi should be the one.

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          • They said no. Christmas is ruined. I guess I’ll have to watch it with Hadena 2’s subs. Unless. . .

            D_S, go around the fansubbing neighborhood with that baseball bat of yours. We all know how fansubbers are afraid of random linguistic violence.

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                • What, Naruto Uzumaki Teaches Typing? That’s hardly an apt reference. Hell, it wasn’t even a show; it was a 3DS game. Let’s not let my failure with one localization effort tarnish the prospect of all the good I could do for Lesbians With Knives.

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                  • Lesbians with Knives is an awesome name for an all-girl hardcore punk band. Also, Funi just announced that they’re gonna be streaming this one, so at least they’ll probably be better than Hadena 2’s subs. But. . . what if they’re Nourin quality? *shuddershudder*

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                    • So, I watched the episode and the subs might’ve been okay had Funi’s editor remembered that you don’t speak in the third person in goddamn English. Why on earth is that so fucking hard to remember?

                    • I’ll overlook it if it’s an important character trait, but when it hits “well gotta match every tense the Japanese sentence had” mode, no amount of airplane bags could contain Dark_Sage’s commencing vomit.

  6. By the way, [SSS] is a group of Anons who said they would sub the series if no one else picked it up. Since HS/shitsubs are alternatives, they’ve dropped it.

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    • I’ll be updating this in an hour or so. I assume there have been numerous changes in the past few days since I made it.

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  15. I hope you review MekamekaSubs’ releases of Mekakucity. They’re Nyaa/Tumblr only and claim to be better than Crunchyroll’s speedsubs.

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  21. Some new group called Chyuu is doing M3 and Blade and Soul. Simulcast edits but they’ve complained at least once about how bad Blade’s script was and also said that M3 had a terrible script too so I’m assuming they’re probably different enough to not receive the failsub designation.

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  24. Two of the disqualified releases already have A+ status on Nyaa. Why is Nyaa so eager to slap A+ on releases that are barely any different to what you can get from HS?

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    • Because we pick the best release without enforcing an arbitrary standard of how much the script has to be edited. Even if a group copy and pastes CR’s script with zero changes, simply adding songs, typesetting, proper timing and a better encode is enough to make theirs a better release.

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      • I just find it strange that out of all the shows and all the releases this season, you choose to give A+ to those that have had the least amount of effort put into them first.

        I mean, just going by what’s on Sage’s list, if you don’t care about changes to the CR script, why hasn’t Flax’s Baby Steps been given blue? Why hasn’t one of Anime-Koi/Chihiro been given A+ for Soredemo/Hitsugi? They’re the only groups doing those shows, and if all they’ve done is add songs, typesetting, proper timing and a better encode, then surely they qualify for A+, right?

        As an aside, could you tell me why DDY’s Gokukoku no Brynhildr release was chosen over Mezashite’s? I went with Mezashite, so I’d like to know why I was wrong and if I should change.

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        • Why is that strange to you? They’re the easiest ones to decide. For example, I watched Chyuu’s Blade & Soul, deemed it acceptable, and nobody else is subbing it. Done.

          Baby Steps is being reviewed, but I’m pretty sure Flax will get it. I haven’t looked at it myself because I don’t really care about most sports anime.

          I wasn’t too impressed with any of the options available for Soredemo when I looked at episode 1, and nobody’s reviewed Chaika yet. I’ll probably get to it later.

          I thought CR/DDY’s script was on the whole better than Mezashite’s for Brynhildr in the episodes I checked (1 and parts of 2/3), which was the consensus of the other staff who had checked them out as well. The multiplication/times table scene in episode 1 stood out to me in particular as being much better executed in CR’s translation. Of course, that’s just my opinion, so feel free to compare them yourself and make your own decision.

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          • >Why is that strange to you?

            Because it is strange that the releases with very little work put into them are awarded A+ before releases that have been originally translated or significantly edited.

            And wouldn’t it be more helpful if you chose the best release for a show when there were several competing releases, rather than giving A+ to one when it’s the sole release for a show?

            >The multiplication/times table scene in episode 1 stood out to me in particular as being much better executed in CR’s translation

            CR’s handing of that definitely comes across better (multiplication tables/I don’t sit at them very often), but if we are to believe Mezashite’s explanation for why they had “I’m not a fan of how they taste”, then their rendering of it would seem to be more accurate.

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            • Literal accuracy doesn’t really matter if the lines make no sense. This was definitely a case where the execution is more important than the contents.

              Low-hanging fruit always gets picked first. It’s a fact of life. The other ones will be decided if and when people have time to review them. In any case, I generally look only at the finished product and try to avoid making assumptions about how much or how little work was put into a release.

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              • I was the one who argued for the literal treatment of that scene in Mezashite’s release. Akatsukin had actually edited in a “localized” version along the lines of CR’s before I removed it. Having dealt with my fair share of people criticizing my translations for not being 100% “literal”, I hate to have to defend the other side, but let me explain my reasoning.

                Regardless of the subtitles’ specific treatment of that scene, as long as they aren’t completely off, the viewer will understand that he’s quizzing her about basic times tables stuff, and she’s answering nonsensically by interpreting his questions as things that sound similar in Japanese. With that in mind, the question becomes “Do we make the scene read more smoothly (i.e. have the lines ‘make sense’) or do we provide more information (e.g. to make it easier for a weeaboo to “understand” the pun by looking things up) at the expense of smoothness?” I’m sure lots of people have their own definitive answers to that, but I don’t think it’s cut and dry.

                That said, I probably would’ve done it in a non-literal, sense-making way if we had fitting answers for all of his questions (2*2, 8*2, 8*8 included). But while “I don’t sit at them very often” is very nice and fitting, it’s much harder to find ones that make sense for the rest. One of my biggest pet peeves in fansubs is when a pun is translated into an English pun that’s such a stretch that it’s not immediately apparent that the translator meant to make a pun, leading to confusion. I don’t remember exactly what CR did for the numeric ones, so they very well may have done it nicely, but I decided not to translate the puns because of the risk that it would be hard to discern what the pun was.

                I took a look at CR’s episode 3 script myself and I have to admit that it was very good. I still think Mezashite’s is better, but that’s probably because I take any flaws with CR’s script to be a sign that they suck, while I can come up with endless excuses to explain away any flaws in my script.

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            • This brings us to the fundamental question at hand: Is effort the sole factor in determining the quality of a release?
              For example, someone as retarded as you could probably work their heart out on a script and it would still be shit. The same goes for a poorly executed original TL. If a CR script is properly edited and then checked for translation errors, the result can easily be better than some TL by some weeaboo who sits in his basement and spends every day trying to become Japanese.
              Another concept you seem to be unfamiliar with is editing. I don’t know how much Japanese you know, but Japanese puns translated directly into English don’t work. It is the TL/editor’s job to find a way to introduce similar humor into the English script. Simply TLing it and leaving TL notes is not sufficient. It is not entertaining and also not what the writers intended.

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              • >For example, someone as retarded as you could probably work their heart out on a script and it would still be shit.

                I’m sure I could churn out a CR edit as good as some of the others I’ve seen out there. I never said your Gokukoku no Brynhildr shouldn’t have been given A+, by the way. I was just asking for a reason as to why it was, and I was discussing one of the points made by Xythar. Your release may very well be better than theirs, and that was why I asked.

                >If a CR script is properly edited and then checked for translation errors, the result can easily be better than some TL by some weeaboo who sits in his basement and spends every day trying to become Japanese.

                When did I argue to the contrary? I never said that a properly edited and TLCed script couldn’t be better than an original translation. Some CR edits are better, some original TLs are. In this case, I was merely asking why the minimal CR edit was chosen over the other group’s release, which happened to be an original TL.

                >Another concept you seem to be unfamiliar with is editing

                Apparently DDY’s editor for Brynhildr is also unfamiliar with that concept.

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          • >deemed it acceptable

            The secret behind A+ scores on Nyaa: The “A+” stands for “acceptable or better”. Obviously they just pick the first group that doesn’t make them tear their eyes out and give it A+.

            For the purposes of Nyaa users, that’s a perfectly acceptable method, since it takes into account speed as well as quality. The best group might not be chosen, but the one chosen will likely be good enough for people grabbing torrents there.

            I doubt more than a handful of users on Nyaa would notice or care that the subs they’re watching are unedited HS scripts with OP lyrics and a different font.

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        • Cause none of the Soredemo releases were that great. I screwed up plenty on Soredemo with poor word choicing and changing stuff that doesn’t need to be changed. Chihiro didn’t have that many changes either, and they had some errors as well. Meaning, none of them gets it.

          Can’t say much for Brynhildr since I watch CR ver.

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          • But it doesn’t matter to Nyaa if very little was changed and some errors were introduced, does it?

            The fact that so many Commie releases that could be explained in exactly the same way have been given A+ proves it.

            I’ll give them some credit this season, though. Whilst I am questioning it, I never expected DDY, or Chihiro for that matter, to ever be given A+ on Nyaa. So at least they don’t seem to be as biased this season. They’re still inconsistent, though.

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  25. Does anybody know who Chyuu actually are? My first thought was that they’re another group of Commie’s and that Xythar is somehow part of them, but I’m open to suggestions.

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  26. It would be nice of Dark_Sage to put up maybe a basic letter grade for the releases he’s watched at least. As a preview for the reviews.

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  27. I would like to start watching Black Bullet but with so many groups doing it don’t really know who to pick. When is that getting reviewed and given A+?

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      • Oh, I see your game!

        Well I’m working on shit, but I’m keeping it on the hush-hush. Shit’s coming tonight, come hell or high water. But not come both; I ain’t a miracle worker.

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    • Please do the exact same episode for Underwater and EveTaku’s reviews. It’ll likely be close contest between these two groups so i’d love to see some direct comparisons.

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    • Thanks for the irregular at magic high school review — now I know what to learn English from. {insert here the link to the review} Also, when will u finally add Hatsuyuki’s DAL II?

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  36. Halfway through Spring and yet there’s only been 4 fansub reviews and 1 TL party. Can’t get away from work, Dark_Sage?

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  37. It seems Commie and Mirlo are also subbing Mekakucity Actors. Are they not on the list because you missed them, or because they are fakesubs?

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  39. Mahouka dropped because it’s so bad my body can’t handle thinking about the dialogue. Doki’s release (before I canceled the review) was around an F, and last I checked, the person responsible for that failure was still on that show. So I’m gonna say it’s still a bad choice.

    FBI’s hasn’t had any significant issues that I feel should turn you off from their subs, so if you’re still trying to decide, go with FBI’s release.

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