General Anime/Manga Chat

[Moonface]

Man, anyone else here watch Attack on Titan or plans to? I just finished the finale tonight and it was so good!
It seems it fixed a lot of issues the manga finale had so I'm glad I didn't keep reading the manga. I'm curious now though if the author had the ending planned from the beginning and there's little hints or something throughout the story or if they came up with it later and just managed to make things line up?


For anyone not interested in AoT, are you watching any other anime or have any you want to watch but haven't got around to doing it?

[Moonface]

I haven't really watched anime in months but decided to pick up Food Wars again a few days ago after only getting through two episodes whenever I first tried watching it. I thank the street artist who did a full piece based on the show at the street painting festival I went to last weekend (which I need to remember to post the pictures from).

It's actually more enjoyable watching it now than the first time because I've watched a lot of those competition cooking shows that like to try and fabricate drama with the music and stuff, but in that it just feels stupid to me. Food Wars does it too though but it just fits perfectly with how over the top the whole show is about its stakes and stuff.

Anyone else ever watched Food Wars before? Or watching any other anime instead or want to watch something but haven't got to it yet?

[Moonface]

So I just randomly stumbled upon this video on Reddit for an anime called Ghost Stories, and the dub compared to the sub is certainly... something else.

Fuji TV gave the ADV Films staff very few constraints when writing the new version, the only rules were "don't change the character names (including the ghosts); don't change the way the ghosts are slain (a reference to Japanese folklore) and, finally, don't change the core meaning of each episode".

The English dub deviates significantly from the original script. While preserving the basic plot structure and storyline, the new script revolved around topical pop-culture references, politically incorrect gags, and fourth wall breaking jokes about the original show's low animation quality, anime clichés, and poor lip-sync.

The English script was written by Steven Foster and Lucan Duran and allowed for ad-lib by the English voice actors. According to Foster, whoever showed up to the recording studio first for any given episode could improvise anything they wanted, those that came later had to build upon the tone and jokes established earlier.

It was probably to the shows benefit since it didn't do well in Japan, but that video has such insane lines I would've thought it was a parody dub from Team Four Star or something.

[Maniakkid25]

Ah, the Ghost Stories dub. The stuff of legends, really. This was made back in a time when the general population didn't really give a damn about Anime, so you could get away with insane things like that. Yeah, Anime wouldn't really catch on in the West for another decade or so (I distinctly remember being in high school as it was starting to come into vogue). Hell, adapting any Japanese title for a Western audience prior to about 1999 was a nightmare in practice (there are some people who have... very passionate opinions on Carl Macek and Ted Woolsey, for instance), and even later than that if we're talking about TV shows rather than Video Games (the less said about 4Kids, the better). But my personal favorite "insanity dub" is and always will be Robotech.

So, if you go rooting around, you will not find a Japanese show by the name of Robotech, nor will you find any series with a matching episode sequence. You'll find, instead, Macross, then Southern Cross, and then Mospeada. See, the plan was to get Macross aired in America, but they couldn't make it to the required number of episodes for a syndication deal. So, they frankenstein'd it and two other series that were completely unrelated to it, and pretended like nothing happened. Oh, you wish I was joking! You can see why I call it an insanity dub, now, but this is just what it took to bring an Anime to air in the West in the 80s! It's pretty crazy to think that now, not even 50 years later, such a practice would be unthinkable, but Robotech is seen as a pioneer, nowadays. Whether or not it's good is another thing entirely, however. Again, people are... passionate.

[ShiraNoMai]

I think it's interesting because, despite all that happening and the wild consequences that had on those specific shows, you actually find more and more that former voice actors/actresses now have lead roles in direction and production for anime dubs these days, and genuinely, they've been for the better of anime dubbing. There's cursed period we just mentioned, then just after I'd probably call that the "cringe" or infamous mediocrity era of dubs (which I think did more permanent damage than 4kids/ADV of yore ever could've dreamed to have done). I think since the era of Actor-To-Director era began, you've begun to see more genuine recreations and reimaginings of translations, as well as the more particular acting picks that are less about name notoriety and more about bringing up more of the young/new talents that more closely fit the ideas of the original visions.

[Maniakkid25]

Well, this is just a natural consequence of time, to be honest. As media ages, if it lasts long enough, eventually the fans start moving into positions of authority with the media in question. The same thing happened in comics, as well. Given the awful work standards of VAs, I would say that most of them are in it because they love their media in question more than anything, and to move into a position to lead is a natural consequence of that love. The TV Tropes page you're looking for here is Running the Asylum. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some of the big names in VA became voice actors directly because of shows like Robotech, as insane as its history is.