The Tower, for bullshitting about sorcery stuff.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Mist Dragons

Magic: Atmospheric Medium: Scent Founding Sorcerer: Puff

Effective Range: Extremely wide. Scent molecules can reach a radius of several kilometers. Duration of Effect: Extremely long. Form of Manifestation: Weather manipulation.

Characteristics: This is probably the most difficult magic to counter. Even if it's blocked by a wall, the smell will still permeate through the surface. The only way to interrupt the magic is to wrap the Mist Dragon's body in vinyl.

Sidenote: No amount of hazard pay is high enough for a guy to walk over to a Mist Dragon and unfurl a roll of squeaky saran wrap.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

So, after disappearing for several years, I decided to see where JN had gotten with the Orphen series. I decided to pick up the last book I was familiar with -- Volume 6. And let's just say... It's a big yikes.

I get the distinct impression they switched translators relatively early into the series, because some names had been changed (such as Wyrd Dragons). As I went on, I came to realize that there were heaps, and heaps, and heaps of inaccuracies, redundancies, even entire scenes that were either written incorrectly or cut outright (for no apparent reason? They weren't necessarily all violent).

I knew I'd have some disagreements with the work, but it's a little appalling, imo, that some of these mistakes were even pointed out on the forum and still made it to publication and sale. It's to the point that I would be fairly comfortable saying, you just flat out won't get an accurate representation of events with this book. This is a big change from earlier volumes where most of the complaints were about the naming conventions -- but not necessarily the translations themselves (and even then, those naming conventions had solid arguments behind them).

Examples under the cut.

First, let's get my main hair splitting / nit picky thing out of the way.

- Leki running around yapping. Deep Dragons can't bark. In the books they don't make sound. This is a somewhat minor detail but it's still a distinct character trait that was ignored.

Unless you're a Deep Dragon in a Drama CDs, or else how are people going to know you're there if you're not yelping and skittering away?

- That's not what happened?

- Details like saying the guards blasted a hole in the wall so Majic could escape. Majic didn't need to escape. The guards were already there. The bad guy escaped by blasting a hole through the wall. This is not the only (or even one or two) instances where the actions of the bad guys were attributed to the good guys, making the good guys seem a lot worse than they are.

.

Another key example is saying that they (Orphen & Co.) had to stop that message (about Tish being attacked) from reaching the Tower.

This is a rather startling one because it is already established in this very volume that the bad guys are killing off messengers to control the flow of information. When Orphen & co. say THEY need to stop them, THEY suddenly look like murderers. (Context: They had no way of knowing if the message had reached the Tower, because of aforementioned assassinations)

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Constantly attributing lines to the wrong people. I can at least understand this one a bit more because in Japan they really like having run on conversations that rely on context to understand who's speaking.

However, some things are obvious. Like, injecting Majic into a conversation when, story wise, he is specifically stated not to be there. This one bugs me because a single proofread of the volume (Just one) would have made this apparent. There are a lot of cases like this. Sometimes, they even attribute events to the wrong thing even if the context and clarifications were in the very paragraph before it.

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Other obvious ones include attributing lines specifically talking about Hydrant's scar to Orphen, as if Orphen has the scar, and Hydrant & Co talking about "the book" when fighting Tish. Hydrant both infers multiple (relevant) books and offers a book to his colleague. There is only one book in question here, the World Book. Tish doesn't have it, and neither do they. That's the entire storyline of this book. I'm not sure how that context could be missed, when the focus of this book bleeds so heavily into the pages of every single chapter. They want that specific book and if Hydrant had it, they wouldn't be there.

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Making it sound like Hydrant lost fingers in the fight against Tish. Tish. Tish is the one that had her fingers cut through.

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Making up and cutting scenes?

Some scenes get deleted for seemingly no reason. This isn't a print media (and last I heard, had no intention of being-) so I'm not sure this would be tacked up to needing to hit certain page count markers. For example, an entire page was cut regarding Vinvi's (Vinbi's?) fight with Cleao.

Sidebar Complaint: Cutting all breaks in the chapters. This includes extra spacing between paragraphs that indicates a jump in time, and includes literal separators that mark a change in scene. This leads to one scene frequently feeding straight into another.

Moving into a stumbling face-planting mess of a sequence where Orphen is fighting Hydrant. There is an entirely fabricated sequence in which Orphen's shoes are blown off by an explosion??? And he walks around to pick up his shoe. This spans like half a page, and then feeds into Vinvi hunting Cleao. So one second we're on Orphen, the next we're on Vinvi, with no cue that there has been a change in character perspective. They even go so far as to have Orphen acknowledge Vinvi, even though these characters are nowhere near each other at the time. (Context: Vinvi was looking at Cleao's shoes, which she had thrown as a distraction, and balking at how obvious the trap was. I don't know why they thought this had anything to do with Orphen's battle, or how they missed the 1-2 pages involving this incident.)

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Ending Rant

Some of these things might seem minor, but I gotta confess, I couldn't get through more than 2 pages without issues like this. It's a little disheartening as I already own a lot of the books, but now know I won't be able to get a proper understanding of the story and character facts if I read through the officially licensed version. This isn't the usual matter of "they had to change stuff for censorship". It's a matter of "This is just blatantly, inexcusably wrong, and any proofreading whatsoever would've told them that." Some of these were even pointed out by members, and ignored. I had originally considered writing in about it, but frankly, the sheer volume of inaccuracies would borderline on part time job hours, and I'm guessing this series doesn't sell well enough to make it worth fixing from a financial standpoint. It would require a thorough review of the entire book.

I just had to vent somewhere and this dead blog seemed like the right place. Not tagging since it's just petty whining. To clarify, I do NOT speak fluent Japanese, but know enough to recognize where the inaccuracies lie, and look them up in the original books (which I have all of.) Most of these things I found because the scenes didn't make any sense, and I found myself thinking "I wonder what it said in Japanese?"

Guess from here on out it's trying to stumble my way through the JP editions!

[lorbeerprinz]

So, the other day I was browsing Amazon and remembered I wanted to see how much Scion of Sorcery costs nowadays. I don’t have any means to play it, but I figured it would make a good collector’s item. It’s a little more than I would pay for a comparatively obscure PS2 game, so that endeavour was a dud, but it also reminded me of the fact that the Light Novels were being translated into English and distributed for Kindle.

So I checked out the Amazon page for the first one and was already pretty sure it wouldn’t be all that great in the first place, at the very least, it uses the same name transliterations the anime had back then and I… have quite some problems with some of those.

But I had no idea it would become so much worse.

I have to give them credit for something, though. I have seen a lot of fans translating the subtitle Haguretabi (はぐれ旅) in various ways of differing qualities. I always found most of them sounded very weird. But I do think “The Wayward Journey” is not too bad of a choice, it fits very well (the German translation in the manga was also interesting, maybe I’ll talk about that another time), so the positively sounding title had me intrigued. But then I opened the page, saw the names. And the synopses. Those damn synopses.

So, you see, a synopsis is meant to give the potential reader an overview of what is going to happen in the work in question, it’s meant to entice them into buying the product. And guess what? These synopses fail on so many levels. Holy shit are they bad. Let me give you some highlights from the first four volumes:

Volume 1: Nothing, really, that one’s quite alright. Again, I disagree with name spellings but that’s neither here nor there. But believe me, this one lurks you into a false sense of security.

Volume 2: “His two companions, Claiomh Everlasting and Majic Lin […]” I hope to God this is a typo. But even disregarding that, it would turn into something like “Claioh” and that’s just… really? Really? If anything, why aren’t you just taking over the name conventions provided by the old anime and manga? Again, I don’t always agree with them, but at least they looked like names. Well, except for Krylancelo or whatever it was, that’s just an abomination that shouldn’t exist. But besides that, the pure fact that there is a typo this obvious and grave in the synopsis of all things already tells me a lot about the quality we’re dealing with here. I’m very sorry to whoever is responsible for this, but how little of shit do you have to give to paste your synopsis into Amazon and don’t even read through it again before (or even after) hitting the upload button? What I take from a synopsis like this is nothing about the story or characters, but rather that the people responsible for this don’t give a damn and that the rest of the product will probably be just as sloppy. It’s awful advertising. USE A FUCKING SPELLCHECK.

Volume 3: “Philietta the Fools’ Hound” “Just what sort of mind-boggling mystery awaits our haphazard party in the remote village of Kinkhole…?” Here’s two in one synopsis. I swear to god, they didn’t read through any of this, did they? Well, let’s start with the names. As mentioned, I don’t agree with all the name spellings from “back then”, so to speak, and I also don’t agree with the new ones, at least this one. Why? Because I have absolutely no clue how they went from ヒリエッタ (“Hi-ri-e-tta”) to “Philietta”. Of course, there is always a bit of leeway when romanizing Japanese, especially when it comes to Katakana, but in my opinion - and I’ll just say that I did finish my jp university studies - this is a bit too far removed from the sounds the katakana give. I don’t know if this is maybe what the English version of the Swada Hajime manga did, but in the German version, at the very least, she was turned into “Hyrietta”, which in my opinion is much closer phonetically and also fits her character if you think about it. It’s a very good choice while “Philietta” just sounds like “we tried but didn’t actually want to think about it for more than two minutes”. Speaking of which… did anyone, ANYONE sit down and say “yep, Kinkhole totally sounds like a serious place in a mostly serious story”. Like really. Are you kidding me. Didn’t those translator(s) ever sit back for a second and reflect on what they’ve actually subjected the world to? Nobody in their right mind would choose FREAKING KINKHOLE as the transliteration of this place. Granted, if it fit the story in some way I could say they tried to insert a (not-so-)clever pun but nope. It has nothing to do with what goes on in this volume, let’s be real here. Do they really expect people to read through this synopsis, see “Kinkhole” and feel intrigued to read this series? Do you even know to advertise??

Volume 4: “Leaving Kink Hall Village behind them […]” …and then we get this. I mean, congrats on realizing “Kinkhole” is very unfortunate, I guess, but… what is consistency. This is a digital release only and I think the third and fourth volumes aren’t even out, why can’t you just go back and edit your Kinkhole into your newfound translation? Am I missing something here or is everyone working on this project just unable to put together a well-presented product? What is so hard about consistency? Do you even know how to spell it? With all the stuff I read in your sypnoses alone, I kind of doubt it.

Holy shit, what a ride.

Anime, manga and related media are becoming more and more accessible outside of Japan, even the more obscure ones. Despite this, however, people are still downloading fansubs, read scanlations and the like, moving around in the realms of illegality instead of supporting the creators by buying official releases. However, if the official release has an awful quality like this, one whose badness drips from every of its pores so hard it overfloods even the previews, then I must say, fansubs etc. are the better option. It’s not the first time we have seen official releases with terrible quality - Digimon had shitty official subs iirc, and I do remember a screenshot of Star Driver’s crunchyroll subs - while fansubbers, scanlators etc. bring the way better product. They’re mostly no professional translators and it’s also obvious sometimes, but you can see the fun and passion for their work that is mostly free while here you have to pay for a product that has been put together by people who give the deep impression they can’t be assed to give a tiny shit. If I think a fansub or scanlation group has done a good job, I can often donate to them or support them in different ways. For official overseas releases, I often have to pay for the product first and only then will know how bad it really is. I’m not saying that every official translation sucks, but still.

I know, translating is hard. Writing is hard. I’ve been there. As a translator, you either have to have language AND writing skills or have a good editor with the latter. But again, if your preview for an official product already looks like it’s stitched together with the least possible care, then I can’t help but feel angry. And this is a series I absolutely love and that got me where I am today, I feel insulted as a writer, a translator AND a fan.

I don’t own the old original light novels, unfortunately, but I definitely won’t buy those versions. I’m not even sure if any relevant amount of money would go to Akita-sensei anyway or if I only supported a shitty, lazy translation by buying this. I’d rather want to support sensei directly by buying the Japanese products.

Well, this got long and angry but I’m just very passionate about Orphen, haha

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

The only thing that bothers me more than the translations themselves, is the fact they’re defensible in most cases. Philietta is one of the only ones I’d call outright wrong, but it’s all a complicated mess.

Cleao’s name shares kana with a (Gaelic?) legendary sword, so they reverse engineered the Kana back to the Gaelic name, Claiomh, as the series shares both tons of mythological names and many sword themes. What with her father being a sword collector, it’s also not outside the realm of possibility. It doesn’t help that Cleao is an unusual spelling to begin with, and Cleo is usually spelled very differently in Kana. That being said, I can never get over this one because it breaks the readers concentration each and every single time they hit that name in a sentence, because who the hell is gonna be able to pronounce it? Even they can’t. It’s the leading reason I haven’t bought the books. I just can’t enjoy reading them because of the mental stutter whenever I read her name.

For the second typo, do you mean Majic / Magic? ‘Cause in his case every official product ever pumped out of the franchise, to my knowledge, spells it Majic. So that’s probably intentional. Like Magikarp.

To play devils advocate, I’m pretty sure Kinkhole is also intentionally awkward. The kana for it can be used for both Hall and Hole, and Hall isn’t going to make immature readers snicker any less when they read the word Kink. The kana would make any reader / translator choke. It’s still a terrible choice to use it, but I’d say that one’s on the original author, not the translators.

The English manga still called her Hirietta. I am... not sure where the Ph comes from. So many of their choices seem really far out.

Don’t get me wrong, this long post doesn’t mean I agree with their choices. I think their methods are turning away a lot of potential readers. I really wanted to be excited about this, but having been stumbling my way through the books (of which I own them all) it just breaks my heart to read these translations.

I really tried to hang in there, but when I reached Volume 4, and the dragons - the monstrously murderous dragons literally say “Hark” I think I about died. I know series like this are wrought with people wanting to use medieval terms, but it killed each and every scene, and I absolutely loath the choice to write dragons in that way. They’re supposed to be serious.

I love Orphen, it’s probably my all time favorite series, but there’s so much room for disappointment. Here’s hoping there’s at least more to look forward to in the anime...

Either way, glad (?) to see someone else anguishing over this. Tbh wasn’t even sure anyone was looking at them. I’ve not heard a single person around here mention the series.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

@microversejimmy Did J-novel include the Orphen manga?  Pretty sure they won’t touch the anime since it’s specifically a light novel setup right now, but it’s just dazzling that we’re getting new anime in the first place. I’d love to hear if someone licensed the Stray Journey manga. New Orphen stuff keeps popping up and I just keep wondering “HOW???” but hey, got no complaints!

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

So, Reckless is getting its own comic series now! You can already read the first chapter! So we’re on like... Comic 3 that I never thought would happen for the Orphen franchise. They’ve come out with so many of these lately it’s just astonishing but in that life long dream kind of way. Looking forward to seeing Coggie get a proper comic, and the shenanigans of Keith!

[notbadforafailedvessel]

Hela + Fenris

My darling.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

I can’t express how excited I am to see Stray Journey given another shot.

[lorbeerprinz]

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re getting a new Orphen TV anime!! I always hoped this was what the Road to 25th Anniversary project would lead up to, but I never imagined I was actually right… I want to cry actual tears of happiness now ;A; In fact, it seems the news blew up enough for オーフェン to have been in third place of the Japanese Twitter trends for a while You can also find comments by Akita Yoshinobu and Kusaka Yuuya on the website~

This is an amazing thing to wake up to. Now we just have to wait until 2019…

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

I’m fucking screaming-

Nevermind the fact that it’s titled Stray Journey, which means they’ll probably be following the books. Which I think can probably, reasonably, be more easily handled in a “one book per episode” format than other recent anime reboots. The Orphen series has a wonderful plot but the books are already pretty episodic, tying into one another but in a way that wouldn’t take up much screen time.

On top of that, it won’t be too redundant compared to the first anime adaption since while it did include elements of the first several books (Monster!Azalea, the Killing Dolls, the Deep Dragons) it completely changed the story of all of these books. So there’s no fussing over getting episodes we’ve already seen, because we’ve never seen an anime adaption that actually told the books story.

This is still in early planning and hopefully hits in 2019 or at least late this year, so that it won’t be competing with the tons of reboots already taking place early-mid year.

There’s also been talk of them mentioning details about the Orphen franchise in Dragon Magazine. I’d assume this is what they’re talking about? I’ll be picking up the books to see what they’ve got.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

We’ve also finally had an announcement for the Volume 2 physical copies. Both books are being released on March 28th, 2018. The cover art is beautiful in both cases, and I like the transition from dark to making the whole contrast of the image focused around the killing doll, with an eerie green that serves as a reminder for where it came from. It especially helps that Stephanie is becoming much more secluded in the background, eluding to what goes on in the story.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Much to my surprise, the Stray Journey manga has resumed over at Comic Clear. After the start of the Origin project, when the end of Volume 2 didn’t list a continuation date, I really didn’t think this series would continue. It was a sad moment, because I really enjoy seeing this comic adaption that’s fairly true to the books.

My main quip for the first chapter is just how slutty Hirietta looks. It’s no surprise that she’s being sexualized, especially with her suit design. It’s also not about her hilariously absurd rightuptheass shots.

What bugs me is that she goes through the whole chapter, and likely the rest of the book, with her suit zipped down. This will erase all significance of her scene at the end of the book, a very important moment that’s vital to concluding the storyline, IMO. Instead of her making this significant gesture, a gesture that the entire volume is named after, it’ll just kind of become “Here, gimme a hug!” And that’s a poor choice, both from a storytelling and a design perspective.

[soundlesswind]

PASH Houshin Engi Interview

I’ve been collecting the magazines as of late, and decided to translate part of PASH March 2018′s interview with the voice actors of the current Taikoubou and Youzen. This is only a quarter of the interview.

“To Youzen, Taikoubou’s existence is something he is very grateful for, I believe.”

“An interview with Ono Kenshou who plays Taikoubou, and Nakamura Yuuichi who plays Youzen. Regarding the roles from the story at the audition, we’ve asked them about the episode and various things on site at the studio.”

"Perhaps it is a good thing that the roles have not yet been mastered!”

Keep reading

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Hey, thanks a crap ton for this! These things don’t usually see translations in the English community and it’s really cool to be able to read it.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

That freaking dog and cat show, man.

I was very lazy in getting screenshots for this review, including the lovely volume icon in one of them.

Story:

Welp, I won’t even try to argue that they cut out a ton of stuff. The thing is, I don’t really care. They probably shouldn’t have for the sake of new viewers, but this was covered so extensively in the previous anime that I just don’t want to watch multiple episodes of it again? Still probably not a great choice for new viewer, but eh.

Progression:

I did like the back and forth. At first I liked the maps, now I’m just getting kind of annoyed by them. At least in this episode I didn’t think it was really necessary half the time. The cutaways were a bit relevant but didn’t really detract from what was going on.

Animation:

Still frames ahoy! But should I even be complaining about this anymore? It’s just how it is. I’m starting to sound like a broken record. Either way, beautiful as always. I really loved the lighting, and how it affected the character’s color palettes. As per usual, someone loves their backgrounds.

Characters:

Side quip. Koyuken’s colors were a bit odd. This might be appropriate to how Ryu Fujisaki drew him in that one art book? I can’t remember. Either way, it was a bit of a shock, since everyone else seemed decent, but his colors just looked... sickly. I appreciated his drama and missed the octopus. Sort of. The tactic of it, anyway. That was kind of important you know...

Li Qoha (no idea how the hell to spell that) was practically gone? And again, his entire battle tactic was missing, which is one thing I do miss. I know I’m being a hypocrite, I don’t think it warranted an entirely extra episode, but it showed Nataku actually THINKING. That novelty should’ve at least made a 30 second appearance. It could have, along with the other scenes, if they, you know, CUT THE RIDICULOUS OPENING SKETCHES. I do appreciate that it’s at least not as spoiler-y these days, though.

Scenes:

I love this particular scene, and adore the green moon. It’s weird and otherwordly but I think that’s appropriate for what’s going on. I also really like the shots we see of Kokukirin, who is just of monstrous size in this adaption. Now THAT is a noble steed.

The below scene is also one of my favorites from the manga. I really liked the setup, and I’m happy that they went with such dark gloomy colors for the Dashinben’s wind here. It really set the atmosphere of something fascinating happening in what is undoubtedly a very solemn moment.

However, it leads me to another quip of scenes that got axed. Youzen transforming into Shinkouhyou. That was here, wasn’t it? Or was that another battle? Well if it was here, it was an important contrast to what we saw of him just earlier in the episode. The fact that his transformation isn’t truly perfect, because he can’t transform into those stronger than himself. It set up an important limitation to an already OP ability.

This freaking cat

Its freaking stubby bulldog legs, its freaking insane ear hair, I love it. The interactions between Shinkouhyou and Koukutenko were really nice, and they set up the cutaways to not be nearly as intrusive. The fact that they seem so comfortable with each other is also a nice character aspect. Koukutenko has no qualms with making slightly snarky remarks at the beloved clown, and they help to develop the story.

It’s just so freaking cute man.

While we’re mentioning it, that freaking dog.

I won’t argue that Koutenken is probably where my love of Eskimos, Samoyeds, etc. comes from. This dog is a delight to see and he has pretty darn good pictures sometimes. I loved all the random shots of him, and the fact that he’s just totally checked out in half of them.

Music:

As someone who doesn’t like the opening, the instrumental version gets on my nerves. There are certain parts of the song that I like, and that I think worked with the scenes. That bother aside, I thought the music in this episode was pretty well done. Good choices and timing, keeping the story dynamic as it went by.

The tl;dr of it

This post is almost entirely droning on. I guess all I can say is it skipped way too much but I just didn’t care about it that much. It’s important, yeah, but covered so much everywhere else, that I’d rather they put the time into another fight. Every bit of it was eyecandy, but that’s become the norm.

- Beautiful slide show

- Shittons of skipped scenes, and practically entire battles

- Go read the manga version of this fight. It makes a lot more sense.

- The scene lighting really sold this episode to me.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Aaahh! So we’re at episode 3! This post is going to be all over the place and filled with spoilers, so bare with me here.

(This face—and that noise, before we begin.)

. Progression

I feel like this was the best episode yet in terms of progression. Unlike the others, I didn’t feel like the cutaways were too frequent or too random. Unlike the previous episode, I didn’t find the little map separators to be nearly as annoying. I think this is because it actually kept the episode in several longer, more consistent sequences, instead of a bunch of random 1-2 minute cutaways that just break up everything else.

Perhaps I’m being a little too optimistic but I didn’t feel as annoyed.

. Story

So, a lot of people were rightfully scared of where the last episode left off, afraid of what it’d mean for the story and what may get left out. This is another thing that I feel like this episode helped. It went back and covered a crucial part of the story that was missing from last time, and in several longer sequences that I dare say take center focus more than the attention whore that is Youzen. And honestly? While I like Youzen as a character much more, I felt like this was the better way to go. This was important. It needed to be emphasized. It was a pivotal moment in the story, and it was treated right, I think.

Also, Kiohi punching the emperor was a true highlight.

. Random Tangent

One thing viewers have universally rebuked so far is the sheer lack of humor in this show. In this episode, they actually slowed things down a bit and took the time to include many of the humorous scenes. Enough that I find myself snickering more than once, and it made me enjoy the episode that much more. Of course, let’s not forget that this is a fairly easy story to handle. It may not spend that extra attention to detail in later story arcs.

One of my favorite lines from both this episode and the manga story is the “IF HE’S BITING YOU, BITE HIM BACK!” line. Oh, if only he’d listen!

. Inclusion of Manga Details

One of the things I most wanted to see was Koutenken being the little terror that he can be. I enjoyed seeing this included, and he is drawn just adorably. I prefer this style much more to the previous anime’s, even in its cartoony state.

While it went back and covered a major story plot that needed conclusion, we’re here missing another one! The young princes. I suspect this’ll wrap up in the next episode, as it surprisingly didn’t place Tenka as the center focus.

While some people may disagree with me here, I feel like this episode covered most points that it needed to cover. It’s getting there, just in a more unorthodox time line.

. Backgrounds, Music, and Animation

As usual, the backgrounds impress. These didn’t have to be complicated for most of the episode, but they did their job. The music, I did enjoy for most of it, but that random classical score? It felt so weird to hear it in Houshin Engi, and more like a “We had to license some music because our budget couldn’t cover everything” skit.

The animation I don’t have many complaints about. It’s following the trend of still frames, but I think we can expect that for most of the series. The scenes still look nice and fairly consistent, though the blood spurting from Taikoubou was just... awkward. Somebody please turn off the garden hose. Please.

Kashi’s face though, there’s something seriously wrong with her face.

. The Big Reveal!

Aah! Watching this without subtitles with my extremely poor Japanese skills, this caught me entirely off guard. I fretted that they’d cover the Gyokutei youknowwhatscene in flash forwards, but thankfully they didn’t, and seeing this made me super excited.

Also because I was scared of what kind of colors he was going to get stuck with. I’d prefer black clothes, but I realize red is just as valid. I’m also extremely happy that he didn’t get stuck with the god awful greenbluemonstrosity skin from the cardass series. Sorry, I just hated that color scheme.

Now that I’m done being a loser fanboy, I do wish they’d left out all the “TRUST ME TAIKOUBOU SENPAI” stuff. It just felt awkward and disjointed. Youzen’s whole thing is that he DOESN’T trust people, and for him to be gushing like a girl wanting to fall in love felt just horribly out of character. They could’ve left this little bit without the spewing of his guts.

But mother never questions my ideas —

. The TL;DR Version~

The Good: I think it was handled way better than previous episodes, but again, this was a fairly simple part of the story to tell. I expect lots of rushed episodes in the future. We shall see. Backgrounds are always gorgeous, and the Youzen part of the story pretty much included everything that it needed to.

The Bad: Here we are again, wondering if a monumental part of the story is getting cut in favor of squishing in screen time! Lots of still frames all around, some questionable animation choices, and an awkward music score in parts.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Ahh! So, we got episode 2!

These ramblings will probably be every episode.

Basically: While I was excited to watch another episode, it raised way too many concerns. This one was more all over the place than the last one, in my opinion, and this may be a more negative opinion post.

.

Story: It covered pretty much all of the main points I wanted to see with the Nataku volume. However, the parts with Bunchuu didn’t need to be there. I think it would’ve been fine with the scene where he meets Hiko, which I was actually really happy to see, but the others could’ve been spread out among other episodes. Here it just kept acting as an unexpected and annoying break from the story that I was trying to watch unfold.

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Progression (Tangent Ranting Time): At the start of the post, yes. The fact that they included another Bunchuu Vs. Hiko scene really concerns me. What concerns me even more is that we see Gyokutei carrying Youzen in the episode preview. I fear what this means for those scenes and/or battles. Perhaps not this one, but what if other important battles are cut or just included as early episode clips? Does this steady feed of late-story clips mean that we’ll get an episode that’s basically a clip show?

I don’t like the direction this is heading at all. I want to see these scenes where they belong. I want to actually know wtf is going on (I’ve read the manga, so I do, but it has the same effect) so that I actually give a shit when they happen. I feel like they’re building up to ruin the effect of all these important battles, and I sincerely hope they knock this off. I expect they won’t, and we’ll end up with a big clip show as the conclusion to the series, or at least one of the majorly important episode battles. It kind of feels like they’re taking up air time.

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Animation: Backgrounds as usual are pretty. I was a bit distracted so didn’t notice them as much as the last episode. The animation left me wanting more in a lot of places, and Nataku’s mechanical movements come off more as having severe arthritis than being ‘mechanical.’ His muscle definition is also a bit weird and offputting at times, bending in awkward ways. I personally preferred the more scrawny Nataku we see earlier in the manga, who develops into a more muscular character with his Paopei revamp.

I admit though I had a giddy fit over seeing the lights and animation effects on his flight paopei. I really love these effects, and I appreciate that they went the extra mile. I feel like it makes it feel much more like a serious flight paopei, and sets it apart from what other flight paopei we’ll see in the series.

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Music: Eh. It’s still ok. I don’t dislike it. But there were a couple scenes where it was just not the right fit. Which leads me to my next point.

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Scenes: The scene where Bunchuu confronts Dakki is just utterly underwhelming. The sound effects and music ruined the effect and made what should’ve made Bunchuu appear intimidating, into what seems like he’s just venting his frustrations at an annoying teenager. This is one of the things I honestly feel like the previous adaption did better. We should’ve had some nice bold music for this ‘nonfight.’

The river dragon was ok, but GDI THE STREAM FROZE ON ME BEFORE THE DRAGON KING. WHHYYYY. I did like the scene where he offs himself, though. The lighting set the proper mood for it, I think. I also liked the animation where Nataku was getting worked up over Taikoubou’s comment.

I loved Nataku’s ranting and screaming when he got trapped in the Paopei. I watched this with my sister and she immediately screamed “GACHAPON!” which made me laugh.

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Ending: Underwhelming and disappointing. I do like the music, it does well enough, but as soon as I saw the first frame I just knew this was going to be another ‘we’re switching the lighting/scene but using the same frame for the entire thing’ ending. A lot of animes do this, so I guess I should’t complain, but it was disappointing and I hoped for more.

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Preview: Super excited for this, but concerned for the reasons mentioned above. Youzen’s animation is beautiful, and I really like how they draw him. I hope we see Koutenken being an evil chompy chomp like in the manga.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

It’s finally here! And I’m excited to see the first episode. So let’s ramble at great lengths, shall we?

Opening: On crack. Way too hyper for my taste. Was surprised to see Outenkun, excited to see Gyokutei. It’s not bad but I just don’t feel like it fits the series.

Ending next week? I assume?

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Voices: I’m ok with these, but I felt like Taikoubou was too serious. We haven’t been given the chance to see him act out in a few scenes, so we’ll see how it goes. The others are ok. Both Bunchuu and Hiko sound too soft, though.

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Animation + Artwork: Some of the most gorgeous backgrounds I’ve ever seen. Animation is also quite nice. It’s gorgeous all the way through, and frankly, way higher quality in terms of character animation than I was expecting. It’s not amazing, but for something we thought was a dead project 10 years ago, it’s nice to see that it stayed relatively consistent and didn’t go for extremely cheap ass animation (I’m looking at you, D.gray-man Hallow.)

I’m pretty unhappy the ugly black gradient they used in a couple scenes, though. You can do this better guys. With the same tools. Use collooorrr.

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Progression: Now this is probably where it gets annoying. They cut a LOT, and some important scenes, such as Oukijin’s fight.

However, playing devils advocate, if I had to cut one volume down to 20 minutes, I probably would’ve cut those scenes, too. Frankly, Oukijin is the only thing I consider vital, and it’s not like her past can’t be brought up when she’s properly introduced in the show.

On one hand it’s sad to see so many of Taikoubou’s scenes cut, but I also feel like he’ll have 10 other fights to have similar development. Most of them follow a familiar formula.

It would’ve been nice to have the village fight, as it introduces our first character Youkai and carries the exposition of what they are. Perhaps they didn’t want to mirror the scenes already covered in the previous anime, as it seems that they gleamed over a lot of it. Which personally, I appreciated. I know it’s not great from a standalone series perspective, but I think I would’ve felt disappointed if it was more or less the same as the previous series’ first episode.

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Scenes: So, wtf is with Bunchuu and Taikoubou fighting in the beginning? Like, I get the reference, but it was so unnecessary to have this here. They could’ve covered Oukijins exposition in this screen time. Maybe not included the whole fight, but included some of the facts that they lost. The Youkai Sennin, etc. It makes me annoyed to think of what could’ve been included if they just left this scene where it belongs.

Fugen’s scene also felt very strange coming so soon.

Loved the scene of Shinkouhyou in the rain. This was one of my favorite scenes from the manga, and I think they did fantastic with the lighting.

I’m glad they included the snake pit scene. The CG looked awkward but I fully accept that there’s no more efficient way to do this than CG, and it probably would’ve suffered greatly otherwise.

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Music: Not that great, not terrible. It’s kind of a hodgepodge, but so was the old anime. There’s one score though that sounds almost exactly like the Spirited Away score? And I know that it’s going for the ancient Chinese music vibe, but it kind of caught me off guard.

The hyper techno, as mentioned earlier, not a big fan of. I can accept it, but it doesn’t fit that well. I’m sure I’ll like a few tracks either way.

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Disappointments: Maybe we should bullet point this?

- Lack of Youkai Sennin Information. They’re kind of important, yo.

- Lack of Oukijin’s fight and general history. Might still happen?

- Pacing in general is fast, but hey. We all called it.

- Some of the changed colors irk me, but I’ll live. - GrreeeeEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

- Soundtrack is pretty uninspiring.

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Stupid things that make me happy:

- Gyokutei, Roushi, Outenkun, etc.

- Amazing backgrounds

- Raikouben shows the scale much better (red is odd tho)

- People getting nommed, not being afraid to show blood

- ^^^ In general preserving the dark scenes. Gives me hope for this.

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Expectations: I expect the whole thing to be rushed, frankly. However, what they can do to help this is, unfortunately, cutting some of the arcs. There are some that I honestly don’t feel contribute to the overall storyline, and that their scenes could be slotted into the Kingou fights, etc.

If they keep the arcs of the manga, we can expect the entire thing to fly by way too fast, and miss a lot of nuances. So do I want to see them cut? No. But I think it would do the series more justice if they were. It could clear up episodes worth of space.

All in all, I can’t describe the joy I felt when I saw this episode. Not a single annoyance got me down, even if I knew it had problems. I’m so overwhelmingly happy to see that this is finally happening, and that it’s not as awful as I had fully expected it to be. It’s following the manga story side of things, which will give me so much joy, sorrow, and love. It’s beautiful, and if nothing else, it’s wonderful eye candy. I think it will do the series justice. Not as much as it would have if it got 40-50 episodes, but if we can only have 23? I think it’s doing ok so far.

[fadingbeardglitter-blog]

Ah! Looks like the new comic is here, and this time on Nicovideo. Unfortunately that means you’ll need to make an account to view it. This is also only Part 1, with Part 2 launching on January 1st, New Years.