#dallos

[yoan-le-grall]

[silentoatmeal]

Dallos (1983)

[centrally-unplanned]

I have started watching Dallos, the 1983 anime widely known as the "first" OVA (you can debate it, The Green Cat came out before for example, but I get how that isn't very "anime-for-otaku"). It is very fun so far! But I am here to mock an incredibly egregious "fansub moment" from the version I am watching:

So the character is saying "the die is cast" in Japanese, which is not the typical way a Japanese person would say that concept and therefore the audience would understand this to be a Julius Caesar reference; the character is being an intellectual about this. But he is still, ya know, speaking in Japanese?? And I understand that this fansubber might hang out with a select crowd that may bias their perception of the normies, but surely they know that the median person does not know this Latin phrase??

I find this amusing because - as someone who has written somewhat substantially about the nature of fansubs - this is like a fun house mirror version of the typical issue of "unprofessional flexes". Normally the problem is the overuse of Japanese phrases with translation notes, because the audience are weebs and they wanna know those terms, they wanna feel the Japanese nature of the product. But here, subbing an OVA often called "the Battle of Algiers in space", the people subbing are weebs, sure, but almost surely also history and military otaku/nerds - and they wanna express that part of their personality too. Peppering in period-appropriate quotes is their keikaku equivalent. Honestly it is a bit adorable, I know exactly who this guy is now and how many versions of the Axis & Allies board game they have played with the lads.

Though, they didn't even add a translation note about how the iacta needs to be pronounced jacta; this isn't church Latin ya knob. Pathetic.

[laboitediabolique]

Cover of the movie program for "Dallos - Commemorative Final Edition", Bandai Frontier Division, July 1984. Scanned from my personal collection.

This is another item in my collection I probably bought at either Nakano or Jinbocho a long time ago, and am not 100% sure what it is. Judging from the contents and the date it was published, it would be reasonable to assume it is a program for a theatrical release of the 90 minute edit of "Dallos" (called "Dallos Special" on the Studio Pierrot website). Of course I can't find any evidence online that "Dallos" got any sort of theatrical release. But considering how hard Bandai were promoting "Dallos", and most OVAs of that era ended up getting a theatrical release in order to promote their video releases, it's almost a certainty that "Dallos" received at least a limited theatrical release at one point.

[ray-saint]

Dallos OVA (1983-84)

Director: Mamoru Oshii

[somemissedconnections]

Policenauts & (The Moon is a) Harsh Mistress: The Gravity of Space

A comparison of two grounded science fiction stories, what they say about societies of control, and the limits of realistic fiction.

Policenauts Translation Project: http://policenauts.net/ World of Longplays: https://longplays.org/home.php NASA Space Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Citations Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qWHfA87edc6jqy3HCrGHry__0vGsvciAAEZswdrQ_ZI/edit?usp=sharing

[ubourgeois]

Dallos (1983) dir. Mamoru Oshii

[izimbracreenshots]

Dallos by Mamoru Oshii, 1983-1984