#theworstotter

[shihalyfie]

By chance, do you have any insight into Lui's name? Using an L sound seems pretty unusual for a Japanese name and I was curious if there was any special reasoning, or if it is more of a common name than I realize.

It's just the Japanese name "Rui" but with stylized romanization, similar to what they did with "Ruri" (Ruli) in Ghost Game. I don't think there was any reason for it besides "to make it stand out" or "to be unique about it". I have a policy(?) of not following official Digimon romanizations because of how bad they are with a lot of other names, so I've just personally been calling him Rui myself.

[the-worstotter]

My little E-Tush :3

[shihalyfie]

This is a very niche question so I'll get if you can't answer, but have you seen any talk about Discotek's remastered Digimon Blurays on the Japanese side of the fandom? I feel like it might be the only time that America has gotten the superior Digimon product, and it's interesting that Toei hasn't made use of the much nicer footage even in advertisements.

(This is another question I can answer quickly, so I'm dropping by to hit this one. Again, I'm so sorry about radio silence, I'll be coming back as soon as possible!)

The answer is unfortunately short for not very good reasons: assuming Toei is even paying attention to what Discotek is doing in the first place -- and knowing them, they probably aren't -- the Japanese side doesn't want people to know about this. In general, the home video market in Japan has everything at extremely high prices, so the fact that it's actually cheaper to import a Blu-ray disc even with shipping is not something they want to encourage (this goes for everything, not just Digimon). This is the actual reason most localized versions of Blu-ray releases are worse than their Japanese counterparts; in many cases, the parent companies will actually ask the localization companies to actively make the footage worse to discourage Japanese fans from importing.

So now that Toei and Happinet have sold multiple boxes that cost several hundred dollars' worth of yen each with the old footage? They've put out reprints fairly recently (all of which are still significantly more expensive than the Discotek versions), so suddenly switching the footage would put a huge dent in the reprints' sales, and on top of that, you can imagine a lot of people who spent those hundreds of dollars' worth of yen on the old boxes getting really upset about it, because they'll feel cheated.

So as a result, Toei is at an advantageous position by pretending the Discotek Blu-rays don't exist in the first place. There is no better version with better footage; this is the best they have available, and those who have the existing Japanese Blu-rays have no need to worry about anything! And so for the average Japanese person, I imagine the only thing they're going to hear about is, at best, that the American side got their own localized release (from what I understand, they don't even have any idea how inaccessible the original Japanese versions have been outside Japan), so it's not going to be a big deal...

[shihalyfie]

From my understanding the new voices for the four 02 characters in Kizuna ended up very well received - especially Daisuke. Do you happen to know how the Tri voice cast was received in Japan?

From what I remember, it was about as good as you can expect. Voice actor changes done when the original voice actor is still accessible tend to be inherently controversial (even with the 02 quartet, they still were), and at the time, it wasn't formally revealed that Fujita Toshiko had actually been approached and declined due to poor health (it had to be kept a secret at the time on her request, which, according to Seki, put the tri. producers in a really awkward position). But most people were able to figure out what happened just by logical inference: some of the voice actors had retired, and the rest were swapped out for "consistency", especially since the Digimon voice actors were retained while the kids' were the only ones changed out. Some people did argue that "you could have at least gotten the ones that weren't retired!", but I think most people got it.

So, putting aside the people who were trying to stage a boycott over it or something:

I know Tamura Mutsumi's performance as Koushirou was particularly well-praised (this was before she ended up becoming super famous in the industry, since she's now really popular), and because of that quite a few Digimon fans were thrilled to hear her as Hiro in Ghost Game. It's probably the tri. performance I've consistently heard the most praise about, including even rave reviews from people who otherwise disliked the series itself.

There were people who said that Hanae Natsuki's timbre for Taichi was too distracting (on top of him not sounding much like Fujita at all, he was already a really famous voice actor by that point, so everyone recognized him as "Hanae Natsuki" too easily), but even those people all said that his actual acting ability as Taichi nailed his personality very well.

Hosoya's Yamato also got good reviews, which is interesting because he was also already a famous voice actor by this point, but I think it's because his timbre already enough in common with Kazama's that it didn't feel too weird.

Ones people were kind of iffy on were Mimi (although this also had a relationship with the way she was written in tri., I noticed people had fewer issues with her in Kizuna), Takeru, and Hikari (this one may be partially because both voice actors ended up breaking out into the industry shortly after in very different kinds of roles). Although this one I admit there might be some bias; I personally also think these were the ones that feel closest to miscasted to me, so maybe there was some confirmation bias from me noticing when others talked about it...

While we're here, in regards to the 02 quartet, Daisuke (especially Daisuke, dear goodness) and Miyako are generally well-received, but people tend to be more iffy on Ken and Iori. In the case of Ken, though, when you have the incredibly legendary Park Romi as his original voice actress, and when his new voice actor is Lounsbery Arthur who has his own distinctive voice, reputation, and fanbase, I think you were inevitably going to get some kind of complaint of uncanniness in some direction somewhere...

[the-worstotter]

I just saw the Heathers musical (it was done by my school, but it still counts)! It was my first contact with Heathers and i really want to know more about the story because they had to cut out a lot of things.

It was a lot of fun, and the acting and music were very good for a school play.

[kobbers]

If you don't mind me asking - how long on average does it take you to complete a comic page?

When my schedule is working properly, I can start it on Monday and finish it on Friday to post Saturday, one major process step per day. I couldn't give you even a rough estimate of hours though, because I don't often power through long blocks of worktime at once. After I come home from my actual job, I'll have the page open most of the evening... but I'm often juggling multiple tasks and just sorta wander between them.

The most effective setup I've had requires a buffer, which I haven't had in a while (hopefully when all the post-Kickstarter logistics are over and I can actually get back to drawing the dang comic!). But when I do, I can have multiple pages at varying stages of completion, and it really allows me to work on whatever I feel like doing that day, instead of being chained to the stage I have to do. It's the same amount of work in the end, but it feels easier.

I hope that at least sorta gets at what you were asking!