Spike Lives! (Anime talk)

[Reply #720 on:]

Yes, the Laid-Back Camp movie looks promising. Don't know if I'll ever get to see it though.

I'm slightly surprised that Super Cub got a dub. There are parts of the show that may appeal to an American audience, but I'm not sure how many would make it that far into the series. The reaction channels that picked it up were mainly UK or Asian, with the Americans finding it too slow or dismissing it out of hand as a blatant ad. And if they didn't cast the right VAs for the two main characters it could be a bit rough. The dub for Made in Abyss didn't do two of the supporting characters any favours, and it didn't feel like they had the same personalities as in the sub.

[Reply #721 on:]

Yes, the Laid-Back Camp movie looks promising. Don't know if I'll ever get to see it though.

I don't know if I'll ever get to see it either.  If it ever gets a physical release I suppose I could just buy it.  (It took about five years, but that's how I was finally able to watch the Strike Witches movie.)

I'm slightly surprised that Super Cub got a dub.

It's getting a physical release (which may also surprise you).  I'm pretty sure that the dub was made so that they could include both audio options on the discs.

The dub for Made in Abyss didn't do two of the supporting characters any favours, and it didn't feel like they had the same personalities as in the sub.

Which ones?  (I've only heard the dub voices, other than hearing the leads sing the opening and ending songs in their characters' voices.)

[Reply #722 on:]

Leader and Ozen. In the sub Leader comes across as more caring and less abrupt, and Ozen sounds older and... more distant? Her voice has a creepy lilt and tends to drag out words slightly, especially at the end of sentences. At least, that was the impression I got.

[Reply #723 on:]

Really?  I thought that Ozen's dub voice was the best part of the English dub.  Granted, I don't know what she sounded like originally, but still...

[Reply #724 on:]

Many years ago when I was in Austria, there were rubber stamps in the mountain huts that could be used to mark a collection card, and if you accumulated enough unique stamps you could claim bronze, silver, and gold badges. What does this have to do with anime? Well, it seems that for the first anniversary of Super Cub's broadcast, six stamps were placed in locations around the show's area, and fans could pick up a collection card with the target locations written on beside spaces for the souvenir stamps. If you collected all six it seems you could claim art cards(?) as the final reward. Video of someone doing the circuit here.

[Reply #725 on:]

The plot of Room Camp involves similar stamp collecting.  If you've already seen the first season of Laid-Back Camp and you've got an hour to spare, you might want to give it a watch.

[Reply #726 on:]

Laid-Back Camp is being dubbed into English.  I honestly was not expecting this.  Hopefully this means that the series, and eventually the movie, will be getting physical releases sooner rather than later.  (I'm also hoping that it means that the movie will be shown in theaters in the US, but I'm not holding my breath.)

[Reply #727 on:]

What animes do they have now?

[Reply #728 on:]

Something like Evangelion, but with more bureaucracy.  A mish-mash of Space Dandy and Mob Psycho 100, if you will.

[Reply #729 on:]

What animes do they have now?

Who, Crunchyroll?

Currently they have all of these shows.

They've gradually been adding shows from Funimation's library since the merger.  Unfortunately you seem to need a subscription to watch those even if they were available for free on the Funimation website.

There's still lots of great stuff that you can watch for free on Crunchyroll though.

[Reply #730 on:]

Something like Evangelion, but with more bureaucracy.

Genesis of Aquarion

A mish-mash of Space Dandy and Mob Psycho 100, if you will.

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

[Reply #731 on:]

I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise after Laid-Back Camp got an English dub, but A Place Further Than the Universe is getting an English dub.

[Reply #732 on:]

Sounds like Symphogear is getting a sixth season or a film, but there's no release date yet. It would be interesting if they borrowed from XDU (the game), because that way they could bring back [redacted] (the best character). But that's probably asking too much.

[Reply #733 on:]

The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie is being shown in U.S. theaters, so I went to see it.

The movie serves as a grand finale for the series.  They basically managed to cram an entire season's worth of content into a two-hour film, which worked better than I expected.  There were a couple of subplots that might have been expanded if we had gotten a third season, and the supporting cast didn't get much screen time, but all in all the movie manages to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion.  I won't spoil which girl wins, but it shouldn't be a big surprise for anyone who's watched the second season.

The only real complaint that I had wasn't a complaint about the movie itself; it was about the subtitles.  They were difficult to read, especially when they were shown against light-colored backgrounds.  I've watched anime films with subtitles in the theater before, but I don't recall ever having trouble reading the subtitles before.  I watched the series in Japanese, so of course I wanted to watch the movie with the same voice cast, but if I had known about the subtitles, I might have chosen to watch the English dubbed version instead.

[Reply #734 on:]

Last weekend I went to see That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Scarlet Bond.  You should have seen the cashier's face when I asked to buy a ticket for that.  She actually thought that I was joking.  I haven't had that much fun buying a movie ticket since I went to see Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Arrow of the Orion.

It's a fairly standard fairy tale story.  There's a young queen who wants to save her kingdom, a hero with a tragic past who wants to protect her, and a villain who would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for a certain meddling slime.  I'd like to be able to say that you could watch this movie without having to watch the series first, or at least say that you only need to watch the first season, but no, you really do need to be caught up with the series, at least to avoid spoilers for the most recent season.

I wanted to avoid the problem with the subtitles that I had the last time that I went to the theater, so I chose to watch the English dubbed version this time.  The dubbed voices were good, and they all seemed to fit the characters fairly well, even if they weren't the ones that I'm used to hearing.

[Reply #735 on:]

I've seen a few clips from a currently airing show called Insomniacs after School, about a couple of students who inadvertently get into astrophotography. The subject is of interest to me, and it has vibes of Yuru Camp and Super Cub, but I suspect many will put it in the Technically Good But Boring category along with SC. From what I've seen, my favourite character is the graduate who is acting as an outside advisor to the school astronomy club: basically the role I would like to see one of the girls take if there is a follow-up to A Place Further than the Universe.

[Reply #736 on:]

I've mentioned it before, but you might want to check out Asteroid in Love, which is about a high school astronomy club.  (It's actually the Earth Sciences Club, because the Astronomy Club and the Geology Club were merged due to a dearth of members in both clubs.)

People who find these slow-paced sort of shows boring are rather missing the point I think.  Watching these shows is supposed to be relaxing.

[Reply #737 on:]

People who find these slow-paced sort of shows boring are rather missing the point I think.  Watching these shows is supposed to be relaxing.

Agreed. Insomniacs does seem to be getting a fair amount of attention, but not to the level of something like 86. So far the technical aspects of astrophotography have been presented fairly accurately, but there was one possible error: They seemed to say that short star trails were due to the lens not being correctly focused, when in fact it would be using an exposure that was too long for the focal length of the lens. But it could be a translation issue, or a deliberate simplification for a general audience. As far as the story is concerned they've set a few flags, so it could take a tragic turn, or it might just be misdirection. I have a theory as to how it could go, but it's probably wrong.

[Reply #738 on:]

But it could be a translation issue, or a deliberate simplification for a general audience.

I haven't been watching the show, but I suspect that this is the case.  I would guess that the original manga probably got it right (I doubt that someone would write a manga about astrophotography without a working knowledge of the subject.), but either the anime writers chose to dumb it down for a general audience, or the localizers mistranslated it.  (The Venn diagram intersection of people who can translate Japanese to English and people who understand astrophotography is probably a small one.)

[Reply #739 on:]

Just starting to watch the English-dubbed Bebob for the first time. Fittingly because it was seeing Steve Blum and Beau Billingslea's clip (right around the time covid dropped) that finally pushed me to dive into the series.

The dialog is only loosely coupled to the English subtitles. The dialog is only loosely coupled to the English subtitles. And the style still hits as strongly as when I watched it the first time.

[Reply #740 on:]

The dialog is only loosely coupled to the English subtitles. The dialog is only loosely coupled to the English subtitles.

They're not closed captions.  They're a translation of the Japanese dialog.  The English dialog is not going to exactly match the Japanese dialog, because it has to match the characters' mouth flaps.  Also, in many cases, a looser translation will sound more natural than a literal word-for-word translation.  Translation is more of an art than an exact science.

[Reply #741 on:]

Oh, for sure the translation is an art! Absolutely. For some reason I expected the English subtitles on the disc to more closely match the English audio track rather than be a more literal translation of the Japanese. And you just made me remember that there's at least one other set of English subtitles I noticed when ripping it.

<looks> Hmm, playing the first ep now with the second set enabled, I don't see any subtitles at all. If I'm bored later I might look for a tool to unpack the Matroska container and see what the subtitle files look like.

[Reply #742 on:]

There's a scene in the first season of Symphogear where the villain is speaking (deliberately bad) Engrish, and the English subs don't match, as if they took the Japanese subs and re-translated them back to English. It's a bit disconcerting and briefly derails your brain.

[Reply #743 on:]

I've watched shows where I've occasionally noticed that the English subtitles don't closely match the Japanese dialog.

I suspect that if I understood more Japanese I'd probably notice this more often.

[Reply #744 on:]

And you just made me remember that there's at least one other set of English subtitles I noticed when ripping it.

<looks> Hmm, playing the first ep now with the second set enabled, I don't see any subtitles at all.

In my experience, it's not uncommon for there to be a subtitle track option that only translates Japanese lyrics and any background signage. Maybe that's what you've got?

[Reply #745 on:]

Oh, that's probably what it is.  I don't remember a lot of Japanese signage in Bebop, but try watching one of the episodes that has a song with those subtitles and see what happens.

I feel sorry for whoever has to translate Yoko's song lyrics.  Sometimes she invents her own languages.

[Reply #746 on:]

Slightly tangential, but someone commissioned a custom Symphogear paintjob for some Warhammer Imperial Knights. There are some seriously nerdy details: the S.O.N.G. shield, gear ident codes, and even each character's Aufwachen waveform depicted on their pennant.

[Reply #747 on:]

Even more tangential, but one of the posters on another forum where I lurk was building a Hololive themed army for Warhammer 40K.  Of course, he had to make sure that all of the models were tournament legal so that he could use his creations to troll other players in official tournaments.

The Holo no Graffiti shorts are technically anime, and some of the Hololive members have appeared in other anime, so it's still somewhat anime adjacent.

[Reply #748 on:]

I'm not familiar with Imperial Knights, but I'm pretty sure Kirika's scythe is not regulation. I'm rather tempted to put four burst cannon on a Tau battlesuit as a reference to Chris in Billion Maiden mode: not a logical combination for competitive play, but I'm not likely to take part in any formal games anyway.

[Reply #749 on:]

Amelia Watson and Akai Haato singing the ending theme from Girls' Last Tour

[Reply #750 on:]

It seems the new Symphogear project is a movie. There are no further details at the moment, but if you take the wording of the announcement as absolutely literal, it could be a reworking of the first series. That would be an opportunity to overcome the low budget and plot hole issues, and possibly placate the section of the fandom that likes to pretend the first season doesn't exist. On the downside they could potentially ruin the concert scene by going CGI, but on the upside one of the best characters would be back for a while. But it's all speculation at this point.

[Reply #751 on:]

I've seen a few eps of Long Riders, which is basically a cross between Yuru Camp and Super Cub but for cycling, but so far it seems more shallow than either. One good thing is that the main characters are in college/uni rather than high school: I wish more shows would focus on that age range, though you do sometimes question how the main character qualified. And I still think that if you need an emergency energy boost, Kendal Mint Cake is superior to that goop in a sachet (at least for taste), but I'm regionally biased.

[Reply #752 on:]

Nutritional energy goop in a sachet ftw!



Yes, it's been in my biking backpack for some time

[Reply #753 on:]

Yes, it's been in my biking backpack for some time

I always ended up bringing most of the mint cake I took on hikes home at the end of a trip. Probably indicative of the fact that I wasn't pushing myself hard enough.

[Reply #754 on:]

One good thing is that the main characters are in college/uni rather than high school: I wish more shows would focus on that age range, though you do sometimes question how the main character qualified.

I think that there's a lot of high school anime for the same reason that a lot of other fiction features high school characters: high school is a universal experience.  Almost everyone watching either has been to high school, is currently in high school, or will soon be in high school.  Not everyone goes to college or university.

That said, I can recommend a few shows about older students.  Honey and Clover follows the lives of a group of art school students as they struggle with coursework, living away from home, finding work after graduation, and, of course, romance.  This one is more of a drama than a comedy, although the show does feature a lot of quirky humor. 

Show spoiler

Just don't expect happy endings for all of the characters.  Love triangles rarely work out that way.

Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is a more recent romantic comedy about college students.  This show has a lot of the same sort of comedy that you'd expect to see in high school anime, just with slightly older characters.

The main character of Steins;Gate is a college student, although we never see him attending class or doing any schoolwork.  I suppose that a mad scientist has little time for such trivial matters when he's busy turning a microwave oven into a time machine.  El Psy Congroo.

[Reply #755 on:]

I recently watched Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, it was a lot of fun

Steins;Gate was great, it managed to be very funny and delivered a real sucker punch half way through.

[Reply #756 on:]

Two out of three ain't bad, but you should probably watch Honey and Clover as well.

If you've already seen Steins;Gate you might also enjoy Steins;Gate 0.  It's a sort of sequel to Steins;Gate that takes place in between the last two episodes, but also six months to a year later.  It's not as good as Steins;Gate (Very few things are, anime or otherwise.), but it introduces some new characters and fills in some of the gaps in the story.

I'd also recommend Robotics;Notes.  It's not a direct sequel to Steins;Gate, but it takes place in the same universe and has similar themes.

Show spoiler

The cast of characters even includes a grown-up version of Nae Tennoji (the landlord's daughter) ten years later.

[Reply #757 on:]

A photography manga by the creator of Laid-Back Camp is getting an anime adaptation.

I just thought I'd mention it in case any photographers who like Laid-Back Camp happen to be reading this message board.

[Reply #758 on:]

Looks like it could be interesting: thanks. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

I've sort of seen the Laid-back Camp movie (small screen, low audio, lots of interruptions). I think they nailed the job choices of the various characters, and there were some good callbacks to the series. A few sections did feel a bit like filler, but that might be down to the way I watched it: seeing it straight through without pausing may help the flow. It was a bit light on actual camping, but there were other outdoor activities, so can't complain. Overall I think I liked the series better, but it was close and my opinion might be changed by a rewatch.

[Reply #759 on:]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but if you want more Laid-Back Camp, the new season just started.