WTF, anime industry?

[Since I've built up a couple such tidbits, I won't name names in the subject.]

First things first. ADV has licensed Utawarerumono. This would make me sad enough, as it's a currently airing show that I was following, but to make matters worse, they've decided to rename the series . . . Shadow Warrior Chronicles. As someone on some forum said, the ninja fans will be disappointed. Sure, there are warriors, but I'm not sure there are all that many shadows. True, the original title, which approximately translates into "Those Who Are Sung", isn't all that informative either, especially when, based on the ED lyrics, it appears to be referring to the gods, and not even the characters in the story. But still. I hate these kinds of rename games.

And I have the tale of an even worse renaming scheme to tell. So I'd been watching Daphne in the Brilliant Blue again. [Yes, I know, it's a terrible show with almost no plot nor character development and such ugly character designs that you can barely call the scantily clad characters fanservice. But for some reason, I am drawn to it as a form of unmemorable fluff.] I don't know what Geneon was thinking, but apparently they think renaming all of the episodes is cute. What makes it more grievous, and incomprehensible, is that they even left the original, Japanese titles in. Perhaps so that you might be able to appreciate totally nonsensical puns like changing the episode called 大波動 ("The Big Surge", but pronounced daihadou) to "Play Hard, Die Hard". Only, if you know enough Japanese to appreciate the pun, you also know enough to recognize how retarded it is, especially since the original title was relevant, and the new one makes no sense. They also mistranslated "The Day the World Surfaced" as "The Day the World Floated Away" when all one had to do was watch the episode to figure it out. But perhaps the example that is most telling of their mentality behind it all is the change from "Defeated by a Baby" to "Five Women with Guns and a Baby". *sigh*

And some people refuse to believe that fansubs can be better.

Including, coincidentally, this guy. [Hah, sure fooled you with that transition, didn't I?] I mean, I can understand the anime industry being somewhat antagonistic towards fansub groups, but I expect them to be slightly more informed and objective when trying to crusade against them. Because, y'know, you're trying to beat someone who's giving away your stuff for free. Legality is great, but so is money. [Obviously, I'm being facetious here. I naturally have a more complex and probably not well thought out opinion on fansubs and scanlations than I'm presenting here.] I mean, this guy is either ridiculously ignorant or is blatantly trying to skew the facts in order to paint fansub groups as evil. He claims that all fansubbers are speed subbers, admits to not knowing much about their translation quality, and then proceeds to mock them for certain mistakes anyway. I'm surprised "Mass Naked Child Events" wasn't part of it. Oh, but wait, that would require actual knowledge about the fansubbing scene. Part 2 gets even better, with him bringing in shaky arguments that could easily be applied to the anime industry itself -- my favorite part is his suggestion that a few bad groups spoil the entire thing. And he expects us to put up with crap like "Shadow Warrior Chronicles"? Oh, and don't get me started on his warning that it's dangerous to trust fansub groups to translate things accurately and explain jokes correctly. I sure trusted Lunar's Daphne translations [for the 8 episodes they did] more than Geneon's.

Feh. I'm just kind of bitter right now at the anime industry, I think. Bandai's announced a PLANETES Complete Collection, although I've yet to see any description or pictures. But if it's swankier than my individual discs, especially if they bring back the slip-cases for the later volumes, I swear I will never buy anything from Bandai again. XO

And, according to AnimeonDVD, the Basilisk DVDs have crappy video. I don't see how this is possible for a series that's so new, and it's really disappointing because I wanted to collect them. I might still, but knowing about the video and then with law school hanging over my head, it's a lot less likely. Especially if Bandai proves that I got burned by collecting a series disc by disc instead of just waiting for the inevitable boxset/thinpak.

[Speaking of inevitable boxsets/thinpaks... OMG, X Remix. *lusts*]

In slightly less "WTF?" industry news, the first Scrapped Princess novel got a decent review from AnimeonDVD, which makes me feel somewhat better about having recently acquired all 15 volumes and 5 supplements -- having just gotten my special order of volume 5 fulfilled, and with two copies of supplement 5... I have a hard time imagining the Japanese equivalent of "tongue-in-cheek", but overall, I think it means "not stiff and old-fashioned and difficult for poor, delusional non-native speakers to understand". [Unlike the impression I got from Kouga Ninpou Chou, the novel on which Basilisk is based. Which, incidentally, is also licensed and is scheduled to come out in December-ish. It's also unlike reports I've heard regarding the Mirage of Blaze novels, which apparently have lots of old-fashioned language and give even native speakers trouble at times, making me very sad. But it increases my willpower to resist wanting them now now now, so perhaps it's a good thing.] I've wondered how much liberty Tokyopop takes with their novel translations. When I first read the Slayers novels, I found it hard to believe that the original could possibly be written in the same style, but having read Ginban Kaleidoscope, I'm slightly more credulous. Now, if I could remember this thought for next time I visit Kinokuniya, I could actually check, because I recently discovered that they actually have a good number of the Slayers novels in stock. [All part of their new scheme to market light novels harder. My sister and I sure fell for that one.]

Final Fantasy VII.

I beat Final Fantasy VII yesterday, at long last. [The "long last" is more about the time it took me to actually get around to playing it and not about actual gaming time, which was about 82 hours.]

It was . . . a decent game, I suppose. A bit too messed up and dark for my tastes. [Don't get me wrong. I love dark at times, but there were bits in FFVII that just creeped me out. In particular, the part where you follow the trail of blood up the floors in the Shinra HQ. After seeing Jenova's empty holding tank, my brain started conjuring all sorts of disturbing images of this blue, headless body crawling up the stairs with blood dripping everywhere. The monsters in that area were pretty grotesque, too, which only made things worse. Of course, it all turned out to be Sephiroth's handiwork, but I couldn't stand that background music anymore after that. The basement of the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim freaks me out, too, especially that two-headed humanoid monster that keeps flipping around, making the battles last extra-long. *shudder* Yeah, I'm a coward.]

And Advent Children doesn't make any more sense than it used to. XP

( Cut for random babbling. )

Oh, and I might talk about characters and such at some point, but I'm not in the mood right now. You may prod me to do so in comments in you wish.

[On an unrelated note, I would like to point out my new gaming icon. I've long felt the need for one, but I just couldn't find or come up with anything. And this one's not even from a game. Bonus points to the first person besides smamole who identifies it without looking in my userinfo. :P]