Translations master list

Since most of the front page was taken up by translation projects, I figured it would be best to make a master list sticky post instead of having each of the translation posts be a sticky. Here’s the projects I’ve worked on and their status:

The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya:
Taken down due to licensing. Yen Press has released some very good translations and they should be supported. Post
The Untold Story of Haruhi Suzumiya (includes Rainy Day):
Finished. Post
The Observation of Haruhi Suzumiya: Official Fanbook (Novel fanbook):
Finished. Post
Someday in the Rain (Original script published in 2006):
Finished. Post
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Official Guidebook:
In Process (I’m about 2/5s done) Post
Hanairo Notebooks:
In Process (1-7 in editing process, 8 is in translation process, 9 releases in March)
Nagaru Tanigawa interview from the June 2003  The Sneaker
Finished Post

I’ll be adding more as more projects come along. I’ve got some ideas, but I’ll rule out Haruhi Theater as there’s already good translations available for it. I might also be contacting some outside help on a couple of projects if I have the time available to devote to them.

Memories of Disappearing

At the time this post is released, it is 19:00 PST on May 21, 2012. This is exactly 2 years since one of the most important events that I had the privilege to attend: the North American premiere of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Licensed by Bandai Entertainment in April 2010, the story is the feature film of the Haruhi Suzumiya anime franchise. It originally premiered in February 6, 2010 in Japan, but the May 21, 2010 showing was the first international viewing of the film. I was lucky enough to be able to take a vacation from work around that time to see the film.

As a huge fan of the franchise, I was debating taking a trip to Japan to catch the movie while it was in theatres, but I couldn’t justify going by myself to Japan and other circumstances forced that trip to be cancelled. When Bandai licensed the film and announced that it was to be shown on May 21, 2010, I thought it would be fun to go see it. Due to Skorp not being able to take time away to see it, I made a decision to go opening night. I bought tickets about a month in advance and booked a flight+hotel for the stay. It was time for Haruhi!

After some scheduling mishaps (I booked a flight a day later than I thought), I finally made it out to San Francisco on night of the 20th. I was able to look around Japantown and scout where the movie would be playing before meeting Yumeka at the airport on the 21st. We arrived at the theatre at 17:00 and there were already people waiting. I was able to chat with a couple of other fans, but the real fun wouldn’t start until 18:00 when the producers from Bandai arrived carrying goodies. Yen Press was kind enough to give out copies of the first light novel (paperback) or first volume of the manga to everyone in attendance.

After getting a copy of the novel, we were able to head to the front of the theatre to meet Christina Vee (a member of the ASOS Brigade) and receive an autographed poster of the film. It was a delight to meet her and I was surprised at the size of the poster! Yumeka and I found a couple of seats and watched as everyone filed into the theatre. Prior to the film beginning, Christina sang a couple of the songs from the franchise, including her dubbed version of Super Driver. She introduced the film and the Bandai staff took their seats. It was time to Disappear!

I’ll confess that I did not have the patience to wait for this showing. Once I discovered there was a camrip of the movie (and a subbed one at that!), I watched it and was enthralled by the film. I say that because seeing the movie in an actual theatre completely overshadowed my expectations. Hearing the sounds of the school all around me, being able to sit in the setting, seeing everything so vivid on the screen; no mere camrip could compare. The movie was 2 hours, 43 minutes, and 53 seconds long. It felt like nothing. It was everything I had expected and more.

The film did not feature subtitles made by Bandai. Kadokawa Pictures hired one of my favorite translators, Quarkboy, to subtitle the film and he did a FANTASTIC job. I still hold all subtitling works in reference to this film because it was that well-handled. I was so happy to hear that he enjoyed working on it as much as I enjoyed reading them. I’m glad that most of them were kept in the home video releases by the English-speaking countries.

When it was over, I had another privilege that I wanted to accomplish. One of the fans on 2ch, a Japanese message board, had made this showing his 100th time viewing the film. Some people were having him autograph things, and I saw Bandai’s cameras in the background, so I had him autograph that novel. I included his name in my first post about this film, and it’s became and is still a meme on 2ch. If you’re reading this, thank you very much Takahashi-san.

After leaving the theatre with Yumeka and walking back to our hotel, I was on such a high. Being in a theatre with so many other Haruhi fans to see the premiere of the movie from my absolute favorite franchise? There’s still nothing that can top that for me. It was an absolute joy to attend. I wrote a hand-written letter and sent it to Bandai to send my thanks, and they put it on their Facebook page. I still remember that feeling.

So why write this post now? Last year was pre-occupied with another high in this franchise for me, so I couldn’t write it then. Yumeka and some other bloggers have been participating in a Remembering Love series, and it hit me: this is my most treasured memory in anime fandom. That is the one night I want to relive over and over again, but alas, it won’t ever happen again. Now, it’s only a memory…

A serene player placement

Earlier this afternoon, Skorp and I had an interesting conversation about the talents of the Kiyosumi mahjong team in Saki (original series) and I thought it would be a nice post to expand on. While this has some spoilers for the original series, I’m only going to focus upon the play style of each of the Kiyosumi team. After we see more of the Achiga team, I should have an accompanying post for them. (TL note: the kanji for Kiyosumi can be read as “serene”, thus the title) When commenting please DO NOT POST SPOILERS FOR THE MANGA OR ACHIGA SERIES!

Blooms are fleeting: Hanasaku Iroha BD volume 9

Beginning over a year ago in April 2011, Hanasaku Iroha became my favorite show last year. The immense visual quality from P.A. Works combined with a wonderful growing up story was an absolute joy for me to view. While it had its ups and downs, overall it was a really well-done series. So now we finish the 9 Blu-ray volumes and conclude the series properly until our new work is released. BDInfo/Photobucket album

Random Translation: 2003 Nagaru Tanigawa interview

Randomly I came across something I had been curious about: What was Tanigawa’s thoughts around the time Haruhi was first published? And so, I found an interview that was published in the June 2003 edition of The Sneaker. This would be the first interview he gave to a Sneaker publication, but not the last. I thought it would be interesting to see his thoughts around the sudden rise that the Haruhi series would become. It became something fun to work on. Let’s go Hanshin! (Apologies, I can’t find decent pictures to break up this text dump)

Winter 2012 series roundup

Throughout this week, the vast majority of the anime series I’ve followed this season will be finishing. As such, I’ll offer my opinions on them as a whole.

90+ – No series

80+
Shakugan no Shana III -Final-: 87

Shana truly surprised me when I first watched it last year. It had a very depressing opening with Hikari fading from everyone’s mind, but moved into a pretty good story. The first season was better than average while the second season had parts that I couldn’t stand. The OVAs were nice side stories, but nothing important overall. But when Final started, it was another tempo. The addition of Yuji to the Tomogara, and with their leader as well, was a fantastic bait-and-switch. As the series came to an end (and I’m sure it’ll be viewed more favorably by those who marathon it), the tie-in and tie-up of the loose cords was very well executed. As it should be, the final episode truly captured the “final” aspect of the series. I enjoyed it immensely.

Chihayafuru: 85

A complete surprise not only to myself, but a huge amount of fans. Chihaya continued to be amazing in animation and story for 26 weeks, even making a recap episode hilarious. It got me interested in the 100 poems as well as the card game itself. Like everyone else, a second season would be very much appreciated.

70+
Amagami SS+: 76

After a series that had many mediocre arcs, I wasn’t looking forward that much to most of SS+. While there were three arcs that were good, there were three arcs that couldn’t stand with the others. I didn’t care for the Ayatsuji, Rihoko, and Kaoru arcs, but the Nanasaki and Haruka arcs were fantastic. I was truly impressed at how they were able to follow up with Haruka to make a “lovely” finish to the series. I’m sure the Miya arc will be interesting, but it’s a side-story at best. If I have to give arc scores: 71, 63, 83, 67, 77,and 85 in that order.

Another: 74

First, the strong points. P.A. Works did a fantastic job animating this series and, combined with the music, keeping the “creepy” feeling through the run. Everything else was mediocre at best. The story itself would have been better served to be compressed into 10 or fewer episodes. Instead of bringing suspense like in a novel format, the lengthening just kept adding to the stupidity of the situation. “We can’t say anything” “I didn’t think of it” got to be so annoying. I felt little to no connection to any of the characters (besides imagining Mochizuki as Hideyoshi from BakaTest) and I couldn’t care about their situation. The climax of “killing the extra” was very anti-climatic and wasn’t worth the build-up. I’m just glad my hopes weren’t raised for this series. Poor Ito.

Nisemonogatari: 72

For a series that focused on the “fake” aspects of life, it certainly captured being a “fake” of it’s prequel. It’s somewhat interesting how the same group of characters can feel so different in another series. I’m not a huge fan of Shaft and their productions, but I felt Bakemonogatari had an interesting story behind it and enjoyed it in 2009-2010. Unfortunately, the focus on the intimacy between Koyomi and his sisters couldn’t capture that same enjoyment. The final two episodes were amazingly strong and felt like they were part of the original story, but everything else was relatively weak.

60+

Zero no Tsukaima f: 61

Barely prevented from being my first score in the 50s only due to the use of First Kiss in the finale, which reminded me how good the series could be at times. Ignoring how Saito could return to the world without magic, his return was very well-handled. The finale itself was good, but the rest of the series (minus episode 3) ranged from “I can’t believe I’m watching this” to “How did this series get so bad?” Outside of jealousy, Louise was an entirely different character in this series compared to the seasons before. Siesta was non-existant and Tabitha had little to no reason for being around other than to appease fans. The third episode truly felt like it should have been the finale for the rest of the series. I’m just thankful no more episodes will come.

Now onto Spring. I’ll be following Hyouka, Saki Achiga, Natsuiro Kiseki, and Fate/Zero‘s second half. My expectations go from “should be great”, “love the source material”, “eh, I’ll give a shot”, and “Let’s see how this finishes.” Nothing else interests me at the moment, so hopefully I’ll get the desire to work on translating a lot instead. The current projects shouldn’t take much longer to complete, so look for the new ones shortly.

Brief Look: Saki Rinshan Kaihou Special Blu-ray box

Aired in 2009, Saki was a show that breathed a lot of fun into the anime atmosphere. Going up against the K-On! monster, the show managed to sell just under 10k DVDs per volume. Unfortunately, the behind-the-scenes matters were not as fun. Gonzo ran into bankruptcy during the show’s airing and another studio had to take over animation. The final product was still one of my favorite shows and I planned to save for this box as soon as we heard news of a “big announcement.” Here is the GIANT Saki Blu-ray box.

So yes, it’s huge, but how huge? Here’s three comparison photos with a figure, DVD, CD, Blu-ray, and light novel.

Now that we’ve established that the box is huge, let’s look what’s inside. Slide the box out from the wrapping, open it up and…

We have the BD case on the left, and the booklet, 3D cards, and event lottery ticket on the right. There’s also some artwork on the back of the case.

Inside the case is a three-sided digipack with 2 discs on each side. The front cover uses the original key visual and continues into episode and bonus feature listings on the discs. Underneath the discs are images of Saki, Nodoka, and Yuuki wearing swimsuits. I had no inclination of taking a picture for that.

In the 196 page booklet, we start with storyboards for all 2 opening animations and 3 ending animations. Next are the character designs for everyone (and I mean EVERYONE). Following that are some background/production artwork for the various locations seen in the show. Then there are explanations for the picture drama stories originally included with the 3-9 DVD volumes. We then have some messages from the anime staff members thanking us for supporting the show and some explanations for scenes (along with the tile situations at various points). Various pieces of artwork drawn for magazines/goods are also included next and finally the booklet references the bits of information included with each DVD volume (like that the final end card was drawn specifically by the character designer). The booklet ends with a look at the original frames that were added at the end of episode 25.

But there’s a few things missing in the booklet.. like the DVD covers! All 9 covers were made into 3D illustrated cards. When you look at them properly, they do appear as if the characters are layered upon each other and the background.

But what’s underneath all of those extras?

It’s a full mahjong set with sticks and turn marker!

This set was drawn by the character designer Masakatsu Sasaki just for this box. They’re not the highest of quality, but the tiles feel fine to me.

Now that we’ve seen all the extras, let’s discuss how the show itself. I’ve mentioned my thoughts on the series prior (tl;dr: it’s a series that emphasizes the fun of the genre while being able to develop multiple characters and plot lines to culminate in the 19th episode. The long wait while the mangaka works on the nationals arc has really angered a lot of the anime-only fans, but this series is worth the wait. I marathoned it in three days originally and enjoyed every moment of it. One of my favorite shows of all time.

The show was not animated in high definition, despite airing in 2009. This becomes incredibly apparent when you view the screencaps of this upscale. Q-tec’s new technology, F.O.C.U.S. did what it could, but they went from the DVD masters, which didn’t have the best quality. It’s not the worst upscale I’ve seen, but it’s certainly not one you’ll want to show screencaptures of. I’ve included 16 screencaptures from the first few episodes and the OP/ED for reference. It does look much better in motion though.

On the bonus features disc, we have a mahjong special included with the LE of the first DVD featuring the main 5 seiyuu, both textless openings, all 3 textless endings (including the three variations of the “serious ending”), TV commercials for the BD-Box, all 7 picture dramas, and a special trailer for the Saki – Achiga Hen – episode of side A anime that begins next month. It’s only an extra 15 seconds with two additional areas, so don’t feel left out by not watching it.

And so that’s the biggest (literally) BD-Box I’ve imported. Could the show have gotten a better upscale? Yes, but I didn’t order it for the visual quality. This set reminds me why I enjoy the franchise: it’s packed with a lot of fun things for everyone!