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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Barbelith Anime Primer

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11:17 / 12.08.08

I'm no stranger to risks of buying from eBay - I occasionally try to source games from there, which is an absolute minefield - and I don't mind fansubs at all. I'm currently halfway through watching the official UK release of Noein and the subs are atrocious. Not through being nonsensical or full of spelling errors (hello, official Eureka Seven DVDs), but because, as far as I can tell, all that they've done is used the English-language script translation. The VA one.

Whereas a lot of newer releases provide two translations - a literal one for the subs and a 'conveys the feeling, but not necessarily in the same way' one for the dub, Noein cheaps out. So what you get are a lot moments where there are subs but nobody's actually talking (because the English VA script doesn't dare to have quiet moments), subs that are clearly different to what's being said in the japanese VA track, even obvious name changes.

More fool me for wanting to show support for official releases, I guess. You'd think, after about eighteen years of this shit, I'd know better.

13:02 / 26.08.08

Cat Soup (Nekojiru-sou)[complete stream in Youtube].
Directed by Tatsuo Sato, inspired by the work of manga artist Nekojiru.

Nekojiru (real name Hashiguchi Chiyomi) was a female mangaka who commited suicide in 1998. Her work is disconcerting due to the juxtaposition of a very kawaii visual style (as would befit stories depicting two anthropomorphic kitten siblings) with extremely cruel moments (pig characters are treated worse than lusophones in Barbelith*). Violence, when it comes to happen, is very graphic and unforgiving. The overall feel is of cuteness, zaniness and nonsensu, but there's an unshakable undercurrent of dread throughout the stories. The manga was made into a TV series [Youtube link], and then in 2001 "Cat Soup"[Wikipedia entry], a 35 minutes movie, came along.

The movie shows a bizarre journey through a spirit world/dreamscape, with Nyātta (the younger kitten) & Nyāko (his big sister) on a quest to retrieve the other half of Nyāko's soul. It's beautiful at times, cute at times, and extremely unsettling all throughout, like those moments when a dream is about to become a nightmare; it trips so many balls it's amazing.

Try and then tell us.

-------------------------------------------------
* - I joke.

Mysterious Transfer Student

19:24 / 26.08.08

Here's something interesting that appeared earlier this year and caused a certain quantity of shitstorms in the anime fan community at the time, so I wonder why it's taken me until now to watch it fully and bring it up here. The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs - a rather well-made and well-argued fan documentary making the case that in many instances, the average modern fansub production has more to do with showing off a half-assed understanding of Japanese language and culture, trying out fancy new fonts and stroking one's e-peen than producing a lucid, transparent translation of a piece of foreign media. It's about thirty minutes in all, and I'd be interested to read others' responses. While I think he argues from authority a hell of a lot more than I'd be comfortable with doing, the alternate universe where fansubbing is unobtrusive and professional certainly seems very attractive to me after watching translators' attempts to bring us more non-gaijin-oriented shows like Gintama, where no gag can pass by without a colossal footnote laboriously explaining the joke.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Postscript: the guy's idea of a *good* fansub

11:20 / 12.01.09

Do we want to take this discussion elsewhere?

It looks increasingly likely that Barbelith may not be around much longer. There are people in the Policy forum petitioning to get it closed down. I've got about enoguh time in my life to conduct an online discussion on something I enjoy, but not not really to engage with board politics or try to change anyone's mind.

Ultimately the decision to close Barbelith would be made by made by Tom Coates. He hasn't expressed much of an interest in this place, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day he just decided to turn it off. We may not even have this place available as an archive. It could happen at any point and we may not get prior warning. That possibility becomes exponentially more likely with petitions like the one in the Policy at the moment.

I've enjoyed all the anime threads immensely and have quite an ongoing investment in the Bleach threads in particular (both of which I've saved on my hard drive).

I do not want that enjoyment to be contingent on a disinterested board-owner, in much the same way as I don't think anyone else's decision to leave Barbelith should be contingent on that board-owner choosing to shut it down.

If you want to continue these discussions somewhere other than Barbelith then please send me a PM with your email address or contact me at seth dot cooke at virgin dot net. I won't be posting in this thread any more and will resume the discussion elsewhere (at the moment it's looking likely that it'll be an invite only mailing list of some sort, with potential to grow into something else if there's interest).

Contact me if you would be interested in participating in a discussion of anime and or/theory-Bleaching elsewhere.

03:48 / 08.04.13

"Where can I get an avi English version of Welcome to the NHK? I'm fed up of downloading only to find that I'm stuck in non-English or mkv blind alleys."

I use Handbrake (free) for small videos, and Appgeeker for everything else including converting MKV to AVI on Mac and Windows.
It does a hell of a job converting videos.

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