Shin Godzilla discussion thread

[takenoko]

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I have to admit, I thought this movie was riveting in a way that I totally didn't expect. The drama was less a man versus monster fight, so much a man versus bureaucracy fight.

I've read that this movie was created in part as a criticism of the government handling of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It definitely feels like a movie that represents their government as craven, toadying bureaucrats and how a crisis needs a more dynamic (and maybe young) approach

I really loved the drama of it all. I liked the little bits of humor, with the overuse of text, all these people who were named that actually didn't mean anything.

The core gang of freaks, geeks, and weirdos saving Japan was pretty cool in my opinion. Ogashira Hiromi was weird and fun to follow. Kayoco was an interesting lady (hate the spelling of her name though)

If you enjoyed this weird political drama, then you should definitely check out Chernobyl which is a masterpiece in my opinion

You might recognize some of the cast, although there's like hundreds of people in this movie. It's ridiculous:
https://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Shin_Godz ... tor_Trivia

[ViRGE]

I take it from your post you just recently saw the movie for the first time? I have to say I'm surprised; I figured you would have jumped on Shin Godzilla early. It was getting amazingly good press during its US theatrical run.

Anyhow, yes, it's a very good film. Even as someone not terribly steeped in Japanese politics (despite the amount of SHT I watch!), a story clearly inspired by inept and overly rigid bureaucrats is pretty universal and easy to follow. And the overuse of text is brilliant; it's a gag, but it also helps to sell the aforementioned bloated bureaucracy.

As for the softsubs that were released, are there any notable differences between these and the official soft subs? You guys generally don't do the work someone else has already done, so I'm guessing you've found some things to change.

[takenoko]

I've never seen a Godzilla movie before, I only watched this one because of Shin Ultraman/Shin Kamen Rider

I don't know if they were the official subs or just the English ones on the Japanese discs, but the major changes I made were:

-Added some text that weren't translated (There were a million texts, I was still finding missing lines even on my third pass). Or a bunch were oversimplified or just wrong, so those were fixed. An example of this was the experts panel at the beginning all had (Pseudonym) by their name, they were so afraid of saying something that'd affect their reputation that they gave conservative observations and shunted responsibility by not giving their full name
-Minor typesetting
-Converted the pictures subs to a script, so if people want they can modify the subs in whatever they want
-Whole script retimed
-Removed the localization to add back the legend of orochi stuff. It's such a Japanese film that it seemed weird to obfuscate that. Added translator notes explaining them
-Obviously added back in the honorifics and changed to Japanese naming order
-With all the people and terms flying, I tried to simplify the technical jargon in a way to make it easier to understand and more obvious who was who (although that was probably an impossible task). One problem with the original script was that every time someone said Prime Minister, 90% of the time it was just translated as Sir.

[ViRGE]

I've never seen a Godzilla movie before, I only watched this one because of Shin Ultraman/Shin Kamen Rider

They're usually more miss than hit. But this one worked well, in part, because it was first and foremost a political commentary like the original, rather than being an action movie.

I don't know if they were the official subs or just the English ones on the Japanese discs, but the major changes I made were:

Looking at yours, you definitely started from the official subs. I'll have to rewatch the whole thing, but you're right that they were a bit simplified at times - though nothing that got in the way of enjoying the movie.

[Lunagel]

Popping in to explain some stuff as it pertains to official subs. Whenever I have a translation job through official channels, there are three major things I have to watch out for: Maximum time per line, characters per second (CPS), and characters per line (CPL).

Now the first is rather self-explanatory. Usually the maximum allowed time per line is 6-7 seconds, depending on client. Usually even in fansubbing we don't go much beyond that limit because it starts to get awkward.

CPS is where it starts to get tricky. Standard is usually 15 characters (including spaces and punctuation) per second. If you have something in Japanese like 総理 "souri" that's a mere 2 syllables and takes maybe half a second to say, but in English is "Prime Minister", a whopping 14 characters, well, something's got to change. If absolutely necessary you can sometimes go over the recommended CPL, but some clients have a hard limit.

CPL is the worst because it is an absolute rule. This cannot be broken at all because the program they use will throw a hissy fit and text will go off-screen. Standard is 38 characters per line, though I've seen as many as 42. You cannot hyphenate words. Depending on client there are a number of other things you cannot do like putting names or adjective/noun pairs different lines. The line "Prime Minister, what is it that you / have called us here for today to discuss?" won't work because although the first line is 36 characters, the second is 41. And that's assuming it doesn't go over CPS.

So yeah, a lot of stuff gets simplified to simply fit the regulations of the industry. It's one of the nice things about fansubs, not having to worry about CPS all the damn time.

[Yaiba]

I only just watched it last week. Best of the 3 Shin movies. I usually got distracted and need to pause and fiddle with other things during long movies, but my eyes were just glued to the screen for this one the whole time. Somehow it got the political tension just right.

And it's now in Minecraft.

It has four modes based on the different Godzilla films. In one of them you can literally walk right up to Shin Godzilla (all the 3 land phases) and get stepped on. Worth checking out just for the Godzilla models. I think they're a pretty good recreation of the real thing.

Official site: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article ... -minecraft

Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ6g51nl6v4

[takenoko]

Nice! I liked Ultraman a bit more for the comedic aspects, but the drama here was just perfect. Makes me bummed out that I didn't get around to Minus 1 in theaters