Rant: I think I'm done buying localized Blu-ray/DVDs

[takenoko]

I watched Suzume earlier this year in theaters and really enjoyed it, but when I heard Crunchyroll was releasing the BLu-ray, that really doused any interest in purchasing it. I don't like Crunchyroll as a company, and I have all these options to just pirate it on Nyaa, so why not?

I own the special edition for Your Name (which I think has a encoding error that has a bunch of visual bugs when you watch it) and the only reason I bought Weathering With You special edition was because it was on sale (watched that with a friend, that one was great)

But a localized anime on Blu-ray can feel like a real roll of the dice in terms of quality. I watched Castle in the Sky from G-Kids yesterday, hoping they had fixed the script with all the little lines that are missing. Nope, it's still got points where someone's saying Sheeta or something and there's something not down there. Maybe okay quality expectations for the 90s, but not in the 2000s!

And so many people work on translations even within the same company. Who knows who you're getting for some of these. When I saw A Boy and the Heron, I thought the script for it was pretty good for the most part. The one thing that really stuck out to me was all the grannies referring to Mahito as "Sonny" for "bocchama". That's super weird and casual, considering the term is usually used by servants to talk about the children of their employers. I usually see bocchama translated as "young master". Having these old ladies just going "hey, sonny" changes the nature of the relationship between the grannies and the kid

The real horror story I heard this year was the Shin Ultraman theatrical release that I went to (which had problems of its own) apparently has a terrible Blu-ray release that didn't even use the same script as a base

The honorofic and westernized naming stuff I've let go by the roadside, since I can't expect the industry to cater to my weeb preferences. But I think there's a definite question of lack of quality control for localized anime/toku that should be considered. These guys are paid to put out a professional release. I feel like customers should at least get subtitles that are all there and relatively accurate to the original text, even if it has to be localized to appeal to a larger western audience

[ShepardRahl]

I stopped buying localized toku and anime years ago for similar reasons. I only get stuff through trusted fansubbers now. TV-Nihon included. I wish these places would just do straight translating instead of localizing. It's always a little jarring to me whenever I would hear an honorific, but the text would have "Mr." or "Mrs.". Or someone would say "niisan", but the text would have the characters name they are referring to. I just wish they would do like TV-Nihon does and just straight translate while putting language notes at the top. It's a great way to learn.

And it's just gotten worse over the years. The egos of these localizers have them injecting their opinions and ideologies into the localizations. One anime (I don't remember the name) has a female character finding magazines and asking a male character if he's a lolicon. The text for the scene has her calling him a pedophile. There are other instances of political massaging being injected where it never existed. Video game localizers are really bad with this too. It's just so very tiresome.

[HowlingSnail]

I can't really comment on official releases of this stuff, because frankly the stuff I pirate doesn't have official options. The Shout Sentai DVDs are region locked, and they don't go anywhere near as far as I'd like in terms of content.

I will say though that I only pirate if it's necessary. I have literally every episode of Doctor Who on DVD and/or Blu-Ray. I just bought the Mandalorian 4K Blu-Rays so I don't have to resort to piracy any more. I've got big media shelves full of my legally-purchased content. My main thing I pirate is toku, because frankly there's no other option.

Or rather, here's the thing. I actually do buy the official Sentai Blu-Rays (Not Rider as well, I'm not made of money). Partly because I want the extras, which frankly no-one else is willing to upload most of the time. But I'll say that a considerable amount of the Sentai Blu-Ray rips on everyone's favourite cat site are sourced from my disks. Mostly as I feel like giving back to the community that's provided me with so much stuff, and also because other people like DBD and OZC do the hard part of chopping everything up into convenient MKVs. It's why I always get a little pissed off at the "SUPPORT THE OFFICIAL RELEASE" crowd. Like, I am, I shudder to think how much I've spent on official Sentai disks.

I'll say this, as much as I like you guys, my "archive" copies aren't your releases. I take the Blu-Ray rips, softsubs, and merge them to create my "perfect" version. Best quality picture, with my edits to the subtitles to be exactly to my tastes. I've just started looking into finally setting up a Plex server on a NAS, so that I can have all my toku together in a convenient form to watch in the living room, rather than sitting at my PC and finding the files on my hard drive.

[archer9234]

I do agree on how localization is all over the place. But some do get it right. The Bluray release of Digimon Adventure. They properly translated the entire series. And didn't use Toei's horrible subs from the old "translations". What I personally do. I know it doesn't help stop these companies. But I still buy the official Blurays. If there's horrible translation issues. I will just correct them myself. When I dump the discs. It sucks I can't watch the discs. But at least I get to see Atlur Kabuterimon in my personal fixed subtitles. You don't know how many times I had to fix Hikari saying Brother. With the Toei subs on Tri kept putting "Tai" in.

[takenoko]

Yeah, I'm not saying never buy a Blu-ray. I have my collection of western movies and TV shows

It's just the localization that I'm a bit more iffy on. And yeah, some of them do it right, like the Weathering for You one is fine and I have no problems with that. But it's such a coin flip on whether the quality is good or not that I feel like if that's the case, I might as well download a few and pick the one I like best instead. At least I have an option in piracy

SPeaking of which, I was really hoping to find a copy of Suzume where the translator used honorifics, but neither of the two I got had that (even though one of them posted a bunch of pics where the honorific was there in their description, confusing!)

[Aeikozz]

i've long accepted this as just the price we pay to be able to sub since the Azumanga Days. I keep my fansubs organized on a server and keep my bluerays and dvd's more like just proof i've supported the title more than i do actually watching them.

i do wish it was better but if it was then we wouldn't exist to begin with.

Localization pisses me off on a daily basis. but again aint jack shit i can do about it accept win the lottery and form my own studio. that ain't happening any time soon.

[HowlingSnail]

I keep my fansubs organized on a server and keep my bluerays and dvd's more like just proof i've supported the title more than i do actually watching them.

I have a shelf entirely dedicated to my large toku Blu-Ray collection, and virtually none of them have ever actually been "watched" properly, they were all just ripped, uploaded to the various people who'd use them for subs/posting raws, and then they've gone back on my shelf. Even my Power Rangers DVDs don't get watched because they're the German ones (the only Region 2 releases of the old shows), and nowadays it's preferable to watch rips of the American DVDs.

[WannaFantaMan]

As someone who has been into anime, manga, tokusatsu, and the whatnot for most of my life (hell, my introduction to anime was Gundam Wing on Toonami), I'm probably one of the few people who fall into the following category: As long as the general meaning stays the same and you're able to enjoy whatever it is...WHO THE FUCK GIVES A SHIT WHAT THE TRANSLATION/LOCALIZATION IS!?!? I watched the debate about the "Original Translation/Dub" vs "Netflix Translation/Dub" as it happened when Evangelion got put on Netflix. With the minor exceptions of the kawoshin scene and them calling the Eva pilots "children" even when referring to just one of them, I didn't give a shit as I was able to enjoy it regardless.

I'm surprised more people don't realize this, but given how fucked up the English language is, in combination with how different it is on almost every level...there is NO correct way to translate something from Japanese into English. There was even talk about this here on the forum when Ryusoulger was announced and how the closest direct translation was "Dragon Knight" or something along those lines. Hell, I find it hysterical how well after 20 years have passed, fans are STILL DEBATING on whether the correct translation of Asuka's final line in The End of Evangelion is either "I feel sick" or "How disgusting". WHY DO YOU WEEBS GIVE A SHIT WHEN IT'S BEEN TRANSLATED BOTH WAYS NOW!?!?!? JUST GO WITH THE ONE YOU LIKE!!!

...or you can do what Mega64 did for their live-action Evangelion parody, which is cut out the middle man and go with the following...which I actually prefer xD:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxzJUoh9zH6K ... o3ct3dVXtH

[Ashki]

When I was younger, anime didn't come with direct translations. We had complete redubs, such as Voltron 1 & 3, Robotech, and probably the closest you got to a loyal translation was Speed Racer. Then, a bunch of companies popped up that were more like modern fansub/fandub groups than "professional" translation teams. They gave us obscure shows like Key: The Metal Idol while simultaneously taking on shows that would become cult classics, such as Video Girl Ai.

And these sub/dub teams weren't afraid to poke fun at the fans here and there. I remember in the first volume of Video Girl Ai (VHS dub), one of the included extras explained why they didn't do localisations. They had Ai talking about her small boobs in a variety of American accents that were absolutely hilarious. In the original Japanese release, the dialects included things like Osaka dialect - which is probably the most fun to pick on. Today, such extras would be considered "offensive" and likely would be excluded from any public release. But we also had this one little TV station from Hawai'i that was putting out toku subs such as KR V3 and Ultraman. While by no means perfect, they were still pretty great subs and a few of them (like V3) you can actually purchase on DVD if you dig around a little.


But then a couple substandard anime were given major US exposure. DBZ and Gundam W were both terrible compared to the shows that came before them, but they were put on big-name networks and kids got hooked. Saban created Power Rangers and most kids and parents had no idea it was mostly borrowed footage. Plus, Saban never meant the show to be taken seriously (watch the Lost Pilot, the whole thing was MEANT to be a parody, but they ended up toning the humour down for the public release). We also had Sailor Moon, which taught us that some women have bigger... talents, and entire episodes were missing or cels were edited (such as raising the level of Ami's bath water). It didn't even try to be a faithful dub, but instead was a blend of '80s "let's use the footage but make our own story" and '90s "let's try to actually follow the story somewhat".


Anime became a huge fringe phenomenon in the '90s. Sure, we had plenty of it in the previous two decades, but now more and more people were exposed to it, for better or worse. The adult market caught on more quickly, leading to the belief that ALL anime was hentai, even though us older generations had been unknowingly watching anime for most of our lives. The success of ultra-violent, low-content shows like DBZ and Gundam W sent a signal to Japan's anime industry and they began churning out more and more senseless violence. During the huge industry crash, the shows that most likely kept anime alive were the exports full of shouting and huge explosions every ten seconds. And that might have a lot to do with why the US rarely gets good anime anymore.

But during this time, something else changed.

The older companies such as ADV began running into all sorts of problems. Disney was literally stealing entire anime series to make their hit movies, so licensed sales of Kimba: The White Lion, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, etc. all plummeted. These companies spent huge amounts of money for the rights to these shows and Disney swoops in and pirates them as their own because they knew nobody could afford to sue them. Still, the market was there, and streaming services were on the horizon. Crunchyroll and others sprang up in the void, using the tactic of "oversaturate because Disney can only steal so much at a time" alongside a subscription fee and limited physical releases. Say what you will, that tactic worked and those companies became huge overnight.


But this is where my thoughts on pirating come in. When a company gets big enough to afford these shows, they don't care about actually providing accurate subs or dubs to the fans. People will pay regardless. If it's streaming, they're paying for one show they want and ten they don't. If it's physical media, the rights include control over if/when/where those shows will ever be aired, so people are forced to buy the physical media or go without. Thus, they can inject political messaging or alter the shows any other way they wish and nobody can really complain because there's no alternative outside of piracy.

I love having physical media, if only for archival purposes. But I won't buy garbage if I can help it. Thus, I've taken the approach that MP3 supporters have used for decades: I don't pirate to steal, I pirate to try before I buy. If a sub or dub is good enough, even if not perfect, I'll buy the physical copy when I can afford it - and IF I can find it. But it it's garbage quality, I'll look for a different, better version online. MOST of my Ultraman collection is fansubbed, as is MOST of my Kamen Rider collection (as mentioned, the old, official V3 subs are quite good, and at least one of the older Ultraman shows I have is by the same company). Companies like Mill Creek aren't in this for the fans, they're trying to corner the US market with intentionally substandard product because they know most people don't know about the fansubs, and that most fansub groups will shelve their subs if a show is officially released. All they have to do is mention they're officially releasing a show and all the competition vanishes overnight. I'm STILL furious I lost the TV-N subs of Nexus in a previous HDD crash, because my son and I are almost finished with Dina (again, TV-N subs), having started with UltraSeven over 1 1/2 years ago. (It's our naptime routine. We snuggle up and put on Ultraman until he falls asleep, and if it's the middle of an episode/movie, I pause, backtrack slightly, and we resume the next day. When possible, we're watching the entire franchise in order. He was too young when I started with the original Ultraman, and I'm holding off on UltraQ until he's older since those entries are more mature in terms of comprehension requirements.)


Thus, I support pirating as a means to send a message that quality has to come before quantity, with good quality being rewarded with my money, and bad quality never being allowed on my shelves. But this does bring me to a related question that I've actually been thinking about a lot the past year or so:


Years ago (perhaps over a decade by now), I remember someone asked Takenoko what TV-N would do if they were ever approached by a company wanting to use their subs for an officially licensed release. At the time, he said he'd turn it down because this was all about having fun with a hobby. But with more and more people resorting to piracy BECAUSE the subbing industry is moving away from fanmade content to soulless corporate money-grabs, I'd be very curious to hear if that opinion's changed. If TOEI approached TV-N tomorrow and asked to use the Heisei Kamen Rider subs for new, official Blu-Ray releases (we already know the president is well aware of TV-N and other groups and unofficially appreciates fansubs but can't openly show support for legal reasons), what would the team's response be considering the current state of the sub/dub industry?

[Lunagel]

It's the money that's the rub for me. If someone were to legally buy our subs, how should the money be split? There are so many people who have worked on our releases, and a lot of them have drifted off over the years. I'm not sure we could even contact all of them. How much would a translator get? How much would timer/qc? If they're not using our fancy effects, would the typesetter even get anything, even though they did a huge chunk of work?

The only way I could see it working out is if the pay was donated to a charitable cause we could all agree on.

[WannaFantaMan]

It's the money that's the rub for me. If someone were to legally buy our subs, how should the money be split? There are so many people who have worked on our releases, and a lot of them have drifted off over the years. I'm not sure we could even contact all of them. How much would a translator get? How much would timer/qc? If they're not using our fancy effects, would the typesetter even get anything, even though they did a huge chunk of work?

The only way I could see it working out is if the pay was donated to a charitable cause we could all agree on.

This is something I can totally get behind. And it doesn't even need to be the same charity for the entire group, maybe there are three that could be picked from at any given time.

[Mxylv]

Some of the releases have varied in quality, even from the same company. For me, it isn't solely about the localization, but the larger quality control--within Kamen Rider alone, the Zero-One Blu-rays used low-bitrate hardsubbed copies while the Kuuga release looks great for when it was filmed, and, unlike the streaming subs, lets one play with or without Grongi. Within localization itself, though, I mostly look for a few factors:

• Don't have near-constant swearing, some of which doesn't even translate to anything IRL (sorry Gridman),
• Be overall readable and comprehensible (Honshin will haunt our memories forever),
• Keep the original meaning feasibly intact (which often means more than dubtitles... but then, if you have friends in demographics that benefit from having both, that can be awkward), and
• Translate more than the bare minimum, often by doing the theme (less important, but still evidence that there's some care about a property, or at least a recognition that fans appreciate such details).

Right now, the Ultraman Blazar YouTube subtitles are a fantastic example of pretty much all of those (most of my examples are going to be Ultraman, partly because that's the most accessible overseas). I think they weren't even translating the OP at first, but when fans asked, they listened. They even provided an English dub with quality that frequently matches the original for me. Shin Ultraman, on the other end, had issues going beyond the localization and into overall encoding--although the upcoming Canadian release is promising new subtitles on a region-free disc, and if enough of those start to get sales from the U.S., that sends a message to the bean counters.

(Now, there's also a second approach to good localization: ignore everything and stick with the spirit of the media instead. Class A++ here is Sevengar Fight, which feels more like a fansub than anything an official outlet would dare release. The subtitles are distracting. The font size is inconsistent. Sometimes, they even cover what's happening on the screen. And yet, it somehow perfectly captures the pure chaos of four actors in a recording studio improvising all the dialog while trying desperately not to break character--which, apparently, is what actually happened.)

I'm not sure what happened to the Mill Creek releases; they started out excellent, but from minimal sub revisions for Gridman (which needed more of a total rewrite) to dropping slipcovers late in, it felt like their later ones had less effort put into them--Nexus was even listed as "Series + Special," but "special" referred to the movie, not Lost Memories. Mill Creek did, however, release an Ultraseven anthology set this year, after they'd already released all the mainline contents; to me, this implies that they see more value in the franchise than solely pushing everything in the contract and giving up. This is a good sign, so I'm curious where things will go from here. (I'd appreciate some extras myself, but that apparently gets into some tricky legal territory.)

Overall, Tsuburaya's taken the Western market seriously, getting everything from a Marvel Comics crossover to an NYCC stage show, and buying even somewhat-imperfect physical releases shows that there's a market in the West (which, one hopes, will make them think to expand to other countries too). Maybe Kamen Rider's in that wild-west phase Tsuburaya was in around 2017, when it was stretched across four or five platforms? We only got hints that Toei were serious about going global earlier this year, so I'm hoping a new approach is on the horizon.