All the cool effects, honorifics, translator notes that explain references that you might miss as non-japanese viewer… Whoever put this much effort for free more than 10 years ago, thank you! It was so refreshing seeing this in the era of corporate sloppy subtitles!
<3
Just according to kekkaku.
TL Note: keikaku means plan
Why is this everywhere? lmfao
It’s from death note and one of the sub groups put just as keikaku or something along those lines with that translator note and it stuck and has been directly used or referenced ever since. Kinda goes along with people die if they are killed levels of stupidity but we love that kind of shit apparently.
Sometimes a stupid gag hits juuuuuust right.
The commie fansubs for monogatari series second are so peak.
For the koimonogatari arc the opening switches between modern/classic art styles. During the classic style portions, the fansubs change to that hideous yellow with black outline font prevalent during the VHS era.
And it’s glorious.
I once watched an anime where the translator added a “fun facts about this ep” part at the end of each ep (and it was always a list with at least 10 points), that was great
I love this kind of thing! When I was reading Kaguya-sama I discovered that each chapter had a blog post from the translation team about all the fun stuff included in the chapter that the average reader might not know. Even though I own paper books it made me reread everything in digital just to appreciate what I missed.
Yeah, so many scanlators do this, it’s amazing.
brings me back to yakitate! japan, where every goddamn sentence had a pun in it and the subtitler had gone through the effort of explaining all of them in little fact boxes.
like, they literally had to subtitle a horse eating bread because it makes the sound “horse”, which is a homonym for “delicious”. a fact i learned from those very subs.
This is one of the best reasons to really learn a language. Nowadays many translators just give up on puns. Hard to blame them, some things you just can’t translate but at the same time official translations ban TL Notes.
Just by learning a little bit of Japanese you can catch so many jokes that got lost in translation.
Counterpoint: They are not commercial products, and there is nothing stopping groups from just abandoning series mid-season. For example, Komi Can’t Communicate got a sub that translated all her written text in place and then just dropped it after a couple of episodes.
I’ve seen two arguments during that time.
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as fan subs, those are entirely done voluntarily and the people behind it owe nothing to the community
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they shouldn’t have started the series if they weren’t committed to completing the season. Other groups sat out on the series because of that.
I’m not really saying that all fansubs were perfect or that the “do for free” model is good. I only miss the passion that nowadays is just less common now than it was back in the day.
That’s a very good way to put it. I’m pushing 50 and have watched anime since my earliest childhood. When thinking back on how the community has changed over the years, it’s not recognizable anymore. And the passion and energy the community has lost is probably the biggest contributor why it feels so empty now. The second biggest contributor is how commercialized it has become. Third would be that it reached the mainstream (though I personally group this together with #2).
My MAL profile says I joined the community in 2019 but I did watch a few shows before that. I did a little time travel to the 2000s when I only watched shows from those years and I honestly felt back then like I was in 2006. I couldn’t yet appreciate everything though. There were so many things I missed. When I go back now to watch some of those older shows I have this warm feeling of nostalgia. I dream about waking up to those days with all the appreciation and understanding I have now… But still I think I can’t say all the passion went away. Sure subs are terrible, but scanlations are awesome, sure there are a lot of trash shows but there are also shows like Frieren that are products of passion. Akihabara is still alive and well. Comiket also is as big as ever.
What I want to say is that I don’t think there’s no passion anymore, just that certain parts of industry become soulless husks of themselves.Akihabara is still alive and well. Comiket also is as big as ever.
Some of the people I follow have been complaining in the past as well about changes in Akihabara. Granted, they were complaining about electronic stores dying out there and not anime-related stuff, so I’m not sure how that translates. I think I also read or heard complaints about Comiket being just a big corporate event instead of the place where people go to sell their doujins. I remember something about winter Comiket now being the new main event for those non-corporate exhibitions.
What I want to say is that I don’t think there’s no passion anymore, just that certain parts of industry become soulless husks of themselves.
You are right, the passion is not lost entirely, but looking at the fandom as a whole, I feel like it has become so large and commercialized that the passionate people are just small individual clusters in an ocean of indifferent people and ads. I base this only on my own views and how it feels to me, and I certainly have changed as well over the years.
You’re definitely right that so many things become too large and commercialized but I’d disagree that passionate people become insignificant drop in the ocean. I might be wrong since I always follow and interact with fans of the medium and try to distance myself from anyone that brings nothing but negativity but I feel like passion still has a very strong presence and it won’t fall this easily!
Akiba is constantly changing but it’s still a heart of otaku culture. If you ever have a chance to visit please do so. It’s a truly magical place for both electronics and anime.
Comiket story is funny because it was created to give the middle finger to corporations. Now that corporate came back crawling and started to feel too comfortable fans pushed back. We’ll see how it goes but if Comiket becomes what is swore to destroy then I guess a new challenger will appear.
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Fun to see this while messing with subtitle translation!
I picked the three seasons of Nights with a Cat to watch. Thought “my mum would love this”, so I’m translating subtitles into Portuguese. (She loved the first two seasons, by the way.) And wow, it made me see the effort the group (pspspsps) poured into it — replicating the cat and Moon logo, animating everything, a thousand gradients, so goes on. I had to sacrifice a wee bit of the aesthetics (not much though) for the sake of making the translation viable, plus because I was merging the files, but it was clear the group did that as a work of love, I’ve seen plenty professional translators (incl. myself) doing a sloppier job.
yeah back in the 90’s anime clubs had people doing their own subbing. Many folks learned japanese just to do subbing and they would meet and discuss how best to translate and such.
There’s far too little fun in fansubs these days
Well clearly the problem is you’re getting fansubs and not funsubs like OP said!
Yup, the best “funsubs” right now are just remixes of official subtitles that for example add honorifics. I still appreciate this work but it’s a far from the golden days.
I have a release of the demon slayer infinity train movie that puts all the subs in speech bubbles as if they were manga panels, it was pretty cool
Definitely sounds fun!
I’ve never finished bleach because dattebayo stopped subbing it and the official subs are just trash to me in comaprison
Go to nyaa.si and search for “bleach v2”, it should be 320 GB adjacent in size and contains all eps, but be warned it uses JP BluRay as the source so filler eps (e.g. Bount arc, entire S09) are in DVD quality.
I’m doing a rewatch before starting TYBW and I replaced the DVD eps with official subs from another source but I’m just skipping them in this rewatch.
Those subs are as good as the old Dattebayo subs, trust.
Thanks for the tip!
I was watching Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity and the subs would get blurry when the character wasn’t paying attention/zoning out, I was amazed
I watched the first 100 or so episodes of naruto with funsubs. I was so disappointed when I went back and watched the official sub. (The dub is absolutely terrible and if you like it i do not trust your opinion on any piece of media at all)
To be fair dub is usually terrible, regardless of the show. Even the best dubs are not as good as the original. I have a huge amount of respect for jp voice actors that can portray so many emotions with just their voice.
I’m not saying that dub shouldn’t exist, people with visual impairment don’t really have much choice, many kids can’t read fast enough etc
I will never force anyone to watch with subs but I always tell them what they are missing.In 2002 when Naruto first aired? Yeah, a lot of dubs were pretty bad back then, they cut a lot of corners and didn’t always hire the best talent. But today, voice acting is taken so much more seriously now, and there is a lot of equally fantastic talent in the west. Hell, there are some shows I’ve watched just because a VA I like is in them.
I feel like this kind of elitism towards dubs comes from people who grew up in that era when dubs sucked, but haven’t noticed that times have changed since then.
Do you have a list of groups who do subs like these? Or at least a few group names to look out for, after watching Bleach with subs like these I’ve become spoiled 😂
Sorry, I don’t have a list like this but I think this particular subs were made by the FFFansub group.
I always appreciate good subs but I never went into the rabbit hole of subbing groups. I only know a few names that make sure that subs aren’t terrible.
Maybe it would be a good idea to make a dedicated post for that?
