The Ouran Rant“2 Comments”

M. Ellis | 7:25 pm | February 3, 2009 | Rants

Every once in a while, an otaku feels alone in their opinion, and that there is no one to talk to about said opinion for fear of getting flamed. Well, to hell with that.

First, I should say that I’m not a “dub hater.” There are plenty of anime dubs out there that I adore. Code Geass, Fullmetal Alchemist (remember that when I start talking about Vic Mignogna later on), Samurai Champloo. Personally, I think the English dub of Cowboy Bebop is better than the original Japanese, so let it be known that I don’t object to dubbed anime on the basis of some purist attitude.

I do, however, get royally irked when a favorite anime of mine gets butchered as it crosses over into the U.S.

OHHC Image

Recently, I got to watch episode one of the English dub of Ouran High School Host Club (one of my favorite anime of all time), and hated the living crap out of it. I’m apparently the only one who feels this way, because every review I’ve read for the dub has been good. More than good. Glowing.

I find myself physically unable squelch my irritation with these reviews, many of which are by fans who’ve seen it in Japanese with English subtitles. Why do they not see the awfulness of this dub? I ask myself. How can they claim that it’s true to the original?

It’s not. Really. So many things were so wrong that I’m now afraid to buy the DVDs because I have no idea if FUNimation’s translation for the subtitles are as bad as their attempt at a dub. I’m going to explain why I feel this way in detail now, so if you’re not one for spoilers, please don’t read on.

1. I love Vic Mignogna. Honestly. He was brilliant as Ed Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist, and his Dark Mousy in DNAngel was freaking fantastic. I’ve heard him in many anime and each time he creates a persona that is distinct and fits his character perfectly.

Except in Ouran High School Host Club. From the second Tamaki (the president of the Host Club) opened his mouth, all I could hear was Ed Elric. And not even the cool Ed who’s about to kick someone’s ass, or waxing philosophical on the nature of life and alchemy. No, Tamaki has suddenly become the Ed who’s wailing against some stranger who happened to say something about his height.

Tamaki Suoh

Yes, Tamaki is a hyper character. Yes, at times he’s really pretty ridiculous in his enthusiasm. And, yes, any voice actor who played him would need a tremendous amount of energy. However, FUNimation forgot that Tamaki is the most popular host in the club for a reason. I had very much expected him to be, ah, smoother in his delivery. When he charms the girls you’re supposed to forget about all the wackiness of his personality for a split second and be impressed with his skills. That doesn’t happen in the dub, and it’s a heartbreaker.

Personally, I don’t think it’s Vic’s fault. We all know he’s a fantastic voice actor, so something must have happened before he even stepped up to the mic. Poor writing and poor direction being right up at the top of my list.

Hitatchiin Twin image

2. The Hitachiin twins. This is a minor quibble, especially in relation to everything else, but the voices were too distinct for Hikaru and Kaoru. Part of their collective issue is the inability of anyone to tell them apart, but if they have easily distinguishable voices then it becomes a rather pointless issue. They also seem a lot nicer in the American version. The Japanese “…he doesn’t even pass the most basic visual criteria…even if you take off his glasses, his eyes will look small…” is converted to the much friendlier “…he’s not going to get very far with the ladies if he doesn’t look the part, you know. He’s not exactly host club material, but maybe if we took off his glasses it’ll help.”

How are the twins supposed to soften their edges over the course of the series if they aren’t sharp to begin with?

Haruhi image

3. Ah, Haruhi. The focal character of OHSHC. A character whose gender neutral appearance and attitude leads the host club to believe she’s a boy when she meets them the first time. Her voice actor isn’t…bad. The thing I like about Maaya Sakamoto’s performance in the original is that Haruhi really could have been a boy or a girl in their early high school years. It worked. It doesn’t work so well with Caitlin Glass in the English version.

When you hear it, you can see how it could work, and you can hear the effort that went into making Haruhi sound gender neutral. Unfortunately, she ends up sounding more like a forty year old woman with a slightly husky voice. Kinda cool in a way, considering Glass is only twenty-eight years old.

Watching the first episode, I figured it was just the shock of hearing a character I’d heard so many times with a different voice. It happens. Usually, if an anime dubbed in two languages is good in both, the favorite tends to be whatever you happened to watch first. I was prepared to let it go because, like I said, Glass wasn’t bad as Haruhi. However, since she was also the voice director for OHSHC, she doesn’t get a free pass like Vic and frankly is probably to blame for a great many of the show’s shortcomings.

The idiot script writers don’t get a pass, either. Which brings us to the next point—

4. The script. Oh. My. God. Whatever chance Caitlin Glass’s Haruhi had of winning me over was killed with one simple sentence:

“I know just the story.”

The American Haruhi says this during her first stint as a host for the club. She says it right after an internal freak out about not knowing what to say to the young women patiently waiting for her to converse with them. They ask her why she joined the host club, and Haruhi remembers her debt. Then she says to herself, “I know just the story.” The very next scene has her talking about her deceased mother, making Haruhi look wildly manipulative and much less sympathetic, as if she’s using the loss of her mother to gain customers within the club.

Just to clarify, “I know just the story” does not exist in the Japanese version.

Kyouya image

Kyouya has an appalling line as well, right at the beginning of the episode. Intellectually, Kyouya is supposed to be the smartest one in the show. He has files on every student at Ouran High School because that’s how he operates. He knows that Haruhi is female from the start. How could he not? That would be why his “Haruhi is a woman” light bulb goes off first. So when he says “Hikaru, Kaoru, I believe this young man is in the same class as you, isn’t he?” it flushes a big piece of Kyouya’s character down the toilet. And when the twins reply that “he’s [Haruhi] shy, he doesn’t act very sociably…” it makes little sense when Kyouya tells them “Well that wasn’t very polite.” and makes NO sense when Kyouya’s light bulb goes off as soon as he says that. Because of this, the sign that pops up in front of Kyouya at the end of the episode declaring he knew Haruhi’s gender from the start is just confusing. Everyone had a specific moment of discovery. Now Kyouya doesn’t.

I realize that the Japanese language provides more opportunity for gender neutral sentence structures, and that sometimes it’s hard to translate that into an American format. But seriously, how hard would it have been to change “I believe this young man” to “I believe this guest”?

And whose decision was it to keep some honorifics and leave out others? “Chan” is okay and understandable by the masses but “san” and “kun” have to go? What sense does that make?

5. Final piece of this rant has to do with the last line of the episode, which belongs to Haruhi:

“I’ve got it. I’ll just call everyone dude and bro now.”

There’s really nothing to say about that one. It’s just as stupid in context as it is out of context.

Anime Review: Kigeki (Comedy)“0 Comments”

M. Ellis | 10:59 pm | September 12, 2008 | Reviews, anime

Rating: 5 out of 5 Pocky sticks.

Quick Summary: To save her village from destruction by an invading force, a young girl runs through the Black Forest to find a legendary swordsman living in the ruins there. The swordsman only accepts a certain genre of book as payment for his services, and the girl believes she knows which kind to give him.

Review: Kigeki is one of four anime shorts included in the Sweat Punch (also known as Deep Imagination) series released by Studio4°C. The title translates to “Comedy,” which is something the viewer needs to know while watching it, which is why when it’s printed out for English speaking audiences it’s listed as “Kigeki (Comedy).”

While the other three shorts in the series are very cool in their own right, Kigeki will always be my favorite. The ten minute gothic fairytale features enthralling animation that captures the darkness, haunting beauty, and touches of humor present throughout the story. The use of Ave Maria in its soundtrack intensifies the atmosphere, providing a perfect backdrop for the characters.

So many elements come together in this anime. The young girl is stubborn without being annoying, naïve but still brave. The swordsman seems bookish on the service, but there’s a reason he’s a legend.

I could go on, but since Kigeki is not currently licensed in the United States, I have the opportunity to post it in this review so you can decide for yourself.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Featured AMV: “Frail as Winter’s End” by DreamingAllDay“0 Comments”

M. Ellis | 11:12 am | May 4, 2008 | Featured AMVs

AMV Title: Frail as Winter’s End

Creator: DreamingAllDay

Anime: Bleach

Music: My Sweet Prince by Placebo

Hi DreamingAllDay, thank you for letting us feature your video! What is the premise of “Frail as Winter’s End?”

Since love and fear can hardly exist together,
if we must choose between them,
it is far safer to be feared than loved.
(Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince)

The song choice of “My Sweet Prince” isn’t one you hear in AMV’s often. What lead you to choose it?

I often talk with my friends about music, what songs they and I heard and liked and this is one of the songs I found out about after one such talk with a friend of mine

Did the song choice come before or after you developed the concept for the video?

It depends. It happens that I hear a song and then get “kicked by a Muse” and suddenly a story, a movie, starts to unfold in my head. Or I have a story that I want to tell and then search for a piece of music that would help me best to narrate the tale. For me, in most cases, I have a story first. And so was it also with this Byakuya/Renji amv.

When I wrote you, you apologized for any possible misunderstandings with your answers to my question, because English is your second language. To tell you the truth, I never would have guessed. What country are you from?

I’m from Slovakia

Does that impact how you approach your amv’s?

hmmm interesting question. As I already mentioned, when creating fan-videos or amvs, I often search for the music that would best help me to tell the story I want to share. And it’s more often the case that the music is not instrumental but has also lyrics. For me, it’s important to also understand the lyrics so I can tell the tale and that’s why I pick the songs I can understand. Of course there are also the “Muse kicks me while listening to music” times and it might be during a song in a language I don’t speak - for example French - and then I would try to search for the translation on the web. But of course I would need to find a good translation [either in English, German, Slovak or Czech] before I would feel comfortable enough to use it. (I wouldn’t dare to tell a tale with lyrics translated by babelfish ^^ although the site is helpful it’s really not meant for lyrics translations)

What was your favorite part of creating “Frail as Winter’s End”?

To tell my story. That’s always the best part about creating any fan-video or amv. Or maybe one could even say it’s the best about creating anything. To tell people the things from your point of view, to show how you see it, to tell your part of a tale.

In this amv I really wanted to show how I see the relationship between the Bleach characters, Byakuya and Renji, the dynamics of the relationship, especially Byakuya’s part (”it is far safer to be feared than loved”), Renji’s reactions to Byakuya’s way of seeing and doing things in a certain way, all the obsession, hurt and confusion that comes from it. (Although, I let the story have its little happy-end and Byakuya/or both come to understand about certain things better..) But I don’t want to talk much about it, I rather let people watch the amv and let the story unfold for themselves. ^^

All right then! Let’s show it:

I like this video more every time I watch it. Thank you for letting us feature it.

To watch more of DreamingAllDay’s videos, check out their YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/dreamingallday

Death Note on the Big Screen“0 Comments”

M. Ellis | 10:18 pm | April 27, 2008 | anime

Death Note on the Big Screen

In my opinion, Death Note is one of the best mangas/animes out there. Even though I absolutely hated how it ended in both the manga and the anime (same outcome, slightly different treatments), I still go back to it again and again.

Death Note follows Light Yagami as he attempts to use a supernatural notebook in order to remake the world. As long as he has the name and face, any person whose name he puts down in the book will die. Light is brilliant (and utterly terrifying) as he uses the notebook on criminals he believes the world would be better without, and he uses these deaths to scare the hell out of anyone who even thinks of stepping over the line he’s drawn.

The string of deaths draws the attention of an equally brilliant detective known only by the letter L, and thus begins one of the most famous rivalries in anime history. Neither man knows the identity of the other, and they must race to discover the truth because the one who fails will die.

the story is dark, epic, enthralling. It’s also a live action movie that will be shown nationwide on the silver screen in the States for two days in May. Fathom Events is hosting the party, and the preview looks pretty freaking cool:

Tickets are already on sale at wwww.fathomevents.com. Movie shows May 20th and May 21st. If you’re a fan of Death Note, you really can’t miss this. The animation of Ryuk (the Shinigami attached to the notebook) alone is worth the admission fee. If you’re not a fan, pick up the manga or catch a few episodes of the show and chances are you will be. Either way, making sure to catch this movie will help to ensure more anime-based films and anime (Bleach in June!) are brought here and shown in more theaters, so go and support otaku obsession.

Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust“0 Comments”

M. Ellis | 9:22 pm | April 1, 2008 | Reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5 Pocky sticks

Quick Summary: In the distant future, D is hired to bring back the kidnapped daughter of a human aristocrat. If Charlotte is still human, he is to return her alive. If the girl has been turned, he’s to give her a quick and merciful death and return the body to her family. The Marcus brothers, another group of hunters, have also been hired, so D has to contend with their interference while unraveling the mystery of Charlotte’s relationship with a badass vampire sporting bulletproof wings.

Review: Vampire Hunter D – Bloodlust has all the trappings of the classic vampire genre: bats, crosses, coffins. It also has something not a lot of vampire flicks have—a human/vampire hybrid with a talking head embedded into the palm of his hand.

D is a dhampir who hunts vampires. Exactly why he does this is never fully explained, and is a little hard to understand since both the vampires and the humans hate him, but the bags of gold coins might have a little something to do with it.

The cash oversimplifies things, though. To be fair, you are never really sure why D does anything, and that’s part of his supreme coolness. Not much can shake him up, and his face stays more or less expressionless throughout the movie. This makes it all the more fabulous when his dark side opens up and you see his fangs in all their glory.

Because he’s such a straight man, D’s loud and obnoxious Left Hand is a vital character in the story. Without him, we’d have no idea what was going on, since Hand is the chief source of exposition. He’s also the comic relief as he tries to talk D out of participating in numerous dangerous feats or into taking a bit of blood now and then. Hand also has moments of disturbing insight into D’s motivation, which adds to the overall drama of the movie.

The Marcus brothers, while pretty cool in their own right, are not nearly as interesting. They have one straightforward desire—get the girl and get the money. Borgoff’s the leader and hence chain smokes the cigars as he fires silver arrows from a high-powered crossbow. Kyle deftly handles throwing weapons that can also turn into crosses. Nolt wields a GIANT silver tipped sledgehammer with surprising swiftness. Grove astral projects with the aid of an unnamed green liquid delivered into his veins via syringe. Whatever the liquid is, it puts a look of pure bliss on his face as he obliterates his enemies, which is hella fun to watch, but it’s also causing his body to wither away, making him weaker with every use.

So, uh, don’t do drugs, kids.

The last member of the Marcus brothers is actually a sister (though she’s not related to them by blood) named Leila. She carries a suped up pistol and has issues outside of money, but D figures her out almost instantly.

These people get into D’s way a lot. He’s pretty good about not killing them.

The chase after Charlotte and Baron Meier Link (the vamp who snatches her) winds throughout a post apocalyptic land. They travel in a black carriage and leave a trail of carnage in their wake. Bit-by-bit, you learn that Charlotte actually loves Link and is with him by choice, then things start to get complicated. For D, anyway. Not so much for the Marcus brothers, since they’re just after the cash and they’re confident in what they gotta do as they pursue their mission without mercy.

This anime is right up there among my favorites. The violence is stylized and bloody enough to hit that horror button, and the anime itself is still gorgeous eight years after its original release. The only thing that tends to bother me about it is the relationship between Charlotte and Link. Charlotte’s pretty bland through most of the movie and you find yourself wondering what’s so special about her. Link gets points for being a hot vampire and being able to fight/defend with his wings, but in a world where the vamps are very obviously the enemies of humans everywhere, you also have to wonder what Charlotte saw in him that convinced her running away from home was a good idea. This might be explained in more detail in the novel this anime is based on (Bloodlust is based on #3 in a 17 volume series), but I have not read it yet so I cannot say for sure.

But to hell with it. You know they love each other, and because of that you have mixed feelings about whether D should succeed in his mission. This is a good thing.

The fight scenes and bloody twists make up for the lack of back story. D, while vicious, is also playful and full of grace whenever he wields his sword. There’s a reason the entire Vampire Hunter D franchise is a cult classic, and Bloodlust does the genre well.

Otaku Glossary“2 Comments”

M. Ellis | 9:22 pm | March 14, 2008 | Glossaries

Welcome to my Otaku Glossary!

I’m not an expert on, um, anything really, so these terms are defined as I understand them. I picked them because these are the words that most often give my mainstream friends that confused puppy head-tilt thing when I say them. Still, I know there’s lots more out there, so if you have your own term and definition, post them as a comment on this blog and if I like it, I’ll bump it up to this main article with full credit to you.

I’ll also be adding my own definitions as they come to me, so check back often.

Here goes. At first I tried to do this in alphabetical order, but some definitions really need to be listed next to each other, so I’m using a more…intuitive organizational system:

Fandom: A kingdom of fans. Muwahahaha! Fandoms can be loyal to a show, a single character, or a pair/group of characters.

Fan art/ fanfiction: Love your anime? Going through withdrawal now that it’s over? Or maybe you just want to see them in situations that would ne-hehe-EVER be featured in the show?

That’s where fan art and fanfiction come in. Here, scenarios are set in your favorite anime world with the characters you know and love. Sometimes it’s a simple expansion of the original. Sometimes it skews into directions that will scar you for life. Although none of it is likely ever to be considered “cannon,” a lot of it is freaking amazing, as proven by the number of authors and artists who’ve gone pro with their OC’s.

OC: Original Character.

Bishounen (bishie): Mmm. Literally translated to “beautiful boy,” but here in the west it’s commonly used to refer to any transcendentally hot guy. Sometimes “biseinen” is used for the adult men, but “bishie” is a much more common usage and tends to span the ages here. Example of a bishie:

Urahara Kisuke by Eldanis.
http://eldanis.deviantart.com/

Bishoujo: Female counterpart of a bishounen. Literally “beautiful young girl.” Often replaced with bijin (beautiful person) to refer to beautiful women. Not really my area, so I don’t have an image at this time, but I’m working on it.

AMV: Anime Music Video. Creators set their favorite images and clips to their favorite songs. These videos are then posted to sites like YouTube or entered in AMV contests where you can watch them on the big screen. It’s much fun, and here is one of my current faves:

Glomp: To show your affection in a glorious tackle-hug-kiss combo. Also works as a noun.

Pocky: Food of the gods. A thin cookie-cracker stick thing that’s dipped in sweet goodness. Comes in dozens of flavors, but the most popular are probably chocolate and strawberry.

Otaku: A hard-core anime fan. The original connotation of this word wasn’t complimentary (think pasty nerd cast in the light of a single computer), but now many people wear it as a badge of honor (like Larry and Andy Wachowski). Note: Eating Pocky does not make you Otaku. Being able to list five animes where a character has eaten Pocky makes you Otaku. Bonus cred if you can also name the flavor.

Cosplay: Dressing up as a character from your favorite anime.

OTP: One True Pair. This is the anime couple who, in your heart of hearts, you know belong together for all time. The pair doesn’t have to have actually hooked up in the show—see Fan art/ fan fiction above.Warning: If you choose an OTP, be prepared to defend it from rabid fans ticked off that you’re messing with their OTP. If things get rough, do not despair—pretty much every pairing imaginable has its own fandom. They’ll be more than willing to make you feel right at home.

Squee: The appropriate sound to make when your favorite character takes their shirt off.

Yaoi: bishie on bishie lovin’. It’s actually a lot more complicated than that, but the whole genre of yaoi is so complex that it will be getting its own glossary pretty soon.

Yuri: The feminine counterpart to Yaoi. Conceivably this will also get its own glossary, but since I’m not very familiar with the genre, I’ll have to do proper research first.

What’s Anime?“2 Comments”

M. Ellis | 9:59 pm | February 27, 2008 | anime

I got an email a few weeks ago from the editor of Crucial Taunt asking me to write an anime column. I stared at the question for a while, wondering what the hell that meant. What sort of anime? Shounen? Shoujo? Mecha? Yaoi? (Please, please let it be yaoi.) Would I be able to comment on anime related topics, like manga and conventions?

He told me sure, just keep it PG-13.

Which, sadly, obliterated a third of the material I had been primed to write about.

Yaoi is the genre of anime I’m probably most familiar with (I write the prose counterpart), so we’ll definitely hit that at some point, but I’m thinking in this first article I should try and define anime in general. For clarity, the explanations and terms I use through my columns will be the American interpretation of those concepts, and might not be canon for those anime purists/traditionalists out there. Most of this stuff is also filtered through my own experiences, and by no means should be taken as hard-and-fast rules. That said, here goes:

Anime is a style of animation (whether a series or a feature length movie) imported from Asia. When I was a kid—and I’m about to date myself here—a common term for it was Japanimation. Then people realized that other countries were putting out quality works as well, and the accepted term quickly shifted to anime. Now not only Asian countries produce it—many Western countries have noted the popularity of imports and have started to produce original works. These works (Teen Titans, Martin Mystery) are generally referred to as anime influenced, but the styles are very similar.

So what exactly is the anime “style”? It’s hard to explain, since anime tends to be one of those “you know it when you see it” sort of things. I could say that anime characters have disproportionately big eyes compared to their counterparts in American cartoons, but that’s not true in works like Cowboy Bebop and Witch Hunter Robin. Could be the hair, which is known for defying the laws of physics and for colors that aren’t found in nature. Again, though, a lot of anime features realistic hair and even conservative cuts. Character body types can be tall and willowy, short and stocky, or totally muscled up, so that doesn’t help a lot.

Anime isn’t limited to a particular genre either. Just about any theme you can think of is present, from love stories to sci-fi to reinventions of biblical stories.

Art, then. Surely the art has a defining factor?

No, not so much. While there are often similarities throughout anime and anime characters, the art varies as much as the rest of it. Dark and complex like Death Note. Bright and charming like Ouran High School Host Club. Everything in between.

So what is anime? At its best, anime is fluid. It’s fun, it’s gripping, it’s emotionally evocative (even if that emotion has you screaming like a little Hannah Montana fan girl). Like any art form, it can be awe inspiring and it can so bad that you will feel moved to join an anime forum just so you can shout your displeasure to the world.

For me, anime is color infused crack. I’m totally addicted to it, and I’m hoping to have a lot of fun writing about it. With this column, I plan to cover genres, terminology, conventions. I’ll be defining a lot of terms specific to anime and anime fans (a lot better than I defined “anime,” I swear), and I plan to interview writers and post featured artists.

If all goes to plan, we’ll have a lot more addicts out there, and that will be very, very good.

Crucial Anime

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