Fansub Review: [Chihiro] Kamisama no Memochou (Episode 03)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Much better than EveTaku’s and UTW’s releases. Surprised?

File size: 183 MB

Release format: MKV

Japanesiness: Honorifics. Japanese name order.

Karaoke.

Typesetting.

This makes no sense. Literally, none.

This phrasing is… egh. What does “pushing your love onto one another” even mean?

This wording is bad. You can have some fun with these guys’ lines. They’re comic relief, so have at it.

“Yes! We’ll do our manly best!”

Coming off the previous line (“However, even if we do that, we can’t guarantee their safety.”), this should be “Of course we can’t. They’re a front company for the yakuza.”

 

Watchability: Quite watchable. There’s nothing much to prevent you from enjoying the experience of the show.

Overall grade: A-

I know that EveTaku and UTW have super sugoi staff. But this is what happens when you aren’t racing your subs to see who can get the most ESL viewers. Chihiro’s release is hands-down the best for this show that I’ve seen and I’d suggest going with their release for this series.

0 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Chihiro] Kamisama no Memochou (Episode 03)”

  1. Another solid release for us! Woot! Wait, am I the only one that takes pride in the work that a group I belong to produces? I don’t work on KamiMemo, but I have to say that I’m ecstatic about the quality of work Chihiro has produced thus far.

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  2. Episode 03 shouldn’t be using ED1. ED1 is unique to Episode 1 so far. Episodes 02 and 03 use ED2. Did Chihiro do their chapters wrong, or did you just use the wrong ED file/screenshot?

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  3. I think this is a prime example on why seperating the OP & ED from the episode should NOT be done, and why it went “out of style” around two years ago.

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    • Did it go out of style? See, people typically download an entire series from the same group. Which means ordered chapters are going to significantly reduce the filesizes for the series, with no detrimental effects for most watchers.

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        • Whenever people talk about “oh, filesize doesn’t matter, storage space is cheap”, they always seem to neglect download speeds, bandwidth caps…

          I’m not a big fan of ordered chapters, but they do result in lower total file size without a reduction in video quality, which for people with very slow connections or a low bandwidth cap can be important.

          No one’s forced to download our release. If you don’t want ordered chapters, just grab UTW or EveTaku. It doesn’t hurt anyone to have another option available that uses OCs.

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        • 1. Good for you w your hi-speed internet connection
          2. Not everyone want to watch op/ed
          3. If I can get it smaller… why should i get it bigger?

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  4. I _am_ from Evetaku, so this may begin to sound a little biased (and to be honest, it probably is), but…

    One of the things that I think needs mentioning is that the program airs on Fridays, Evetaku and UTW get it out on Saturdays, and that Chihiro releases on Monday/Tuesdays. I think this is something that should be mentioned.

    Let’s take a look at release dates, shall we?

    Episode 1:
    Evetaku: July 3rd (v2 July 3rd)
    UTW: July 11th
    Chihiro: July 9th
    Episode 2:
    Evetaku: July 16th (v2 July 17th, v3 July 17th)
    UTW: July 16th
    Chihiro: July 19th
    Episode 3:
    Evetaku: July 23rd
    UTW: July 23rd
    Chihiro: July 26th

    Consistently, Chihiro releases at least 3 days later than the fastest release (either UTW/Evetaku). If you’re going to release 3 days later, then you’ve got 3 more days to do your work. As a result, the translator can spend more time perfecting those translations, the editor can mull over and check lines even more, the timer and typesetters can near-perfect their job, and the QCer can take his/her time making sure there’s no scene bleeds or frame mishaps. It’s no wonder that these releases are going to be better, because generally more time on a project means more output quality.

    Some people want to watch their content as soon as possible, whether it be a liking to the show or that they want to not look like a fool on /a/. Others are willing to wait a while to let those who take their time proofing their release do their stuff, because they’re going to get a good (though somewhat late) release. This is a difference that matters, and I think it’s a difference that your recommendation neglects, Dark_Sage. Chihiro’s release may have the best english, the best typesetting, the best karaoke, whatever. However, they _do_ have a 3 day turnaround time, whereas most fansub groups only have 1 or 2.

    As a result, for high-quality releases, and possibly the select group at the end of the season, once all the episodes have been aired, Chihiro gets my nod as well. However, for the group of people that want to watch their anime as soon at it is available, while still being able to enjoy it wholeheartedly, I don’t think that the 3 day turnaround time sets a good mark, when Evetaku and UTW release in just 1 day.

    If everyone was fine with waiting 3 or 4 days for a release, then we’d all do it, since we’d be able to bring people extremely high quality content. But there’s a reason why we don’t, and that reason is to appeal to those who wish to watch their anime as soon as possible.

    I apologize if this comes off as mere hate: I’m just throwing in my thoughts on the matter, given the release patterns.

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    • You can dress it up all you like, but releasing “for the group of people that want to watch their anime as soon as it is available” is just a race to be the first group to release the episode.

      You sound pretty bitter that a group who took their time over their release got a better ‘grade’ than your own. Quality is quality, and should be recognised as such – whether it takes five hours or five days to come out.

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    • To be fair, speed has nothing to do with quality.

      I watched Chihiro’s ep1+2, scanned through Monokage’s ep1. I don’t think their translation was better than mine (or Evetaku’s), even if they had the extra time and the ability to use ours as reference (or at least as mistake-checker).

      Non-creative editing (grammar/spell check/format etc), on the other hand, is more black and white, and extra time definitely helps in spotting out errors.

      If they did a good job in it, they deserve a better grade. Although, it might help to have different standards for slowsubs ^^;

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      • Exactly. I’m not trying to argue against their grade (which they wholeheartedly deserve), I’m trying to argue for the seemingly non-existant division between speedsubs and slowsubs.

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    • Perhaps you didn’t read the whole review? This is in the last paragraph-
      “I know that EveTaku and UTW have super sugoi staff. But this is what happens when you aren’t racing your subs to see who can get the most ESL viewers.”

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      • Perhaps you didn’t read the next line? “Chihiro’s release is hands-down the best for this show that I’ve seen and I’d suggest going with their release for this series.” Nowhere in that line do I see any notion, mention, warning, etc. of the difference between speedsubs and slowsubs.

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        • And why should there be? Are you admitting that if you took your time you could do better? If you rush at the detriment of the quality of you release why do you care what the review says in the first place? We take our time, cause we know the end result is better. If people want the first release they will choose between UTW and EveTaku. Since our releases are 3 days later we’ll be overlooked. If they want the better rated release they will wait for ours. Unless you are planning to re-edit your scripts in the 2-3 days between the 2 releases there’s no point in differentiating between the speed subs, and the slowsubs.

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          • Points taken.

            I don’t detriment quality; in fact, I value it as much as you do. However, I _do_ value speed more than you do, apparently.

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      • I agree. I will not work on speed subs. I take as long as it takes to try to do it right. I don’t always succeed, but that’s what I do.

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    • Then, Chiki is A Tier for be speedsub and HorribleSubs the way to go (S Tier of course for be Simulcast)? No, quality is quality, if you can get quality and a fast release, better. Some people wait for the best or favorite release, and others go with the first release (inclusive Chiki or Ayako). I like more the UTW release, they have the best typesetting and quality encode (Chihiro have standar encoding, and EveTaku don’t have .ts =/).

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      • I’m not saying that speed is everything. I’m saying that speed counts for something. Otherwise, a group that takes a whole month per episode can be compared _equally_ to a group that takes a day.

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          • Well here’s my 5 cents if it’s worth anything. If you can take 3 days to release an episode and claim it’s better quality, please for the love of god put some effort into typesetting, or at least find a typesetter who is decent.

            Yes typesetting isn’t everything but if you can spend 3 days releasing an episode due to working on the script, you could at least put some equivalent effort into typesetting.

            Here is the biggest problem, and for an example I’ll pick on the Title (Kamisama…) and Episode Title. Is it really that hard to find a similar english font, even if you don’t have the Japanese font?

            Here’s a hint, both the episode title and the english for the show title use the same typeface (I’m not quite sure on what they used for the Kanji, but it’s definitely a Pop variant.)

            I approximately matched the english to a Dynafont typeface, DFCraftDou-W3. I used the G variant personally because the glyphs are spaced more proportionally than the regular and the P variants.

            It’s either that exact typeface or another font maker uses the same style for their English glyphs. Either way for the purposes of typesetting a fansub it can be considered a perfect match.

            Typesetting isn’t rocket science, but it does require some finesse, and if you are willing to take your time releasing something at least make the whole package good, not just the parts you deem more worthwhile than the others.

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          • I can’t reply to ar, but if I’m right replying to myself should make my comment show below his and accomplish the same effect.

            I have no control over the typesetting. I have voiced my concerns about some of our typesetting, but honestly we are lacking in experienced typesetters. I have next to no experience doing it, and wouldn’t even want to touch anything meant for release. I believe Kuzu has been doing the typesetting himself after he finishes TLing for the time being.

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          • Those are TSed using a different font. We’re not sure why it’s not displaying properly for different displays, however. I may just release the font. I have been muxing it in.

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        • Yup. You can compare the quality without problem, because is a personal election of the fansub if they will dedicate more or less time to the sub. And of course, is a personal election too if the leecher prefer wait for a certain group, or download a speedsub.

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          • You need certain time for do a good job, don’t so much time, only few hours and good team cordination. And slow don’t be necesary quality, some slow releases are slow for so much reasons (illness, problems, fun, life, not serius bussiness, etcetera).

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          • >personal election of the fansub if they will dedicate more or less time to the sub.

            Yes, but the amount of time you dedicate also sets some standards for you. When you go out to buy a DVD of some anime, you expect the subs to be pretty damn good. When you buy a science fiction novel, you’re expecting that book to be a science fiction novel, not a romantic 19th century piece of literature. When you buy some clothes, you’re expecting those clothes to be wearable, and not drastically shrink in the wash.

            Different speeds have different standards, and I think it’s unfair to audiences to assume universal standards. Yes, English has universal standards, but 10 mistakes in a release that had been worked on for 6 hours is a whole lot different than 10 mistakes in a release that had been worked on for 3 months.

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        • Speed counts for fuck all.

          Unless you expect mistakes to be ignored since you release the episode within xx hours.

          Why shouldn’t a group that takes a month be compared to a group that takes a day? I’m sure you’d be fucking smug if your release got a better grade than that of a group who took longer.

          End of the day, a quality release that takes three days is better than a rushed release that takes a few hours.

          Besides, can you even prove that a three-day release has had more man-hours put into it than a six-hour release? Staff availability can slow a group, so a ‘speedsub’ release could actually have been worked on for the same amount of time as a ‘slowsub’ release.

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          • Points taken. However, I’m not saying speed beats everything. I’m saying that speed has to be worth something. Otherwise, we’d all be taking 2 weeks with releases, making them perfect.

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        • You weren’t here last season then, where I argued against choosing GotWoot’s releases, even though they had the best subs. Even though I was in the fucking group. Why? Because they were going at absurd levels of slow.

          And then when I was asked to review one group’s releases which were a month behind I started off my interview like this:

          Competent release? Yes. Good, even. But time-to-market is everything, guys. If you can’t manage to release your episodes in a timely manner, I think it’s time to disband and let your staff move on to bigger and better things.

          I told them to give up fansubbing because they were too fucking slow. Three days is not a long time to wait. Three days is not even relevant to this debate.

          Mybe this is just me being hopeful, but I expect that people who actually take the time to read fansub reviews here are going to be capable of weighting quality vs. speed and coming to a decision of their own. To some degree, this site is about my recommendations as to the best group’s subs.

          But a large part of these reviews is providing enough information for people to make informed decisions on their own about what they want to watch. You think I care about file size? Think I just toss it up there because it makes my reviews look cute? No. People told me that they make decisions on which group to get based on file size. Watchability? Karaoke? Japanesiness? Typesetting? Those are all areas which help people come to a decision.

          I wouldn’t mind adding a section for release speed. I actually had that feature in my earlier reviews this season. But calculating it out is too much work and groups have variable release speeds, which pretty much renders it irrelevant.

          I’ll mention speed when I find it to be exceedingly relevant, but I’m going to leave the speed vs. quality balance decisions to my capable readership. They can handle it.

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          • Thanks for your input. I guess what it comes down to is varying priorities in what matters in releases (speed? quality? reputation? typesetting? karaoke?), and varying ways of, as you said, making the “speed vs. quality balance decisions”.

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          • I agree with D_S here. It’s practically up to us to actually decide on which group to lean towards for a show. The only show i’m excited for in this season is Dantalian. I’m satisfied with Whine-Subs for it. And i download and watch as soon as it’s out.

            As for the other shows, I’ll wait for the season to end, then look to reviews as to the best subs at the end. That way, I’ll get quality, and won’t need to wait to watch the whole show.

            Those who watch as the show releases, let them decide which group. Meanwhile, you guys just do the best job you can, and D_S should just review.

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          • To me, speed subbing has always compared to making love to your lady. In and out because you got yours is speed subbing. Taking the time to make sure she has been brought to satisfaction is the quality way of subbing.
            I realize that some of you out there may not know what I’m talking about. Sorry.

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  5. Re: The promises/protection line.

    That’s essentially the same translation I got. It didn’t make sense to me, either, but that’s what I heard. I haven’t seen what 8th put for that line in UTW’s release. :

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    • That line makes no sense to begin with in Japanese. It’s not really Chihiro’s fault that line made no sense.

      She probably meant “forced protection” = “confinement”, but we also played it safe and left it to audience interpretation: “Promises and protection are sometimes the same.”

      I would imagine the scriptwriter messed up while trying to adapt from the novel.

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      • I don’t think the scriptwriter “messed up” since I can make sense of that line. I also asked a Japanese person I know (a recently recruited tl/tlc/qc at Chihiro) and when I questioned them about this line, they said:
        “I’m sorry! I should have picked up on that miss when I did TLC. It should hopefully be fixed for the batch.”
        I forgot to ask what the fix will be but it shows that people understood the line in Japanese so I doubt it was a mistake.

        Basically, her speech is saying that no one is to blame as both sides were at fault. She restrained her from making the call so it’s understandable that she went against it, but having broken the promise, she couldn’t protect her. (ie. breaking promise => can’t protect, keeping promise => will protect.) So, keeping promises and providing protection overlap each other.

        The Japanese used here is not simple, so it’s understandable that even TLers will get confused.

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        • That explanation makes no sense whatsoever, especially given the previous sentence “People will resist oppression.”

          Anyway, I’ve done some more research, and it turns out we all translated wrong.

          The word “hogo” was 「反故」, not 「保護」.

          This line was supposed to be “Making and breaking promise are sometimes the same thing” = “Some promises simply can’t be kept.”

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          • That TL is not quite right.
            Okay, just to verify, I asked the guy I mentioned before for an explanation.

            “When you first showed me the line, I also thought it was ‘the making and breaking promises’ like 8th, but as soon as I listened to it together with the previous line in context, that made no sense (in Japanese). You’re actually correct (so don’t be insulted ^^), but you didn’t word it quite well so 8th probably got confused. The use of the connection ‘ga’ with the ‘tokitoshite’ is what’s probably causing the problem. In this context, promises is referring to the ‘oppression’ (or whatever word was used previously) therefore the meaning is actually: ‘oppression and protection are one and the same.’ In other words, oppression is sometimes required to protect. Also, you want to get the tone to get across your message as well. This is a non-trivial TL as you’d expect from an anime targeting adults (with adult topics). Of course, I may be wrong here, so I may ask my parents or some friends of mine.”

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          • That was enlightening. You’re right, just Googled and people seem to be quoting the line as 約束と反故. I’ll go change that.

            *checks line off of Big List o’ BSed Lines*

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    • @NSnow

      「抑圧されれば人は抗う。悲しいが、時として約束と反故は一体なのだよ」

      Your TLC still doesn’t seem to realize that “protect” was a mistake, a term Alice never said. It’s “broken promise”.

      Either way, if he thinks “ga” in that line magically replaces a word in previous sentence, you’re going to need a new one who speaks Japanese.

      Even if “hogo” was “protect”, which it wasn’t, “ga” is clearly connected to “kanashii”, “kanashii GA” = “It’s the sad truth, BUT” or “Unfortunately”.

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      • Actually, it still doesn’t make sense to me. 約束を反故にする is the usual phrase, but not when を is replaced with a と.

        Also, “Making and breaking promise are sometimes the same thing” = “Some promises simply can’t be kept.” doesn’t seem to make sense to me, even if this is the correct TL. I kinda ‘sense’ what you mean there, but on a closer inspection, I don’t see how you equate both phrases together. Are you saying that some promises are made to be broken? Or do you mean that by making one promise, you would be breaking another?

        (Oh, I didn’t actually watch the episode, so I don’t know the situation. I’d appreciate it if you could explain to me what’s happening XD)

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        • Yeah, it’s definitely not a common usage, but you know Alice and how she occasionally talks in almost riddle-like fashion.

          “Some promises simply can’t be kept” is a little over-interpretation on my part to better match the previous sentence that can be interpreted as
          “People will inevitably resist when oppressed.”

          I think the promise here is Alice’s terms when she took the case: “Don’t contact your father”. Meo is forbidden from contacting her father, so inevitably, she ended up resisting.
          “Don’t contact your father” was a promise Meo made, and also a promise made to be broken at the same time (since people inevitably resist when oppressed). Shorten this, and you get “Some promises simply can’t be kept”.

          “Making a promise would lead to breaking of another” would be a much more straightforward interpretation, but it doesn’t apply in context.

          “Protect” instead of “breaking promise” would make sense by itself if over-interpreted as “confinement” as I originally thought (or “promise” = “oppression” theory, which is the same thing), but out of context and out of the blue no matter how you twist it. This would mean the scriptwriter messed up adaptation.

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          • > “Making a promise would lead to breaking of another” would be a much more straightforward interpretation, but it doesn’t apply in context.

            I agree with you, as this is actually misleading, since it would imply that ANOTHER promise has been made, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

            Actually, another interpretation just sparked up in my mind. Maybe what she wanted to say was “Making promises and breaking them are two sides of a coin.” Depending on the situation they are in, they might either keep the promises they make, or break them as easily as they had made the promises. This interpretation would be a better fit to the the original line, in the same sense as “Good and evil are the same”, where it depends on your stand point.

            Putting the context in, maybe Meo intended to keep her promise of not contacting her father initially, but when things got serious she broke it. Of course, since I didn’t watch the show, I might be making up my own story here, so please do tell me if things happened differently in the show.

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      • Okay, well, I thought I should post here as well before things got messing. 8thSin seems to hate me or something?

        Firstly, I’m not NSnow’s TLC. NSnow doesn’t even fansub. Secondly, I seem to be a male now which also thinks magic occurs in dialogues. Obviously, that’s false. That was just a misunderstanding of what I said.
        I’d prefer it if you don’t just go bad-mouthing me, please. I’d definitely prefer to get along.

        Now, I did some searching myself. Internet sources does show some references to 約束と反故, which is just a more “relaxed”(not sure what word to use) way of saying 約束とその反故 (~promises and its violation). This means that my original TL and 8thSin’s current would be on the right track.
        Originally, this statement didn’t seem very likely to me due to how it was used so I disregarded it, but after some thought and reading 8thSin’s arguments, I can see its feasibility and it can fit into the context nicely.

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        • I can’t possibly know, and I don’t really care about the sex and group affiliations of everyone who posts here.

          I have nothing personal against you, but I do hate so-called “translators” who don’t even fluently speak the source language. It disgusts me, and you’ll see me badmouthing translation from Doki and just about every group closely associated with them. So you’ll just have to get used to it @_@

          I don’t know if you really made that “ga” and “tokitoshite” comment… it still makes no sense at all. The argument of “protection” meaning “oppression” in context is somewhat valid, but that argument has nothing to do with the presence of “ga” or “tokitoshite” in that sentence… much less the connection between those two, because there is none lol

          Excuse me if you’re a native speaker who just had a derpy moment, but seriously, this is not hard to figure out when it’s already written in kanji. D_S doesn’t even speak Japanese, and he seemed to have understood it.

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  6. The typesetter looked at this, and informed me the font wasn’t showing.
    This is how the OP should have been-
    http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c198/Fanofde4ever/Chihiro_Kami-sama_no_Memo-chou_-_OP_1280x720_H264_AAC2CF07293v2mkv_snapshot_0007_20110729_1010.png
    http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c198/Fanofde4ever/Chihiro_Kami-sama_no_Memo-chou_-_OP_1280x720_H264_AAC2CF07293v2mkv_snapshot_0055_20110729_101232.png
    I’ve fixed my copy of the OP, but ordered chapters are beyond my knowledge, so it’ll have to wait for somebody else to make an official patch.

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    • That looks a lot better. I could explain how to fix the problem (though the means to do it requires a reasonable amount of font knowledge), or you could just use the stripped jp font which is muxed in the UTW release, which I made up for the occasion. It’s mpc-hc/locale compatible and is only around ~300kb.

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      • You don’t need to strip the font. You can simply correctly set the MIME type of the font in mkvmerge to “application/x-truetype-font” from the default “application/octet-stream”.

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      • I have the font. The typesetter extracted the .ttf from the .ttc that got muxed by mistake. I extracted everything, and remuxed it with the .ttf, and it worked fine. That’s how I took those screen shots. Somebody else reworked what I did to make it work with the chapters in the existing episodes in place of the original OP. Now it’s just a matter of the decision makers to decide if we’re doing a patch, just releasing the corrected OP with the next episode, or whatever other options I may not have thought of.

        I’m just a timer. Why in the hell am I doing all of this anyway? lol

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  7. well, most of my friends prefer to watch fastest sub available, because they are fluent in Japanese.
    but for me who still learning Japanese, I prefer to watch slow sub that have better subbing than watch the fastest sub.

    well, sometimes it’s depressing anyway. like when I’m waiting for nearly 2 weeks for TWGOK II release from Chihiro, even though all my friends already watch the show long time ago. :v

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  8. Well, I don’t know why there is all this fuss about quality vs speed around there. When downloading an anime, I tend to choose the best translation available at the time, without thinking about the release time …

    And if the release for the best group is not available and that I don’t feel like waiting their average release time to watch it, then I go with whatever second best group remains, etc.

    So why bother whining about speed, since I’ll eventually archive the releases of the best group no matter when it comes out, or even rather wait for the BD ?

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  9. I don’t know who else does this, but if I’m not madly interested in a show, I’ll wait for the best subs of it as it’ll probably end up on my backlog anyway. If I’m avidly following something, I’ll get the best subs I can within a couple of days of airing, but these will then be replaced by any better ones which come out later (as I do re-watch series I like). I do tend to avoid bad subs though no matter how fast they are. What ultimately ends up on my HD is best quality fansubs for stuff that’s okay but not great, and BD rips (hopefully with subs from the best group) for stuff I really love.

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  10. Speed vs quality debate… No correct answer imo.
    I usually go for quality if I care about show, nah, even if I don’t, I can wait one day for better release however speed is VERY important in case of some special anime like Madoka, where there are hardcore spoilers everywhere every week. Whoever not named trollgg releases first wins because I simply can’t take time and read M&A related forums safely. Three days delay is unacceptable if you do anything else besides downloading anime and closing browser just after that.
    Fortunately series like Madoka are very rare and three days are just ok most of the time if the difference is big enough. Especially if I’ve got stuff to do in life and need to catch up with many series.

    I think it’s gonna be the first time when UTW releases something and I don’t watch their release. Good job Chihiro.

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  11. @Ryu
    > “Making promises and breaking them are two sides of a coin.”

    I kind of like that translation, and it’s arguably closer to the original line, but I don’t think it would mesh very well with her previous line ^^;

    Unless you can come up with a genius liberal interpretation for that too :P

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    • Well, I asked one of my parents about the line with the context provided and it looks like I didn’t understand the meaning of “反故” properly in the context of promises (that’s why it didn’t feel quite right with my original TL). I got a nice and long explanation for it in this context even with some imagery and some extra example situations for when it’ll be used. I’m now convinced. Also, yes, I do TLs based on “feel” since I learnt Japanese as a Japanese and English as an English speaker. I didn’t learn one language from the point of view of another so I suck at the theoretical stuff, but when I TL between the two, if I don’t feel that it conveys the same meaning then I question the correctness. The only down side is that we moved out of Japan when I was still young so I’m not good with weird phrasings, technical words, or unusual words like “反故” (as my vocabulary is on the lower end). I’d probably be better off on an easier show, I think.

      Anyway, comparing the making and breaking of promises is a bad mistake here. It fails badly at expressing the meaning behind her words. It also loses the impressiveness of that line (This line is so very Alice-like to say but with the making/breaking promise TL it ruins the deep and understanding message she is making).
      Rather than taking “反故” as breaking, it should be taken more along the lines of void/null(etc.) I need to go now, so I’ll make it quick. Make the comparison between the state of being in a promise and if the promise wasn’t ever made instead (this is also different to the cancellation of a promise since we are comparing to a state as if there never was a promise) (ie. promises can sometimes be invalidated/not promises depending on the state). “Breaking” is way too harsh/extreme for the meaning to be conveyed properly – in fact, it’s probably as far as you can get. I can think of a couple of usable words but getting the phrasing properly to get the message across is probably going to be tricky (that’s if I can even do it).
      Anyway, sorry if the last few sentences are nonsense since I rushed them before I left (and the explanation is still just floating around in my head so I’m still organising my thoughts).

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      • You seem to take that from 反故にする, which is, of course, not entirely incorrect. I think I get what you mean. You’re trying to say of two opposites, one state where a promise was made, and another state where it wasn’t, hence the null/void state. Am I right?

        Though, it seems to me that going with line is going to be rather… metaphysical. Also, how are you going to describe this anti-state in English without making the translated line horribly awkward?

        Reply
        • I think you are right.
          When TLing, there are a lot of parameters like how localised should it be, how liberal, how much analysis should be done for the audience, etc.
          I’ve been able to get a handful of possibly TLs with ranging parameters which I don’t think sounds too awkward.

          For example, the one I came up with yesterday was:
          “there are times when promises need to{/should} be forgotten”
          Hopefully this gets the message across that Alice doesn’t consider a promise broken since if a promise is forgotten then it is the same as if the promise never existed (ie. there is no promise to break). Also, even if the promise is forgotten, it doesn’t change what they’ve been through ever since the promise, therefore we hopefully have the overlap where having made a promise and not having made the promise is the same.
          Well, hopefully anyway.

          Reply
  12. I think i’ll go with Chihiro for Kamisama no Memochou. Though my reason is simple, their release have a 480p MKV and better quality.

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