Fansub Review: [Commie] Sword Art Online (Episode 01)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Sword Art Online is probably going to be good. Can’t tell with this episode, but the potential is there for some good shit.

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (291 MB, 10-bit)

Japanesiness: Japanese name order. No honorifics.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/5Vx5mvCe

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

 

External links.

Group website: http://commiesubs.com/

IRC channel: #[email protected]

8thsin’s translation critique: N/A

Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: http://www.ji-hi.net/su12/sao/

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: N/A

Commie’s fansub reviews: N/A

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Ending. The colors mostly made sense and changed depending on the scene. The karaoke overlapped the credits, but there’s not too much you can do about that. One line had a visual fuck-up, but I liked it overall.

Rating: Good.

 

Typesetting.

Fantastic typesetting. Truly top-tier.

You couldn’t fucking position the text slightly lower? Fucking stupid.

 

Other.

Great encode.

Are you seriously too stupid to know how to position your text? You can fucking do it with two mouse clicks in Aegisub. Jesus Christ, whoever fucked this up is retarded.

This really is the best encode I’ve ever seen. Commie should be proud.

 

Script Quality

Karaoke.

While I do acknowledge that this is a legitimate phrasing order for this particular line, I did receive a question about it, but I couldn’t answer the person who asked. That is, why exactly did you phrase this line “High I fly in my dreams” rather than “I fly high in my dreams”?

I don’t have a problem with the line, but I am interested in the answer.

 

Main Script.

What’s the point of “here” here?

Kind of understated for the goofy kinda language that seems like it’d be right at home in the anime.

Why not, “Right in the nads…” and why not put it above the Japanese text? Y’know, so it doesn’t look like shit?

Omedetto -> Grat, man. Smart translation, whoever was responsible (CR or Commie).

Ugh. This nearly made me throw up my Taco Bell. Change the second line to “We’re actually in a game.” if you don’t want to sound like you have a speech impediment.

In English, we keep it limited to just “beta”. Don’t use the full term.

This dialogue makes no sense. The main character wasn’t playing as a girl, even if you pretend that the viewer couldn’t see his avatar, because in the log-in, his character was said to be male. And if Klein is gay, we had absolutely no context for it besides this line. In addition to the poor phrasing, I’m gonna call a shitty translation followed up by a bad editor on this one.

Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Visual grade: C-

Script grade: B+

Overall grade: B-

That encode is fucking terrible. I never bitch about encodes, but holy shit, my eyes… And no, I can already see your comments on this post. I don’t care if you had a bad raw. Don’t bitch to me like I’m your fucking mother, ready to pat you on the head for any hardships you faced. You released it; take responsibility for your shit. In this case, I talked to some techy fansubbers and it’s entirely your fault for using a shitty TV source.

Yes, the script is fine. But this is anime, not a book. And if I’m seeing problems in an encode, that means there are some problems with that fucking encode.

51 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Commie] Sword Art Online (Episode 01)”

  1. > I did receive a question about it I couldn’t answer the person who asked.

    I think you forgot a period there.

    Reply
  2. please get a new color choice commie, for the line in the third kara picture so that I can read…and actually have the sub do their job. nice editing though it was well done

    Reply
  3. I don’t watch Commie nowadays because of their lazy encodes. I don’t know how it took you this long to notice how bad it looks.

    Reply
  4. I’m depending on you to show me the differences between NyanTaku and Evetaku’s SAO, Dark Sage.

    Don’t let me down.

    Reply
  5. >This nearly made me throw up my Taco Bell.

    Sure it was the release that did that and not your self-preservation instincts kicking in? In that case, you should be thanking Commie — they just saved your life, added several years to it and, I dunno, let’s also throw in raised your IQ.

    Reply
    • yeah, he basically said that Kirito has a baby-face (as opposite to his cool dude avatar), but well… kawaiiii ^___^ is always “cute”, right, right?

      Reply
  6. “I still can’t believe it, no matter how many times I see it… That we’re in a game.”

    Personally, I would just switch it around a little:

    “No matter how many times I see it, I still can’t believe… that we’re in a game.”

    Or, perhaps instead of “see it”, it should be “see this”? Since he’s talking about the place they’re in (not really sure if this would be correct though). Maybe “see this place” to avoid confusion.

    Am I a good boy?

    Reply
    • IMO, your rewrite is fine, and you also fixed the capitalization error for “that.” Show looks good, but gah…so much hype! Maybe it will live up to expectations.

      Reply
    • A more appropriate way of putting it–although yours is already an improvement upon the original–would be, “No matter how long I stare at all this, I still can’t believe we’re in a game.” It’s important to note that this is Cline’s/Klein’s first session in SAO, as he didn’t participate in the beta.

      Reply
  7. > In English, we keep it limited to just “beta”. Don’t use the full term.
    I really don’t have a problem with using “beta test”. While just “beta” is certainly more common, I’ve definitely heard the full term used on multiple occasions.

    Reply
  8. Even though your review is accurate and most of the points you make are good, there’s really no call for all the language. You can make your point and sound more serious by not cussing every few seconds. Just a tip.

    Reply
  9. I just wanted to say that the third screenshot of the karaoke isn’t really a fuckup on Commie’s side. It’s your subtitle renderer not animating the line – the outline and font colours switch places. If you don’t have animation in subtitles enabled, it looks like that gray mess.

    Reply
        • Oh, I’m sorry. You’re right, I should quit my job so that I finally have enough free time to make you happy. Thanks for helping me understand exactly how to prioritize my life.

          I got four hours of sleep on Sunday because I wanted to get that shitty show out to everyone. But it wasn’t ready. And if it’s not ready for me on a Sunday night on a week I’m going to be out of state, it won’t be fucking ready till Saturday. This includes reviews because my weekdays out of state usually consist of working, eating, sleeping, and that’s it. Take last night for example. After I “clocked out” (by shutting off my laptop), I put it down, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. I only woke up about two hours ago.

          Am I fucking pleased? No. I wasn’t born into wealth, so I have to fucking earn the chance to live well (go America capitalism life). But unless I somehow magically find my way into a better-paying job with fewer hours that I can get to within 5 minutes, you’re not going to be seeing much activity from me when my days are spent either sleeping or working.

          Reply
            • I’m spending the first free time I’ve had in a week on organizing my manga collection. Reviews and La Storia to follow whenever I’m done with that. I have over 1,000 manga, so it may be a bit but I will certainly try my best to get things done. Reviews take about two hours to make on average, so expect 2-4 tonight depending on how much caffeinated poison I drink.

              Reply
                • I’m assuming you’ve read at least 95% of your manga, so I have a question: how is the Deadman Wonderland manga? The show was pretty cool until they tried to add rising action and a climax… then it went to shit.

                  Reply
                  • Much, much, much, much better than the show. I was unbelievably disappointed when I watched the anime. They ruined it.

                    Reply
                    • Sigh. Not surprising… but still very sad. I’ll give the manga a shot, because the story and characters seemed promising. Thanks for heads’ up.

      • fuck double posting.

        You should have at least subtitle animations turned on and have buffer set to 0 so that the karaoke has animations. It’s just a simple MPC-HC option.

        Reply
        • Those are ISR options, right? Shouldn’t make a difference if he’s using CCCP and VSFilter.

          I assumed he just took a screenshot of the few frames in the middle of the animation where the line is technically unreadable. I saw that, but it didn’t bother me because you can read it fine at the start and end.

          Reply

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