Fansub Re-Review: [UTWoots] Sword Art Online (Episode 03)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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How will UTWoots fare now that they have forced our intrepid hero to use some xy-vsfilter bullshit so their subs can display properly to the 10% of people watching the show with said filter? This review will let you know!

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (483 MB, 10-bit), AVI (236 MB)

Japanesiness: Honorifics.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/Z8K90j9b

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

 

External links.

Group website: http://utw.me/  http://gotwoot-subs.net/

IRC channel: #[email protected]    #[email protected]

8thsin’s translation critique: N/A

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

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://subcompare.com/sword_art_online/

Commie’s fansub reviews: N/A

 

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening. Cunt punts are in order here; this is fucking hideous. One line at a time, no overlaps. How is this a hard rule to understand? When watching episode 2 I thought it looked bad because of my filter, but no. It’s just bad by design.

Rating: Bad.

Ending. It doesn’t lag with the filter but there’s no excuse for overlapping the credits like this. The effects were fine at least.

Rating: Okay.

 

 

Typesetting.

Top-tier typesetting from two top-tier groups. I’d expect nothing less.

 

Script Quality

Karaoke.

Kara’s fine. Good call on fixing it from the previous review.

 

Main Script.

What’s the point of one-handed here? Isn’t it clear that if you have a sword and a shield you’re using one hand for the sword and one for the shield?

one-handed sword and shield build -> sword-and-shield build

Redundant questions are still questions. Questions have question marks. End of story.

“Knights of the Blood”? The fuck is this shit?

Try “Knights of Blood”.

Great language like this almost makes me want to recommend UTWoots’s release hands-down. They really spiced up Klein’s language in a sensible way.

This makes no contextual sense. Go with something like “You sure have been grinding lately.” I’m relatively certain an information broker isn’t gonna be like “Holy shit, your level’s too high! Stop before you save us all from this virtual prison!”

I would have preferred something like “Suck my dick, jolly saint bitch.” but this is acceptable as well.

I’d normally put this is in the typesetting section but this shit needs some English loving.

“After a player dies, but before they completely disappear (within ten seconds of death), select this item from the menu. Shout “Resurrect” followed by the player’s name to revive them.”

You can have angry words with someone, but words aren’t typically described as “angry”. Why not “harsh”?

“No matter how harsh her words may be, I have to accept them.”

I wonder what they’re willing do get a Klondike Bar!

You know that feel when you strangle a hooker and hide her in your boss’s car?

Neither do I, and I don’t think this is anything like that.

Something like “Find out why scaredy-cats like me are here and the reason why we met in the first place.” would be much better for this line.

 

Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Visual grade: C+

Script grade: B-

Overall grade: B-

One thing I did quite like about this release though was that it was noticeably different from Crunchyroll’s script since Kokujin TL’d it. I enjoyed a fair number of lines better than the CR translation, but not enough for me to overlook the issues I had with the rest of the release.

Assuming Derp doesn’t blow me away, you’d probably do best to stick with NyanTaku. But we’ll see how Derp does in the next SAO review~

41 thoughts on “Fansub Re-Review: [UTWoots] Sword Art Online (Episode 03)”

  1. If I go crazy and make a group whose releases only render properly in Media Player in Haiku, will you install Haiku so that you can give a real review?

    Reply
  2. I hope that everyone is just pretending to get upset over re-reviews in these comments.

    Or is everyone this petty and childish normally?

    Reply
  3. > You know that feel when you strangle a hooker and hide her in your boss’s car?

    feel -> feeling? Or was this some kind of reference to copping a feel on a hooker? Strangulation play? Kinky.

    Clearly, a one-handed sword and shield build requires one to carry both sword and shield with the same arm, or maybe with a buckler on the forearm with the sword. The free arm is to provoke adversaries with rude gestures.

    Reply
    • Baka-Tsuki should be used as for references, but definitely not for the final decision. Reason being that the TLs there somehow don’t have as much say as some of the editors who lurk there all day who are japanophile control freaks that *have* to have series be done their way.

      Saying this because I’ve been observing the power struggles and stuff there for a while now, I’ve actually seen some of those editors drive a translator away from the site (killing a series in the process) because he fought against some wording changes they had to have their way for some reason. It wasn’t a grammar or English issue either, just a control thing.

      Reply
      • Actually, for shits and giggles: ‘Zero2001’ at B-T is one of those instigators, he’s helped kill at least 1-2 series already, and is probably the biggest control freak I’ve seen there after lurking for years on that site.

        Also seen him be a dramamongering jackass to a few would-be newbie editors a lot lately, so fuck him. I really, really don’t like control freaks (D_S exception, at least he’s smart enough to recognize it and be funny with it).

        Change his totally necessary “series improvements” back and write some reasoning in the discussion. Hook, line and sinker. He likes to look up your IP and pretend to know where you live (or talk shit about proxies/anonymity), and then deletes everything in discussion and pretends nothing happened. Have fun, anyone who participates.

        Reply
      • In Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls you can 1h or 2h any weapon regardless. A good example would be the Dragon Bone Smasher from Demon’s Souls which is a huge two-handed sword but if you have enough strength you can wield it with one hand and carry a shield in the other. I don’t believe any MMORPG has this kind of system in place though so it’s not really much of an argument.

        Reply
    • Actually, Warriors on World of Warcraft have the ability to hold (and use) a two-handed sword and shield. It’s by no means viable, but it is possible.

      As a player of too many MMORPGs now, I can appreciate the weapon type being specified.

      Reply
      • More specifically, though, they gain the ability to wield certain weapons as if it were one-handed. If if actually were two-handed to them, they logically would need two hands to wield it (according to the wiki spears are still 2h). Point is, wielding a sword and shield in either hand requires they be 1h (obviously), and the possibility of wielding a nominally 2h weapon with one hand would be inane to explore.

        Reply
        • Yeah, that’s true. My interpretation of this though, is that as far as identifying a weapon goes, they’re looking at it as players, as opposed to as characters.

          As a result, they’d identify a weapon primarily by it’s type and subtype (in this case, one-handed sword), versus being in-character and simply referring to their weapons by item name.

          Reply
  4. I don’t think this review is completely fair. You’re picking on some perfectly fine sounding English there. Knights of the Blood, that’s fine. Doing to much leveling up? That’s ok too, it makes perfect sense. It implies that he has just been doing to much training (leveling as it can be referred to in games) and is tired, hence why it is too much. I also see no problem with the angry words, sounds perfectly fine.

    Well anyways that’s just my 2 cents 3 months later.

    Reply

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