Fansub Review: [sage-koi] Code:Breaker (Episode 03)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Another fucking shitty show. Dammit, Japan.

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (486 MB, 10-bit)

Japanesiness: No honorifics.

English style: American English.

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

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

 

External links.

Group website: http://www.sagesubs.com/

IRC channel: #[email protected]

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://www.subcompare.com/code_breaker/

Commie’s fansub reviews: http://notredrevie.ws/autumn-2012-reviews/#breaker

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening. The colors match perfectly and the effect suits the OP well. However, the English cuts into the credits and the Japanese lines blend together as they transition, which cuts down the visual quality of the karaoke.

Rating: Okay.

Ending. While you’ll sometimes see the karaoke tilt the way of the credits, it happens far too infrequently and only ever in one direction. The subs also run into the credits, but I think for this ED it would be hard to avoid doing that without cutting down line length. The font and colors are great, but there’s slightly more to kara than just that.

Rating: Okay+.

 

Typesetting.

 

 

Script Review

Karaoke.

You had three fucking episodes to notice this. No excuse.

 

 

Main Script.

The fuck’s an arrival log? I think you’re looking for “sign-in sheet”, “visitor log”, or “guest log”.

Guess it must be hard to figure out what it’s called when you’ve never stepped foot inside a school in your life.

You’re making me embarrassed for you, sage-koi. Pretty fucking certain this joke is localizable.

“‘Lefty’ and ‘Righty’? I bet I can guess which is which.”

The key to repetition is the repetition part of it. When someone repeats a part of a line they said before, it better fucking match. Here, sage-koi changes up the word. Not good.

It would work much better by switching “Hers…” to “Her puppy…”

Are you fucking certain that says “Hallway”? I’ve spent a lot of time in hotels and not one of them has a naming convention like that. What I expect that it says is “Room 303”, because generally the first digit refers to which floor you’re on (the third floor in this case) and the last two refer to which room you’re in (room #03). And maybe Japan’s different, but if there’s a key being used, it’s gonna be universal, not limited to hallways.

tl;dr: If I can translate better than your TLs, something’s wrong.

 

Note: Minami told me it looks accurate.

Someone got a fucking clue what’s going on here?

 

Drop the “for us”. It’s redundant.

I guess they’re going for Phillie gangster here? (Dude uses “yous” in a prior sentence.) I do like a little flavor in my subs, so I thought this was a decent addition.

From episode 1

While we’re on the subject of speech, I’ve got something to bitch about. What I get from the way Sakurakouji speaks and acts is that she’s “proper” and set in the “old ways”, which ties in with her social naivety. Indeed, it’s noted in the show as seen above.

When she sets up an elaborate string of words, talking in a dignified tone (as she often does), I expect to see this reflected in the subs. But what I got from sage-koi’s release was nothing out of the ordinary. If anything was notable about how they approached her voice, it’s how fucking boring she sounds.

Now, I’m not expecting this girl to talk like a fucking samurai, but I do expect something different. Something that captures the essence of her character and conveys it through the subs. But I’m just not getting that from this release, and that’s a major disappointment.

Take out “have to”. Everything she’s been fighting for relies around her philosophy of there being non-violent ways to resolve disputes.

Obviously, it doesn’t make sense for her to believe that death was necessary, so don’t fucking make it seem like she does.

This is some bad, awkward phrasing.

“Are you completely evil? Or could you be…”

I can feel the bile forming in the back of my throat. The fuck is the point of including “Like I said”?

I don’t give a shit that you heard “dakara”; use some fucking human English.

Perhaps imitating Hadena isn’t the wisest of strategies.

That forced pause does not work well here. Take out the “you’ll” and it will work a lot better.

 

Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Visual grade: B

Script grade: C

Overall grade: C+

This was a stiff, awkward release that I wasn’t expecting to see from sage-koi, and I don’t think anyone was. I was bored more by the subs than the show, and that’s a terrible thing.

I hope Hatsuyuki can handle this show better.

33 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [sage-koi] Code:Breaker (Episode 03)”

  1. >I hope Hatsuyuki can handle this show better.
    You can hope all you want, but I’d much rather watch sage-koi’s stale subs over hatusyuki’s wap-to-max garbage.

    Reply
  2. I generally see 玄関 used to refer to “front entrance area”, “main foyer”, etc. So the key would be unlocking the front door to room 303.

    Reply
      • Thirded. In Kawaiiland, you’re not actually “inside” a house (or in this case a room) until you take off your shoes in the foyer and cross some kind of magical boundary they’ve established, so they consider that area just after the door a separate room or space.

        But, then again, I haven’t seen this episode, so he might very well be opening the door to “Hallway 303”.

        Reply
        • We did struggle over this sign quite a bit. I didn’t want to imply that its a room, because it’s not. It’s an entranceway to what I assumed was some kind of apartment or office. It was the key to the front hallway so that’s what ww chose eventually. In retrospect “front door key” might have been more natural.

          Reply
  3. Well, that’s that. I don’t consider our release bad. Maybe stiff in some places. We’ve been working on making Sakura sound stiffer in the latter eps.

    What exactly is wrong with the ed kara translation? I don’t see anything still.

    Reply
    • Obviously that was intentional. Our translator didn’t feel like that translation truly matched the lyrics. He wanted to do his own, a better one. I see no issue with that.

      Reply
      • For your own good, I’m begging you please to stop.

        I can’t believe your TL saw
        “We fly unnoticed”
        as a translation for
        人知れず、僕らは飛ぶ
        thought it through carefully, and decided that
        “Quietly, secretly, we fly”
        reflected a more profound appreciation of the English and Japanese languages. (I would understand fixing a few lines that actually were bad or weak English, or were poorly translated.)

        So I’m going to assume this is another post-hoc justification. Pro tip: you can’t have fansubs without drama, but this constant “We meant to do that” act doesn’t make you look cool. You guys make your own choices about which shows to sub. Live with the good and bad of how well you pull it off.

        Reply
  4. I’d like to know how your TL could consider “whereto the white crow flies” an improvement over what was already there.

    Flying by unnnoticed strongly implies flying by quietly, so I don’t see how the other line was an improvement either.

    Reply
    • Assuming fnord translated the songs for this, I know he likes to take a more poetic tone with his song translations. It’d look out of place for only the first three lines to be written in a more generic prose format if the rest were like that.

      I don’t really see why the English translation of the lyrics needs to match the one shown onscreen just because it’s there, either.

      Reply
  5. I don’t give a damn what the animators wrenched in; my translation is what goes into the release if I translate the song, and that’s the end of this discussion.

    And obviously I saw that. My eyesight is, alas, not impaired. I just did not and do not care.

    Reply

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