Fansub Review: [Anime-Koi] Tokyo Ravens (Episode 04)

D-Tier, Fansub Review — By Dark_Sage on November 14, 2013 1:47 am

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

Because I felt like it.

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

11/14 Edit:

Please note that for this release, apparently Anime-Koi not only barely touched the Funimation script they worked off of (which, per my standards, means I never should have reviewed this in the first place), they also made it noticeably worse.

Obviously, that’s not fucking cool.

I will leave the review’s contents generally unchanged, so you get the idea of what I thought of it before receiving that information (spoilers: I thought it sucked), but I have added an additional statement to the final thoughts section to properly reflect this new information.

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (257 MB, 10-bit)

Japanesiness: Honorifics.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/t2a0QjPt

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

Translation style: Funirip.

External links.

Group website: http://www.anime-koi.com/

IRC channel: #[email protected]

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening. It’s black and white, as expected for the monochrome scenes, but when it bursts into color mode, the karaoke… stays the same. It’s suitable, but nothing special.

Rating: Okay+.

Ending. Pseudo-cursive? Yuck. But I do like how the Japanese part of the kara reflects the two main themes of the ED — fireflies and red ~~w’s~~ thingies.

Rating: Okay+.

Typesetting.

Mind telling me the difference between onmyo and onmyou here?

Looks like A-Koi went with the bare minimum they could get away with. And that’s fine from a low expectations standpoint, but I was hoping for a bit more effort put into it than just half the potential signs.

Script Review

Main Script.

Standard, dull, non-specific translations are the name of the Anime-Koi game in this release.

Why is this italicized?

I could buy that it annoyed people, but how the fuck would a mopey cunt cause them “trouble”?

No it isn’t.

Bluster? Really?

No.

It’s not a business; it’s an academy. And that that abuse isn’t helping your case.

“A shell of its former self”, you mean? Yeah, you can use idioms every now and then instead of beating the English language over the head with a shit-covered phrasing stick. Try it sometime.

Do tell me how one would study a curriculum.

Wouldn’t every female from the Kurahashi family necessarily be a daughter of it?

Yes, doyenne is a word, but I’m pretty fucking sure you meant “matriarch”.

This is too convenient to be anything but intentional.

It’s like there was supposed to be a pun here but a certain shitty group didn’t understand that.

This is top-tier English torture porn. I’m just waiting for a midget to pop out of a box with “lowercaes” tattooed on his dick in cursive.

In case you’re wondering, quite a bit of the release reads like this. If this reads fine to you, add two full letter grades to the final script score and take a bath in a garbage disposal.

Continuing from the previous critique, one of Anime-Koi’s problems through this entire release is their inability to properly turn a Japanese script into English. While Japan relies on implications as an adequate form of storytelling, you can’t just leave your lines unattended in English. Taking this conversation as an example, this is intended to be a fully functional discourse. But what do we get here?

“You shouldn’t humble yourself to me.”

“I should because I stayed by your side today.”

The viewers have to logic leap on their ends for this to make sense. “Oh, she observed him so that’s how she determined he was worth humbling herself to. That’s great.”

Now apply this across the whole show and tell me people aren’t gonna get tired of it if they’re not watching while zoned out. It’s not the viewers’ responsibility to mentally rewrite your fucking scripts, Anime-Koi.

In case you weren’t convinced from my prior argument, this is another “full” conversation. This is the kind of dialogue you will get when you watch Anime-Koi’s subs for this show.

You mean “cautious”. Careful has too many positive connotations to use in this sense/context.

A whole conversation, just for you

For those of you who didn’t believe the whole release could possibly be at all like the examples I listed before…

“rescuing”?

realize -> understand

And “soft”? The fuck?

This is getting ridiculous.

that. that policy.

I don’t think you understand what “contradictory” means. The word has nothing to do with the conversation. I’m going to assume you wanted “surprising” instead.

Though I’d rephrase it to “It’s not something you’d expect to hear from a teacher, is it?” If you want it shorter, a “…not something you’d expect to hear from a teacher?” would get the same point across.

This can’t be real life. That line makes no sense.

Quite. And can’t say it’s one worth living in with subs like these.

Luckily for you, that’s the end of this section. Combine all these screens together and you have a full scene that Anime-Koi thought was acceptable enough to release to the anime-viewing public. Whoever greenlighted this should make themselves intimately familiar with a train’s headlights.

Original Results

Watchability: Watchable.

Visual grade: B-

Script grade: D

Overall grade: D+

These subs may not be amazing (or even good), but unlike gg’s, you can count that you’re not going to have any scenes ruined by excessive trolling.

Go with Anime-Koi for this show (D+ > F, after all), but make sure to put your brain on auto-pilot lest you think too hard about what the words on the screen are actually saying.

Oh, and before any A-Koi members come in all “well, we only screwed up for this one episode because our QC came down with cancer; Dark_Sage how could you be so cruel as to review the one episode where we weren’t A-tier?”, I checked episodes 5 and 6 and you had just as many stupid fuck-ups as I saw here. As an example, here’s one of my favorite lines from 06: