Fansub Review: [Nutbladder] Mawaru Penguindrum (Episode 01)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

Twitter    


I’m sorry. Nutbladder’s release of Mawaru is much better than gg’s. It’s not perfect. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it’s even good. But the English is much better, and that counts for a lot.

File size: 272 MB

Release format: MKV

Japanesiness: No honorifics.

Preview: Not translated.

Karaoke. The OP/ED were not translated. But the insert transformation song was. However, there wasn’t really karaoke. They just placed the regular font up at the top.

Typesetting. More like TL Noting the signs.

Coming off another comma, “succeed” should be in lowercase.

Keep your lines to two, please.

Why won’t

you listen

to me?!

I think you a word.

Put “is” in italics, kthx.

Even rhetorical questions need question marks.

Make this line

Who’s “he”?

or the visual context will imply a different meaning for that line.

God -> god

But I think what you wanted to go with is “If God exists, I’d like to ask him one question.”

If you make it “and even fall in love…”, it flows MUCH better into the next line.

 

Note: The line at 21:50 was not translated. It seemed fairly significant to be left out.

 

Overall grade: C+

They use a lot of fancy words in this release. But their translations are also extremely natural-sounding. All-in-all I had a much better time watching this release than I did watching gg’s. A loose, liberal handling of this show definitely suits it better than a strict, literal one.

24 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Nutbladder] Mawaru Penguindrum (Episode 01)”

  1. For my nakama that thought Nutbladder’s release was worse, would you mind explaining why? I went into Nutbladder’s thinking I was gonna see an F-tier release for sure, but this was not as bad as I was prepared for.

    Reply
    • Actually the accurate of the translation fails a lot (I accept the liberal translation, not problem, but a thing is liberal, and other is a bad translation). So, no OP/ED + No worked signs + No preview + Worst Style for the Standar Text, and still have problems with the english. I don’t see nothing so much better of gg, If you put a D- in gg, this is a D+ or C- really. (And personally, to gg, I give a D+ at least, because the typesetting is decent, and the translation is pretty good – not the editing – ) Well, is only my opinion though. Thanks a lot for the reviews. =)

      Reply
    • IMO, no amount of minor English failures can amount to one single translation failure, because as you’ve been doing for your reviews, you know what those lines should’ve been. Reading a sloppy script would be unpleasant, but at least you’ll understand what’s actually being said.
      On the other hand, translation errors are nearly impossible to spot if you need fansubs in the first place, and leaves the audience with wrong information.
      I guess that’s why there are still so many Doki fans, not realizing they’re being fed with a lot of nonsense -_-;

      It’s not like gg translations were perfect in the first ep, but there were far fewer TL errors, and less severe. You probably won’t notice those, but you should be able to notice how they don’t follow any TL best practices.
      > Complete disregard for nuance / couple of really poor word choices ending up not conveying what’s actually being said/meant.
      > Randomly leave out details to make lines shorter when there were ample time to display.
      > Lines that had very short display duration and could’ve been condensed… weren’t condensed.
      > Vertically stretched font = no readability.
      >>> This is major: Completely ignored a major quirk. There was a hint given to the audience (or at the very least a reference) about the transformation phrase “Survival Strategy” (“A Strategy for Survival”)

      I don’t like talking shit about a “competing” group unless challenged first, but these guys completely butchered the original Japanese script.

      Reply
  2. I just thought that I would point out an error in your last paragraph: “They use a lot of fancy words in these release”. I assume you meant for “these” to be “this”. It’s late for me, too.

    Reply
  3. It’s “Mawaru-Penguindrum” and not “Mawaru Penguin Drum”. I’d appreciate if fansubbers and reviewers sticked to the official name. This kind of thing happens quite frequently and I wonder why. Imbeciles.

    inb4 grammatical correction

    Reply
    • Yeah, I had a short discussion about that with gg release, but the group decided to not stick with Engrish.

      TBH, I don’t even know where the hell “penguin” came from, because the correct translation of the Japanese title would’ve been “Revolving Pingdrum”.
      Don’t ask me what Pingdrum is, it’s a made-up word.

      Reply
      • Oh wells. More renaming for me, then. BTW, I remember you, 8thSin. Remember you from D-Addicts and JPS. I’m surprised to see you in the fansubbing anime world and also very saddened that you left the fansubbing d(o)rama world. Mawaru-Penguindrum is my first anime in a long time (6 years to be exact) so, I’m glad you are doing this. Guess I’ll stick with gg for Mawaru.

        As for the name, I don’t care what individual fansubbers call it. It just irks me when I visit a pseudo-professional review page and see a name written wrong. If one nitpicks about the right usage of God/god, then one should have the decency to use the correct AND official name for anime. I know trillions would rage if I, for example, spelled Naruto as “Naru To”.

        Oh and Dark_Sage, there is no “animeS”. The plural form for “anime” is “anime”. Other than that, I love how you are handling your stuff here. Keep it up.

        Reply
        • I realize that there is no plural for anime, just as there is no plural for ninja, tycoon, or tsunami. I, however, elect to pluralize it anyway, much like I pluralize those words. You may take me as an enterprising badass.

          For my review titles, I generally follow whatever standard the group itself used. You will notice my previous Penguindrum review contained the title that gg used. Sometimes I’ll add alternate titles when they’re vastly different between the groups. e.g. Softenni/Soft Tennis.

          But since you obviously take offense to the title, I’ll change it. Just for you.

          Reply
          • Thanks. How thoughtful of you. Oh and, I wasn’t offended by it. I merely fail to understand why it is so hard to stick with the official name. Sorry to have nitpicked. It’s just a stupid habit I adopted when I was using last.fm during my teenage days.

            And yes, I shall take you as an enterprising badass then.

            Reply
      • PS. I’ll hunt you down in your dreams (excruciating pleasure, rawr) should you decide not to do the karaoke for EP02, 8thSin. The ED makes me touch myself. I know, TMI. I don’t care.

        Reply
        • There’s too much Johnny’s and models who can’t act for dorama, I kind of lost interest.

          OP/ED lyrics will definitely be included for next episode. I spent more time than translating the episode itself to figure out what they’re saying and tweaking so they make sense lol

          Probably won’t have karaoke effects though.

          Reply
          • This is true. I have almost lost all my love for JP dramas and I can’t stand Johnny’s either. I did however enjoy BOSS 2nd and Rebound last season. Those were surprisingly entertaining. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody cared about JP dramas in, let’s say, 2 years anymore. The fansubbing world for JP dramas is slowly but surely dying out.

            I don’t care about karaoke effects. Only little twats do (seriously though, I can’t even begin to imagine how stupid someone must look when they sing along during the OP/ED with all those exaggerated karaoke effects, mispronouncing every single word). I just want to know what the fuck they sing about. I appreciate your enthusiasm and efforts for this anime.

            Would you recommend anything else besides this? I hear great things about “NO.6”. Any good?

            Reply
  4. I believe capitalising God in the second to last pic is correct. It doesn’t really follow the usual rule, but “if there is a God” and as a similar example “there is no God” look more correct to me than “if there is a god” and “there is no god”. I think it’s because it’s referring to a specific ‘God’, not just any ‘god’.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to borg Cancel reply