Fansub Review: [Commie] Fate/Zero (Episode 01)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Great anime and I’m liking this release. [Note: Images broke in site migration.]

Release format: MKV (320 MB)

Japanesiness: No honorifics. Japanese name order.

Note: The episode is twice the length of a normal one – 48 minutes.

Typesetting.

Nothing too fancy, but this was really all that needed typesetting, so I’m not seeing any problems here.

Karaoke.

Ending only. No opening this episode.

You know what? I think there is something to be said for simplistic karaoke like this. Perhaps I was just coming off an epicness high from anime, but I thought it was suitable. Forgive the use of “epic”. Though it makes me sound retarded, I couldn’t think of a better word for what I thought of the show.

Script.

This ain’t the bible. Let’s at least try to aim for some tenses that make sense.

“Your child was born!”

Unless “this” refers to the birth of their baby, the proper word should be “that” because the event/action they are referring to is not immediate. Not quite sure I explained this well enough… so let me just break it down.

When you point to “this” it’s something immediate. When you point to “that”, it’s something further away. The same applies to concepts/ideas/events/etc. When you refer to the immediate, use “this”. When you refer to something less so, use “that”.

Okay, let’s break this down to just the first part. “I am the person I am now” Un-uh. This is the kind of circular phrasing that makes so many people laugh at Japanese logic. “I am me and you are you! Through the power of friendship let’s defeat evil!” ~_~

But the problem isn’t the logic behind it. It’s the overuse of “I am”. Doesn’t really sit well with me. I’d prefer an opening that’s a bit more varied, like:

“I have become who I am because I internalized your ideals,”  <- It still sounds stupid, but it’s less repetitive.

But I do like how the line proceeds into the next (“and I intoned your prayers.”). internalized -> intoned. Definitely digging the alliteration. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the release in terms of the language.

You can’t have friendship to something. This isn’t like being engaged.

“but magi who have a long history of friendship with the Church.”

“magi with a long” wouldn’t work too well with the second “with”, so I rephrased that part to make it read nicely.

This is, of course, assuming the intent of the line was to signify a form of comraderie between the two groups. If the intent was to have the magi play a more subservient role, the line would need to be modified. I wasn’t entirely sure with the original line and the context around it.

This begs a question mark regardless of its status as a rhetorical question.

I wish I could derive as much satisfaction in this as I usually do while reviewing groups, but honestly this is about the worst thing I’ve seen in the 18 minutes of the show so far, which is… pretty decent.

“Sort of like” and “exactly” are kind of entirely different from each other. I’d fix up the second line to make this read right.

“So sort of like…”

“how I once was.”

Fix’d~

“Personal issues” = plural. Therefore, the sentence should read, “My personal issues with his philosophy are a secondary concern.” But let’s make it flow nicer and change “a” to “of”.

“My personal issues with his philosophy are of secondary concern.”

Yeah, there we go.

 

Watchability: Quite watchable. Nothing in here should really impede your ability to watch the show.

Overall grade: A-

I’m not sure how much of this was Commie and how much was the NicoNico translation they used, but I found the release as a whole to be high-quality. Even assuming they just slapped their name on it and threw it out without much care, it’s still worthy of watching.

34 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Commie] Fate/Zero (Episode 01)”

    • I was operating under the assumption that all termimology was accurate. I didn’t actually like FSN the anime and I’ve never played the games, so I have no real comparison point.

      Reply
        • I overreacted a bit, but it is important to use the proper terminology, or at the very least something that makes sense. They aren’t crests acting like worms in the body of a person, they are actual worms going through your body and surviving off of your magical energy. This is obvious when you see them moving on the inside of Kariya’s face.

          Reply
    • Considering there is no official localization of ‘Kokuinchuu’, I believe you’re overreacting to this. I pulled ‘Worm crest’ from memory, which is much closer to what was used in the game (Crest Worms) than what the original subs had (Bug Seal). Although, I will say since most of the staff that is working on this show has played the game, we try to stick with the terminology mirrormoon introduced if possible. However, for the sake of people who might be unfamiliar with the Nasuverse jargon, some of the terms have been changed to something more widely understood (see ‘root of all knowledge’ instead of ‘Akasha’ for ‘Kongen’).

      Reply
  1. ”Who knows what dark plans they may harbor for the Grail.”

    It’s not necessarily wrong. A question mark is not mandatory when dealing with this kind of rhetorical question. It’s just a matter of style.

    Reply
  2. Have you seen UTW’s karaoke? It’s terrible. Turned it off the moment it came on the screen. Why can’t more groups just stick to simplistic karaoke like Commie and gg?

    Anyways, the major issue with Commie’s release was the encode.

    Reply
    • ar usually does great suitable karaoke, but I guess this time was one of the odd days. as for me I just changed the font to Cleargothic, much better.

      Reply
      • Eh, I was kinda tired by that point lol, and probably being a one off job I wasn’t too fussed about it. I’ll fix it up once we get the proper OP and ED next episode.

        Reply
  3. They probably didn’t run TLC on the script. The translation errors are still present. They fixed / improved the awkward lines, and timing is a perfect, so it’s a whole lot more watchable to me than the NicoNico stream.

    I really like their “Magi/Magus” edit, but it seems to me like “Prana” was a poor choice since there’s less nuance for Western ancient magic.

    Reply
  4. Could you also add the colour encoding format (8bit / 10bit) to the “Release format” section? Half the groups this season are using 10bit and half are using 8bit and it’s tough keeping track of which is which.

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    • I don’t mind, but I’m not sure there’s an easy way to gather that information beyond the group’s sites and asking on IRC.

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      • They usually say in the torrent description. Alternatively, if there’s a ton of people bitching in the comments it’s probably 10bit.

        If you have the video itself it should be checkable in video info I think

        Reply
      • Dark,

        In MPC->Properties, check the Mediainfo stuff. It will say in there what the depth is. It should say 8-bit or 10-bit. I am at work so I don’t remember the exact name but you should be able to find it.

        Reply
    • Yeah, some of the older reviews didn’t have their images migrate over when we moved to Crymore.net. Also lost some reviews entirely.

      I think the data’s still on Crymore somewhere, but it’d be effort to try and get it all nice and working again. (And by that, I mean a LOT of effort.)

      Reply

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