Fansub Review: [UTW-Mazui] Little Busters! (Episode 01)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Best to get the Little Busters reviews out of the way as quickly as possible before I start crying all over my keyboard. I’m onto you, Key!

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (207 MB, 10-bit), MP4 (109 MB)

Japanesiness: Honorifics.

English style: American English.

Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/5P4C0yTd

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

 

External links.

Group websites: http://utw.me/ http://mazuisubs.com/ 

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

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://www.subcompare.com/little_busters!/

Commie’s fansub reviews: http://notredreviews.wordpress.com/autumn-2012-reviews/#busters

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening.

Matching the credit colors is fine and dandy, and it often serves its purpose well, but at some point it can get to be a bit too much. In this case, maybe orange was not the best choice.

Rating: Okay.

 

Ending.

Purple on night sky, a time-tested tradition. No issues here; this works well.

Rating: Good.

 

Typesetting.

Clearly too difficult to translate.

 

Script Review

Karaoke.

None. I did have some here before, but it turns out the translation as-is is accurate. I was just misinterpreting it.

 

Main Script.

I was the best of times, I was the worst of times.

I guess “comics” works, but I don’t see the need to translate this from “manga”.

;

The fuck is the point of including “specifically” here?

Me want English but difficult expect when UTW-Mazui.

 

… Well, fuck. There aren’t that many errors here, so you know what that means. It’s time for “Dark_Sage kisses ass to pad out the review!”

This is a perfect example of why literal translations are shit. You can’t translate whatever idiom they actually used here and simultaneously get across the mispronunciation and make it funny. So U-M came up with a parallel joke in English, and it worked brilliantly.

Throughout this release, all of UTW-Mazui’s jokes hit their mark, which isn’t as easy as one might think. And it’s important from the standpoint of getting the viewer involved with the show, rather than focusing on trying to understand what the fuck’s going on. (Well, the Melvin one could have been slightly rephrased but let’s ignore that for the sake of making my argument better.)

Another thing I liked about this release is all the… um… the complete sentences.

Yeah, check this shit out. Their grammar was fucking perfect on this line. Ain’t that some shit?

Okay, I’m trying here, people. I am fucking trying.

The varied language use helps add depth to the characters. Yes, even if this was reflected in the Japanese script, it’s just as important that UTW-Mazui managed to carry it across into English.

 

Okay, that’s enough of that. Results time!

 

Results

Watchability: Quite watchable.

Visual grade: B

Script grade: A-

Overall grade: A-

The script is pretty amazuing. (Sorry, UTW, you don’t fit the pun.) Can’t say I felt as much love from the visuals, but I can guarantee this is a good release to watch.

20 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [UTW-Mazui] Little Busters! (Episode 01)”

  1. Yeah, in this case, I suppose parallel jokes have to be implemented if you want to bring across the joke and are absolutely against the use of TL notes (leaving that can of worms closed).

    However, you can’t really say that literal translations are shit because practically everything else is translated literally. Well, more literally than liberally anyways. Otherwise, you’d have bizarre aberrations that barely represent the the original Japanese dialogue. For instance:

    “Another deep quote is born…” (which is pretty much as literal as you can get) becomes something like, “That’s some profound shit you’re spewing.”

    Reply

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