Fansub Re-Review: [Hybrid-Kaitou] Robotics;Notes (Episode 08)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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This group originally got a “D” for episode 3. But they promised they’d improve and asked for a re-review many, many times. So, fine, let’s see how far they’ve come.

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV (290 MB, 10-bit), MKV (325 MB, 8-bit), LQ MP4 (170 MB)

Japanesiness: Honorifics. “Onee-chan”/”Onii-chan” used.

English style: American English.

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

Speed: Slow (>48 hours)

Re-reviews: In my 455 currently visible fansub reviews, only 6 of them are re-reviews. I really try to avoid doing them. Reason being, re-reviews inherently have issues.

If a fansub group takes the advice I give in my reviews and pays attention to the problems areas going forward, all else equal they will perform better. While I expect most (on a given project, I’d bet at least one person on the team is gonna read a review here) to improve going forward, it isn’t really until the next season that my reviews can measure whether or not they’ve improved in some fashion.

But what a re-review allows for is instant (hopefully positive) feedback if you took my advice or improved on your own. You don’t have to wait a season anymore; your positive changes instantly materialize in a tangible way (review score). And that’s good, right? Sure… to a degree.

Unfortunately, it throws off whatever “balance” there is in the review scores. Groups which ask for re-reviews will start to score higher on the whole, and groups which don’t will look bad, which isn’t fair at all.

So what if I did a re-review for every group? Well, you’d see a couple things right off the bat — 1. The groups which pander the most getting the best scores. 2. Decreased activity on the site as a whole because circlejerks are boring to watch. Luckily I have neither the time nor the inclination to turn this into reddit.com/r/suckmydickandgetagoldstar so that won’t be happening.

Honestly, I have way too much to say on the subject for a simple note in a review and I’m already starting to ramble. Gist is, I don’t like doing re-reviews, but here’s one anyway. Enjoy.

 

 

External links.

Group websites: http://hybrid-subs.me/   http://kaitoufansubs.wordpress.com/

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

SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://www.subcompare.com/robotics%3bNotes/

Commie’s fansub reviews: N/A

 

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Original — Main issue: Stupid fucking particle effects everywhere
Fixed — Muted particle effects that no longer detract from the opening and instead accentuate the karaoke in a positive way
Original — Main issues: Stupid color choice and overboard effects
Fixed — Intelligent color choice and overboard particle effects removed
Opening. I’ll stand by what I said in the previous review — the font was a fantastic choice. That, in combination with the much-needed changes I outlined before results in a great karaoke. I love it.

Rating: Great.

Original — Main issue: Disappearing text, making it impossible to follow along
Fixed — The text no longer disappears, allowing people to follow along with the karaoke
Original — Main issues: Font disappears and the karaoke overlaps the image when there’s usable black space instead
Fixed — Karaoke no longer overlaps the picture, and the romaji stays on the screen
Ending. Great fixes. This was an enjoyable ED.

Rating: Good.

 

 

Typesetting.

Edit: I’ve been told I may have jumped the gun with the typesetting praise. Fair enough. Let me add critiques.

They only added their name to this screen.

They did the typesetting for this a few more times, but also missed one scene where it was featured prominently.

Those fonts don’t really match at all. And did you know there’s a color selector tool in Aegisub? It’s kind of useful.

Does it blend? No.

If your signs are scraping up against the borders of the boxes they’re contained in, that’s not a good sign.

You’re missing the period on Iruo. and it’s sticking out way too much compared to the Japanese.

What in the fuck is this?

Is there a reason why the Japanese is so blurry and your signs are so clear? Try to make them match better.

You may want to try covering up those Japanese characters too because it’s quite obvious with this that you’re not matching what they were originally.

Everything that mattered was typeset, but not very well as herkz obliged me to point out.

 

Script Review

Karaoke.

They fixed every issue I had with the karaoke and completely rewrote those lines. Hell, they may have even redone the TLs as a whole, but I’m too lazy to check.

 

Main Script.

What the fucking fuck is Pocchi? I spent like five minutes googling this shit, only to come up with nothing. Are you just making shit up, guys?

<+Korekame> The animators don’t have the rights for Pocky, so they called it Pocchi

<+Korekame> Yeah, it’s avoiding having to pay companies money to use their product names in the show

So I guess that explains it. It’s a bit of an issue though as you shouldn’t need to search IRC to get a TL Note to understand the line. I assume quite a few people watching this will be as confused as I was (or they’ll just assume it’s some Japanese word and move on with their lives).

Get your tenses right.

“but I have no idea what they did to me either!”

Oh, you fucking scrubs. His name’s been localized as “Gendo” since the 90s. Fucking hell.

Except the typesetting has it as “Let’s make a giant robot together with JAXA”. How do you not remember what you fucking wrote not 5 frames ago?

You’d be better off with an em-dash or a colon in place of the comma here because the second half of the sentence is describing what the flags are.

Unless the Anemone was the ship they were on, I’m not buying this line. That’s because “Anemone” almost undoubtedly refers to the “Anemone Incident”. And if they meant Anemone Incident, you need the whole thing in there.

“This reminds me of the Anemone Incident.”

 

 

Results

Watchability: Quite watchable.

Visual grade: B (weighted toward the karaoke)

Script grade: B+

Overall grade: B+

I’m not entirely sure what changes Hybrid-Kaitou put into place within their joint’s structure, but whatever they did worked.

For Robotics;Notes, go with whatever group you want; all four groups doing the show have decent releases.

I do want to take this opportunity to praise the joint for recognizing a need to improve and jumping at the opportunity to do so. I’m sure your viewers appreciate it (even if they’re too tsundere to say so).

 

Edit: To be very fucking clear since I’m not sure I was before, you can’t directly compare a re-review to a regular review. So don’t.
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44 thoughts on “Fansub Re-Review: [Hybrid-Kaitou] Robotics;Notes (Episode 08)”

  1. he’s right tho >.< that was underhanded, just cause your commie buddies were upset that hybrid-kaitou got a better visual grade.

    Reply

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