Fansub Review: [Guodongsubs] Mo Dao Zu Shi / Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Full Series)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Might be a bit late, but happy new year, fam.

 

China Number 53

On a spiritual journey to become one of the best anime reviewers of all time, I made a resolution to stagger my way through everything on MAL’s “Top 100 Animes” rankings so I could fully earn my outstanding certification. But while compiling my to-watch list, I came across a recently released title I had never heard of before.

Considering practically every Chinese-made anime has a well-deserved sub-6 on the site, I became a bit confused how this one in particular managed to rise through the ranks. Was it perhaps a sinistrous Chinese plot to conquer the English-speaking anime realm?

This true American cowboy says it isn’t, so I guess that settles that.

Fully satisfied with that explanation, I set out to get my hands on a copy of this show. Cuz wow, how good of a reviewer would I be if I casually referenced such a hidden gem while fingerbanging drunk 16-year-olds in Panty & Stocking cosplay?

Why I could even be the greatest.

Unfortunately, I would have to watch fansubs to get there. And C->E fansubs can be… well…

 

 

Table of Contents

Release Information

Visual Quality

Script Quality

Results

 

 

Release Information

Some of the fan art is good, I guess.
Spoiler:

Episode details.

Release format: Hardsubbed MKV, episode one naming example:

[Guodongsubs][Mo Dao Zu Shi][Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation][01][HEVC_AAC][English Sub].mkv

Yeah, you can probably guess where this is going.

Japanesiness: Actually it’s Chinese this time. Still got TL Notes though.

English style: I don’t want to be racist, but…

Translation style: Nostalgic, in the sense it makes me long for the days before “Chinese cartoons” could still be considered a statement of jest.

 

External links.

Group website: https://guodongsubs.com/

Twitter: @Guodong_Subs

 

 

Visual Review

Some art is… less so.
Spoiler:

Karaoke.

Meh.

 

Typesetting.

Yeah, it’s boring.

 

Encode.

I’m not gonna go too in-depth on why this release sucks ass beyond the incomprehensibly hilarious Engrish, but I should at least note that the show isn’t supposed to look like a watercolor painting.

 

 

Script Review

Spoiler:

Main Script.

Miss, you flaetter me.

Now, it should be mentioned that while this release is about as grammatically sound as the San Andreas Fault, WordPress does have image limits I have to keep mind of.

And why bother with grammar alone when you have lines of this caliber?

Legendary illiterates.

Half explosion, half expulsion, all stupid.

So I was thinking about how any normal human would translate this as, “Here we get up by 7.”

But then I got to thinking that no, maybe the Chinese had some good ideas before they were mercilessly beat into submission and forced to abandon them along with all their pride.

Question, question: what the fuck?

If this line was English I’d actually kinda like it.

Calm down, Confucius.

Getting the feeling like these are the only guys who’d ever straight-facedly use “whomst’d’ve” in a sentence.

Weird, I thought the Chinese scrubbed the words “sister” and “brother” from their dictionaries post-1979. Guess a western-born wrote this one.

A lot of the issues with this release can be solved by the viewer simply treating every line as a puzzle that has to be pieced back into English.

Yet sometimes that puzzle is unsolvable. :(

Well ya surely didn’t assure anyone who mattered.

Maybe if we Americans had colonized China instead, these imports wouldn’t be so tea-stuffingly retarded. Drink coke like cultured people, you dumb, stupid fuckfaces.

And I wonder why Sasuke settled for Sakura instead of Karin. But maybe some mysteries ain’t meant to be solved, Guodongsubs.

For a group made up of people who don’t know any English, this was a pretty good guess at how to spell “missy” (or “miss” if we’re going off what the line is actually supposed to be).

Say what you want about the Chinese, but damn do they suck at English.

These subs make me wanna give up even more than the translator did at life.

Well if you glare any harder it might grow another inch.

What’s up fellow sk8rbois?

Goes to show that you learn something new every day. Well, unless “you” are Guodong’s translator, and that “something” is English.

*even this gibberish is

Maybe it’s just the alcohol speaking, but I can truly empathize with how hard some of this translation shit has got to be. English is held together half with duct tape, and half with used condoms.

But it’s for that reason that any translation team needs to have someone involved with the script who can speak the language they’re translating into not just well, but fluently. Otherwise, we get… this.

Okay, empathy lost. This is some dumb shit.

Yeah, sure, but you’ve pay a couple hundred for each round, and if you fumble the roll you’re headed to jail. Not playing this game, society; plastic approximations of feminine tropes are cheaper.

I’m questioning everything I know about the Chinese right now. Which, granted, isn’t a lot, but…

You may cry enough, but we’re only halfway through. Prep yourself.

Her… she… oh shit, we’re just a liplock away from the worst chocolate in the best hemisphere.

Yeah, that’s an L.

Adding a simple “yet” would’ve changed this line from awful to sub-mediocre. Shit’s more disappointing than Taco Bell’s nacho fries.

Changing “The” to “A” would have prevented this tragedy almost as well as a condom would have.

It was the worst of subs.

No worries; never had an ounce of faith in this release since I learned the Han had a hand in it.

(jk, cute Chinese girls plz forgive – I had to go for the pun)

The fuck is a cyclops kite?

Liven up, honey. It ain’t that bad.

…oh wait, it is that bad? Well.

The only thing better than this milf is the inverse of these subs’ quality.

How many periods does one realistically need before they should realize they need to stop?

s.

 

Time for a break without pause:

Okay, let’s continue.

 

No, randomly adding spaces to the rest of your sentences isn’t going to fix the issue here.

This is what happens when you don’t read what you write.

You’re welcome, but only to kill yourself.

How much you wanna bet the person who translated this has a fake name they give to non-mainlanders? (Looking at you, “John Wayne” Chen.)

The one thing these subs ain’t is S-tier.

Did a triple-take and still couldn’t believe it.

Look down harder.

The prior 13 episodes were filled nothing but stiff, stuffy lines, so for this spasm to appear out of nowhere was quite jarring, and not in the good sense. Granted, I laughed.

The only hell that exists is the one in which these subs exist.

Why is, indeed.

Unironically, me. Gimme that real weird shit. I’m really getting tired of every “Chinese” place I go to having nothing more edible than fortune cookies on the menu.

Not sure if it’s showing, but at this point in the glass I am way too fucking done with this Engrish bullshit. Fill in the blanks yourself; it’s madlibs hour at this point in my headspace.

God this translation is so ass. Thank god it’s over.

…it’s over, right? Okay, time to finish up and turn off the lights.

 

 

Results

Watchability: Barely watchable. Both the subs and show.

Visual grade: D

Script grade: D-

Overall grade: D-

The reason I reviewed all the episodes here is because I wanted to highlight how bad the actual translation side of the house was. (Spending a couple hours correcting blatant grammatical mishaps in one episode alone would not be terribly fun.)

Rest assured that each episode’s base script is so headache-inducingly awful that I stand by the entire “Guodongsubs” release catalog as intolerably low quality as the country those fansubbers hail from.

And can you believe I went through this entire review without calling anyone involved a dirty Chin–

 

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13 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Guodongsubs] Mo Dao Zu Shi / Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Full Series)”

  1. When you go to a Chinese place just order pork fried rice and call it a day.

    I read a few Chinese manga when I ran out of isekai to read, 90% of the market is martial arts cultivation shounen shit.
    It’s ok

    Reply
    • I’m a big fan of the Amber Sword WN.
      In transported into VRMMO, ~40years (game world time) in the past. Standard Early Renaissance fantasy. Starts off at lvl 1. Only MC-kun has access to game leveling function. Uses knowledge of the past to survive with the hopes of creating a better future the the previous one.

      It’s the only Chines translation I’ve come across at novelupdates that’s appealed to me.

      Reply
  2. >And I wonder why Sasuke settled for Sakura instead of Karin.
    To sell the sequel. That was an easy one Sage. You’re slipping up. This is not the first overrated chinese cartoon on MAL and I find the sub-6 shit to be far more enjoyable on average. I only made it 2 episodes in with this one. I don’t understand its appeal tbh. My theory is people just rate things high that already have a high rating. The same shit happened with Pupa.

    Reply
  3. We get it, you’re racist every single second. You inhale and exhale “racist” everytime you breathe, even when sub-reviewing.

    Reply
  4. Could you do a review of the available subs for Kaguya sama? There is quite a drama on nyaa every single time an ep releases lol.

    Reply
  5. Yo Dark_Sage, how about channeling your alcoholism into producing a couple of articles about the anime of now? You’re busting my balls, man.

    Reply
  6. You forgot about the best part: that the male leads are lovers in the original book, but someone in charge of the TV version not only had their relationship written out, they also inserted unrelated characters into every scene of the two of them alone in absolute desperation to no-homo it.

    Reply

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