the aftermath
Jul. 10th, 2005 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeManga roundup:
Petshop of Horrors 1: I like this as much the sixth time as I did the first. I've always had kind of a love-hate relationship with the art in PSOH--"fussy," someone called it, and it is that, and the character designs are distractingly lanky. But the sheer, galumptious beauty of the animals and of D make up for it.
By the way, Leon is ridiculously bishie in his first story. Thank god it tones down after that--D is pretty enough for both of them, thank you.
Bleach 6: I can now see the difference between the manga and the anime--the storylines are exactly the same, but the manga is brimming with spastic humor, not all of which made it into the anime. (I still think the anime is more stylish, though.) It has a lot more text than most of the other stuff I've read lately, and I noticed it took me about twice as long as usual to finish it, even though I was reading steadily.
Tactics 1: Tactics, however, took me forever to finish. I attribute this to the fact that I found the characters dull and the writing uninspiring. Is Kan mercenary or big-hearted? Spastic or scholarly? Who cares? Haruka is pretty, but boring, and Yoko is funny, but two-dimensional. If this is feudal Japan, why does everybody dress like it's either 1900 or 2005? What's the difference between a demon and a goblin? And I don't think I care enough to see if it improves in subsequent volumes.
The art was strong, though. Everything was nicely detailed, the character designs were distinctive, and when I started looking for it, I found a clear visual flow from panel to panel.
I frequently have trouble following action scenes in manga--Saiyuki is a pleasant and notable exception--and I noted that I had no trouble following the visuals in Tactics, but I still had a hell of a time trying to figure out what was going on, because the writing jumped all over the place.
I also noticed that Tactics has two names on it, although we only get commentary from one of the authors. This leads me to wonder if the writing is being done by one person, and the art by another.
Oh, a side note--every company seems to have a different philosophy regarding the translation of sound effects. Some remove the Japanese sound effects and replace them with English (my personal favorite, but not very popular). Some provide in-panel English translations for the sound effects (my second choice). Tokyopop likes to provide a glossary at the back that you navigate by page-and-panel number (which I fucking hate, because you have to flip to the back of the book to find out whether the sound effect was "BANG" or "WHAP," and when only one character in the book has a gun, the sound effects provide vital information about who's doing what! And who wants to flip to the end of the book after every panel?) Tactics is translated and published by ADV, and this volume contains the most egregious failure to translate I've even seen in manga. One of Haruka's speech bubbles is translucent, and you can see his wings underneath the text. Rather than erasing the Japanese text from the bubble, replacing it with English text, and correcting the art, ADV simply placed a translation outside the speech bubble. It was completely random, and it took me a good minute to figure out what they'd done. (At first, I was puzzling over it, trying to figure out why it hadn't been translated, and whether the characters were fake text, meant to look pretty, but possessing no meaning.) This is the first time I've ever seen that don't-disturb-the-sacred-art philosophy applied to the regular text of a speech bubble instead of a sound effect, and I am not impressed.
D.N.Angel 1: I liked this, but not as much as I'd thought I would. However, after reading Tactics, I realized how much more engaged I'd been by D.N.Angel--while I was reading it, I didn't want to put it down--and I'll probably read more. Daisuke's a cutie. Is it wrong that I find Risa adorable?
Alice 19th: I had no idea what this was about, no clue who the characters were, and only picked it up because of an offhand reference to the way it handled some iffy subject material. I was thus a little surprised when I instantly fell in love with Alice and her hot bishie love interest. This book grabbed me faster than anything I've read in months (even Saiyuki took four volumes to really hook me in). Cute flying rabbits, teenage angst, archery club, and an overarching theme of the power of communication, all delivered with Yu Watase's usual eye-candy? Yes, please! I'll take six dozen.
Watase's stuff doesn't tend to eat my brain a la Naruto, but I read it and re-read it, and I always love it. She's funny, she's romantic, she's dramatic--and yes, I'm one of those freaks who likes Miaka just as much as her boyfriends. >_> I may have to pick up the rest of Fushigi Yugi after all. I only haven't because I'm afraid of ruining the happy ending of vol. 13.
Petshop of Horrors 1: I like this as much the sixth time as I did the first. I've always had kind of a love-hate relationship with the art in PSOH--"fussy," someone called it, and it is that, and the character designs are distractingly lanky. But the sheer, galumptious beauty of the animals and of D make up for it.
By the way, Leon is ridiculously bishie in his first story. Thank god it tones down after that--D is pretty enough for both of them, thank you.
Bleach 6: I can now see the difference between the manga and the anime--the storylines are exactly the same, but the manga is brimming with spastic humor, not all of which made it into the anime. (I still think the anime is more stylish, though.) It has a lot more text than most of the other stuff I've read lately, and I noticed it took me about twice as long as usual to finish it, even though I was reading steadily.
Tactics 1: Tactics, however, took me forever to finish. I attribute this to the fact that I found the characters dull and the writing uninspiring. Is Kan mercenary or big-hearted? Spastic or scholarly? Who cares? Haruka is pretty, but boring, and Yoko is funny, but two-dimensional. If this is feudal Japan, why does everybody dress like it's either 1900 or 2005? What's the difference between a demon and a goblin? And I don't think I care enough to see if it improves in subsequent volumes.
The art was strong, though. Everything was nicely detailed, the character designs were distinctive, and when I started looking for it, I found a clear visual flow from panel to panel.
I frequently have trouble following action scenes in manga--Saiyuki is a pleasant and notable exception--and I noted that I had no trouble following the visuals in Tactics, but I still had a hell of a time trying to figure out what was going on, because the writing jumped all over the place.
I also noticed that Tactics has two names on it, although we only get commentary from one of the authors. This leads me to wonder if the writing is being done by one person, and the art by another.
Oh, a side note--every company seems to have a different philosophy regarding the translation of sound effects. Some remove the Japanese sound effects and replace them with English (my personal favorite, but not very popular). Some provide in-panel English translations for the sound effects (my second choice). Tokyopop likes to provide a glossary at the back that you navigate by page-and-panel number (which I fucking hate, because you have to flip to the back of the book to find out whether the sound effect was "BANG" or "WHAP," and when only one character in the book has a gun, the sound effects provide vital information about who's doing what! And who wants to flip to the end of the book after every panel?) Tactics is translated and published by ADV, and this volume contains the most egregious failure to translate I've even seen in manga. One of Haruka's speech bubbles is translucent, and you can see his wings underneath the text. Rather than erasing the Japanese text from the bubble, replacing it with English text, and correcting the art, ADV simply placed a translation outside the speech bubble. It was completely random, and it took me a good minute to figure out what they'd done. (At first, I was puzzling over it, trying to figure out why it hadn't been translated, and whether the characters were fake text, meant to look pretty, but possessing no meaning.) This is the first time I've ever seen that don't-disturb-the-sacred-art philosophy applied to the regular text of a speech bubble instead of a sound effect, and I am not impressed.
D.N.Angel 1: I liked this, but not as much as I'd thought I would. However, after reading Tactics, I realized how much more engaged I'd been by D.N.Angel--while I was reading it, I didn't want to put it down--and I'll probably read more. Daisuke's a cutie. Is it wrong that I find Risa adorable?
Alice 19th: I had no idea what this was about, no clue who the characters were, and only picked it up because of an offhand reference to the way it handled some iffy subject material. I was thus a little surprised when I instantly fell in love with Alice and her hot bishie love interest. This book grabbed me faster than anything I've read in months (even Saiyuki took four volumes to really hook me in). Cute flying rabbits, teenage angst, archery club, and an overarching theme of the power of communication, all delivered with Yu Watase's usual eye-candy? Yes, please! I'll take six dozen.
Watase's stuff doesn't tend to eat my brain a la Naruto, but I read it and re-read it, and I always love it. She's funny, she's romantic, she's dramatic--and yes, I'm one of those freaks who likes Miaka just as much as her boyfriends. >_> I may have to pick up the rest of Fushigi Yugi after all. I only haven't because I'm afraid of ruining the happy ending of vol. 13.
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no subject
on 2005-07-10 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-07-12 03:18 am (UTC)That's pretty much the essence of it. I'm sure erasing-and-correcting is a lot more trouble than what they did, and I wouldn't begrudge the easier method for someone doing it for fun and no profit. But I expect to get a professional quality translation from the professional, paid translators. Not to mention that dude, if you can't be arsed to do a better job than the hobbyists, stfu about how they're undercutting the market.