Innablogadavida

The Best Anime You've Never Seen

2011-10-19T15:04:00.015-05:00

Anime fandom should take a big psycho-gun shot to the face for not being more keen on this awesome show. Space Adventure Cobra is the 1983 animated adaptation of Buichi Terasawa's manga series, Cobra. Cobra ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1978–1984 and it stars a space outlaw described by animevice.com as "a cross between Han Solo, Buckaroo Banzai, and Douglas Quaid from Total Recall".

Space Adventure Cobra follows the titular character, Cobra, on his many adventures through space. But don't let the corny, yet obscenely apt, title of the show throw you off... it's anything but corny. Cobra is as manly as they come. He travels around sporting a head of blond jheri curls, red spandex, and a multifunctional high-tech blunt in his mouth at all times. Along for the ride is his voluptuous robot assistant, Amaroid Lady, and a highly advanced, one-of-a-kind space ship, The ~~Millennium Falcon~~ Turtle. There are two opposing forces through out the series, the Milky Way Patrol and the Pirate Guild. Though the struggles and crossfire between the three parties, within context of the story, take a backseat for Cobra's quest for adventure and bitches.

Space Adventure Cobra is one of my favorite anime shows and it is definitely one of the best from the 1980s. It is just really fun and really well executed. Nothing artistically groundbreaking, no deeper meaning; what you see is what you get. And what you get is a whole lot of action, comedy, and tits. The similarities and inspiration from American action cinema of the time period is obvious, but its brought to you with all the flair and proficiency that can only be conceived by the utterly insane minds of Japan.

It's really a shame the show never hit it big in the US. It would have been right at home on Adult Swim's anime block between Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. With an awesome soundtrack, consistently good animation, and a totally non-anime art style, I really don't see how this was never licensed back when old anime was still being picked up. Though never released in the United States, the franchise has a bit of a presence in Europe. The French translation of the manga was a favorite of director, Alexandre Aja, and he is currently producing a live-action film adaptation.

Japan has an awesome Blu-Ray box set that you can purchase if you feel like taking out another mortgage on your home. Otherwise there are some pretty good quality rips in circulation with fansubs. I suggest you check it out. It's exactly what you're looking for if you're like me; completely unimpressed with most of the recent cliché, recycled, modern garbage shows from Japan. It's cliché, recycled, old garbage from Japan. Which has come full circle and is novel again.

Dear FUNimation, Your New DBZ Blu-Rays Are an Insult...

2011-09-10T15:27:00.011-05:00

Of all the money-grubbing, self-righteous, and disrespectful marketing gimmicks I have ever witnessed, you're latest attempt at milking your precious Dragon Ball Z franchise has got to be the most deplorable. First you think you can get away with re-releasing the show on DVD singles after you had already forced me to start collecting VHS. That's just sick. Then you have the audacity to think you can just repackage the show in cheap easy-to collect DVD box sets.

"We'll just put this on the shelf at Walmart, tell them it's new. Those pathetic sheeple will all buy it again. They need it like a newborn platypus needs to lap up the pools of milk in the indents of a mother platypus's abdomen; as the platypus has a functioning mammary gland but lacks the proper teats to excrete the fluid, thus it is expelled through pours in its skin," you probably said amongst yourselves at your big evil board meeting.

Then, like clockwork, as the thunder strikes in the distance beyond your big evil cooperate layer... You scheme to put the show out again in its "proper" presentation, remastered in Japan, with all kinds of cool supplementary material. What's worse is you put this one out even cheaper than the last release despite being a superior product in every way.

I can just see it now. At your board meetings, after having group sex with animals and feeding on freshly aborted fetuses, you plot to release the show AGAIN to the unsuspecting public. After decades of dealing us an English dub filled with inaccuracies and shoddy performances, you put it out in HIGH DEFINITION with no filler and a better English dub with stellar performances and character-appropriate voice-recasts. And in dirt-cheap box sets that are even better than the home country's release. But you won't stop there, will you? How evil can you get? Have you no shame?

Well, I for one will not fall for it again. This "Level 1.1" Blu-Ray release of Dragon Ball Z is the final straw. There's no way I can support this level of treachery. You don't get second chances. Or third chances. Or fourth or fifth. You get a chance to suck my balls. That's what you get. There is absolutely no way you can get me to buy the same show again. I don't even like the show anymore. I have bought it and watched it so many times that I would rather hang myself with piano wire than to give you more of my hard earned cash for the same product I've been buying since before I had a jo-

Holy shit that looks fantastic.

Bad Dubbing: Limited by Lip Lock

2010-08-30T17:59:00.016-05:00

Japanese cartoons are pretty cool. They can be some of the most imaginative, story-driven animation on the planet. Here in the States, we're lucky to get mostly all of the good stuff released in affordable, high-quality packages. With a dub in our own language to boot! And man do I appreciate a good dub. Because of the limited animation techniques employed within in the Japanese animation industry, so-called "mouthflaps" are usually limited to three frames. In addition to saving money and time, this process also makes dubs of other languages not only easier to produce, but easier to watch as well. When done right, an alternate dub of an anime can flow just as naturally as it does for the language it was created for.

Unfortunately, not every English dub is perfect. The problem is that anime is a niche market. This leads to budget restraints which in turn results in a lot of less than perfect English dubs. Common problems include amateur voice acting, poorly adapted scripts, awkward dialog, and articles lost in translation. Over the past 20 years, with experience and better technology, these problems occur less and less. Industry leaders like FUNimation, Bandai, and VIZ produce some steller English dubs. But there is one issue in particular that gets overlooked too often in this day and age in ADR production... Awkward Pauses.

This is... a result of... animation produced around the Japanese language. Because pauses in speech belong in certain places in... Japanese but not in English. I don't... quite understand why it still happens. But it... is extremely awkward.

It could be another reason why the mainstream public does not seriously consider anime a valid form of entertainment; paradoxically fueling the "nicheness" of the medium in general. Let's say hypothetically that we can forgive Dragon Ball Z. After all, it was an amateur production, by an (at the time) amateur company (with limited money and resources). We could look past things like that if it weren't still happening today! Take this clip from 2003's popular Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex as an example. It is a newer show, with a newer English dub.

This is a series that I have been trying very hard to get into, but the English dub just keeps turning me off. It's absolutely fantastic in some episodes, but in others, such as the one the clip above derives from, it's downright hard to watch. On the whole, aside from Luci Christian's, nails-on-a-chalkboard, "baby talk" little girl voice, all of the characters are casted appropriately. There are no annoying "character voices" to speak of. It's all natural, believable, plain ol' good acting. The script is also as accurate as they come. The only problem is that the dialog is riddled with these awkward pauses, and as a dialog heavy show, this is detrimental to the product on the whole.

Awkward pauses as a product of "lip lock" is by no means unrealized or new. It has happened since the very beginning and continues today. The fact that it does continue today is the major problem. I know that dub work is extremely difficult, especially on such a tight budget and time schedule. But we have come a long way since Astro Boy and Speed Racer. If professionalism is the goal, which I'm assuming it is, more attention has to be payed to the shortcomings holding these products back. Simple mistakes like these should be worked around; English is a flexible language. Personally, I feel like flow and natural-sounding dialog is much more important than accuracy. That is, as long as it fits the tone of the original and we don't miss any important plot-points. There is absolutely no reason for the awkward pauses to persist in today's anime dubs.

And so I leave you with this clip from the English dub of Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo. It is very relevant to the topic. ;)

DISCLAIMER: This post is about English dubs. It was created for the purpose of critiquing common problems in ENGLISH DUBS. It is an unspoken understanding that any shortcomings of a dub can be ignored by watching the show in its original language with English subtitles. Please do not be a sub-pusher in the comment section.