Attack on Titan

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Animators in Japan get paid horrible.. makes sense why so many anime look horrible now and then get re-animated scenes for the blu ray releases. It didn't make sense to me until now. They must be churning out crappy animation for pennies on the dollar to meet broadcast deadlines and then to encourage people to buy the blurays they actually give everyone the animation that should have came out initially.

(wow.. wtf.. I guess we can embed reddit links here since that last upgrade I did. That surprised me. )

Another example:

http://www.dorkly.com/post/81237/anime-tv-blu-ray

Back to AoT.. I've only read a few chapters of the manga since the original season aired. From what I saw there is still hardly that much material to even turn into a second season at this point. I haven't watched any of this new season yet, but I am surprised they didn't turn it into a full 24 eps.. but if they did then season 3 wouldn't happen for another 3-4 years at this rate. I don't read nearly as much manga as I used to, but not many mangaka can make enough content in a single chapter that could fill an entire episode in an anime. Then the anime catches up, we get all these filler eps and usually some badly animated episodes (I've always noticed that some seasons, but mostly filler arcs in different series are usually animated poorly). But lately more anime keeps having consistently badly animated episodes. These anime studios should pay their employees more.. and if these studios want to actually make more money, they should charge cheaper prices for the blurays. Seriously.. why the fuck does Yu Yu Hakusho still cost roughly $25 a season on bluray. The series is 25 years old now. I bought all three of the Lord of The Rings movies in a bluray boxset for $15 and LoTR definitely costed far more to make than Yu Yu Hakusho.

I bet the studio that made the Attack on Titan series was probably under contract to make a new season to retain the rights to it. Its the same reason why every 3 years or so a new Terminator movie comes out or Fox makes yet another Fantastic Four movie. Fox has to keep making Fantastic Four and Spiderman movies every couple years or the rights revert back to Marvel. Thats why Spider-man has been rebooted so many times now.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I know Dragonball Super has some really shitty animation. AoT has really good animation. Space Dandy, Mob Psycho 100, and My Hero Academia have outstanding animation and they were all simulcasts. I wonder if Funi and/or CN funnel any money in to get some of these studios to do it right the first time. MHA is on a different level,\ from Dandy and MP100 though, as the latter two could probably get away with some shortcuts due to their psychedelic scenes since they are both batshit crazy in their own rights.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Oh god, the CG in Berserk is horrible. It's the main reason why I won't even watch the new one (that is some of the worst CG animation I have ever seen).

Funi probably does pump money into shows, I know either last year or so they actually helped co-produce an anime (don't remember the name). CN funneling money that way is a little less believable since they have one 4-5 hour block a week that shows anime (and of those very few are actually popular outside of AoT and Dragonball), wouldn't really pay for them to funnel money that way (plus they're too interested in their own properties).

The practice of fixing up shows for BD/DVD release has been in effect for a long time, they pretty much release a sub-standard version for TV and the fix up all the problems for the video release. In fact, with the exception of very few studios that can afford to do it right the first time, almost every anime shown/made for TV goes through this process. I can name numerous examples of this considering I still have my fansubs and own the actual video versions of some shows (the differences are pretty noticeable).

We pay these ridiculous prices not because of the animation quality or the fact that it's on BD, we pay it because of who owns the rights. Not to mention do you know how hard it is to get broadcast/home video rights for music? Extremely hard, this is the reason why a lot of anime have their opening and ending songs changed when they're released on video in the States because the rights holders for the original songs want a huge sum of money to allow that music to be put in. Pretty much you pay that money because of the music, not because of the show or its animation quaility (though some shows do warrant a huge markup based on popularity (Kill la Kill is a good example, each BD comes with 4 eps and last I checked was being sold at $49 a pop (I'd really like to get my hands on this but I'm not paying $300-$400 for a show, last time I did that was when I bought the original Pioneer boxset for Trigun back in the day ($270 for it)). I'm accustomed to this since I buy a lot of anime which is why I always shop around Black Friday/Christmas, Right Stuf has such amazing holiday sales that it's hard to pass them up (I think last year I spent $500 all together and made off with like 7 series and 3-5 OVA's/Movies). Yea, I need a life because I know entirely to much about this stuff.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I do notice that anime uses popular Japanese bands for their openings and closings most the time. I can just about pull up any opening on youtube and find a live concert version of it. Of course this started irritating me because a lot of the time I like to listen to this stuff and then it gets yanked from YT due to copyright reasons or "not available in your region". I use to listen/enjoy the scenery on a lot of SCANDAL's stuff who did some endings for Fullmetal Alchemist. Now it makes sense why anime is so expensive when you only get 4 eps a disc. I have a bootleg Samurai Champloo that I bought for like $50 back when that stuff wasn't monitored on half.com. Its all on like 2-3 DVDs... as opposed to my 16 disc FMA collection. This is why I'd rather just give Funi $7 a month to watch stuff.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The cost for the rights to produce the anime in the US must be ridiculous for the prices to be as high as they are. I'd rather pay $7 for a one month subscription to Funi and marathon a crap load of series and then cancel my subscription. It still makes no sense to me tho. In comparison the actors in the Big Bang Theory all make at least $1 million per episode and thats just the actors, doesn't even count the cost of the production, music rights, etc.. and yet I can buy seasons 1-9 bluray boxset for $50. But that will only get me 2 seasons of Yu Yu Hakusho which cost way way way less to make and easily recovered its production costs over the last 20 years since its release.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

So after watching season 2, it was enjoyable, but you can tell they are stalling without complete filler eps. It all build's up to a big revelation at the end including an odd cliff hanger. The next season will happen in 2018. I guess this will be like a normal US TV show with a yearly release format similar to Vikings.

Spoiler

So Eren can control unself-aware titans via his emotions, and so can the beast titan... who is possibly Eren's father? wtf? We still don't know the secret of the walls either. Reiner and Bertholdt knew Eren had this power they call "The Compass" and it seems like they want to figure out how to take it or use him to control it. They came from some community of self aware titans. So how does an entire demi-nation within walls over generations become so ignorant about titans, while another knows of their orgins?

Further more, I assume the beast titan can awaking people's titan forms against their will making them those unself-aware types. Reiner and Bertholdt are not aware of the beast titan either.

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I set my dvr to record all eps and it recorded 12.. I went to start watching this and I realized the damn thing recorded 6 random episodes twice instead of recording all 12 actual episodes. I'll have to download them and watch it this weekend.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I know there was two freaking holiday breaks so they stretched out 12 eps over 14 weeks. I hate how Toonami effects this, they should run them separate. I pay for the service, and I should get access to the weekly episodes regardless of what Toonami does, it should be a bonus perk of having the streaming service. They probably do it to prevent spoilers and all that for CN viewers, but it sucks.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

This season has been good so far, but damn every show about humanity facing some great threat, always eventually turns into humans vs. humans. It's its own cliche. Tons of political drama this season, and I'm always  a sucker for that. However the show has drifted far from its action packed season 1. I feel like for many, they blew there wad in season one and slowed down considerably since then. Sometimes it feels like episodes are dragged out to have an episode about nothing and save the good part for another day. Black Clover is NOTORIOUS for this, and I've started noticing it in a few other shows I've watched. I'm curious if this has to do with the demand of simuldub on these studios or what. This season has good pacing though... or normal pacing you'd find across most action anime. Season 1 was just non stop from beginning to the end, and set a standard that was too high to keep up.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

This will probably be taken down eventually if not soon. Its a really small channel with only 3 views currently but Funimation is a hawk on YT. I must say for all the hate dubs get for its "LaCk Of EmOtIoN" this moment is a crowning achievement. The dub is better than the sub in this scene. The emotions are more raw and powerful. Big respect to J Michael Tatum for a simply outstanding performance as Erwin Smith. I don't even care for the character, but in this scene he made me care. I shouldn't be too surprised since he did Okabe in Steins Gate. This however is his best work. Spoilers of course if you aren't current and you care.

 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

I give dubs credit more often than not even if I prefer subs and it's actually more common to see better portrayal of emotions in dubs then it is subs (the Japanese aren't really into showing emotions and it does show in subs more often then not). There's a reason I prefer the dubs of Cowboy Bebop (I like both tracks but the English track is just so much better, the English VA's fit their characters better than the Japanese VA's), Ghost in the Shell (yes, I actually love the GitS dub mostly because it's the way I watched it originally), The Slayers (this gets me so much crap among my friends because they think the subs is superior, I like both tracks but the dub sits better with me), and Martian Successor Nadesico (the dub is far superior in every way minus one character's voice, the sub is so freaking bland) over their Japanese tracks. Sadly though it's really hit or miss for what dubs I'm willing to watch and even more so now that I have instant access to subs the day of or after it airs in Japan (thank you CR).

My problem with dubs is the lack of voice actors over here and it gets annoying when you're sitting there and go "Oh that's so and so from (list any of like 50 shows or games)" because they don't add in variation in there voice (I can pick out Jet's voice actor instantly because of this, he keeps that voice in everything he does. Same with Spike's). I really don't like that feeling because it takes me right out of the show. True I can do this with Japanese VA's as well but they try to vary their voice between characters and it's sometimes harder to pick them out.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Fair point. I just can't stand people that just disregard dubs and use 20 year old copypasta statements from anime forums back in the day. Yet we're gonna get butt hurt that Netflix redubbed Evangelion... a dub that was utter fucking trash. Most these people call "enough emotion" the constant overreaction and yelling to anything. TBH I'm good with out it. No one in the west reacts like that, I guess we're all emotionless tools. When it comes to variations in translated words, people don't understand that there simply aren't singular words for things in Japanese as there are in English, and sentence structure is different as well... we're mostly backwards from the rest of the world, I learned this in what little of Spanish I dabbled in. Talking in a direct translation is just not natural. Yeah they go too far some times, but meh. I digress.

I can generally point out many dub voices from different series. To me its no different from a Hollywood actor playing different roles. Most of the time they use their normal voice but sometimes they'll have an accent or something. Christopher Sabat is probably the most talented VA, even though he does variations of his Vegeta and Major Armstrong voices for random anime strongmen, he does have a range of performances you'd never know was him without looking it up. Colleen Clinkenbeard does mostly big busty best girls and doesn't stray too far off from her Erza Scarlett voice because its sexy, but she does Luffy in One Piece which is wild. Steve Blum uses Spike voice for everything. But damn its a good voice. Monica Rial is insufferable with mostly squeaker boxes. I've also read the reason we get the same 50 voices is becasue companies are too lazy to try to find new VAs and just prefer to skip auditioning and stick with what they know... which is kinda sad that its hard for newcomers to get an opportunity.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Even the original Japanese track for Eva is fucking trash (most fans will agree with me on that and I, sadly, prefer it to the dub (I've watched both as I own the complete series but I just like Rei and Asuka's voices more in Japanese)). I'm actually quite happy Netflix is re-dubbing it and will most likely watch it when it goes live (it's been years since I last watched Eva, I think it's about time to go through that mind fuck again).

My other major fault with  dubs that I forgot to mention is localization and partly what you mentioned (though I overlook sentence/speaking structure because I honestly don't think I could watch a literal translation being spoken (especially with the way Japanese is structured)). I get that there are cultural things from Japan most westerners will never understand without some passing knowledge of the culture but god damn I don't need characters speaking with various accents that make no sense or western slang in my anime (if I wanted that I'd watch American cartoons and TV). I get this shit in subs as well (sadly more so now that I watch almost everything legally now (I download very little in the way of fansubs anymore)) but it's nowhere near as bad as it is in dubs and it drives me nuts.

Meh, I could list every roll Mamiko Noto has done and pick her out instantly in any anime she has a voice role in (even ones I've never seen) but I'll never get tired of her voice (it's so soothing its unnatural and it's no wonder she voices the majority of my favorite characters). Sadly though she's one of the few Japanese VA's that rarely changes her voice for her roles (nothing wrong with it but I find myself thinking I'm hearing a different character while watching a show (don't know how many times I've mistaken a character for another when its her voice)). I can say the same for Maaya Sakamoto as well but then again I'm a huge fan of her music career so its not real hard to pick her out in her voice roles (though she does change her voice quite frequently in the roles she takes). Don't get me wrong I love Steve Blum's voice for Spike but how many damn characters need Spike's voice? I feel like every time I hear him its a long lost brother or relative of Spike or that Spike had cosmetic surgery and transported himself to whatever time frame or area this new character's in. It also doesn't help that the industry over here pays way less then it should. I'm honestly surprised any of the anime VA's over here make money with how little they're paid and the fact that it's contract work sucks ass. it's not surprising most companies stick with whats tried and true. This also goes to show that anime has a long way to go before it hits the level of other animated shows and movies over here (really sad honestly considering how big of a career it is over in Japan).

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[slippers 3,168]

i gave up on AOT around a year ago. after finding out about their secret hidden in the basement, its all downhill from there. i read manga up to vol 27 i think and the way its going back and forth with flashback and present time can be really confusing and doesnt help with its flow of storytelling. ill just look up how it ends when it finishes.

Spoiler

and im not that interested in what happens to main characters anymore either (well they revealed whats going to happen to those who can transform to titans anyway so blame it on the storyline)

 

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I started reading the manga after season 2. I thought the twist was pretty cool myself as far as the origins of the Titans. The direction Eren went is pretty cliche. As far as the flash back, I only remember the one after the secret is revealed, going back to his father's childhood to before he died. But I haven't read pass the tainted wine part in the manga. I can almost guess how it will end.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Pchan 5,162]

On 6/6/2017 at 11:03 PM, Strider Hiryu said:

Oh god, the CG in Berserk is horrible. It's the main reason why I won't even watch the new one (that is some of the worst CG animation I have ever seen).

Maan, I wish Berserk got the same treatment as S1 of One Punch Man or AOT. Can you imagine how good it would be if it had good animators and stuck to the plot? Sigh. If only good ol Mr. Jeff from Amazon was into the series and dumped a fraction of that 500 million he just spent on a boat. 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Don't watch if you haven't gotten to the last season.