I'd say it is. They upload about half a week later than Overtime, don't translate lots of things and Overtime actually localizes stuff like the Ghost jingles.

Unbelievable.

So yeah, sorry Fish, I'm waiting until someone else subs the Specter V-Cinema, but once it's out that way I'll make sure to post my thoughts on it :)

(TV-Nihon's Ex-Aid translator here)

Well I get it that everyone has their own preferences and stuff, here's just to clear some things up.

We just have a more flexible QC system for our QCers, where we give them a few days to QC whenever they like. Just because Over-Time does things faster doesn't mean we're lazy (would you say they rush their stuff out?). Everyone works at their own pace, whichever suits them best. I don't see anyone saying EXCITE is lazy because RTA gets their subs out within a few hours (I mean, I could release rushed translations, no typesetting, even earlier than RTA if I wanted to, does that make RTA lazy?).

And Lunagel was just being honest there? If she didn't like it, she didn't like it. Just like how I wrote in our forums that I felt that Takeru's cardiac arrest in the Pac-Man movie was a complete waste of time, just to add 3 minutes to the movie. It doesn't mean I translated that part haphazardly without care.

I mean. When out of all the sub groups, you're the last one to upload in the week, tend to have literal translations in comparison to the other groups, don't actually translate stuff and keep Japanese words in, then it's just fucking lazy by comparison. RTA, Excite and Overtime don't get praise for just being quick, but for making it enjoyable. I haven't seen anything from TVN Ex-Aid, so I can't say if you're subs are actually good or bad, but rather, in comparison to other TVN subs I've seen, I just tend to be baffled how TVN's one of the biggest toku fansub group. I STILL can't bring myself to watch Dekaranger because only TVN had the full series and I kept getting pissed off by inconsistent translator notes. Note though, again, this isn't against you

I wasn't criticizing this Lunagel for not liking the movie, it's Ghost, which has proven time and time again to be controversial in the fandom.

Personally, I would say that I'm one of the more liberal translators in TV-Nihon. I try not to change the meanings, while also making sure that the viewers can understand them. Eg. I kept the "boku/ore" thing in, with translation note for the first time, while EXCITE and RTA change it to "polite/rough" or something like that. Remember when Emu started using "ore", then he eventually returned to normal, saying "boku" at the end? Asuna said "You said boku"? while RTA's translation was "You returned to normal?" RTA's translation, while easier to understand, lost some meaning in there, in how Asuna realized Emu returned to normal. So yeah, that's one benefit of literal translation. I translated all the jingles for Ex-Aid (except some which can't really be translated accurately, like Maximum's Dariragan Dagozuban which doesn't really mean anything).

I also had lots of issues with our old DekaRanger subs myself (eg. DekaMaster's Jigoku no Banken, DekaBreak's Yoake no Keiji), but to be fair, those were one of takenoko's first projects. He was too literal at first, but I can see that he strikes a finer balance between literalism and localization now. Which is one of the reasons I'm working on the DekaRanger blu-ray translation checks.

Of course not, but I think the scale is a little different here. "Laziness" was a poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was more, if you don't have any enthusiasm for what you're working on, the quality of that work is naturally going to suffer at least a bit.

Thinking a scene in a movie is tacked on is one thing, but if your response to an entire film is, and I quote, "FUCK THIS MOVIE", the subs you're making for it probably aren't going to have that extra layer of tender love and care, you know?

It's why I maintain Aesir's subs for Gaim, even with all the grief you can give them for umlauts and Ornacs, are the gold standard for what a fansub can be. Everyone working on that show loved it to bits and you can see it in every line of dialogue. There was a ton of thought put into stuff like how the characters "sounded" and what seemingly innocuous lines meant in the grander scheme of the overall narrative, all because they were so engaged by it.

To use an example from a different show, that kind of passion for what you're translating can be the difference between a climactic, heartwarming speech ending like this:

http://i.imgur.com/eg5YoYp.jpg

and like this:

http://i.imgur.com/ZDAAUvZ.png

The one that sounds totally limp is the officially licensed release, by the way. I'm not a translator or anything, so obviously I can't speak with too much authority on the subject, but hopefully you can see what I'm saying here. Both of those lines are correctly translated, but only one of them actually accounts for the fact that the viewer is supposed to be feeling something.

Yeah, I really don't want to insult the effort TVN puts into what they do, much less any of the individuals who work on it! As much as I like to bash on earlier work by them, I really can't help but admire how far they have come at the same time. I still stand by my opinion that they are not the best subbers for me though.

I don't watch TV-N subs because I'M COOL!
Nah, it's more due to the torrents over DDL thing. As I've said, I like all of the wacky graphics and shit. And y'all did my beloved Ryukendo, so, thanks for that!

Catching up on Ex-Aid, and I just watched the Lazer DVD. It was...alright.

I get that Hyper Battle DVDs are supposed to be goofy, but when it's something like this where it seems to be canon given it's connection to important future events, it makes it feel very out of place and odd. Emu seemed particularly out of character, with his English "oh my god"'s and....whatever the hell he was doing in the scene where he disguises as a bugster. I have no earthly idea why he was moving like that.

I also don't really get the significance of Bike Action Gamer being Level 0. He didn't use the Level 0 powers and it wasn't even mentioned. Kinda odd.

So yeah, all in all it was fun, but if it were up to me, I'd probably have given the Hyper Battle Video to Poppy and let Lazer get a proper spin off.

I'm pretty sure it's just because Proto Gashat forms are Level 0 by default. With exceptions of course, like PMAX, and I guess PBBS, but in general. It's just 0 because it used Proto Bakusou Bike.