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TokuNation
(https://www.tokunation.com/forums/index.php)
- Tokusatsu Show Discussion
(https://www.tokunation.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=20)
- - Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider 555
(https://www.tokunation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96228)
Do ExciteSub's anidex batches for Blade no longer work? They're my first recommendation over TV-Nihon. I don't know at all who Turn Up Scrubs is but, I mean, they've got 'scrubs' in their name which already makes me question their quality!
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Me dealing with finding the Right Subs for 16-year old Japanese superhero programs created to make children ask for toys: https://media.giphy.com/media/xQz492gZVUoms/giphy.gif |
Oooh I see. This is their website: https://excitesubs.wordpress.com Scroll a bit down and links for their Blade batches should be there. Mind you, I havent checked if the links still work...
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Turn Up was a scrub of the old TV-Nihon subs with the DVD rips. They're what I used the last time I watched Blade and they were pretty decent, as I remember. They may also be the best way to get Missing Ace and the New Rider mini-episodes, because I don't think Excite did those. |
I actually watched the TUS version for my recent rewatch of Blade, and yeah, they're much better than the infamous TVN subs. Granted, they're by no means perfect(expect a good handful of typos) but they'll serve you fine.
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I can't remember what I used for the movie, but I do remember there being an annoying amount of honorifics left in the dialogue that I only understand because I suffered through TVN's Den-O subs.
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Man, ya'll are pretty hard on Tv-Nihon. I mean call my crazy but I'm ...grateful to them? You know, for providing free subs for all these great Toku shows, for years. At a certain point in time Tv-Nihon and actual trash Hong Kong subs were the only names in the Rider Subbing game. I dare say if it weren't for TVN a large portion of us probably would never had gotten into Kamen Rider.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying people don't have the right to their opinion or preference or anything -- I just don't get the vitriol at what is essentially a free service for fans by fans. |
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But, at the same time, you could make the argument that poorly-done subs, to the degree that fans warn you off from them 12 years later, might do more harm than good? If your first exposure to a series is one that grates on you so much that you quit the franchise and never look back.... is that really better than no subs at all? It's complicated emotions, I guess. |
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But that doesn't mean I can't also criticize some of their bizarrely bad discisions and the stuborness with which they insist on make those discisions in spite of it make no sense to do so. |
Yeah, like, “it’s awesome they’re providing this service for free” and “their service is... really bad” are two statements that can and should co-exist. I’m not ungrateful, just very glad they’re not the only option anymore. They walked so good subs could run.
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I guess I just don't "get" what makes them so bad? I don't speak Japanese, I just know a few words, but are they really sooo inaccurate? I mean I remember watching Over Time for Drive and they got tons of stuff wrong.
Most of the complaints I see are about not translating things like Nii-chan or Oba-san, or some clunky wording. I'm not trying to be a TVN-stan, I just see people taking shots at them on forums pretty often. I'm also not saying just because something is free you have to like it, but you might have more understanding of something's faults when it doesn't actually cost you anything. (e.g. I get to work and a co-worker offers me some of his left over pizza he ordered an hour ago vs. I order a pizza and it arrives cold as though it's been sitting around for an hour). And I get it, you guys are saying there's pizza that is hot and free at a different spot (forgive the pizza metaphor, it's almost lunchtime) but I've never eaten there. |
TV-Nihon has its problems but I don't think they're as lame as everyone claims they are. I generally go with Over-Time since they're often the fastest and most accessible for casuals of Japanese language, although I've been watching Tokusatsu since 2008 so I can totally understand the stuff TV-Nihon leaves untranslated. But I refused to use Over-Time for Ryusoulger since they translated Kishiryu (Knightsaur) as Dinoknight which is totally backwards, unintuitive and another reason why I hated that speculative name for Dino Fury. I'm grateful to TV-Nihon for all that they have done for the Tokusatsu fanbase, despite their mistakes.
Let's be honest though, HK subs were a source of so much comedy! :lol |
TV-Nihon is sugoi daisuki subarashi onee-sama, itadakimasu, banana new shoe!
I haven’t watched their newer stuff but the Phase I Heisei releases are absolutely terrible. Easily translatable words left untranslated because kawaii, completely butchered sentences and ugly ass fonts with pointless graphics. Kurona said it best, these guys gave what they had and thus paved the way for better options, and I'm honestly thankful for that, but I've been burned so badly by their stuff that I would rather miss out on something entirely than to watch it with TV-Nihon subs. |
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Other subbing groups do a localized translation. This approach goes one-for-one as much as possible, but also adjusts the language in ways that make it read more like standard English. This does mean some things are less precise (Kyoryuger had a lot of puns that Over-Time reworked into similar English ones, for example), but the general idea of the original language is maintained. It can lead to some awkward moments, though, based on how the translator chooses to localize some things ("Gotou-chan" as "Brotou" in O-T's OOO sub, for example). This is how most professional translation works, though. I will also say this: the last time I watched something new from TV-Nihon, it read a lot better than their older work. I think that having competition has forced them to step up their game and be less of an early-00s fansubbing group. |
Thanks, everybody, for the feedback on the various sub groups. A lot of this stuff is above my paygrade (tough to judge the translating accuracy when you don't speak both languages), so I appreciate more knowledgeable folks chiming in with their opinions.
Mostly, though, I love how the end of the 555 thread becomes a teaser for the Blade thread with all of this TV-Nihon: Threat Or Menace stuff. There's like two whole pages where there's this, like, palpable dread over bad subbing. It's like the end of a Marvel movie, but if instead Captain America and Doctor Strange were arguing about the next movie's cinematographer. |
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I think the best thing I can personally contribute is that TV-Nihon's subs are what set me on the path to learning Japanese, a compliment(?) that really illustrates the duality at play here if you think about the layers in it. Considering I spent this entire thread complaining about translation errors, it should go without saying I think they often deserve criticism. But they have improved on the whole over the years, and they have a genuine historical significance in growing the English-speaking tokusatsu fandom that I hope doesn't go unappreciated in the future. I don't think I would be watching an officially subbed livestream of Heisei Generations Forever later tonight without these guys doing their low resolution, low accuracy subs of Blade all the way back in the day. |
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But yeah, credit for getting alot of people into KR, but there's no denying that most of their Phase 1 subs were total trash. Is danger acute? |
TVNihon's definitely improved with time, but they're a) an easy joke, and b) seriously, what the hell is a Momotaros-san-tachi, that's not translated, it's not beginner friendly, aaaarrrgghhh.
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I went about 2/3 of the way through Magiranger without realizing that the one character was their mother, because they never translated the Japanese word for Mom.
But yes, they have gotten better and I will still use their subs if there is not other option. It's not terrible and it's not unwatchable. You still get the basic plot. The main think I don't like about them is how sensitive they are to any criticsm. They double down on the bad parts of their translations and fight back against anyone who dares not agree with them. I think that's had a lot to do with how much some people don't like them. |
You guys made a lot of good points and I feel I definitely have a better understanding of the near constant criticism I see toward TVN. I was wondering if it was warranted or (as the very show this thread is about) is something that gets a lot of undue hate because it's sort of en vogue. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond.
My big takeaway from all this is that I should check out Excite for subs, but I'm still left with just one question... What the hell did Owner (Den-O) say when it was translated as "Banana New shoe?" cuz my buddy Walter and I have been saying that to each other for years. |
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Haven't found something yet to say here but happy Kaixa day!
https://66.media.tumblr.com/a448e876...n8no1_1280.png |
Yes, Happy Kaixa Day to you as well, Dread!
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Such a despicable guy I took a break from watching Faiz after getting sick of him and still haven't come back after nearly two years
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Kaixa? Oh, you mean Kiba? A neat suit but I prefer Orga for him.
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https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz37a.png https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz37b.png https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz37c.png https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz49a.png https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz49b.png |
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If today is your birthday, you get to call yourself Kamen Rider Kaixa, because you've probably used the belt at some point.
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And Kusaka's true final form, a.k.a sand https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...57406/sand.jpg It's a sin to forget this one https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...saka_smile.png Quote:
https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/...22/kusaka1.png |
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KAMEN RIDER 555 20TH: PARADISE REGAINED
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/regained1.png –1– There’s a difference between telling a 555 story and telling a Takumi story, and it comes down to one thing: Kiba. Kiba was the other half of the 555 narrative. Where Takumi and his friends represented a future of coexistence by blending in and asking for less, Kiba and his friends represented a future of coexistence by embracing what made them different from the rest of society, and arguing for their place within it. That struggle – blending in or standing out – was the core tension of the entire series, and engulfed the rest of the cast in that unanswerable question. Individual characters might have their own moments of conflict or drama, but the engine of the show was the twin poles of Takumi’s shame and Kiba’s belief. Obviously, that’s all off the table in a follow-up. With Kiba’s actor’s passing, the story became more about Takumi, and less about the (accidentally?) progressive ideology of the original series. There’s still a lot to enjoy there – I really liked how the Drive-era side-story found a place to interrogate Takumi’s inability to take a win – but it’s inevitably smaller and more singular. Takumi’s issues are born out of the themes of the series, but they’re an isolated facet of a much more complicated structure. Setting his survivor’s guilt up against the ghost of Kusaka, typically furious that Takumi ambivalently abandons something Kusaka would kill for, is a fun story to tell about one character’s psychology, but it isn’t the societal examination and critique that always made 555 so special to me. We’ll get Takumi stories forever, probably with a side of Kusaka, but it felt like 555 stories were impossible going forward. –2– So imagine my surprise that we get this film, that largely puts Takumi’s issues on the backburner to tell a beautifully nuanced story about how progressive ideals frequently age into conservative fears, while the next generation’s struggles become theoretical and nostalgic to the older generation. It’s a movie that nicely echoes what worked for me about the final act of the original series, where Takumi and Kiba are caught up in the dreams and machinations of an earlier generation’s struggles, doomed to act out the obsolete and irrelevant rivalries that they were raised on. Only now, the cast has aged into that older generation, looking back on progress – or the lack thereof – and seeing only failure and decay. Whatever they thought they were fighting for they didn’t get, and society’s regression (or calcification) into institutional distrust makes the idea of fighting for anything a fool’s errand. I like how this movie allows for a weariness that feels earned, as middle-age introduces mortality and frustration into the mix of emotions that guide someone, so that ideals are more easily betrayed in the name of nihilism. Takumi comes into this movie trying to stave off his second death, but the ever-present fear of it makes him think that any hope for the Orphnochs is doomed. It’s an interesting way of portraying the creep of conservatism, how a disconnection with idealism accompanies a life that’s closer to its end than its beginning. That darkness suffuses this movie, but it never feels like it’s Inoue wallowing in it. The point of this film, as evidenced by Takumi’s reclamation of the original Faiz suit for the climax, is how the idealism of our past – the ways we wanted to make things better instead of just protecting what we have – is never really gone from us. There’s no inevitably to turning your back on hope. We may lose sight of our optimism as we get older, but we can always fight to get it back. Society may not consistently improve, but we can always fight to make it better. Faiz as a show – and Inoue as a writer – is sort of obsessed with the idea of not punishing people for backsliding, and recognizing that doing something right in the moment is worth more than making up for your past or ensuring a perfect future. Especially as you get older, it can be difficult to see what you’re doing as worthwhile, or that the future is what you’d originally hoped it would be. This is a movie that only asks people to do the right thing right now. (Jotaro even has it on a sweatshirt!) I think that’s a lovely message for a middle-aged Faiz movie. –3– And, boy, everyone’s old now! (I can say that as an old man myself.) Original cast is all mid-30s to 40s, but they all look great. It’s a very nice reunion, save a couple folks I’d’ve loved to get back. (Saeko, Houjou, the conspicuous-by-his-absence Keitaro.) What we get is a fairly complete Faiz dynamic, and everyone’s dramatically and hilariously on-point. My favorite thing in the film, and the moment I knew I was in good hands, is when Takumi is leaving the cleaners -slash- going out to get smokes, and Mari asks him to get mayo, and Takumi says he will… if he remembers. PERFECT. No notes! Takumi will absolutely agree to do a friend a favor and then immediately qualify it by saying he also might forget to do it. And then. And then! He returns after years of absence, tries to kill several of his friends in front of Mari, and then shows up to give her the mayo he was supposed to pick up while also stating that he’s not here to talk or explain things… at which point he talks and explains things. He’s such a melodramatic baby around Mari, and that dynamic’s return was crucial to the success of this film for me. The way this movie foregrounded Mari’s role in things, boy, so grateful for that. She was a lynchpin for me on the original show, and the use of her here was exceptional. Thematically, she’s here to talk about the difference between allyship and having skin in the game, which is a nice way to talk about how people can find themselves reexamining their motivations as they get older, and end up needing the very support they used to offer others from a distance. (I don’t just want to go Trans Metaphor, but, y’know, Trans Metaphor.) Dramatically, though, she’s also here because the movie needs someone to call Takumi out on his constant hypocritical bullshit. One of the best scenes (in a movie full of great scenes) is the one in the abandoned hospital, where Takumi shifts from Orphnochs Have No Future So I Should Kill Them to Mari How Dare You Try To Kill Yourself. Mari’s argument with him helps spotlight Takumi’s internal struggle, and how his fatalism will always lose out to his protectiveness, so long as he gives it time. That, and she’s here to finally get her long-awaited chance to give some pain back to Kusaka. Kusaka! I honest to god was hoping they’d just leave his resurrection as (heavy sigh) Somehow Kusaka Returned, but no, he’s back as a deep-cover android. I don’t know if this all the way works, or even a little bit works – Smart Brain knew that someday Mari would become an Orphnoch, so they placed a Kusakabot there as a failsafe… but that Kusakabot helped save multiple Orphnochs, and Smart Brain could’ve activated and/or killed Mari at any time. It 100% feels like the movie wanted fans to get plenty of Them Eyebrows, while also giving Mari and Takumi free rein to wallop the living shit out of a guy who leverages his oily hovering to maximum tension like it’s 2003 all over again. I don’t really have any big thoughts on the return of Kitazaki, since it, y’know, isn’t ever actually Kitazaki. Nice to have some of that residual iconography dragged back into the present, but he’s mostly just here to be an implacable adversary with a famous face. If it had somehow really been Kitazaki, I’d say the use of him was a neat way of exploring how age subsumes even the most difficult outliers into the needs of the oppressor, but it ain’t him, so I don’t think it’s that. I will say that I appreciate the way the government uses the symbolism of past insurgency to solidify their interpretation of history; Kitazaki’s participation in the government crackdown means that even the loose cannon of the past agrees with this course of action. Also, hey, Seiji Takaiwa gets ramen spilled on him! At Kaido’s ramen shop! Because Kaido is here! Not to really do anything besides be comic relief, but still! KAIDO! –4– But you can’t have a movie about the shifting battle for society by only focusing on the hollowed-out husks of those in their (gasp) 30s and 40s – you gotta have some young people, too! They’re an interesting grab bag of characters, and while I can’t say they made a huge impression on me as individuals, I appreciated them in the aggregate. I liked how they existed to be the collateral damage of things like Mari’s advocacy, Takumi’s nihilism, and the overall inexorable pull of idolatry. These kids give a shit about Takumi et al. because they’ve Seen Shit, and they think that’ll help them better navigate their present. But, of course, it can’t. Takumi’s way of doing things worked for him (citation needed), but he’s got nothing really to offer anyone hoping for a better world. Mari’s work represents a kind of stasis, that’s only grinding down the spirits of the very people she’s hoping to help. Smart Brain is a cheerful face on societal intolerance, and it doesn’t care about how Orphnochs see themselves. Kids like Kouta, Kei, and Rena are better off finding their own way and leaving the battles of the past to their elders, just like the cast of Faiz learned 20 years ago. (I will take a minute to say that I found Jotaro’s presence alternately worthwhile – how even terrible role models like Takumi have something to offer the next generation – and hilariously on-the-nose. Like, he’s just Keitaro Junior! This movie just goes We Need A Keitaro To Make This Work so they invented a younger one and dressed him up like the original! My headcanon is that he’s another android, Small Wonder-style.) While it may sound like I thought the new cast was some sort of storytelling failure, since they’re barely worth talking about individually, I think they're probably just about right for an hour-long anniversary special. Why would I want a huge, nuanced cast of new characters? I don’t! I want Takumi being a frustrating, contradictory mess that both his friends and foes have to try to navigate! I want Mari stepping up and becoming a love interest AND someone who can beat the crap out of Kusaka! I want Kusaka to get the crap beat out of him by Mari! I want Kitazaki to do all of his own stunts, and do them well! I want the kids to be a seasoning, and not the main course, which this movie got exactly right. –5– It’s amazing to me how much this movie felt like the 555 I remembered. (I mean, it wasn’t 20 years for me – I only watched this show in 2020.) Far from the tricky introspection of the Drive-era specials, or the Greatest Hits weirdness of the Zi-O two-parter, this was the Big Themes storytelling of 555 that won me over originally. I love how this was able to leverage time and age to readdress the core conflict of the original series with more subtlety and melancholy. Like the screens deployed throughout this film and the TV show’s finale, there’s a separation between idealism and fatalism that’s brought about by time, but it can be bridged if you’re willing to make the effort. That hopefulness is frequently overlooked in Inoue’s stories, and I’m so glad to see how prominently it was used here. And in such a beautiful film, too. Every few minutes there was another iconic shot: Takumi in a beam of light, caught between the shadows, symbolizing his thin life between two deaths; Muez, losing a fight in simulation to win it in reality; all those exquisite long takes, emphasizing the connections of the characters by letting their movement be the motion of the scene; just, like, the whole movie. Getting back Inoue was a treat; getting back Tasaki was a gift. I don’t know if I could’ve asked for more than what this movie gave me. I was dreading watching this, a little. 555 is one of my favorite Kamen Rider series, and the thought that would come back wounded or diminished was… I don’t know what I would’ve done with that. To be greeted instead by a film that celebrated what was smart about 555 by continuing to challenge its assumptions, in an action-packed film that never relied on fan service? Amazing. What a special thing to do for Faiz fans. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/regained2.png https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/regained3.png |
So, Keitaro’s absence is because the guy who played him retired a year before this movie was announced. I’m guessing he wasn’t that eager to break his retirement so soon, so we get the nephew playing much the same role.
One thing I do like about this movie is the fact that Muez’s Predictive AI (which in the CSM toyline, all the “Next” Rider suits have) is thwarted by Old Faiz, presumably because Smart Brain felt that since the power set was obsolete, they didn’t bother keeping any detailed files on at all. And because casting trivia is my bread and butter for the most part, our new female Orphnoch is played by Kanon Matsuzawa, who is better known for the Girls x Heroine series (a slightly lesser known Tokusatsu franchise aimed at young girls). She also appeared soon after this came out as Sena in the Romeo and Juliet two-parter in Gotchard. |
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KAMEN RIDER 555 MURDER CASE: THE PROBLEM
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/murder1a.png So, we get this anniversary movie, and it’s great. It’s a nuanced and thoughtful look at the themes and conflicts that powered the original series, told with humanity and shot beautifully. It was a movie that felt weighty with age and regret, and used that to tell a story about how we can always find the idealism we thought we’d lost. Everything you’d want, right? Wrong. The movie’s great – one of my favorite pieces of non-series Kamen Rider media – but it doesn’t really cover the totality of the 555 experience. Kamen Rider 555 wasn’t just a show of thematic intricacy or complex motivations. Kamen Rider 555 was also a show of incredibly broken people being colossal assholes to each other at the drop of a hat, led by a title character who was a gigantic, whiny baby whenever he didn’t get his way, and this TTFC project nicely honors that side of the Kamen Rider 555 experience. Thankfully, there’s really nothing in the way of theme or metaphor this time out. It’s just an AU where Team Old and Team Young all live under the same roof and annoy each other, which is as loving a tribute to the original series as Paradise Regained was. It’s a comedy special full of prickly Inoue nonsense, abetted by Tasaki’s expert staging and timing (the incredibly long shot of the incredibly fake goldfish on the street!!!), leading to the sort of absurd warmth that 555 managed on a staggeringly consistent basis. Like, Takumi. He’s so on in this one! He hates that everyone likes the goldfish, and he’s a total pissy baby about it! Across all of Heisei, he’s probably the most insufferable Kamen Rider, and it’s nice to see that that aspect of his character will never, ever change. Paradise Regained had him grumpily bringing a bottle of mayo to explain his long absence and off-screen heel turn, while Murder Case has him refusing to do any work, and feeling indignant and slighted if anyone around him is happy. It’s incredibly sweet of Toei to give fans the chance to celebrate this side of Takumi, in addition to the world-weary fatalist, because Takumi is a giant bundle of off-putting personality traits, some of which are very funny. I don’t care even a little bit about the murder mystery, some of which is because I was implored to solve it (in the most insulting way imaginable) by Kusaka, and eff that dude. No, I will just bask in the ridiculous radiance of Mari bringing home a goldfish to a bunch of teenagers, a creepy would-be love interest, and her melodramatically unhelpful best friend. I missed this side of of these characters, so much. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/murder1b.png |
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