[macblo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

So, confession time! Or at least this feels like a confession given the awkward timing of me getting around to this (Hi Dr Kain!). I totally adore Ultraman Ginga. There's a lot of reasons for that, like the more meta stuff of it being the show that got me properly interested in Ultraman to begin with, or the design of Ginga himself being a favorite of mine (it's those glowy blue bits~), but I honestly love the show itself too, flaws and all. Sure, it may be the unnecessary answer to the unnecessary question of "What if we tried making Kamen Rider Fourze, but it's an Ultraman show, nobody can act, and the whole thing has a budget that makes old Doctor Who episodes look like major Hollywood productions?", but dang it, it just did it all with so much heart I can't stay mad at it. Ginga is a show you absolutely have to meet halfway to enjoy, but meeting it halfway is absolutely worth it as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, the point I'm getting around to here is that I haven't watched more than a couple episodes of Ginga S and have decided to rectify that. However, after a bit of indecision I went ahead and rewatched regular Ginga first. Partly because I wanted to see if it still holds up (to me I mean), and partly because I wanted to see if Crunchyroll's subs for it are as bad as the couple of bits of them I watched when they first added it.

We'll get back to that last bit in a second, but suffice it to say based on the first paragraph of this post, my thoughts on Ginga haven't changed much. The first half is great, and the second half is... better than I remember actually, but still very odd and nowhere near as sharp as the first couple episodes. The tone is kind of all over the place, for one thing, but, especially given certain plot developments, it also feels like the budget was even more stretched than it already was? Fortunately the finale is great and really leaves the show on a high note.

About those Crunchyroll subs though. They're awwwwwwwwwwwwfulllllllllllllllllll. I'm not just being facetious when I say I've seen TV-Nihon translations that are better than this. I don't know what the deal is either given that the subs we've been getting for X, Orb, and Geed range from fine to good. It's like the backlog Ultraman shows Crunchyroll has were pumped out over a weekend or something. It's absolutely insane. Basically every line is wrong in ways that range from subtle to glaring. For one thing, they've systematically sucked out every last bit of character from the dialogue, and given that Ginga's biggest strength is that aforementioned heart, it's kind of a problem if the show feels completely heartless and devoid of life. There's also the usual weird things like refusing ever say stuff like "an Ultraman" or "Ultramen" even when the result is rather clunky. That might just be a branding thing though so I'm not too angry about it.

What does make me angry, more than any of that relatively subjective stuff, are all the outright mistakes. Sentences written so awkwardly they barely make sense, outright mistranslations, and just plain bizarre inconsistencies like being unable to decide if Taro has "Ultra Telekinesis" or "Ultra Psychokinesis". Not to mention the irrational fear the translator(s) seemed to have of exclamation points and contractions. The Spark Dolls Theater segments do better in this regard, but then they also use the word "moe" in there once like it's a real word. I mean, I know what it means, and I'm sure most of Crunchyroll's audience knows what it means, but you can't just assume this crap! Is this a translation or not?! And why aren't the episode previews translated? None of this makes any sense!

Like, guys, I'm sorry I'm so hung up on this but you gotta understand. I thought replacing Legend of Galaxy as the opening was going to be my biggest issue here. Ginga is a show that already has the odds stacked against it, so the thought of people getting exposed to it through this half-baked mess of a translation is genuinely depressing to me.

At least with the initial shock out of the way, I should be able to enjoy Ginga S without getting so frustrated I want to punch a wall.

Its kind of sad how much of an uphill battle Ginga's fighting pretty much every step of the way. I'm critical of the show and I don't think its very good but, as you've already mention, it has heart and it served its purpose of bring Ultraman into the modern era.

It was also my first Ultraman show, which I watched with Tv-Nihon's subs, and, while it didn't exactly wow me even then, I might not have cared enough to watch Orb, the show that made me an Ultraman fan and made me actually interested in watching the rest of the series, had I not see Ginga first so its a win in my book.

Besides, I hope we can all agree that Ginga is one of the best designed Ultras in the entire franchise. Those lines, his blue Zenshin Crystals that change colors based on attacks, why is blue so rarely used as the primary color for non-sentai-esque tokusatsu heroes...

Its a shame about Crunchyroll's subs though. I've watched all of the Heisei Ultras they have on their site and, while I can't for how accurate the translations are, the overall quality of them seems to vary quite greatly depending on the show.