[Fish Sandwich]

Alright, before I move into the last chapter of this rewatch, there's something I want to get out of my system first. Namely all the runners-up and otherwise unused mistakes that almost managed a mention when I was going through Faiz. I feel like I'm going to regret it if I don't get this stuff committed to writing before I forget.

というわけで、復活のスーパーファイズ翻訳ミスコーナーです～！今日は完全ルール違反の翻訳ミスオンパレードだ！



「質問によるな」

This is the mistake from episode 2 that set me on the road to creating this little corner, so I figure while I'm here I might as well give it the full treatment, with the picture and the original quote. For a quick reminder, Takumi is saying whether or not he'll answer a question from Mari "depends on the question".



「人数足りないんだから」

In this bit from episode 4, the other girls on Yuka's basketball team are doing their usual shtick of tormenting her. She then gets told by this one not to skip practice, but not because it's boring without her. Granted, the implication that's it's boring without her around to make fun of means the broad meaning is still intact, but the actual reason given is that they won't have enough people without Yuka. I think the implication that she's considered so worthless by the rest of them that they only keep her around out of absolute necessity is a bit more devastating, but maybe that's just me.



「で…でも、死体が発見された場所は、バラバラじゃないですか？」

This whole exchange between Soeno and Sawamura from episode 5 is pretty messed up, and not just because they're talking about the deaths of a bunch of high school girls! There's a lot I could get into, but one thing I'd very specifically like to call out is this line here. Sawamura didn't say a thing about the bodies being mutilated! He just said they the locations they were found in were scattered. This got misinterpreted as the bodies themselves being scattered, and the followup line where he states, factually, some of those locations, is now rendered as a hypothetical because of this initial mistake.

It's been a while since I actually watched these episodes, but I believe the implication here, is that, since people killed by Orphenochs revive for a bit briefly (something played up much more this early on), the girls Yuka killed tried going about the rest of their day before properly kicking the bucket, and because of this, Sawamura is skeptical that the deaths are directly connected back to the school, unlike Soeno, who's sure something happened here, but not what.



「あなたは再三の警告にもかかわらず、今まで一度も人間を襲ったことがありませんね？」

This line from episode 10 was in an unfortunate category for a while. I knew it was wrong, and it was majorly bugging me. But since, and I can't stress this enough, I'm not any kind of expert, I didn't know what was right, preventing me from using it as the mistake of the day.

But then Murakami used the word 警告 in the movie and I realized I'd been blanking on that the whole time.

Smart Lady is actually telling the Snail Orphenoch here that, in spite of Smart Brain's repeated warnings, he's yet to attack a human. This is crucial! He hasn't even attempted to attack people. He was introduced as someone stealing food from people's homes, while being so polite about it, he even cleaned them up while he was there. It's not until he's threatened with getting murdered by Faiz here, and then getting caught stealing, that he actually works up the guts to go for it.



「三原くんは知らないかもしれないけど、乾さんはファイズとして今まで立派に戦ってきたのよ」

Mihara debuted literally right as Takkun's break from being Faiz began, and it still hasn't ended by the time this line from episode 38 is said. What Rina, who has been around to see these things, is saying to Mihara isn't "did you forget how...", it's "maybe you don't know, but...". The poor kid has enough problems already without people trying to gaslight him.



「俺、たっくんのこと怖くないから」

This is from in episode 41, when Takumi is being welcomed back into the group after certain big story events leave his friends fearful of him for a while. So I'd just like to note that, far from uncharacteristically talking about what he wants in this delicate time, this is actually Keitarou reassuring Takkun he's not scared of him.



「木の間に、引っかかって飛べない風船」

This line, from episode 43, is another one that's correct, but inexplicably missing part of the sentence. Yuka makes the comparison she's drawing much more explicit in the full line, which would be, working with what's already there, "A balloon caught in the branches of a tree, unable to fly".



「あなたはお払い箱なの」

And of course, I couldn't leave everyone hanging after teasing this line from episode 46 earlier. The short story is that Smart Lady just told Murakami he's been fired. The long story is best explained by someone smarter than me!

But since I'm here right now, and this is a weird enough flub to warrant elaborating, the gist of it is that Smart Lady used an idiom that literally means "payment box". The etymology of that apparently has something to do with Shinto purification rites and wordplay, if you're wondering, but that's the part someone else would be better at telling you. To be fair to TV-Nihon, I didn't know this word either until I had to go look it up, but from what I can tell, it's not something that would ever be used literally, and even then, I don't think "piggy bank" would be an appropriate translation.

The fact that Murakami is out of a job is probably obvious enough anyway, but this line makes Smart Lady sound like... actually I'm not even sure what this sentence implies, but it's way off the mark!

...Okay, I think that about covers it. Covers the things I most wanted to comment on, anyway. There are actually still mistakes I haven't touched on at all. That includes both ones minor enough I wasn't too worried about, and also bigger ones that I simply can't explain easily enough. Even just talking about that conversation between Soeno and Sawamura was something of a struggle. Not to mention anything there might've been that simply flew over my head entirely, the same way it did both the groups who have worked on this show.

I touched on this when I finished Faiz, too, but critiquing bad translation is seriously not something I'm qualified for. I'm aware there's an armchair critic aspect to this. The classic "well do it yourself then if you're so smart" scenario. But that's just it. If I'm smarter than these people at all, it's not by much. I'm attempting to punch well above my weight every time I do this, but I really have a passion for these shows, and I think these things are worth pointing out.

The subs available for Faiz are not very good, and while I don't know if good subs would magically raise everyone's opinion on it, there's no doubt in my mind that the guesswork-heavy translation we have available is not doing anyone any favors, especially for people who are fans of the show, who won't be able to dig any deeper into a lot of the subtext, because it's been paved over.

I guess that's what I hoped to illustrate through this whole process. TV-Nihon's subs for Faiz weren't bad because they said nekojita a lot, or even because the dialogue was wooden. They're bad because they are, objectively, indisputably, incorrect about a large amount of what happens. Agony tried to step up to the plate, and I give them credit for that, but even with them you still aren't getting a particularly trustworthy set of subtitles.

So hopefully someday none of this is an issue anymore. Either way, I'm going to get back to talking about the shows themselves now. Er, well, some movies, actually, but you get the point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

Aww, c'mon; you just recommended earlier in this thread that viewers only watch the W part of Decade x W, and you won't follow that logic for W x OOO?

Nope! The real Message for Double was to go watch a better movie instead!

In all seriousness, part of the reason I think that might actually work for 2010 is that once Shoutarou stands up to fake Skull, the story is basically complete, and the fight afterwards is a formality. In Core, the reveal of why Soukichi stayed away from Akiko comes at the very end, so you really do have to stick around to get the full experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

Huh, people actually debate that?

They do in my experience, at least. I've always seen people fall into the basic camps of "Double was really good", and "Double was really good... but that ending". I don't think anyone is at each other's throats about it, but it seems to split fans.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

Now you just have to finish things up by watching W's tribute arc in Zi-O- Oh, wait.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

As someone who dislikes her, it's because she's really annoying during the first act of the show.

That was one of the craziest things about this rewatch to me. That used to be how I felt, but now after seeing it again, I think she was actually at her strongest in some of those early arcs. Her banter with Shoutarou works great because, despite throwing herself recklessly into danger, she often makes extremely legitimate points about things, and is generally more competent than she appears. That bit in the Sweets arc where she smashes a chair against the Dopant to protect their client is also, like, by far her coolest moment in the whole series, and it's only 10 episodes in.