Are all american DVD releases so ugly?

[DaggerLite]

Regarding  dubs or other perks "not being wanted"  that is your preference as a consumer,  and it ends there.  You cannot compare a fansub which exactly catered to your tastes,  to a retail dubbed / subbed product as a whole, which is marketed to a decidedly different mainstream crowd than your own tastes.

You misunderstand. It's not that a dub is "not wanted." It's a bad dub that's not wanted. If the dub is going to be considered as a factor, it should be done well, not some free 6-hour job by some friends of the Funimation staff. It has (in my case) nothing to do with the quality of the translation, but the actual dubbing job of the people involved. They sound completely retarded. Part of it I'd guess is because they don't translate names at all, so they sound like retarded "weeaboos" trying to pronounce Japanese names all the time, even. Of course, not all dubs are bad. When you look at Disney work, you see what it should be like. But when looking at certain other stuff, I can't help but cringe. Why you are protecting them for just doing a half-assed job is beyond me.

I never see (or hear of) anyone actually trying to send a message to these companies or at least try and start a feedback dialogue.

This is done by not blindly buying their half-assed products. Why would I bother writing them messages they won't listen to? They're trying to make money, and they figure they do that best by contributing a mass of low quality work rather than a smaller amount of quality work. They may be telling you that they have a passion for anime in their extras, but you'd think they'd at least do a better job, then.

I'm not an American in the first place. While they don't have license for distribution over here, American licensors somehow still manage to enforce their rules upon our fansubbers, and I've seen plenty of zone 2 releases of their subs. Perhaps it's just Wikipedia that is mistaken about it. Even so, why should I have to send them mails about making their stuff less crappy? Why should I have to tell them how to do their job? It should be their goal to make a good product before the mails start ticking in.

I'm sure some of their staffers are reading replies just like mine on forums anyway.

Note: There's usually never more spaces after another in an English text.

[kenshin-dono]

well i was about to reply to necos post but looks like dagger beat me to it and with pretty much the same thoughts i had =P I know a lot of people prefer dubs, thats fine, but that doesn't mean go ahead and put out a piss poor one with hacks who obviously dont seem to give a damn about what they're doing.  It also doesn't mean you can just handle the subs as an afterthought.

how many dvds out there have 5.1 in both the english and japanese track? Almost none, most will maybe have 5.1 for the god awful english dub, but the japanese track gets regular stereo.

As to getting in contact with the companies.. PLease. Like they give 2 craps about the fans. Odds are you'll get some generic form letter back and it wont even get read. I gave up trying stuff like that after sending an email to the creators of Psi-ops back in the day about a serious game breaking bug they had that killed a very enjoyable game. It seems so much easier for these groups  to use big ugly ancient fonts and have hobos off the street voice the dubs for a sandwich.

[Xiong Chiamiov]

Vobsubs are what you see on DVD releases.  They are also known as imagesubs, because they are (as I understand it) essentially images, rather than text.  This gives the typesetter the ability to place things exactly where wanted, but also sticks you with the font size and color that they chose.

[Zalis116]

well i was about to reply to necos post but looks like dagger beat me to it and with pretty much the same thoughts i had =P I know a lot of people prefer dubs, thats fine, but that doesn't mean go ahead and put out a piss poor one with hacks who obviously dont seem to give a damn about what they're doing.  It also doesn't mean you can just handle the subs as an afterthought.

how many dvds out there have 5.1 in both the english and japanese track? Almost none, most will maybe have 5.1 for the god awful english dub, but the japanese track gets regular stereo.

So fonts can be ancient now too, just like colors? Is that why fansubbers don't use simple, practical fonts like Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Century Gothic, Abadi, Comic Sans,* Lucida and the like anymore, in favor of unreadable serifed crap? I don't see anything wrong with using colors and fonts that were functional and practical 15 years ago, because they're still functional and practical today for the same reasons they were then. Can anyone tell me when the magical cutoff date was, when a certain portion of the visible light spectrum suddenly became "old"? Also, my understanding is that DVD subs have to be a certain minimum size or bigger, or else they'll run into flickering issues against interlaced video. So once again, it'a a technical issue.

*Okay, I'm kidding about the Comic Sans 

Really, I think you're painting dubs with too broad a stroke. The average quality has gone up, and there've been more and more exceptionally good dubs in the middle years of this decade. You don't see very many exceptionally bad dubs anymore, except for a few that got outsourced to Singapore. (And then there's the Nanoha/A's and Familiar of Zero S1 dubs, which were essentially fandubs.) In fact, more and more DVDs have been coming out sub-only these days, as companies look to cut costs on niche/marginal titles. So the issue of "paying for dubs you don't want" isn't as much of a factor as it used to be.

And why is it only anime fans that take issue with additional audio tracks, anyway? Lots of US movies and TV shows come with dubs in French, Spanish, or other languages, yet I don't see mainstream buyers saying "why are they putting this Portuguese shit on my Simpsons discs?"

"Subs as afterthought:" Yeah, it happens, but it's not always the case. If you want an example, give this torrent a download, and tell me that those subs look like "afterthoughts."

As for Japanese 5.1 audio tracks, they often don't exist in the first place. See here:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2009-11-06

And it's also possible that the Japanese themselves don't allow the Jpn5.1 on R1 discs, for fear of reverse importation. We saw with Gundam 0079 that they didn't allow the Japanese track on the R1 DVDs in any form, since it hadn't come out on DVD in Japan at the time. And with the Kurokami Blu-Ray release, we can see that reverse importation fears are still alive and well. So basically, there's more going on than "evil R1 companies sadistically depriving consumers of Japanese 5.1 sound."

[Neco]

Dagger,

You cannot expect a company whose first and primary goal is to make their profit to always be oriented towards what people want, and doing so in such a fashion as they just "know".  They will put out what they can get away with, for the price they can get away with.

If you choose not to buy dubbed Anime because you don't like the quality of the dubs, then that's your right.  But how do you realistically expect anything to CHANGE if you and everyone else have the exact same feeling?   If its not worth writing to, or organizing a massive feedback effort directed at these companies,  then maybe its NOT that important to you in the first place.

It's pretty easy to put it all on the shoulders of companies, and expect them to hire people just to troll forums looking for negative feedback to write down,  but for all we know they already do that, and they may have determined that the quality of their work is sufficient compared to the ratio of people complaining.

But really,  if its truly that important to you,  then do something about it.  Otherwise  you're just another one of the,  most likely, vocal minority.  Things don't change unless people decide to change them.    A handful of fansub watchers not buying R1 DVD's in protest of the quality doesn't send any kind of message to anyone,  other that your money is insignificant to their bottom line.

This is a universal concept no matter where you live in the World.  Its why we have sweat shops, and loads of other crap issues going on all the time.  You have to expose the sweatshop and damage the image, or their bottom line to convince a lot of companies these days.  Its just the way it is.  A few hippies protesting a Nike (or whoever) sweatshop product out of principle don't put a dent in Nike's profits.   A big news expose' or an organized well thought out boycott does.  (I use Nike for example purposes, I don't remember who it was in the 90's that got into that mess).

Until those truly concerned with the quality of English dubs and subtitles  get up off their asses, and actually start organizing with one another to try and get something done, things will not change  faster than the natural phenomena of a few standout employees within a company would allow for.   Anyone expecting otherwise is fooling themselves.

[DaggerLite]

@ Neco

Because the company's intent is to make money by mass licensing and mass producing low quality DVD doesn't mean that's the only way to make money. I just stated that that is their logic. By licensing a fewer amount of high quality shows and doing a proper job on them, also marketing them properly, they might be able to make up for the extra effort by gaining a good reputation and sell more copies. I'm honestly not sure what is the best way to go in terms of earning money, but I do know a good product combined with innovative marketing will sell.

By buying low quality stuff, you encourage that system even more. That's how I see it. If you support that, go ahead and continue to do so.

It's pretty easy to put it all on the shoulders of companies, and expect them to hire people just to troll forums looking for negative feedback to write down,  but for all we know they already do that, and they may have determined that the quality of their work is sufficient compared to the ratio of people complaining.

It's not a matter of hiring people to go to forums and check out everything. People pay attention to the buzz around them. Sure, they might receive good feedback as well as bad feedback, but it's ultimately up to them to improve if they want to. It's not like we're forced to buy any anime today. Perhaps if we were, we'd be more active on the front. It's the company that wants to sell their stuff, and if I don't think it's good enough to buy, then that's $2000+ lost on one potential customer. I'm not sure about how much I'd spend, but it'd be quite a bit for something I'm interested in.

For your last paragraph, I'm not expecting things to change much at all. I've just accepted that certain companies don't care much for selling their stuff to me, so I leave them at that.

[Neco]

It's not that I support low quality work,  I just simply do not have an issue with most of the Anime I buy, especially the newer stuff.  But I am a dub watcher and that is how I approach things.  I almost never watch things in Japanese unless I don't have a choice (Macross Zero).  So no I don't ever turn on subs.

Of course there are companies out there who like to focus on good production, and sadly it seems that those companies either have too few projects or their efforts are not respected enough and they either become insignificant, lower their production quality, or just plain fade out of existence.

I think by and large we agree on a lot of the same principles though.  There is just no easy way to go about affecting change, that I have ever seen, that doesn't involve  the customer base organizing in opposition.

[kurandoinu]

How many dvd releases of anything can you point out that have fansub style subtitles though? And I'm not just talking anime here, I'm talking foreign cinema, Hollywood films, documentaries. Show me a range of beautifully stylised subtitles in any commercial DVD.

[kenshin-dono]

So fonts can be ancient now too, just like colors? Is that why fansubbers don't use simple, practical fonts like Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Century Gothic, Abadi, Comic Sans,* Lucida and the like anymore, in favor of unreadable serifed crap? I don't see anything wrong with using colors and fonts that were functional and practical 15 years ago, because they're still functional and practical today for the same reasons they were then. Can anyone tell me when the magical cutoff date was, when a certain portion of the visible light spectrum suddenly became "old"? Also, my understanding is that DVD subs have to be a certain minimum size or bigger, or else they'll run into flickering issues against interlaced video. So once again, it'a a technical issue.

*Okay, I'm kidding about the Comic Sans 

Really, I think you're painting dubs with too broad a stroke. The average quality has gone up, and there've been more and more exceptionally good dubs in the middle years of this decade. You don't see very many exceptionally bad dubs anymore, except for a few that got outsourced to Singapore. (And then there's the Nanoha/A's and Familiar of Zero S1 dubs, which were essentially fandubs.) In fact, more and more DVDs have been coming out sub-only these days, as companies look to cut costs on niche/marginal titles. So the issue of "paying for dubs you don't want" isn't as much of a factor as it used to be.

And why is it only anime fans that take issue with additional audio tracks, anyway? Lots of US movies and TV shows come with dubs in French, Spanish, or other languages, yet I don't see mainstream buyers saying "why are they putting this Portuguese shit on my Simpsons discs?"

"Subs as afterthought:" Yeah, it happens, but it's not always the case. If you want an example, give this torrent a download, and tell me that those subs look like "afterthoughts."

As for Japanese 5.1 audio tracks, they often don't exist in the first place. See here:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2009-11-06

And it's also possible that the Japanese themselves don't allow the Jpn5.1 on R1 discs, for fear of reverse importation. We saw with Gundam 0079 that they didn't allow the Japanese track on the R1 DVDs in any form, since it hadn't come out on DVD in Japan at the time. And with the Kurokami Blu-Ray release, we can see that reverse importation fears are still alive and well. So basically, there's more going on than "evil R1 companies sadistically depriving consumers of Japanese 5.1 sound."

christ, lol.  yes fonts can be ancient =P Its the same giant bright yellow block letters they used 10 years ago so that IS ancient. If your using the same junk from a long time ago that makes the color/font old by definition.

Dubs may have improved since the era of the 90s and very early 00's (ungh those were bad) but I still think theyre just tolerable at best for most shows. Id personally much rather just watch it in the original language and dont like the ancient (YES THEY'RE ANCIENT) format they use for that stuff. 480I  was fine 10 years ago too and 'worked' does that mean we shouldn't have ever made HD? Because something got the job done doesn't mean people should just stick with ugly old tech

I personaly dont have a problem with doing other dubs, i realize a lot of people like them, but they really should try to come out with better subs. I find it strange that Funmation and VIZ, 2 traditionally horrible companies, have the best subs out there these days -_-

Thats an interesting bit of info about why we dont see Japanese 5.1 though. Lame. The Japanese seem to ball about tech, hell, they got a lot of anime on BD. Youd think theyd have 5.1 audio for their  releases! hopefully this changes soon. I hate having my sound system wasted with crappy 2.0

the second sceneario with reverse importing is even DUMBER. WHy the hell do we even still have Region restrictions, i friggin hate them, yeesh.

I actually looked up Kurokami after your mention of it and it looks kinda interesting but is rated fairly low on ADB. Is it worth a look? lol

and btw the moribito DVD's seem pretty damn crappy overall, not just their subs (though thats the worst) the picture itself seems kinda juttery which is really irritating.. I wish i had just d.loaded this, im DEFINATLY not buying anymore media blaster DVDs again

@kurandoinu
really not sure i dont watch much subbed foriegn cinema honestly. Some of the hong kong action movies i see usually use the smaller white font which is much less intrusive.
 Im not even looking for beautiful i just would not like giant bright yellow font a quarter of the way up the screen o_O

i mean christ, wtf?
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/MedaBlasters_New.png
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/BangZoom_New.png

[Zalis116]

I went and pulled two random books off my shelf. One from the late 1960s, one from the early 2000s. Both of them use similar black Times New Roman-esque lettering. Yet I don't see a massive outcry in the literature world calling for different fonts and colors in books on the grounds that black Times New Roman is "ancient." Why? Because it worked back then, and it still works today. Colors are not technology. Some of the white subs in the screenshots I posted were from fairly old DVDs, like from 8-9 years ago. Does that mean that white is obsolete too?

(some slightly O/T thoughts about style evolution and fansubs)

(click to show/hide)

I don't see style evolution in subtitles as a good thing, due to the way fansubs have turned out. Back in the early days of digital fansubs (2000-2002), you'd see a lot of releases with reasonably-sized text, bolded simple san serif fonts, colors that stood out from the artwork (often white or even yellow   with substantial black borders and shadow, and vertical margins that raised subs to a "happy medium": higher than today's fansubs, but lower than DVD subs. Example here.

Now, you get over-styled serif fonts, tiny text at the very bottom of the screen, and non-bolded white subs with no shadows and 1-pixel colored (sometimes semi-transparent) borders that cause them to blend in with the background half the time. Being "unobtrusive" isn't a bad thing per se, but many groups think "unobtrusive" is synonymous with "invisible." I'll take DVD subs any day over that crap. Something's got to be wrong if I can start up old DivX3 fansubs from 2001 and read them just fine, whereas comfortably reading modern fansubs requires changing ~7 different parameters on 2-4 different subtitle styles in MPC.

You'd think they'd have 5.1 audio for their releases!

The explanation I've heard for why a lot of Japanese releases don't have 5.1 audio is that many Japanese viewers don't have 5.1 systems to play it on. We've all seen tiny Japanese apartments portrayed in anime -- those don't leave a lot of room for widely distanced speakers. And in crowded apartment complexes with thin walls, those subwoofers would be a considerable nuisance.

Im not even looking for beautiful i just would not like giant bright yellow font a quarter of the way up the screen o_O

i mean christ, wtf?
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/MedaBlasters_New.png
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/ee336/Zalis_116/BangZoom_New.png

After cropping the images to remove the subtitles and doing the math, I find that the newer Bang Zoom subs are only 1/6 the way up the screen. M-B are 1/4 of the way up, though.

This is just a theory, but my guess is that live-action DVDs are able to use white subs because pure white is a color that doesn't show up that often in real life, unless you're filming some place covered by snow. Anime, otoh, uses simpler colors and shades. Since pure white is more likely to come up in the artwork, the companies went with yellow.


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Sorry to be so contentious over this -- regardless of the aesthetics of yellow subs, I do agree that things need to change if the industry wants to get sales from the segment of the population that doesn't like those styles. It's just that whenever there's a debate/flamewar over this topic, I always wind up in the thick of it. Somebody's got to represent the other side My main intention was to answer the original topic question by showing that not all DVD sub styles are created equal. And I'd like to think that I succeeded -- anybody else have opinions on the relative goodness and badness of different companies' styles? Even if your answer is "they all suck," surely some of them suck more and less than others, right?