Urk.

You know, I should have known something was rotten in the Kwanto Province. When I saw that Geneon/Pioneer was putting out the American release of the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack, alarms should have gone off in my head like unto sirens warning of incoming Backfires over Fairbanks during the Cold War. However, I was so enthusiastic about the chance to get a legit copy, I got online and ordered a copy along with ADV's new All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku Sound Phase OIVCD.

First the good news: Geneon didn't screw up the front cover art, and the music is the same excellent music released on the Japanese OST and made familiar to fans through (mostly) the DVDs and the Son May bootlegs.

Now the bad news. Whoever did the translations should be taken out and shot, preferably starting with the knuckle joints so they can't screw anything up this badly ever again. This may sound harsh, but there are at least TWO good translations of the song titles and lyrics out there, and there is NO excuse whatsoever for perpetrating such wretched Japlish as "The Revolution of Absolute Destiny" and "Brightened Garden" instead of "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" and "The Sunlit Garden". Did anyone at Geneon even bother to familiarize themselves with the series at all before going to work on this project? Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the series wouldn't have made this kind of screwup, unless they deliberately avoided watching the subtitles. "Alien Kashira", my ass...and then we open up the booklet.

It's good to have the translations of the liner notes by Saito and Ikuhara, though referring to Saito-sensei as "Comics" is just...bad. The screenshots also look far less crisp than the Son May version, and the lyrics translations...ugh. I don't know what happened here - whether it was just sloppiness or indifference, but this is just shoddy work by a company that has turned out much better. I can only wonder how much better this would have been if Central Park Media (the folks who own the license for the Utena DVDs) had been in charge. It certainly couldn't have been much worse.

Urk.

You know, I should have known something was rotten in the Kwanto Province. When I saw that Geneon/Pioneer was putting out the American release of the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack, alarms should have gone off in my head like unto sirens warning of incoming Backfires over Fairbanks during the Cold War. However, I was so enthusiastic about the chance to get a legit copy, I got online and ordered a copy along with ADV's new All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku Sound Phase OIVCD.

First the good news: Geneon didn't screw up the front cover art, and the music is the same excellent music released on the Japanese OST and made familiar to fans through (mostly) the DVDs and the Son May bootlegs.

Now the bad news. Whoever did the translations should be taken out and shot, preferably starting with the knuckle joints so they can't screw anything up this badly ever again. This may sound harsh, but there are at least TWO good translations of the song titles and lyrics out there, and there is NO excuse whatsoever for perpetrating such wretched Japlish as "The Revolution of Absolute Destiny" and "Brightened Garden" instead of "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" and "The Sunlit Garden". Did anyone at Geneon even bother to familiarize themselves with the series at all before going to work on this project? Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the series wouldn't have made this kind of screwup, unless they deliberately avoided watching the subtitles. "Alien Kashira", my ass...and then we open up the booklet.

It's good to have the translations of the liner notes by Saito and Ikuhara, though referring to Saito-sensei as "Comics" is just...bad. The screenshots also look far less crisp than the Son May version, and the lyrics translations...ugh. I don't know what happened here - whether it was just sloppiness or indifference, but this is just shoddy work by a company that has turned out much better. I can only wonder how much better this would have been if Central Park Media (the folks who own the license for the Utena DVDs) had been in charge. It certainly couldn't have been much worse.

Busy, sick, busy, busy, busy...

Took a couple of days off posting because I was trying to finish up the Anime Detour 2004 membership list (finally done) before the Thursday night meeting. I almost didn't make it there - woke up nauseous and vomiting Thursday morning and called in sick, after which I swilled down some antacids and went back to bed where I tossed and turned for the rest of the day. Crawled out of bed at 5, showered, choked down a bologna sandwich, and headed in (with my laptop and thumb drive) to MCAD for the meeting.

The big news there is that we're not going to be in the Sheraton Bloomington next year - they want us to move to Easter or May 13, and neither of those dates will work for us because of our guests - at least two of them have prior commitments on Easter, and May is just too far off "our" weekend. It also looks like we're going to have enough staff - a lot of new people showed up at the meeting, plus we have about half a dozen staffers that didn't make it in last night for some reason. No big deal. Came home afterward, washed down three ibuprofen and went back to bed

Felt much better this morning, though perhaps inflicting a Weight Watchers breakfast bar on my poor abused stomach was not the best plan. Got through the day okay, shipping out all the eBay CDs I meant to ship on Wednesday, weighing in at Weight Watchers since I missed the regular Tuesday session (down to 400! w00t!), doing lunch with Melody at Peter's, and managing to look busy for most of the day.

And now I should tend to my poor neglected apazine, since the collation is tomorrow, it is...

Busy, sick, busy, busy, busy...

Took a couple of days off posting because I was trying to finish up the Anime Detour 2004 membership list (finally done) before the Thursday night meeting. I almost didn't make it there - woke up nauseous and vomiting Thursday morning and called in sick, after which I swilled down some antacids and went back to bed where I tossed and turned for the rest of the day. Crawled out of bed at 5, showered, choked down a bologna sandwich, and headed in (with my laptop and thumb drive) to MCAD for the meeting.

The big news there is that we're not going to be in the Sheraton Bloomington next year - they want us to move to Easter or May 13, and neither of those dates will work for us because of our guests - at least two of them have prior commitments on Easter, and May is just too far off "our" weekend. It also looks like we're going to have enough staff - a lot of new people showed up at the meeting, plus we have about half a dozen staffers that didn't make it in last night for some reason. No big deal. Came home afterward, washed down three ibuprofen and went back to bed

Felt much better this morning, though perhaps inflicting a Weight Watchers breakfast bar on my poor abused stomach was not the best plan. Got through the day okay, shipping out all the eBay CDs I meant to ship on Wednesday, weighing in at Weight Watchers since I missed the regular Tuesday session (down to 400! w00t!), doing lunch with Melody at Peter's, and managing to look busy for most of the day.

And now I should tend to my poor neglected apazine, since the collation is tomorrow, it is...