Written: 04/04/96
Anime Watch is a column about Anime (Japanese Animation) written by Jay
Scott Raymond. The opinions here are mine and bear no resemblance to the
unintelligible ramblings of those poor, benighted fools who have yet to
discover Anime.
Welcome to the all-new, all-terrific Anime Watch! Now published directly
on the World Wide Web. Previous print editions of Anime Watch (1-6) have
been HTMLized and published on this site as well for historical purposes.
In this new format I might not always include links to specific reviews,
since all reviews are accessible from the "Columns & Reviews"
page.
Well here we are out in the wild and woolly World Wide Web. If you have
checked out my Anime page then you have seen that most of the Anime
translation companies are out here as well. They don't always put their
latest news on their sites though.
Case in point:
According to a recent issue of Comics Buyer's Guide, AD Vision has
acquired the rights to Ushio & Tora. There is no inkling of
this on their web site, as of today at least. I have e-mailed them for
confirmation, but I assume it's true. Once it comes out commercially I'll
definitely review it. It is hilarious and one of my favorite series. Some
fans refer to it as "Calvin & Hobbes on acid"; I find this
description accurate.
Back in Anime Watch #3 I discussed the old dubbed vs. Subbed
debate. Significant changes have occurred since I wrote that so it's time
to revisit that issue. What changes? you may ask. Previously I had
concluded that if the dubbers got good voice actors and better fit the
voices to the characters, then I would have no problem with dubs. Until
then I would remain a staunch subtitle person. Well, Pioneer has met my
challenge! So far, in all of Pioneer's several releases, I have found
only one voice that bothered me! Specifically the voice of
Sasami's school friend (her name escapes me) in Magical Girl Pretty
Sammi (a kind of alternate-universe semi-spoof of Tenchi
Muyo). Pioneer's laserdiscs have both Japanese and English sound
tracks with closed-caption subtitles if you want them, but the quality of
Pioneer's dubs has been so high that I haven't felt the need to switch to
the Japanese track and turn on the closed-captioning!
This is not to say that all the dubber's dubs are good. There are still
poorly done dubs coming out, just not from Pioneer. Streamline seems to
have ironed out the relatively few problems their dubs had. Crying
Freeman is excellently done with no problem voices. One show that had
real voice quality problems was Guyver, at least in the US
Renditions version. It's now being reissued by Manga Video,
but I don't know if they re-dubbed it or just repackaged the old dub. If
any of you fans out there happen to know, please e-mail me (there's a
mailto link on my Anime page), I'll publish that info in a future
column.
That's all for this edition. Until next time:
ANIME HASHIN!