Blade of the Immortal

I heard about this randomly from one of my crazy anime friends (whom I’ve trained since the delicate delicate newbie levels into a monster that rivals myself) and was utterly dismayed as I’d heard not a single word about it. Probably because it’s rather recent and I’ve been out of touch ever since my computer died. (It’s fixed now though thanks to pawnshops and five dollar bills) I’ve been a fan of the manga for frikking ever it’s one of those things you never include in a favourites list because no-one ever knows what it is. Like BLAME or NOISE; Both of which are a sort of cyberpunk post apocalyptic dystopian resident evil done anime style… But yeah, then all of a sudden there’s an anime version out, two whole episodes and this crazy little person who hardly knows what it is starts telling me about how someone on IRC told her about it.

Anyway, Blade of the Immortal is well the titles self explanatory, it’s about a guy with swords (twelve of them, well twelve various bladed pieces of weaponry) and he’s immortal. To expand on that he’s known as Manji and then something that loosely translated is hundred man murderer. He’s just so frikking good at what he does he’s wracked up a kill total of a hundred. Although really that hundred only accounts for the ‘good guys’ he’s killed.

So this crazy witch curses him… with immortality. The only way out of this ‘curse’? kill another hundred people, except this time one hundred bad guys. About the only thing I could compare this to is to take a little Berserk and then roll in a helping of Rurouni Kenshin. I’ve never come across anything with the same feel and setting. Though Samurai Deeper Kyo is kind of close… just this guy doesn’t have an insane guy living in his brain he just *is* insane. Though not totally, he actually wants out of the whole senseless violence thing. Even then, I don’t advise doing something to piss him off… like shooting him in the head… or kidnapping his insane ’sister’.

I will now stop to criticize the fansub I have of it. The version I have is by KSN-AEN (Kesenai and I’m not sure who AEN is >.>)

They did a nice job all things considered. It looks good it’s timed well and I didn’t see any major typos or anything.

What I did notice, was well it’s set back in the day so they speak a whole lot of old school moonspeak. Sometimes fansub groups like to translate that into King James english style. Lot’s of thee and thou. These guys did a little bit of that, Thankfully only once, so far. Good job there as it annoys me when people do that because it’s pretty obvious they’re talking something other than “regular” japanese. The only people who wouldn’t know are the newbs, and they’d learn really quick unless they’re of the casual variety, in which case they really don’t care. Now I’ve said the good and the sort of good… now the bad.

They keep translating harakiri and they’ve been translating things like ‘onii-sama’ though in Manji’s case oni-sama fits better) and it annoys me so much. You should go slit your stomach like a true warrior. The reason I didn’t slit my stomach slit my stomach slit my stomach. GAGH! It’s a rather standard practice to take words that are considered well known and leave them untranslated. The first two or three times the translator may make a note and then they leave it alone. That’s probably half of my problem with dubs right there. they translate stuff and leave it in and it just sounds ridiculous in english. No-one here walks around referring to their sibling as ‘big brother’ or something. It might happen in an introduction ‘oh this is my little brother so and so.’ Perhaps a bit when you mention a person in passing, my little brother/sister blah blah. But you never address them as that, unless you’re trying to be annoying… or you’re calling your little brother your little sister… But yeah needlessly translating words we all knew already. Again unless we were total newbs or casual watchers. But if you’re watching Blade of the Immortal you’re not casual unless you’re just curious. But odds are if you’re watching it it’s because you remember the manga… which right there disqualifies you from the casual ranking. Watching an anime because you remember reading the manga back in the day?

Seriously though guys, stop translating words we know, or ones that have no real business being in english. It’s annoying and it sounds wrong. I understand you had nice complete english sentences but it sounds horrible. And if you wanted to translate it… translate it as something a little more … anything other than slit your stomach… and certainly don’t give an translators not about how slitting your stomach is a japanese custom of slitting your stomach to regain lost honour. I ad-libbed it a bit but that’s basically what the TN said. All in all it’s a good tl though, I only had the one mean thing to say after all. There’s been much worse, much much worse.

The subs for Advent Children I have, the subs for Azumi 2, the subs for the first half of the live action Death Note movie … So take heart you’re only possibly the fourth or fifth most annoying… no wait fifth or sixth. I forgot the Gunslinger Girl 2 (which like Tsukihime the anime doesn’t exist) subs. The group I had it by did this crazy whitish half transparent subs and it really didn’t work out on a light background. Looked pretty sweet on a dark one though.

And now in closing: The OP Theme

I don’t like the ED enough to post it, so go find it yourself nubcaeks.

Edit: Episode two seems to be better for all that. And unless my ears decieve me we have Toyoguchi Megumi (Revy from Black Lagoon) doing the voice of this new character Hyakurin. On second thought they’re translating oba-cha/san to grandmother where it should just be old lady. Because somehow I doubt crazy witch lady is related to both Manji *and* Rin. I didn’t pick up on it in the first episode, just now in the second when Rin talks about how her grandmother told her about him [Manji].

Due to lazyness;

We’ll be talking about another webcomic. Well, not entirely pure lazyness.  I’ve been busy playing with the Wii I bought and re-watching Psych… which has caused me to go back and resume watching all those shows I started once upon a time and stopped partway through for one reason or another. Chuck and Reaper as primary examples. And then a few shows I thought would be good but never got around to watching, The Shield, for yet another example.

I’m way behind on the anime spectrum of things and well that’s pretty normal.

So… without further ado I’ll be linking you to Minus.

Now unlike Flipside which I talked about last post (or Shadowlark Symphony which I suppose I blurbed about just a tad) Minus has no real ’storyline’ per say. Later in the comic story arcs string together for three or four pages but there’s still no real overlying storyline. The comic deals with Minus a little girl who can do anything she wants, quite literally. Comic gags range from sidewalk chalk drawing coming to life to well… even more bizarre things. Most of the panels are funny, the ones that aren’t are either cute, or just random tangents funny because they go as long as they do.

The art in this is a good portion of why I started with it. I clicked a link into the webpage and saw the artwork and nearly died. It’s something you don’t see anymore. It’s hand drawn, on paper… and then painted… with watercolours… at least it looks like watercolour to me. I’ll be the first to admit my artistic knowledge doesn’t flow very far in the paint areas. Heck my art knowledge is meh at best.  Anyway, go read, hopefully you enjoy it.

Howdy.

Not really an anime related update but one nonetheless.

Because in the last while the only anime I’ve watched is Vexille, which technically doesn’t count and then that whole Batman Gotham Knight thing, which is ‘technically’ anime.

Anyway this post is all about a webcomic I’ve followed off and on for years.

Flipside
Basically it follows three main characters around. Maytag, yes I know she’s named after a household appliance, be quiet, Bernadette and the new.. sort of Crest. I call Crest new because when I originally started reading this web comic he didn’t exist. The artist got to a point and said hell with it I’m doing it over… and now we have Crest… and Bernadette, my favorite character (DFC, scars AND dual wielding swords?!) I’ll warn you know some of the pages are NSFW (not safe for work) as there’s nudity; Not much though, boobs, the odd ass… Also a couple of the main characters are… …well one’s bi and the other one’s a lesbian so… There goes pretty much all my attraction to Bernadette out the window. T^T

The artist’s also got a few side comics I really liked which I don’t think ever got finished. The one’s a sort of… zombie movie/comic and the otherone was spawned by the Evil Dead trilogy, and was awesome… short and unfinished but awesome. But the main comic is still going, at least afaik, I was away for a while and just picked it up again. I do that, can’t stand the waiting between updates. I’d rather go without for a while and then have a whole at once than the one page a week thing. -.-;

If only one of the other webcomics I *LOVED* a character design in would pick up again. T-T Shadowlark Symphony we miss you! Mostly for Sakura but a little bit for Eve too. Comic had a great story the first time around, even better the second time… and then it just stopped… five years ago.. wow makes me feel old.

Wootness

The other day I wandered into one of those… I hesitate to call it a pawnshop but in all technicality that’s at least part of what it is. My brother bought himself the base guts of a used computer there for 5$and so I in my psu-less state went in and asked if I could buy a power supply for a fiver. Which I did and it sat around for… about a week before I pulled my old one out and slapped this one in there. It’s been running for the last… five or six hours with no problems so I think we’re good. Which means I can watch and blab about a whole lot more anime since I’m not restricted to just whatever I can burn off or watch between waking up and the owner of the other computer to want to sleep.

Plus I’m back on good old windows XP.