Makoto Shinkai English Fan Forum and Site

the_emh · Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:04 am Post subject:

so are they married now or did it get called off?

Laz · Laz Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 1073

Not sure ... maybe Angry_ can chime in on that ...or else we'll have to do some research or ask Daike.

Laz

Phantast · Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 8:56 pm Post subject:

This reminds me... On the North American version of Voices (or any of Shinkai's other movies), is the Japanese/subbed version also on the DVD, or is it just the dubbed version?

zitch · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject:

Well, it looks like I was incorrect earlier. Mika Shinohara was Shinkai's fiance at the time Voices of a Distant Star was made. As far as I (and others) know, though, he's still single, but his marriage status is really a private affair. Even if such stuff can be interesting backstory to his movies, I'd rather focus more on his work itself.

Phantast · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:14 pm Post subject:

I've watched Voices of a Distant Star before, just... not on the DVD. The version I watched was subbed.

With very few exceptions, I usually like the subs more... And (as a rule) I hate it when they "Americanize" anime.

There will be much suffering in Guilder if "Noboru" has become "Larry". Razz

Laz · Laz Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 1073

HA HA .. don't worry Voices is almost as good in English as the Japanese. The Dubs are pretty good for all of these. The subs are awesome ... theres a thread about that on the forums here somewhere Smile

Laz

zitch · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:44 am Post subject:

Ok, I've actually watched the English dub and the original Japanese dub (The one with Shinkai and his fiancee at the time voicing the characters) with subtitles back-to-back and I have some serious issues with the scripting for the English dub. The voice acting is just fine, just several things about how the script was changed really irked me.

One thing, though this isn't the serious problem, Mikako's personality was changed in the English dub. This isn't necessarily a problem, though...

Changing the wording, alone, isn't necessarily a problem. Changing the meaning from what it was said originally starts getting into the danger zone. Especially changing the meaning for no apparent reason. For example, when Noboru says something like, in the original subtitle says something like "I'm at a door that will never open, so I will stop knocking", the dub said "I'm at a door that will never open, yet I keep knocking". More criticism of this was on a review of the Voices of a Distant Star DVD on ANN.

This isn't even the worst criticism of it, though. Many a reviewer (including me) have criticized VoaDS for being a bit scientifically inaccurate with how long it took messages to reach Earth from Jupiter and from Pluto. Unfortunately, this is because we were criticizing the dubbing. The "adapted" English dub mentioned that it would take 6 months for a message to go from Pluto to Earth. I also remember it saying it takes 3 months from Jupiter to Earth. Both are incorrect, as it takes radio waves 52 minutes to go from Jupiter to Earth and about 4.5 hours to go from Pluto to Earth. In the past, I've chalked it down to messaging priorities in the communications between the ships and Earth, but it seems the reality is the crappy "adaptation" dubbing. In the subtitles, there is no mention of how long a message would take inside the solar system. There is only the fact it took 6 months for the ships to travel form Jupiter to Pluto. The first mention was for how long it would take to send a message to Earth from outside the Oort cloud!

So, I have to rescind my earlier statement; if you have any stipulation for scientific accuracy, stick with the subtitles. If such errors don't bother you, try out the dub so you can soak in the visuals, then watch again with the subtitles. Even better, the subtitles include translations of the magazines shown, which imparts more information to piece together of what is happening, something that is not available in the English dub.

Fortunately, ADV didn't do this for The Place Promised in Our Early Days, as it looks like they tried hard to keep the meaning the same, so the English dub works out much better with it.

Laz · Laz Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 1073

Thats one of the reasons why I like the Subs is that so often the English Dub isn't even what is in the Sub. Try watching with both on at the same time ... stuff like that irks me a little.

Can't say I'm all that concerned about the exactness of the science of communication in the film ^_^

Laz

Junpei · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:22 pm Post subject:

That is one of the main reasons I don't like dubs. They tend to change some lines a lot to whatever is suitable instead of just trying to translate it from the original. That kind of kills a bit of the story.