the internets conspire to keep me from my homework. let’s see: a flood of subs to choose from, and the leaking of nyan tra? regulatory capital is very high maintenance ok.

gaku vs shinsen, tl;dr quick impressions after teh jump.

gg picks up abyss: NO CONTEST. too bad their files are so big (and i prefer the fresh colors of gaku) but ah, good times in #gg.

surprisingly, there were already three or four errors in shinsen’s translations only 5 minutes in, not counting the two errors in karma lol. although it is a ridiculously difficult song to translate, there’s also the centigradej translation floating around that is 98.5% accurate (half a point docked for awkward phrasing) and karma really, really matters because it’s literally the game in seven stanzas (or so). although it had even more errors, and it obviously didn’t reference the centigradej translation either, i prefer gaku’s translation -  i felt it was phrased more accurately in the parts that mattered.

putting shinsen’s episode 2 .ass onto gaku’s episode 2 -

guess which is correct? hint: size =/= everything

since i’m at it, some notes: luke doesn’t even mention himself here and assumes the fruit seller knows what ‘yashiki’ he is referring to. (あとで屋敷から纏めて支払う is just get [the money] from the manor later, albeit in a very casual and therefore rude form that… i can’t find a suitably rude equivalent of now.) cute, isn’t he? he actually sounds less bratty the way it played out in the game but it also happened slightly differently. my guess is, mr producer wants to underscore how annoying longhaired luke is while he can, because i see akzeriuth happening by episode 10.

now: nuance versus practicality? well, more accurately, gaku’s subs are pretty good (accuracy in both meaning and tone), but shinsen does just about everything else right and better. freelance-raw’s hueg video also lags my integrated graphics card unless i close everything else, and abyss doesn’t require macross frontier quality because the animation is simply not as beautiful. it’s a little painful for me to compare the two and be reminded that abyss’s budget is much smaller, and the HD raw just rubs it in.

apart from the relatively poor translation, shinsen’s version is beautiful. sized at the sweet spot – it has just enough quality and isn’t large enough to lag my poor asus while it runs 20123912 things at once, and the subs are also in a nice, large, readable, clear font – apart from karma, but i can butcher that in karaoke blind, so. if only gaku would release an .ass file, that would solve both their australian distro problems and let me watch without the mental red pen coming out. to be fair to shinsen, sometimes it is right when gaku is wrong (tear’s 故郷 = hometown, not orders). this makes the dilemma worse, lol.

coming this thursday: translations of bouken suisei (full version) and yes, a stab at karma. i NEED to get bouken suisei out of my head, ugh, and until i translate it the mirror imagery is EVERYWHERE.

俺わガイなこと、ただの使用人でなんて 思ってない！♥

kurogane beat me to it!

fast pacing is fast, i remember i spent about 15 hours just getting to this part of the game.

entry in progress. reactions to come here after i finish with hedge ratios, sob.

LQ screencap gallery (x68, more cheagles than jade, some tear, and luke for a certain very small person) from LQ raw and some comments after the jump. 

cheagles ftw! jade ftw! indignation was very, very faithful to the original in game animation, it is giving me bursts of nostalgia and an itch to toss abyss in the ps3.

ED and preview:

next episode promises the full set of god generals (minus the rose? and i cbb capping largo) and… ninja guy \o/ although ‘enter the amazing guy!’ wasn’t in the preview and the angle wasn’t flattering anyway, so i didn’t bother with caps.

entry very much in progress.

i’m writing from the perspective of someone who’s played the game thoroughly and explored the backstory in some detail, but it’s as much a process of rediscovery as enjoying the good ol’ times because it’s been two years and my head has in the meantime filled with the alphabet soup of EBITDA and PVIFA.

meta for my own reference more than anything after the cut.

backstory

• by far the best single reference: souya’s translations.
• @ LJ: contamination sidequest, translated from my scans.

music

• karma lyrics and translations. besides being great to work out to, it should be noted that karma is a gigantic spoiler for the entire game, hohoho. abyss being all about the score and all, the music is wonderful, especially the final-boss themes – yes, two or three of them – tying all musical motifs into one.
• crossreference songs for tales of the abyss and luke’s journal (the game’s synopsis script), paying attention to key phrases.

game replay videos

• a bunch on nicovideo: here, here, and here
  
• youtube has some comprehensive replays though sadly lacking skits

game omake

• all costumes, conveniently rotated
• the famous keterburg spa scenes and skit

meta

• i find CFUD, as always, very useful for character-driven storylines such as abyss’s, although i REALLY need to track down previous generation players
• guy backstory dump
• awesome replay logs: 1 2 3 4 5
• more replay logs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
• even more replay logs + meta 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

wank

• honorable mention

editor’s note: everything not discretely listed, wink wink yourself kthx.

three spoiler-filled conclusions from watching it raw over lamb soup:

1. either i’ve been spoilt by watching only mecha porn over the past year (my life lived only for SPREADSHEETING) or this first episode got an even smaller budget than the symphonia ovas. :’( it was a lot like watching a partly animated radio drama – playing it in the background gave me flashbacks to unfortunate facials, guh.

2. still loving it all, though. plenty of things to please japanese game fans – lots of asch cameos, jade/guy and asch/luke juxtaposition, backstory highlights like the sword of gardios and cold, young guy, motifs and imagery – for example the episode preview in the OP ‘as foretold by the score’ or ED, har har, and karma, of course. lots of changes made in terms of pacing and some to events, for example natalia being introduced this early instead of it being exclusively the luke and guy show, the exposition on the order of lorelei and the oracle knights (as far as i can gather), and the rapid, bloody skip through tartaroo valley, which i felt they should’ve lingered on more for sentimental reasons…

3. however i am NOT pleased at the OP trolling me, especially after getting trolled thrice in rapid succession by gurren lagann, macross frontier, and THEN code geass.

couple screencaps after the jump.

troll me, sunrise, just say that you troll me ;A;

always good for a lol.

according to this canon though, luke didn’t collar him, luke did! *g*

though i never imagined him this way, i actually like aggressive young luke

b’awwww.

the ed is lovely – throwbacks to the game’s credits, anyone?

next up: cheagle woods.

• blog abyss as it comes out, possibly other series,
• meta for macross frontier, plus a dash of blather for code geass (et tu, clamp).
• consistent meta and a few notes on characterisation in reborn.
• resist urge to watch ugly betty and blather about house.
• gameblogs probable (51/256) once ps2/ps3 is re-equipped.
• resist urge to blather about real life.

i actually started this up because i got really sick of basel ii and ecap – to the point of getting on encyclopedia dramatica and blatantly serfing during class. said concepts were supposed to be inhaled, a part of me, like the back of my hand, etc, three weeks ago, but nevertheless! indulging an idea i’ve been wanting to execute for three years – ie blog publicly about a habit that i’ve had for nine years, i can’t believe that i’m so old already – also counts as personal growth, yes?

[...someone beat me to anhero.wordpress.com by 9 days. *sob*]

really, the discovery of jp showed me The Way: meta ftw. too lazy busy to take screencaps, too old to have free tiem like 18-year-old, too lazy to type with CAPS, but with the Inner Fangirl still going strong – google chrome said: hay! ur top 3 websites were that, omni’s, and kabitzin’s! – i thought i should, you know, do something about it so i could concentrate during class, as much as it is fun to troll ranka x alto fans, lolz.

so instead of bootstrapping like i should be (the relevant equation being toilet humour + fixed income = unyielding zero curves) and because my eyes are popping out of their sockets after a 13 hour day, here’s something slightly different.

i am a girl, i am going to a bschool, there are no more investment banks sob though i thought i had sealed that job with that financial markets internship but i always wanted to be a lawyer anyway! (and anyway major is frighteningly passive-aggressive), i am not intellectual enough to prefer ffxii over tales of the abyss, musou power: screaming a lot and hitting notefraggers while playing ssx and backseat engineering an hero strategy or singing creep; alternate: Wall of Text crits for 9999. enough clues, i should remain moderately anonymous but for the following:

i miss having the time to fangirl, and therefore, this.

i am partial to the writing of the aforementioned jp, kabitzin, the harem of that, omni’s hd screencaps especially when he spoiled me on shirley pulling an aeris, and the occasional cat.

i plan to dump lots of essays and the occasional reaction here, and perhaps some RL through the filter of fandom, like so:

To Do #87: Religiously Conditioning + Bangs = Sheryl Hair.

it’s time the women spoke up. some of us can actually play guitar hero, lol.

konnyanyanchiwa!