ADV Gatchaman

Call me behind the times, but due to a dearth of spare time (and my PC's dvd drive being region 2) I've only just got around to taking my first look at the 1st collection.

I chose, at random, episode 11, the one with the Giant Blue Hawk plane. And I chose, for my sins, to watch it in english language.

It's a shock to the system. I get the feeling that they have used a fairly literal translation. It's not smooth. I feel as if I'm getting used to G-Force all over again, but without the backbeat. There's something very stilted about these scripts, but perhaps with a literal translation it can't be avoided.

And there was this great moment where Nambu is talking to the guy from the security council who is telling him that the Blue Hawk has already been stolen, and the guy's voice is exactly the same as Tony Curtis' Shell millionaire voice from Some Like It Hot. You know, the "nobody talks like that" voice that's meant to sound like Cary Grant? So I don't think that voice actor was taking things very seriously

I shall get used to it. I'm off to watch another one now. Probably episode 12, since it's already started. But next time I watch some, I might just choose japanese language/english subtitles. I think I can handle literal subtitles better than literal voices with a smattering of contemporary slang.

And Ryu said "frigging"! I was smirking at that.

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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."

I have tried to watch both in the dubbed versions and I hated them. I also watch my Gatchaman on PC as that's Region 2 as well and have problems reasing every single subtittled word and sometimes miss a bit of the conversation (lucky nothing important) I read.

I only have come across only several Japanese cartoons which are very good in dubbed, eg Chost In The Shell, but sometimes come across as bad dubbing and it's better watching it in the subtittled version, just Gatchaman.

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Eagle in Residence
Tempory Frisker

I'm still going on the dubbed ones here. I've watched a couple of the series commentaries as well, the ones with Jun's and Joe's VAs and also half of the one with Ken's.

It's growing on me. I just watched episode 6 (the mini robots) and again everyone sounds like they're just having such a good time. Perhaps the script for ep 11 was particularly stilted, or I am brainwashing myself, because I'm not noticing really bad lines any more. I'm probably brainwashing myself

I've found that I often have a problem with the voices for the G1s. While I liked Mark's, I found Ace's voice too childish, and Hunter Harris's voice I disliked so intensely that I couldn't get my head around his character at all. I can't actually remember what I thought about the english version of OAV Ken's voice. But I like this G1's voice. It's young without sounding too young. Which is odd, because according to the episode commentary the guy (Leraldo? what kind of name is that?) must be in his 30s.

Joe's voice I also like. On the other hand, I have a history of liking G2 voices and the only one I've ever disliked is OAV Joe's, which was done by the same guy that did Hunter Harris's voice IIRC. And Dirk's voice through most G-Force episodes was peculiar because the VA seemed to be trying to lipsynch to the characters, who of course finish every line with their mouths open because that's the way japanese works, so Dirk never finishes the last word of a line properly XD Not that Joe gets to do much talking in the early episodes, episode 6 being the one where he probably has the most lines.

Jun and Jinpei, yeah, they're there. Again, I haven't watched any episodes that really feature them yet. I'm not disliking them.

Ryu is getting a few good lines. Whenever I think of him, I shall think of one of his lines from this episode, where he's waxing about swimming in the warm seas around these tropical islands and the local girls, and then he says "Even better than cheese". Yeah, that'll be my Ryu catchphrase. Better than cheese. I bet he'll never get to say that again in any other episode.

Dubbing is a tricky business. I think it's probably quite hard to make the choice between staying loyal to the original words and writing stuff that sounds good. Either way, you lose. And then of course because anime is a cheap import for kids tv, it's often dubbed with voice actors who are, quite frankly, not very good. I'm thinking that perhaps the episodes done so far are a bit uneven in quality. I've made 2 lucky choices and 1 unlucky.

Anyway, no more for me tonight.

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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."

The melodrama is part of what makes it fabulous for me, but then, I have very cheesy tastes. I have GOT to ge my hands on the ADV. *shakes head* I need to prioritize how I waste my money. ^_~

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What if there is a spoon?

I have to admit. I do prefer BOTP over Gatchaman but the reason I prefer Gatchaman over BOTP is mainly Zark. Oh why, oh why does he say everything is fine and no body dies when Spectre destroys a city and the UN planes are robots when they get blown out of the sky but are flown by humans when they DON'T get blown out of the sky and win.

Another problem is that they often travel in space alot and if Spectre decides to make trouble with more than 1 plan at the same time, then G-force would be up the creek without a Fiery Phoniex, as they are only 1 team. Surely it would be better to have several teams working in other sectors of space to stop Spectre.

I think both series have good points and bad points and I do hope that the infamous "Centrifuge Method of Removing a Bullet" surgery never comes about.

I am sure Joe/Jason was sick afterwards. Poor man.

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Eagle in Residence
Tempory Frisker

Ahh. Zark. For Zark alone, Jameson Brewer deserves to be SHOT. With a bird missle for preference.

From the interview with Jameson Brewer on the BotP dvd's, it seems obvious to me that he was the hadn behind all the gratutious cutting and bad animation inclusion.

The bad animation is absolutely unforgiveable - the standard of US animation was so much higher than that - but then they weren't using one of the US animation studios but a French one for some reason that nobody seems to have known (execpt JB had some connection to it....)

In many cases, I think that the BotP scripts were streets ahead of the Gatch ones - but then the reverse is often true as well.

And yes - the Gatch site with the Zark bit you quoted. Love it. DIE ZARK DIE (sorry - got a little overworked there).

I was interested in heaing the commentry of th eeop with the VA who does Joe that he was a BotP fan - which possibly makes him older than the others doing the VA-ing (the guy who plays Ken says in his interview that he came to Gatch through G-Force which was mid-80's).

And yes - I do have a habit of loving the voices for the G-2. But then, Jason was my first "bad boy" crush (and still is, I shall say) and lead me onto so many others (Starbuck, Han Solo (I was only 11 when I saw Star Wars the first time - give me a break!), Indiana Jones to name only a few) Ahh. Give me a man with a gun and an attitude - and a sexy uniform won't hurt either!

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"When I'm old, I don't want them to say of me, "She's so charming." I want them to say, "Be careful, I think she's armed." -G. Stoddart

Aww come off it, the red rat deserves to die more than once.

And Zark has his uses, hes a good propaganda machine.

a useful corrective to people who cannot stand Zark is his recreation in the Botp movie on the Universal playback box set

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Eagle in Residence
Tempory Frisker

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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."