The Games of Haruhi Suzumiya

So, I'm back from Attack on Titan part 1! It was actually pretty good. Obviously, all the formerly European characters were made Japanese, along with some changes to the mythology and history of the story. But despite the numerous changes, it was an overall solid adaptation with a lot of the characters being instantly recognisable. Most notably, Hange and Sasha were most like their animated counterparts. The titans themselves were grotesque as ever and the perpetrators of many gruesome deaths, leaving me very satisfied with how they looked. Movement on the Omni-Directional Mobility Gear wasn't as dynamic as the animated version, but overall solid. Perhaps my biggest beef with the film is that the actors portraying Eren and Armin look very similar and that there were a few scenes here and there where I had trouble telling them apart. Other than that, both I and my dad (who hasn't seen the Attack on Titan anime, but also attended the film) really enjoyed it. Now then, bring on part 2, End of the World!

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So, as of this post, I'm switching my image hosting from TinyPic to Imgur. Old posts are set to remain with images from TinyPic for the time being at least, mostly because going back to edit all the posts would be a pain in the ass, although I may change the links in the future. (Come to think of it, I still need to update all my old Phase 1 images with that annoying "FPS" in the corner at some point in the future too...)

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And we have officially hit the two year anniversary of me translating Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsuisou! A lot has happened over the past two years, some of it good and... a lot more than I was hoping bad actually. But, life goes on, things will get better (hopefully?) and there's plenty of people who have it way worse than I do. Anyway, this isn't a place to go complaining about my problems, it's a place to post translations of Haruhi Suzumiya video games! And there's plenty more of that to come as we continue our way through this game!

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Yesterday I bought a new 128 GB iPad, because I had to keep deleting things on my old 16 GB one to fit new issues of Shonen Jump and other manga. I had to delete Haruhi and Yuki-chan to survive. This new one is great, everything fits (including Haruhi and Yuki-chan) and I've still got plenty of space left. ... But my poor, poor bank account is left to suffer as a result. But sometimes sacrifices must be made for the sake of Japanese comic books.

Anyway, none of you reading have any reason to care about this, so I'm just going to provide you with some Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsuisou instead.

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So, the Yuki-chan anime is over. I miss it already. I can't wait until volume 9 of the manga and the OVA are out. (Also, Nagaru Tanigawa, where are you? What happened to you? When will we get the next Haruhi novel after Surprise?)

Sometimes when I'm taking screenshots for my updates, the characters decide to blink the exact moment I hit the screencap button. (It's worse when there's two or three characters on screen as sometimes it happens several times in a row in that case.) Usually, when this happens, I just delete the shot where their eyes are closed and re-take it, but I felt like sharing this shot of Mikuru today.

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This week was the final episode of Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu and it sure went out with a bang. ... Because, fireworks. Get it? No? ... Forget it. Ignore my lame jokes. This week's episode covered chapter 38 of the manga. The first half of the episode was pure filler up until they arrive at the summer festival. They sure packed in a lot of Endless Eight references though. I liked the stinger of the episode doing the whole "Kyon-kun, denwa" thing a second time, which provides the setup for chapter 39 by establishing Kyon hasn't done his homework. Perhaps chapter 39 will be covered by the OVA set to come out later?

Anyway, here we have another revisited scene which... doesn't actually offer anything new at all. The only difference from last time is the removal of some of Kyon's inner monologue.

It's been a blast getting back into making these posts alongside the Yuki-chan anime and so I'd like to say farewell until next season! ... Okay, no, that'd be cruel. I'm intending to stay here with regular updates as I have been, but without Yuki-chan on the air anymore, I am pondering the possibility of changing my schedule. Maybe do my posts on a different day of the week? Whatever it is I do, I hope you readers stick with me as I keep making progress through Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsuisou!

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This week's episode of Yuki-chan covered chapters 36 and 37, other than adding in a few more beach antics (trying to bash the watermelon with Kyon and Koizumi right there is super dangerous) and some extra narration from Kyon it was a pretty straight adaptation. The next episode preview for the final episode shows that it'll cover at least chapter 38. I'm curious as to whether any of chapter 39 will make it in?

Anyway, while next week is the end of Yuki-chan, this week is the end of the Asakura route of Tsuisou! Yaaaay! Now I'm just going to have to carefully plot my way to success with Mikuru...

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No weekly episode impressions as of yet, haven't watched the episode. Will update here later with stuff. For now, translation update is done.

Just finished this week's episode. Covered chapters 32 and 33 of the manga, rounding out the end of volume 4 of the manga. Overall, it was a pretty great episode, a little bit of padding material (most notably at the used book fair), but it all helped to give the episode a natural flow and even deepen some moments. The scene where Kyon races to the park on his bike is much more dramatic in the anime than it is in the manga.

Next week's episode preview seems to show material from chapter 35, so I expect it'll cover both chapters 34 and 35. Episodes 15 and 16 will probably cover summer vacation, leaving us almost at the end of volume 5? These are just my suppositions, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

This week's update includes a video, which I've subbed using YouTube's Closed Caption feature instead of annotations like I have until now. Feel free to share any opinions on whether this is a change for the better or worse?

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This week's episode of Yuki-chan covered chapters 28 and 29 of the manga. For the most part, it was pretty close to the original. Changes of note include that when Kyon mentioned how Haruhi wouldn't be around for a while, there was actually a flashback of her explaining the situation rather than Kyon just telling the others, and it was a teacher other than Mori-san that kicked Kyon and Nagato out of the classroom. Also worth noting is that during PE class, we have the first non-filler appearance of Taniguchi, as he has one panel in the manga. After this he doesn't return until chapter 43.

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So, I just finished watching the English dub of episode 1. It was pretty good for the most part. I was particularly interested in how Michelle Ruff would portray Yuki, since she's an entirely different character from the main series. Her portrayal was splendid though, keeping a similar tone to her voice from the Haruhi series while injecting a strong base of emotions into her. Both she and Crispin Freeman (who was amazing as Kyon as always) entirely stole the show.

Performances by other characters were all solid, Stephanie Sheh on point as Mikuru (despite how few lines she had) and Kari Wahlgren giving a solid performance as Tsuruya. Bridget Hoffman's portrayal of Asakura was probably the weakest of the episode, which isn't saying much considering that her performance was still overall solid minus an instance of referring to "shoujo manga" as "shouju manga".

I understand that American voice actors aren't all going to be fluent in Japanese, but if you're making a living dubbing Japanese cartoons, I'd like to at least expect you to be able to pronounce a Japanese word correctly. While learning and understanding the entire language is certainly quite a challenge, the basics of pronunciation are actually pretty simple. (... And wow, literally half of my written opinions on the dub involve me complaining about a single word. Pedantic, huh?)

I can't say for certain whether I'll continue doing dual updates for sub and dub, especially since I don't have any backlog left over at this point, meaning I'm translating stuff from week to week now, so consider this a bonus for this week.

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