Haven't Seen It

Nope seen done read otherwise interacted with none of that.

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The former is pretty awesome but what no one will tell you is that what draws you in at first isn’t what you end up staying for. The real story is slightly buried and has a slow build in the very beginning but is so satisfying in the end.

Watch West Wing if you’re a political junkie and have fantasies about a president that can actually accomplish something. It’s a nice wank.

Missing zip, zero, nada. I couldn’t get into Lost after a while because I hated not knowing what the fuck was going on. It’s kind of the same reason I stopped watching Dragonball- people spent a lot of time charging and talking smack. I figure I could get the same effect by watching pro-wrestling with my phone plugged in.

Tiresome. It tries so hard to be shocking that it’s kind of embarrassing. Theme song’s nice.

Those.

Stop. Wait. What?

Drunken Angel. Now. I don’t care that you’re helping a woman give birth to the person who will cure all the things. Stop what you’re doing and watch it. Yeah, people will try to sell you on Rashomon and Seven Samurai, and they’re right to recommend them as they are excellent films.

But start with Drunken Angel. It’s got a lot going for it and I think it’s a wonderful way to “ease-into” Kurosawa. I don’t recommend starting with Seven Samurai. It’s longer than three hours. It’s very good though, so definitely save it for last.

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So you’re saying I should watch Drunken Angel?

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I think you should watch Ran.

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Ran seriously needs to be seen on a huge screen. It so gorgeous and lush and a small screen takes away from the visuals.

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No. I’m saying you should get on a plane, fly to Manila, and find a man named Yat at the Airport Tiki bar. He will take you to a seedy underground nightclub where you must engage in three rounds of bareknuckle boxing in order to win the grand prize of 5000 pesos in a dark blue bag. At the bottom of the bag will be directions and the keys to a Vespa.

Ride the Vespa to the directions given. You should reach a bank. You will be greeted at the door by a man whose name is inexplicably and unaccountably Charlie, even though you will agree with me that his face definitely has “Greg” written all over it. He will take you past the vaults to a small room with two shirtless men counting money over a bloody knife and a pile of cocaine. Ignore them. In the corner of the room in a Hello Kitty backpack you will find an envelope. In that envelope will be an engraved invitation to a wedding. Select your dining preferences and list any allergies you may have and when you reach the bottom of the invitation, you’ll see a small “PS”. The PS will read, “P.S. WHY AREN’T YOU WATCHING DRUNKEN ANGEL!”

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Greg says Hi.

(Why the hell aren’t we making films together)

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Manila’s hottest new nightclub is called the Drunken Angel…

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You need to stop what you’re doing and watch both English dubs of Akira and report back to me which one you think is better.

There’s a long holy war in the weeaboo culture over which dub is better. Honestly I like them both, but one is a slight favorite of mine. The Pioneer dub. It’s more accurate to the translation.

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I am trying to remember what was on my DVD.

Would have bought it in the early 2000s. I think it would have been the Manga Video UK release. IIRC the dubbed version was longer than the theatrical release? (I normally prefer subtitles, but felt I was missing out on content by watching that version)

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You have the original dub with the ninja turtles voice actors. The Pioneer dub came out sometime around 2003.

This may belong in unpopular opinions thread, but, I feel some anime is far better in English dub.

Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Crayon Shin Chan specifically.

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My god, that’s shimmering. Thanks for sharing!

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Thanks for reminding me that I haven’t seen Drunken Angel yet (adds to Netflix queue). I think Yojimbo would make another good Kurosawa starter; it’s basically a Western, and it is funny.

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I LOVE being uncertain of what is going on, and I still disliked Lost. I made it halfway through the first season. It just did not click with me in any way. Many people complained that with The Leftovers Damon Lindelof was stringing people along in the same way, except that I found Leftovers completely engaging and interesting.

AKA the “Streamline” dub.

Yes, I strongly disagree. Some anime I can tolerate in English. The problem for me is that Japanese voice usually actors act just like normal actors, while anime dubbers often sound a lot “stagier”, as if they are being more self-consciously cartoony. Also the soundfield of most anime in Japanese is mixed with proper spatial dynamics (panning, reverb, etc), while most English dubs sound more like flat ADR with people simply dry mic’d. It really rankles me!

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You must not have seen much modern anime. And the Japanese dub of Cowboy Bebop was technical garbage. You can hear all their mics aren’t balanced, they’re far too hot occasionally clipping, and sometimes you can even hear someone cough in the background. The English dub is at least technically far superior.

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Plus, English dubs don’t really get the humor delivery right… not so much lost in translation as lost in performance.

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It often boils down to choosing between: 1. get the mouth flaps right so you don’t have mouth moving but no talking and vice versa and 2. Better accuracy of translation and delivery. A lot of directors want mouthflaps to always be perfect. Because when they aren’t it’s incredibly distracting. This also leads to awkwardly stilted dialogs at times because obviously English and Japanese words have different numbers of syllables.

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Don’t Japanese voice actors have the same issue? IIRC, Anime is animated first and voiced in post rather than animated to voice tracks as US animation is. Don’t know if that awkward production process has changed in recent years or not.

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I have terrible hearing, so I often use captions. It really bugged me how different the captions were from the dub.

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Even so, Japanese animators are animating for the number of syllables in each word in the Japanese script. So unless you want to recut everything and insert/remove extra lipcycle frames all over the place, getting things to match is going to be much easier for the Japanese voice actors.

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