Hi guys. Just wanted to plug a great summer of events to promote the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise (which our company translates). Please read this press release for details. Anyone in the San Francisco Bay area must go!

CELEBRATE “THE SUMMER OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA” AT VIZ CINEMA MAY 21^st; CRISTINA VEE TO PERFORM; GIVEAWAYS FROM BANDAI, YEN PRESS, AND CRUNCHYROLL

May 7, 2010 (Cypress, CA) – “The Summer of Haruhi Suzumiya” a cooperative promotion between Bandai Entertainment, Crunchyroll, and Yen Press will occur May 21^st at the Viz Cinema at the premiere of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya theatrical feature.

Cristina Vee, “Haruhi” of Bandai’s ASOS Brigade.com, will be performing several of the Haruhi songs in English and Japanese prior to the film and she’ll be autographing and giving away the theatrical poster from the film.  After the movie, attendees will be treated to a Haruhi manga and novel giveaway courtesy of Yen Press and Crunchyroll will raffle off 10 three month memberships and five one-year anime memberships to lucky theater goers.

The film, which is based on the novel of the same name by Nagaru Tanigawa and Noizi Ito, was made by Kyoto Animation and supervised by Chief Director Tatsuya Ishihara and Director Yasuhiro Takemoto.  The story follows the two seasons of the anime series phenomenon The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiyaand tells the story of Haruhi’s sudden disappearance and her friend Kyon’s attempt to untangle the mystery of why she’s vanished.  The film opened on February 6th, 2010 in Japan with 24 prints, and earned more than 670 Million Yen (Approximately $7.5 Million US) by the end of March. 

The English subtitled print of the film will be shown in Hawaii in mid-June by Consolidated Theaters (http://www.consolidatedtheatres.com ) and Artisan Gateway as part of their SPOTLIGHT ASIA FILMS Program.  Hawaii dates and venues will be announced soon.

For more information on Haruhi visit:

www.bandai-ent.com or www.asosbrigade.com

yenpress.us

www.crunchyroll.com 

For more information on the Theatrical release visit:

www.vizcinema.com or www.newpeopleworld.com

(for San Francisco)

http://www.consolidatedtheatres.com (Hawaii)

About Bandai Entertainment Inc.

Bandai Entertainment Inc. is a subsidiary of Namco Bandai Holdings (USA) Inc. and the premier distributor of Japanese animation on DVD and programming for television broadcast in North America. Titles include Gundam 00, Code Geass: Lelouch of Rebellion, Lucky Star, Gurren Lagann, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, My Otome, and many more.

About Yen Press

Yen Press, founded in 2006, is the manga and graphic novel imprint of Hachette Book Group US. Yen Press’s focus is primarily on licensed manga, but also publishes original manga publications, original comics and graphic novels, webcomics, licensed adaptations, and children’s graphic novels. For additional information, go to www.yenpress.com <http://www.yenpress.com> and/or contact Jack Womack, Publicity Manager, Yen Press, (212) 364-1137;jack.womack@hbgusa.com <mailto:jack.womack@hbgusa.com>

About Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is a leading global lifestyle and entertainment brand centered around all things Asian media and operator of the largest online community, video site and network of sites, services and devices for Japanese anime and Asian drama in the world. Content on Crunchyroll is provided by leading Asian media companies including TV TOKYO, Fuji Television, NHK Enterprises (NEP), Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation (YTV), Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), Shueisha, Kadokawa Pictures, Aniplex, Avex Entertainment, King Records, Happinet, d-rights, Bandai Channel, Toei Animation, Tai Seng and many others. 

Crunchyroll was founded in June 2006 and has offices in both San Francisco and Tokyo. Crunchyroll is a pioneer and innovator in the Japanese content business and the only video service in the world to offer hit programs Naruto Shippuden, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee and many others within one hour of their first Japanese broadcasts. Crunchyroll is a member of the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) and Licensing International Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA) and is funded by leading venture capital firm, Venrock, Japanese entertainment giant TV TOKYO, and a group of angel investors representing some of the brightest and most successful minds and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. More information can be found at http://www.crunchyroll.com.

Greetings. Ken Hoinsky here.

I want to write to you about one of the most unique projects myself and MX Media has had the honor of assisting with.

During New York Anime Fest 2009, I was asked by an associate of mine to help out on the production of a music video for Japanese idol band sensation, AKB48. The song used was their new single “River” which debuted at #1 on the Japanese Oricon chart.

Japanese TV show Nemousu TV (ネ申テレビ) was following AKB48 on their trip to NYC. They chose two local directors to each scramble to create music videos on a strenuous one-day shoot.

One of these directors is J.X. Carrera (Jonathan Carrera) who happens to be a video director for Anime News Network. Needing someone bilingual in Japanese and English to assist with the production, I was asked to assist.

Look, Mom, I’m on (Japanese) TV!

I am not sure any of us were prepared for the scope of the shoot:

1 day, 3 locations (Central Park & two studios), 16 group members, 2 music video film crews, 2 TV show film crews, and other support personnel. I wouldn’t be surprised if it totalled over 50 people. Oh, did I mention we had about 10 hours to complete everything?

I am not sure I ever worked harder in my life. That goes for everyone involved with the project. The poor girls from AKB48, freshly jet-lagged from their trip across the world, gave it everything they had. To think they had appearances and performances at NYAF and Webster Hall that very weekend, too!

Jonathan Carrera did an excellent job captaining the ship and the finished product speaks for itself.

As a professional translator, every once in a while I am tasked to do some sort of simultaneous interpretation. Though not my strongest skill, I somehow managed to survive the day and get the director’s vision across to the girls.

I’d like to think that having worked on shows about the entertainment world (Skip Beat, Glass Mask, White Album) helped me out with some of the rather obscure lingo used on a TV shoot.

All in all, it was a great day and something I am proud to have on our portfolio of completed projects.

You can visit the director’s homepage here and blog here.

Watch video:

Good morning, everyone. This is Managing Founder and translator, Ken Hoinsky, interrupting your scheduled broadcast with an important report on, uh… anime.

I have had the rare opportunity to have worked on both the simulcast release of a show and later on the DVD/Blu-rays of the same title. I’ve noticed some interesting things with the workflow.

Today I am going to talk to you about Kurokami The Animation.

I had the pleasure of personally translating this show more or less weekly going back to late 2008 and through the first half of this year.  This was a very unique project because it was released on television, dubbed, in three different countries on the same day every week. To my knowledge, nothing on that scale had been attempted before.

As you can imagine with a project like this, myself, our subtitling team,  the folks at Sunrise and Bandai Entertainment, and the excellent dub actors and ADR guys at NYAV Post, were all working off of incomplete materials for much of the workflow.

Though this complicates matters, it doesn’t make it impossible* to pull off.

(*Assuming translating on airplanes and getting up to send scripts in at 4AM, etc., is within your definition of “possible.”)

But I’m not here to post on the process of creating a simuldub, that can be another time. Today I want to talk to you about what it is like to work on an incomplete project for a simulcast and then later work on the same project for the DVD/Blu-ray release.

You’ve got re-animating, re-recording, re-timing, re-writing, re-authoring, re-syncing… Basically re-everything to do.

It’s very interesting, as a translator, to see how what is on screen, or more importantly in this case, what is not on screen colors your translations.

This morning I was going over the resynced subtitles for an episode of Kurokami that will end up on the American DVD release. In the initial unfinished video, it looked like a character had her hand on a man’s chest while she was saying a line. As it turns out in the finished video, she doesn’t put her hand on his chest until after delivering the line. (whoops)

You will probably see much whining about the ambiguity of the Japanese language on this blog, but a slight change in a gesture like this can alter the meaning of a line anywhere from slightly to radically.

The moral of the story is: Don’t ever assume you know what’s going on screen unless you absolutely have to.

Oh, the joys of translation.

“Mind Stat of 34″
Hey all, Adam here again with another note on something that probably went by 99% of the viewing audience on Shin Koihime.  Back a few eps ago, during the tournament between Enshou and Kan’u’s group, Chouhi made a crack about Toshi having a mind stat of 34.  If I remember right she made a similar joke in the first series, too. (I was not the translator for Koihime Season 1, that was a different company actually.)  But characters in Shin Koihime don’t HAVE stats, at least, they were never mentioned outside that one joke.  So what gives?

If you read my last post, you’ll remember that Shin Koihime is based off of an old historical book called “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”.  As I said then, that book has inspired hundreds of spin-offs, including several well known video game series.  One of these series is a terrifyingly complex historical simulation “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” by Koei.  The game puts you in the role of one of the generals of the Three Kingdoms era, and has you try to take over China by making alliances, waging warfare, and building cities.

Every general in the book is represented in the game, and each of them has various statistics that represent their capabilities.  Toshi’s role in the game is that of a military strategist: a cunning advisor whose knowledge and insight gives you the edge over the opponent’s army.  The most important statistic for a strategist is “mind”; a high mind stat means a genius of Sun Tzu proportions, and a low mind stat means you have trouble remembering how to tie your shoes.  Stats are scored from 1 to 100, and Toshi’s got a mind stat of 34, by far the worst in the game for somebody of her type and placing her squarely in the “paint-eater” category.

So there you go.  It was a joke from an obscure historical sim that probably less than 1% of their audience has played, and less than 30% of that would remember, which may earn it some kind of record for obscurity.