Category Media

Nov 28 2012

This is Sternbild watches the dub (and other things)

Aki and I have been watching the English dub of Tiger & Bunny. Neither of us expected to get this into it, but here we are. Dying for episode 9 dubbed.

The start with the dub was pretty bumpy – which I think was a combination of the voices sounding unfamiliar after seeing the original so many times (read: we lost count how many times), and the voice actors themselves still settling into the roles. By episode three that had evened out. The translation has some minor issues and a couple of derps a fan will notice, but we can forgive those. As a whole it works, and the important character chemistry is still there.

The dub cast is also really good. Wally Wingert may not sound anything like Hirata, but he’s gotten the feel of the character down. Yuri Lowenthal is excellent as Barnaby. What really blew us away was Liam O’Brien as Lunatic. Yusa Kouji was awesome in the original, but the dub version is better in our opinion. Yuri Petrov and Lunatic actually sound different in the dub, and the choice of voice and style of speech for Lunatic make him more menacing. Or as Aki put it…

Aki_the_geek: NO LUNATIC YOU SHOULDN’T SOUND LIKE YOU WANT TO BANG EVERYONE

Yeah. I was going to add some snippets of our dub watching chats here but since they mostly consist of capslock keysmashing because of FEELS, I’ll just leave it at that. The dub has gone from being an excuse to rewatch the series to something we’re looking forward to every week.

Live-Action Buddy Cops

Earlier this month, ANN posted some news about T&B’s character designer Katsura Masakazu appearing in a TV series written by Nishida Masafumi. So far we’ve seen two episodes of Jikken Keiji Totori. Nishida seems to like the age gap theme, this time the rookie is the older of the duo. For a Japanese drama, Jikken Keiji Totori doesn’t really have that j-drama feel, it’s more Western. That’s not very surprising, though, Tiger & Bunny wasn’t the first Western style thing Nishida wrote. He’s also written and directed one of the few Japanese sitcoms filmed in front of live studio audience. The acting in Jikken Keiji Totori is pretty good, too. We’re really enjoying watching it, and if you like Nishida’s writing it’s definitely worth checking out.

(I tried to keep this short and sweet, because I’ve been down with a flu for the past week and that doesn’t really enhance my ability to stay coherent.)

Oct 4 2012

English dub impressions

We’ve been a bit quiet here at This is Sternbild recently. Mainly for two reasons: I spent the last two months on my bachelor’s thesis, and Aki was getting ready to go to Japan for a year. Now my thesis has been defended and Aki’s getting cozy with all the Taibani available in Japan so we’ll be more active. So, down to business.

The English dub of Tiger & Bunny premiered a couple of days ago on Viz’s Neon Alley PS3 service. I don’t own a PS3, nor do I live in North America where Neon Alley is available. There’s a rip on the interwebs that I watched instead. This is all my personal opinion, Aki hasn’t been able to watch the dub yet.

I think that when you rate the dub, you have to take into account that the English dub actors had an advantage over the original seiyuu. The original version was recorded with the seiyuu getting only the information necessary to play their characters correctly, they didn’t get any extra information until they received the scripts. The English VAs on the other hand have had the opportunity to watch the series and build their performance from that, and there’s a lot more background material available now. The Japanese version is also more subtle, the English dub is blatant with some things compared to the original. It’s a cultural thing, Japanese language just works differently from English. I think they also added some lines to make some things clearer or to substitute things that wouldn’t have worked in English.

Individual voices

This is a short version because Kotetsu’s got the most lines in the first episode, hard to judge the others based on just a few lines. Continue reading →

Aug 11 2012

New content = new books

The upcoming stage play and movies mean that we’re getting new source books. I’ve had to redo my September orders twice already because the publishers keep announcing new stuff every week. Here’s what’s available for pre-order so far (dates based on what the shops have announced), though I may have to edit this list soon because this is only stuff from Kadokawa Shoten.

TIGER&BUNNY THE LIVE Official Visual Fanbook
ISBN: 9784041102886
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Release date: September 13th, 2012
Notes: Visual guide to the stage play. I don’t own any other stage play books so I’m not sure what all this’ll include, but there will be cast interviews for certain.

TIGER&BUNNY -The Beginning- SIDEa
ISBN: 9784041204405
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Release date: September 26th, 2012
Notes: Manga of the first movie, art by Ohno Tsutomu. I’m not sure how many volumes this’ll be.

Theatrical Edition TIGER&BUNNY The Beginning Vol. 1
ISBN: 9784041102879
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Release date: September 20th, 2012
Notes: Movie novelization, this will be at least two volumes. The writer is Takahashi Yuuya, based on Nishida’s scripts. (I’d have preferred if Nishida could have written these himself, but I think he’s too busy at the moment.)

That’s the stuff for the stage play and first movie, but there are also new books for the TV anime. I’m still debating whether or not to get these because I have KING OF WORKS and they don’t seem to offer anything new.

TV Anime TIGER&BUNNY Scenario Document Vol. 1
ISBN: 9784041102848
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Release date: September 20th, 2012
Notes: Scripts for first cour (episodes 1-13) of the anime.

TV Anime TIGER&BUNNY Scenario Document Vol. 2
ISBN: 9784041103098
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Release date: October 20th, 2012
Notes: Scripts for second cour (episodes 14-25) of the anime.

I order my books usually from CDJapan, but these should be available at most of the usual stores that sell other T&B and anime merchandise.

There’ll also be a new one-shot manga by Katsura Masakazu and Nishida Masafumi, the latest issue of Young Jump announced that Katsura has put ZETMAN on break so he can draw some Tiger & Bunny.

Update: Miracle Jump’s T&B serialization volume 1 has appeared on Amazon Japan.

TIGER&BUNNY The Comic 1
ISBN: 9784088794228
Publisher: Shueisha
Release date: September 19th, 2012
Notes: Manga by Yoshida Erika (story) and Ueda Hiroshi (art), published in Miracle Jump magazine.

Jul 31 2012

“The rumours of my demise…” etc.

I’ll take this chance to disrupt the normal service to do some personal blogging. So if you couldn’t care less about non-T&B stuff that gets posted here, just stop reading this post now, and go check out the latest info on Tiger & Bunny -The Beginning- U.K. premiere!

This post is mostly to clarify what happened last week, in case people were still worried about me.  Anyways, on Monday 23rd of July I woke up with a bad dizzy spell. And I mean really really bad. About 10 years ago I suffered from vestibular neuritis. It was – all things considered – pretty mild since I recovered almost completely within a month. Ever since then I’ve had occasional mild dizziness and sometimes trouble with balance, and one case of remission. Until Monday a week ago when I got a really bad case of remission and had to go to the ER to get some medication for the nausea (constant feeling of vertigo and the world just going around and around me like in a carousel, etc.) and also to get a proper diagnosis because I had been living abroad when I got it for the first time and they didn’t have my medical files.

As a result I have a packet of nausea meds that will probably come in handy if I ever have trouble sleeping (they did help with what they’re prescribed for but they also made me very tired), and a huge ass painful bruise on my left wrist where the nurse was trying (and failing several times) to locate a vein to stick an IV into. I also have a new experience of getting to ride in an ambulance.

Right now I’m pretty much back to normal, but the Twitter and Facebook updates were scarce for the past week because for days I was feeling too weak to keep up with what was happening. Sorry about that.

Normal service will resume now. Thanks, and thanks again for all the get well wishes!
– derpchan