High School DxD

kitsuneb

Well-Known Member
#26
Gafar, the hell's the matter with you? You do know that this is Fiction, right? The sc called sacrilege has almost nothing to do with the main story itself. I mean, neither the Devils or the Angels are the antagonists. They're allies for fuck's sake.
 

Prince Charon

Well-Known Member
#27
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is amused, and Thor thinks Gafgar should lighten up.
 

zeebee1

Well-Known Member
#28
Gafgar, everything you says makes people think you're heretical.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#29
kitsuneb said:
Edited for ADD's truth: It was depressing that Issei was suffering from slight gynophobia? Not so much as to avoid being friends, but definitely caused him to ignore the cues that the girls actually cared for him and weren't going to go axe crazy one him if he tried to commit a romantic relationship with one of them.
through the whole first few novels we're fairly direct witnesses of the damage that Issei's friends, reputation, 'romantic relationships, etc have done to his self-esteem and to his mentality, the more you look the sadder it is to a point. It's not a tear-jerker but its....a 'give this dog a bone' kind of sad, nevermind that the poor bastard keeps whittling down his life to the point that he can only live for 100 years.....and as a devil he should be able to live thousands
 

zeebee1

Well-Known Member
#30
Well, if the Devil and God are dead Issei is clearly going to replace one of them. And such positions probably come with extra life extensions.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#31
zeebee1 said:
Well, if the Devil and God are dead Issei is clearly going to replace one of them. And such positions probably come with extra life extensions.
Michael already replaced god and Rias' brother is already acting as Lucifer and he........well, yeah, not a fucking chance he's gonna be replaced any time soon. Also Issei, as a devil, cannot become 'anything' relating to the church
 
#32
I've read all the novels that have been translated so far. Definite hoot as far as I'm concerned.

Don't know why everyone hates the anime, I rather enjoyed it. More than the manga anyway. Drawing style on the manga is not the best.

The fact that Rias (the female lead) can be majorly clueless as well is funny, considering she doesn't recognize her own freaking 'brother' and 'sister-in-law' dressed up as Power Ranger knock-offs. Even when her brother uses a power unique to their mother's side of the family.

Even Issei recognizes them!

Though Issei has 'yet' to realize he's engaged is funny.

Not to mention he's got 'permission' to have his harem, from Rias's mother no less!

Can't wait for Volume 14 as it'll be the next major step in the story.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#33
the DragonBard said:
I've read all the novels that have been translated so far. Definite hoot as far as I'm concerned.

Don't know why everyone hates the anime, I rather enjoyed it. More than the manga anyway. Drawing style on the manga is not the best.

The fact that Rias (the female lead) can be majorly clueless as well is funny, considering she doesn't recognize her own freaking 'brother' and 'sister-in-law' dressed up as Power Ranger knock-offs. Even when her brother uses a power unique to their mother's side of the family.

Even Issei recognizes them!

Though Issei has 'yet' to realize he's engaged is funny.

Not to mention he's got 'permission' to have his harem, from Rias's mother no less!

Can't wait for Volume 14 as it'll be the next major step in the story.
Because the Anime makes the series look generic, the Novels make the Main character's internal and external aspects shine
 

kitsuneb

Well-Known Member
#34
Volume 11 was a big turn around in my opinion. We already knew that the girls were getting themselves involved in harem politicking from volume seven onward. Then came, the end of Ten and the start of Eleven, which showed these girls had a serious psychological dependency of him. I mean if it wasn't for the fact that she knew Issei wouldn't have liked it, Asia was all but ready to slit her wrists.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#35
kitsuneb said:
Volume 11 was a big turn around in my opinion. We already knew that the girls were getting themselves involved in harem politicking from volume seven onward. Then came, the end of Ten and the start of Eleven, which showed these girls had a serious psychological dependency of him. I mean if it wasn't for the fact that she knew Issei wouldn't have liked it, Asia was all but ready to slit her wrists.
And the vampire kid..............
 

Comartemis

Well-Known Member
#36
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
I realize that the anime is.........awful awful turd on a stick. But the Light Novel is A-Grade stuff. And I mean REALLY good. I just went through all 12 volumes currently released and I'd be willing to put it right up there with To Aru Majutsu no Index. At the very least it has a great atmospheric pull to it and one of the few Protagonist characters who deserve his harem and who have legit reasons to be oblivious(initially).

So let's talk, in the name of Oppai Dragon-kun
The anime is infinitely superior to the novels because it doesn't have a shitty translation that reads like it was ghost written by a fourth grader.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#37
Comartemis said:
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
I realize that the anime is.........awful awful turd on a stick. But the Light Novel is A-Grade stuff. And I mean REALLY good. I just went through all 12 volumes currently released and I'd be willing to put it right up there with To Aru Majutsu no Index. At the very least it has a great atmospheric pull to it and one of the few Protagonist characters who deserve his harem and who have legit reasons to be oblivious(initially).

So let's talk, in the name of Oppai Dragon-kun
The anime is infinitely superior to the novels because it doesn't have a shitty translation that reads like it was ghost written by a fourth grader.
If you don't like it, you don't need to ruin it for those that do. And as far as I'm concerned these guys translate for free for the benefit of those of us who don't have the spare time to learn a fairly hard to read language.

And if you can do a better job at a translation then please go ahead and take over the project, because reading a new, improved and polished version of such a novel would be great
 

Comartemis

Well-Known Member
#38
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
If you don't like it, you don't need to ruin it for those that do.
Don't ruin the anime for those of us who like it and maybe I won't. Of course I don't see how voicing an opinion ruins anything in the first place but hey, whatever floats your boat.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#39
Comartemis said:
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
If you don't like it, you don't need to ruin it for those that do.
Don't ruin the anime for those of us who like it and maybe I won't. Of course I don't see how voicing an opinion ruins anything in the first place but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Alright, so you like the anime, what were good points that attracted you to it and made you enjoy it then?
 

kashiro

Well-Known Member
#40
dat pole dancing animation. But, in all seriousness, I'm kinda curious to hear your reasoning for the translations being an inferior quality to the anime's translations.
 

Comartemis

Well-Known Member
#41
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
Comartemis said:
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
If you don't like it, you don't need to ruin it for those that do.
Don't ruin the anime for those of us who like it and maybe I won't. Of course I don't see how voicing an opinion ruins anything in the first place but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Alright, so you like the anime, what were good points that attracted you to it and made you enjoy it then?
Well my initial expectation of the series was that it was going to be something like Ikkitousen with a male lead, and I was pleasantly surprised that it exceeded my expectations and actually held my interest rather than being a generic panty fighter.

I like that Issei avoids most of the major harem protagonist cliches. He's a very realistic character as far as wish-fulfillment characters go; yes he gets to be an awesome shonen hero with Kamen Rider armor and has a harem of hot chicks, but he's got to work for his girls and his powers as opposed to having them fall into his lap for completely arbitrary reasons. He's also goal-oriented and willing to level grind to get what he wants and isn't completely reactionary like, say, Yuuki Rito is.

The format conversion was also well-handled. The last light novel port that I paid attention to (aside from SAO, which is also awesome) was ZnT, which made the mistake of burning through a whole set of books in about 12 episodes and wound up being a really crappy port that discarded a lot of material to make room for idiot/tsundere comic abuse that got old after about five minutes. DxD on the other hand took the slow route and only burned through two novels; it padded itself with extra fanservice, but that fanservice wasn't replacing anything of any importance.

The anime made a handful of improvements as well. I forced myself to read the first book and parts of the second while the series was coming out because some other fan was whining about the difference between the anime and the novels, and as far as I've been able to find the anime did not cut so much as a single scene without replacing it in a better location elsewhere. Issei's two assignments with the otaku dude and Mil-tan were back-to-back in the first novel and felt really redundant; not so in the anime, which sets the meeting with Mil-tan after the first book as part of a breather episode. The only scene I can think of that was cut completely was a poorly-placed and not-really-relevent-to-anything tangent that Rias goes off on just before the fight with Laser Nipples Demon about the origins of the evil piece system.

The showdown with Raiser was changed by having Issei run out the clock talking his opponent to death. This looks like a really stupid change that makes Issei look like an idiot but it makes a kind of sense if you rationalize it as him losing his situational awareness as he reaches the peak of hotbloodedness. It's also better for his character growth; in the novels he ran out of time on his armor six seconds early and one gets the impression that he's "still too weak" to handle his own abilities. This isn't so in the anime, which then of course goes ahead and gives him his big Checkmate moment after reinforcing the amount of growth he's done.

dat pole dancing animation.
Yum.

But, in all seriousness, I'm kinda curious to hear your reasoning for the translations being an inferior quality to the anime's translations.
Well for one thing the translations leave a lot of (if you'll excuse the term) weeabo-isms scattered around the text. Oppai, buchou, senpai, suffixes left attached to names all over the damn place, things like that. Someone else posted a bigger list than that, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Much more distressing is the lack of any regionalization of the text format. You can go for whole chapters without ever seeing a single paragraph in some places, and the sentences are cut up and blocky in ways that almost physically hurt to read. I mean look at it!

ôIt was fun today.ö

That's what she said while smiling.
I wrote like that when I was in kindergarten for god's sake. I mean I know the BT translators are all volunteers and such but it really doesn't change the overall quality of the translation if they can't even be assed to parse it into a form that doesn't sound like it came straight out of Babelfish.
 

kashiro

Well-Known Member
#42
The way the margins are set up on baka-tsuki is kinda like how it is on ff.net where it makes short paragraphs look like really long lines. Though, now that you pointed that line out (kudos for you finding an exert), the editing on the High School DxD thing looks like it could use some sort of editing/western formatting.

While I find there is legitimate room for argument on the issue of suffixes, I do agree that there are occasions where the translator shouldn't just romanize things and could use an editor to help westernize(aka: make it more aesthetically pleasing for the western eye) the light novels.
 

goldenarms

Well-Known Member
#43
kashiro said:
The way the margins are set up on baka-tsuki is kinda like how it is on ff.net where it makes short paragraphs look like really long lines. Though, now that you pointed that line out (kudos for you finding an exert), the editing on the High School DxD thing looks like it could use some sort of editing/western formatting.

While I find there is legitimate room for argument on the issue of suffixes, I do agree that there are occasions where the translator shouldn't just romanize things and could use an editor to help westernize(aka: make it more aesthetically pleasing for the western eye) the light novels.
Honest to God, I've seen MUCH worse LN translating -- I DLed a copy of a Kampfer! LN and it was done so badly, I literally did not comprehend what the hell I was reading. The words were in english, but their patterns was like being stuck in someone's brain while all the words in their minds just bumped into you and you had to figure out what was being said by taste.

I threw it out after seeing the first few pages and going, "Oh God, there's more..."

And to be frank, ZnT suffered badly from that sort of translation screw to the point I considered rewriting it all just so it was more coherent. Because, really:

"That's my boy."

Said Joe as he cheered.
Just about every line is ridiculously annoying.
 

kitsuneb

Well-Known Member
#44
Okay, so LN translations could use a little work. The fact that Japanese is, even amongst close people, a polite language compared to American English. Hell, me and my mom got into an argument about how uneducated Americans tend to sound due to the fact that we don't enunciate enough.
 

Aegis

Well-Known Member
#45
Comartemis said:
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
Comartemis said:
ADD Kyuubi Naruto said:
If you don't like it, you don't need to ruin it for those that do.
Don't ruin the anime for those of us who like it and maybe I won't. Of course I don't see how voicing an opinion ruins anything in the first place but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Alright, so you like the anime, what were good points that attracted you to it and made you enjoy it then?
Well my initial expectation of the series was that it was going to be something like Ikkitousen with a male lead, and I was pleasantly surprised that it exceeded my expectations and actually held my interest rather than being a generic panty fighter.

I like that Issei avoids most of the major harem protagonist cliches. He's a very realistic character as far as wish-fulfillment characters go; yes he gets to be an awesome shonen hero with Kamen Rider armor and has a harem of hot chicks, but he's got to work for his girls and his powers as opposed to having them fall into his lap for completely arbitrary reasons. He's also goal-oriented and willing to level grind to get what he wants and isn't completely reactionary like, say, Yuuki Rito is.

The format conversion was also well-handled. The last light novel port that I paid attention to (aside from SAO, which is also awesome) was ZnT, which made the mistake of burning through a whole set of books in about 12 episodes and wound up being a really crappy port that discarded a lot of material to make room for idiot/tsundere comic abuse that got old after about five minutes. DxD on the other hand took the slow route and only burned through two novels; it padded itself with extra fanservice, but that fanservice wasn't replacing anything of any importance.

The anime made a handful of improvements as well. I forced myself to read the first book and parts of the second while the series was coming out because some other fan was whining about the difference between the anime and the novels, and as far as I've been able to find the anime did not cut so much as a single scene without replacing it in a better location elsewhere. Issei's two assignments with the otaku dude and Mil-tan were back-to-back in the first novel and felt really redundant; not so in the anime, which sets the meeting with Mil-tan after the first book as part of a breather episode. The only scene I can think of that was cut completely was a poorly-placed and not-really-relevent-to-anything tangent that Rias goes off on just before the fight with Laser Nipples Demon about the origins of the evil piece system.

The showdown with Raiser was changed by having Issei run out the clock talking his opponent to death. This looks like a really stupid change that makes Issei look like an idiot but it makes a kind of sense if you rationalize it as him losing his situational awareness as he reaches the peak of hotbloodedness. It's also better for his character growth; in the novels he ran out of time on his armor six seconds early and one gets the impression that he's "still too weak" to handle his own abilities. This isn't so in the anime, which then of course goes ahead and gives him his big Checkmate moment after reinforcing the amount of growth he's done.

dat pole dancing animation.
Yum.

But, in all seriousness, I'm kinda curious to hear your reasoning for the translations being an inferior quality to the anime's translations.
Well for one thing the translations leave a lot of (if you'll excuse the term) weeabo-isms scattered around the text. Oppai, buchou, senpai, suffixes left attached to names all over the damn place, things like that. Someone else posted a bigger list than that, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Much more distressing is the lack of any regionalization of the text format. You can go for whole chapters without ever seeing a single paragraph in some places, and the sentences are cut up and blocky in ways that almost physically hurt to read. I mean look at it!

ôIt was fun today.ö

That's what she said while smiling.
I wrote like that when I was in kindergarten for god's sake. I mean I know the BT translators are all volunteers and such but it really doesn't change the overall quality of the translation if they can't even be assed to parse it into a form that doesn't sound like it came straight out of Babelfish.
About the assignments, you are certaintly correct in that it was handled better in the anime, that's one of the few points that I found good about the anime in my opinion. As for the showdown with Raiser? Issei IS too weak to handle his powers, he's too weak to handle them all the way to like........what? Volume 11 and volume 12? He has A LOT of growing to do even as far as he's come in the novels and believe me this is nowhere near the end of things. I don't care about the weeabo-isms because honestly I don't think Chichiryuutei, Oppai Dragon and a song that uses japanese SFX sounds would work if you completely take them out of context, the use of a suffix also doesn't bother me because it gives conversations their proper weight depending on the situation and even later in the novel there's discussions about the root of the words themselves which would be further taken out of context with the absolute removal of the actual Japanese words. That it can use a little work to adjust it to 'american' standards? Sure, but please take into account japanese Light Novels are in fact read differently and that might be what they're trying to go for

 

Watashiwa

Administrator
Staff member
#46
Uh, actually a lot of times light novel translations are bad just because the translators aren't familiar with English colloquialisms, so they directly translate the Japanese. Almost all sayings, stock phrases and metaphor have equivalents in other languages, but they're almost never the same. Effective translation requires recognizing meaning behind words and deciding the best way to get the meaning across. Baka-Tsuki's translators skew towards very literal translations, which are stilted and awkward in English.

BT is constantly looking for English editors for a reason. I help out sometimes.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#47
Well, English has a long and proud history as an "importer language", so things like colloquial expressions and idioms, actually I'd kinda rather see the original Japanese versions, as like a "cultural bonus".

It almost sounds more like, BT's problem is, they don't formally understand how paragraphs work.

ôIt was fun today.ö

That's what she said while smiling.
Exact same sentence with better formatting:
ôIt was fun today.ö That's what she said while smiling.
More classically correct usage:
ôIt was fun today,ö she said while smiling.
Hmm... in that case, it might be a difference that, "what was said" and "who said it" are treated as two sentences in Japanese, but usually as one sentence in English.

Of course, there's a difference between those two paragraphs, because the former emphasizes that it happened in the past, and also has the existence of the narrator closer to the surface. The former is probably just an artifact of how much more important temporal tenses are in English, but the latter implication might still make me lean towards the "less correct" construct because light novels are typically written in first person with a strong narrative voice.
 

Watashiwa

Administrator
Staff member
#48
I think you're right about the reasons for the sentence split, though I half-suspect it's more a light novel thing than a Japanese thing. Light novels are directed at a younger audience, which might not be able to differentiate between spoken and descriptive text. I forget how much punctuation existed in the language prior to Westernization.

I prefer the full English style translation myself, being an English lit. and language major. It's more reader friendly, and jagged edges caused by unnecessary stops ejects me from a story almost as fast as misspellings.
 

kelenas

Well-Known Member
#49
I tried reading the LN as well, but I also found the layout and writing style of the translation jarring. Might give it another try at a later date, though, since I liked the anime quite a bit.
 

kitsuneb

Well-Known Member
#50
Well, obviously the first few volumes are rather jarring, though it does get, somewhat, better. Yes, the enjoyment factor does get reduced due to the jarring translations but all in all it is a fun read to see a generally perverted character get a harem without being blasted for any little slight, like a certain familiar to a certain number. The fact that they see his perversion as a part of himself rather than a fault is also somewhat endearing.
 
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