I must have a lot more time on my hands these days, because I’m watching so many bad cartoons while locked up inside. For reasons, I decided I’d give Mirai Nikki a rewatch, so I pulled up my archive and found a release from GotSpeed, GotWoot’s speedsubbing faction. I don’t remember much about the fansubbing scene from back in the day, so I went to interview a special guest. Enter EienShouko, former leader of FFF and current deadbeat:
[12:21] Blankaex: is gotspeed just gotwoot
[12:21] Blankaex: but speedsubs
[12:21] Eien: yes
[12:22] Blankaex: ok
[12:22] Eien: it's just a really dumb idea
[12:22] Eien: because their co-founder was absolutely incapable of typesetting
without 3-4 days of slowpoke
[12:22] Eien: so gotspeed is just the timed edited script
[12:22] torn: :KEKW:
[12:22] Eien: he pioneered many stupid memes
[12:22] Eien: like when a sign was too annoying to track / do?
[12:22] Eien: freezeframe it
[12:23] Eien: he hardsubbed all the typesetting anyway
[12:23] Eien: so nobody knew
[12:23] Eien: :pepeg:
Thanks Eien. Anyway with that in mind, let’s dive into the episode and see what the subs are like. I remember episode one having a few stray {s hanging around; hopefully we don’t catch anything like that on this episode.
Off to a good start. Probably don’t need me to point out the issue here.
“Weak” probably isn’t the word I’d use to describe a diary, even in Mirai Nikki’s context. It’s not some battle shounen where they’re comparing dick sizes and having pissing contests. “Useless” is definitely more appropriate here.
Questionable typesetting but not sure if I want to comment on this given the whole speedsubbing meme. I wouldn’t wish fully masked typesetting on someone working a show like this, with all the moving phone screens and everything. Still, I feel like a tiny bit of extra work could go a long way here.
lol they forgot to mux the chapters this episode
Bit of a sneaky translation error here. She technically does say “wrong”, but the word can also mean “different”. It would be kind of strange to say the weight of a tomato is “wrong”. What she’s saying is more along the lines of the weight being different to what it was before.
Not sure if this is grammatically correct, but it looks bad so it probably isn’t. If you say “than”, then I feel like you need something to compare the subject to. Like, “this apple is heavier than this tomato”. “When I washed it” isn’t a suitable comparison here. I’d go for “It’s heavier than it was when I washed it”.
In the manga, Kaguya says “how cute”. Translating it as “how adorable” is wrong, she clearly says “okawaii koto” which means “cute” Fifth is technically saying he loves Yuno, but not in the romantic sense. He’s talking about how he considers her a worthy opponent and is having a great time fighting her, so it’s more of a really strong like. “Adorable” misses the mark by a large margin, and doesn’t really make sense considering the previous line is calling her “awesome”. Should’ve just carried on with that thought.
So understood what this meant because I knew what was being said, but I’m not sure if the line makes sense on its own. He’s saying he’s the kind of person that starts off a meal by eating his favourite parts, as opposed to someone who saves the best for last. This is his analogy for trying to kill Yuno first. A bit of creativity here could’ve helped immensely. “I always eat the cherry on top first”, “I like to start off with the strawberry on my cakes”, words to that effect.
Email, actually. Not sure if referring to email as “mail” is a thing in English, but I wouldn’t use either here anyway. Just say “text” like a normal person. Technically Japan does use email rather than SMS/MMS (at least, they did before online messaging became a thing). Great call, because those protocols are slow, unreliable and insecure, but there’s no need to bring that into the subs. Especially when there’s a perfectly workable local equivalent that doesn’t require any background knowledge.
Nothing particularly wrong with this one but it sounds extremely wonky to me. Might be the “zero chance” as a phrase that makes it sound weird, I think the more common term is “no chance”. Anyway, there’s a lot of room to play around with on this line, for example “You guys are way to stupid to find it” or “You idiots will never find it”. No need to stick religiously to the Japanese grammar structure.
What way? Very literal translation here that doesn’t really mean much. “Hurt” also implies some kind of physical wound (could be emotional injury too I guess but context), which is a bit off when they’re talking about toxic gas. He’s saying that Fifth’s game would get his mother involved (against her will), so something a bit more liberal could get the gist of the point across without sounding super awkward. “Leave my mum out of this!”
That’s all I captured before I hit the end of the episode, so we’ll wrap up here. There were a handful of minor issues that mostly boiled down to laziness, but nothing was particularly detrimental. Not sure I can really fault them for that, given that they’re hiding behind the speedsubbing option select. My only lingering question is why they’d be releasing episodes they know need work, but I guess clout chasing and unabashed shitposting was more prominent in 2011.