Looks like we’ve finally hit a fansub group collision on this blog. Oh well, it was bound to happen eventually. Today’s blog material is Sasami-san@Ganbaranai by gg, a curious cartoon that seemed to have flown quite well under the radar. Possibly for good reason.

Thanks jaka. Anyway, we’re not here to review the quality of the show itself. We’re here to talk about the subtitles. It’s been almost a decade since I last watched it anyway, so I don’t remember a thing.

I was ready to disagree here until I saw the context. Sasami was telling the person at the door to leave because she didn’t want to answer it, so I was thinking “get lost” or “go home already”. Turns out it was actually an Amazon delivery guy and she wanted him to leave—but not with her package—so I actually like the choice here a lot.

High school is two words. Thanks Japan.

This line in a vacuum is fine, but the original sentiment is missing a bit. Throughout the skit, her brother is going on about her being spoiled and a baby. The same wording is intentionally used here when Sasami responds to her brother’s single request after he takes care of dozens of hers to show her hypocrisy.

The adjective here is “late-night”, not “new”. They sound similar and both are plausible, and it doesn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of things but I figured I’d point it out anyway since it’s still technically a mistake.

At first I was going to complain about the difference in tone, but the more I think about it, the more this line grows on me. I’ve never seen a game where someone with no experience is this confident and unabashed, so it actually works pretty well.

Minor nitpick, but is “adult games” a thing people usually say? Can’t say I’ve really come across it, but even if it is a thing, “porn games” rolls off the tongue a lot better and is kind of the point here.

I wanted to call this one out because they did not fall into the obvious trap. “Die” is my least favourite stock translation here, because when have you seen someone go up to another person and say “die” (outside of the situation where they’re literally about to kill them)?

My preferred choice here has historically been “kill yourself”, which I feel is more realistic and gets the message across a lot better. In this context though, I might argue “go to hell” is even better since it’s a little more light-hearted and not as morbid. Also saves you the trouble of walking on eggshells like you would need to with “kill yourself”, though arguably this wasn’t as much of a problem in 2013.

One great line after the next. Literally, Sasami is saying to “give back” her barley tea; the implication being it’s Tsurugi’s fault that she spat it out and wasted it. Of course, this sounds stupid as hell in English, so props to the team for taking the implication in the Japanese and being explicit about it in the translation.

Another really good choice. Funimation or Aniplex probably would’ve written “you’re gross”, which is pretty gross. gg’s line extrapolates from the fragment and formulates the kind of full thought you’d need for a proper English sentence. It fits the character a lot better too (this is exactly what girls in high school said to me my friend).

Damn I can’t even go one post without calling out this weird pronoun usage. In their defense, Tama also refers to Tsurugi by name right after so they might’ve thought it would be weird to use her name twice in a row when one character is referring by pronoun. I dunno, I’d probably just fluff it as “Oh, Tsurugi” if it really had to be different.

This is turning out to be a very positive review. The literal line here is “I won’t wear it”, in response to her brother talking about her wearing a maid outfit. “Like hell I would” was my first thought, but “over my dead body” takes this a step further to really show her displeasure while sounding like a line out of a cheap American movie (this is a good thing).

So the character’s name here is “Chiyoko”, not “Choco”. It’s intended to sound similar, but it was probably just misheard. Considering how gg used to operate, it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t look at the screen to see what the name actually was. I could give the benefit of doubt and assume it was intentional, but that doesn’t seem as likely.

And this character is called “Cacao”, not “Cocoa”. Granted this one isn’t shown on-screen, but there is a very audible difference. I’m no chocolate chef myself, but I believe “cacao” and “cocoa” are actually different (though related) things.

Looks like the QC accidentally added added a word.

Oh, right.

There was a sequence of chocolate puns here, none of which I could really come up with good English equivalents for. Regardless, I appreciate that they tried and came up with workable lines, even if they were a bit awkward. I’d much prefer this to notes all over the screen.

To my memory, this is probably the first mostly positive review on this blog. It was a little unpolished, but that sort of comes with the territory with gg. I also feel like I’ve been picking on Vale’s work a lot lately. I’ve neglected to mention this to him because I don’t think anyone cares about minor translation errors in cartoon subtitles ten years down the road, but if you’re reading this, I promise I’m not doing it on purpose. (´・ω・`)

Edit: it appears I am a bit late to the party. But oh well, that didn’t stop us from starting a fansubbing review blog in 2019. Though considering Vale reviewed this release too, it was probably someone else on TL for this ep.