Category Archives: Fangirlism and Snark

I either fangirl the heck out of it or I snark the heck out of it

The Flaws of Kurain

Kurain is an idiocracy anyway, but that’s not what I’m ranting about today. The whole spirit-chanelling thing just doesn’t make sense in-universe.

In the real world, we can dismiss mediums as a bunch of scam artists, but in the Ace Attorney universe, it’s genuine. They would 100% have won James Randi’s $1,000,000. I mean, they literally shapeshift for all to see. There’s no way to dismiss them as frauds. And it’s not like it’s a secret. We know from the Dr Grey case that the Feys take clients, and spirit channeling is their job. We also know the cops hired Misty years back. Mia frequently appears in court post-death and Franziska literally shows the court a photo of Maya transformed into Mia.

aa-miaeewa Continue reading →

Still Replaying the OT, and the Gyakuten Saiban Anime

I recently remembered that there’s a Gyakuten Saiban anime, so I decided to watch it. I saw a few clips of the English dub and wasn’t too happy with the voice cast, so I went with the subbed version. I don’t like Edgey’s voice. I know it’s supposed to be deep, but it sounds the wrong kind of deep. I dunno. It just doesn’t sound right. Maybe his English voice is better. Maya was a bit too high-pitched for my liking, but it’s kinda an occupational hazard for anime, isn’t it? I seem to remember her voice being better in the Layton vs Phoenix Wright trailer. Anyway, I’m only up to the second episode. So here’s what I think so far.

One thing that bugged me is that Naruhodo-kun (Phoenix) kept calling Chihiro (Mia) “Chihiro-san”, which he didn’t do in the game. He called her “shochou”, or, in the English release, “Chief”. I don’t know if they made the same mistake in the English dub. They also couldn’t make their mind up about Mia’s age. She literally aged down a year in one second, even though she was dead!

is she 28?

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I Sunk Your Battleship!

Recently I've been playing the first Ace Attorney again. I thought since I'm working on the translations again, I should refamiliarise myself with the characters' quirks. I blazed through the first 3 cases, and now I'm on Edgey's case and he's been on trial for over a week now. Poor Edgey. Anyway, a weird thing is in the fanbook, Larry calls Phoenix by his actual surname Naruhodou. But in the English release, Maya gets the Nick-name (see what I did there? Of course you did) from Larry. Before that, she calls him Phoenix. So where did she get Naruhodo-kun from in the original? I'll have to try playing that case again on the DS re-release. Also, in the original, Maya calls Larry by the nickname Yappari, instead of his name Yahari. But in the English, she says his name correctly as Larry, rather than Harry, which is what Mia and Gummi call him. It's strange how they changed that.

Anyway, I was recently looking up my blog online to see if it had been indexed yet (as you do), and came across this post by sophie_inthesky at AO3.

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What is This Book? — (Re)Create This Book Pt 3

I haven't really done any work on this for a while. See how easily I get bored of projects? So I thought I may as well post my last entries since it may be a while till I do any more.

So here is "Create Hope". Of course, I thought of Star Wars: A New Hope, so I drew moisture-farmer Luke. This was a really hard one. I'm not good at realistic portraits. I had to use the grid method, but even then, his left-eye was so hard to draw. No matter what I did, it always looked wrong. So I quit before I made it any worse. It didn't help that in the source image, Leia's bun was super-imposed over the left-hand side of Luke's face.

create-hope

I mean to seal this as it's soft pencil and I don't want it smudging, but I can't think of any way to incorporate the fruit rule without cheapening the picture, so I may have to break the rule in this one case.

Next is "Create an Upside Down Drawing". I drew a sloth. I mean to paint this with watercolour, as I've finally dug up my drawing pens, but the Luke picture is on the following page, and I'm so scared I'm going to manage to spill the paint onto it.

create-upsidedown

That's all I have for now.

Jumping the Snark

In fact, I finished reading the Naruto manga a few weeks ago, but then I got a nasty cold, and then I decided to play Etrian Odyssey again, and I don't even know why I found it so hard the first time, because it wasn't harder than any other RPG, and then I decided to get a move on with the Gyakuten Saiban translations. I should have posted this earlier while it was still fresh in my memory, but shaanai naa, what can you do?

i am madara
I guess I'm Madara. Reality is way over-rated.

So... I was disappointed. An awful lot of sharks were jumped. It felt like Kishimoto went "Oops! I've just OP'd Madara, what should I do? I know! Let's power up Naruto and Sasuke! Akan! I've OP'd the boys now... What should I do? I know, I'll make Madara more powerful. Oh, damn —" etc etc. So many sharks were jumped, so many. I really preferred Part 1 to Part 2. As the series progressed, it became more and more about...

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Celebrate! The Translation Project is Done!

To commemorate almost actually finishing this after *checks* almost exactly 9 years, here are some more photos of the inside of this book. Just to clarify, it’s an official fanbook, not a fanwork. It was published by Softbank Creative, and has a retail price of 1,500 yen + tax. I think I paid about £15 for it on eBay. It was first published on 14/06/2006 and I have the second printing which was on 30/06/2006. The ISBN is 4-7973-3556-4.

Here’s the dust jacket opened out.

Naruhodo Gyakuten Saiban - Dust jacket Continue reading →

Page 10 — Festival

I am finally back working on this project! Thank you to Yuki-san for helping me when I got stuck. The end is finally in sight! Takumi-san uses the phrase "ato no matsuri" (the festival after?), and then at the end, Maya says "matsuri no ato" (after the festival), and I don't really know what they're getting at. The original title of this page is Matsuri. You can read more about matsuri here. Hamidashi means something like, "sticking out", "overflow". Pearl's Japanese name is Harumi, Hami-chan for short, so they got her character to answer the reader comments in the puntastically named Hamidashi Letters Corner. Turnabout Trials is the literal translation of Gyakuten Saiban. I had to use that version to make Phoenix's observation work.

Page 11 - Matsuri

Episode 2 — October 2004 Issue

Takushuu Column — Ace Attorney and Festivals

Hello. It's hot every day, huh? It seems like day after day, the heatwave of over 30° is just going to keep going, but... here's one big question.

... So an air temperature of 30°, it makes you feel really hot, right? But hang on. Continue reading →

Sasukin Skywhiner

Okay, I'm past chapter 400, and my gosh, Sasuke is more annoying than Sakura now. He's even more annoying than Anakin, dammit. How does this whiner have such a big fanbase? Anyway, here is some general snark for what I've read so far.

Firstly, the Kakashi Gaiden:

chefs kiss

I actually spent £7 on Volume 27 just for this. Minato is the best thing about the series. He's such a cupcake! So wholesome! Dammit, Kishimoto.


Yah yes!

Also, I watched Tsunade's Infinite Tsukuyomi dream, and why do you do this to us, Kishimoto? Why?! Tsunade's tsukuyomi dream is forever my headcanon!

Anyway, on to the snark...

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Attempting to Fix Sakura Haruno – Part 2: The Actual Fix

Part 1: How did Sakura even qualify as a genin?

So just to clarify, it's been a loooong time since I watched/read Part 2 of Naruto, so this is just in the context of Part 1.

So the biggest problem with Part 1 Sakura is that she is 95% Sasuke-stalker, 5% self-absorbed brat. Let's start fixing this.

Our first proper introduction to Sakura is when she joins Team 7. Kakashi asks them to introduce themselves. Sasuke and Naruto answer as they originally did, and then it's Sakura's turn.

"My name is Sakura Haruno. Things I like... Well, I really like my best friend Ino, and my parrot, Mr Feathers," she says, with a big smile on her face. "My hobbies... Well, my dad is a master pastry chef, and on weekends--" She stops suddenly, remembering that both her team-mates are orphans. She looks over to Sasuke, who is looking into the distance, seemingly oblivious as usual. Naruto is just looking at her with a big goofy grin on his face. She hesitates a moment, then continues. "My dad teaches me how to make all kinds of fancy desserts, and my mum is a master woodworker, and she's teaching me how to carve traditional figurines."

"And things you dislike?" Kakashi prompts.

Sakura looks despondent for a moment. "What I dislike is that I'm really bad at both of them."

We see a still of her standing next to her burnt and misshapen pastries, and another of her next to a hideously deformed kimekomi doll. In the background though, we see the respective parent smiling proudly at their beloved daughter.

"That's why my dream is to be Continue reading →

How did Sakura Even Qualify as a Genin? Attempting to Fix Sakura Haruno

I used to be a big Naruto fan. I used to watch the anime, and my gosh, the flashbacks, the monologues, and the pointless explanations of what just happened, and then another character explaining what just happened again in case we forgot in those last 5 seconds. Holy carp. [Edit: Naruto Kai is a thing, but even with all the filler and padding removed, it still drags.] I got through some of Shippuden, and I then went on to the manga because the dubs were taking too long, but I didn't get all that far.

Anyway, I got a little fed up, because it seemed every story followed the same formula of: baddie does bad guy stuff, Naruto gives a pep talk, bad guy decides to be good. This must be where Dhar Mann got his formula from.

So I was watching Abridged recently, and it made me curious about what actually happened in canon, so I decided to start reading the manga from the beginning, because ain't no one got time for those flashbacks, yo. And boy, did I forget just how bad of a character Sakura is. I'm not just talking about her general uselessness throughout Part 1. Her whole character sucks. She is literally a terribly written character, and an awful role model for girls. Kishimoto writes females badly in general, but he really messed up with Sakura.

And I don't for one minute buy the excuse that he's "bad at writing good female characters". What a cop out. What an absolutely lazy, pathetic excuse for a cop out.

I've seen reports that he even said he didn't bother to improve Sakura as a character because the fans hated her anyway, and if that's true then feck off, Kishimoto. You don't get to blame the fans for your crappy writing.

Here's how you do it: write a good character. Make them female. That's it. That's all you have to do.

If Itachi and Sasuke were sisters, their character arcs would still be the same. Genderswap Naruto, Kakashi, Neji, any male character at all, and nothing would change but their appearance. They would still be well developed characters. So why can't he do the same for the female characters? Because I think in Kishimoto's mind, females are less than males. That's what I think anyway.

Kishimoto's guiding principle on writing female characters
Kishimoto's guiding principle on writing female characters. Continue reading →