The University of Oklahoma Animation Society
UOAS NEWS IN BRIEF
· Thanks for dinner Gordon!
· Check out the new Ronin Con web-site at www.softassteel.com/ronincon
· Just under a month until the fall showing block!
· Next month's issue in print! Be sure to be at the showing on the 27 to get your copy.
· Want to make a comment on a story or the club in general? Then send your two-cents to FredisGod@aol.com and we'll get it posted!
· AU Wants You! We're looking for the following staff positions: News Editor, Anime Reviewer and a Staff Columnist. Anyone interested can write us at FredisGod@aol.com for more details.
By Nathan Kerswill
The hastily thrown together Dinner/Officers meeting held on July 16 proved to be one of the most productive meetings held to date. During the meeting which lasted roughly two hours, the question of how do we make the club more enjoyable for everyone involved dominated the conversation but not without superb results. One of the ideas that came out of the meeting was that we could have some kind of activity between the pre-show and the showing possibly with prizes for the winner of the game or activity.
Also discussed at length was the issue of club parties and it looks like the first club party will be held sometime in early September. So far ideas for the party that have been talked about are having be a "heckling" and pizza party. The possibility of having one party a month was also discussed but no concrete decision was made. Anyone with an idea for a party activity can contact any officer.
Recruitment was another hot issue for those in attendance with the general feeling being that we need to recruit new members and keep them along with our current members. Ideas on how to achieve this included advertising in the campus newspaper, talking to the gateway classes and possibly making individual flyers for each of the showings. The activities between the pre-show and showing as well as the parties are some of the things we are looking at doing in order to attract and keep new members. However, when it comes down to it word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising around, so tell your friends, classmates, hot dates, cold dates and just random people you see on the street about us… hell drag them to the showings tied up and stuffed in a duffle-bag. * In order to get more feedback from members on the showings, starting this fall we are going to begin discussions on the message board about the showings for all those interested in participating.
On funding, Katie Wilks enthusiastically revealed to those in attendance that the club has $180 more than what was projected in January. The overage is attributed to the club saving money on the hotel rooms during our annual pilgrimage to A-Kon in June. It is still unclear exactly where the extra money will go but a large portion of it will probably go to supplement the allotted Ronin Con funds.
The atmosphere of the meeting was one of general exuberance and enthusiasm and I think it is safe to say that everyone walked away ready to surge ahead into the great unknown that is the fall semester and make the UOAS the best damn club on campus!
* The University of Oklahoma Animation Society (UOAS) neither condones nor encourages the use of kidnapping as a method of attracting people to our showings.
By DC Bueller
Subtitling shows has been around since the beginning of movies. Silent movies had to have subtitles in order to understand the plot. As other countries began producing their own movies, some people stateside wanted to see them, but did not want to spend the time and effort to learn another language. So, translators and editors worked together to subtitle films for people, and professional subtitling continues even now. And that brings me to fansubbing, which is basically the same thing, just by amateurs.
Fansubbing. When compared to the current widespread popularity of Cartoon Network and the dubbed anime it shows, a newcomer to anime wouldn't think much of fansubs. But the origins of anime's popularity began on an unbeaten road, with fansubs.
I'm not going to write whether or not fansubbing is superior to dubbing, or vice versa. I am going to just give a brief glimpse into how fansubbing in America helped set anime as a mainstream form of entertainment.
In the beginning, a little after someone flipped the switch, there was anime. Susceptible American youth went 'Oooooooh…must learn Japanese.' Since the majority of people could not keep up with Japanese speech, the stalwart few fans of anime began translating. This was a slow and typically painful process, especially for the brain. Because fans and not major companies did it, this became known as fansubbing.
Truthfully though, the beginnings of fansubbing were quite meager, given that the process of translating required of dedicated and skilled people. There has to be someone to actually translate the Japanese, someone to work in the text in time with the lines spoken by the characters, and someone to know the programming well enough to keep it all running. The level of skill of the subbing would vary from group to group, sometimes having good translations but out of time, or bad translations in time and occasionally bad in both cases. Still, it was the good translations with good timing that brought more fans into anime.
The quality of the subbing was at first based on a largely tape based format. The quality of these subs ranged from highly professional to downright awful. When the internet came about, it was more feasible to do all of work on the digital medium. And not having to factor in the cost for additional tapes due to online file sharing made digital copies of fansubs highly popular. Of course, the price for the hardware and software to be so exact makes such dedication rather expensive, so obtaining tapes online is still a viable alternative, especially for the bandwidth impaired, i.e., dial-up users…oh how I pity thee.
Fansubbing is also an indicator for distributors to see what is popular and should be published. As anime companies scoop up more and more anime to publish, the need to sub them becomes more and more moot in my opinion, and most fansubbers have ethics and do not sub any anime titles available commercially. But some do not feel such restraints, and continue to make copies of it, even if it is currently available stateside. The good part of this is that it is typically free, or at least cheaper than buying the real copy, and readily obtainable. The down side to this is that it is quite illegal, and getting caught is pretty silly, considering that most anime has several episodes per tape or DVD for typically at or under twenty dollars.
Getting further into this would be going into deeper philosophical and ethical issues than I think I should discuss while out of school. So go and enjoy your anime, be it a commercially legal version or something you downloaded on your computer.
You can find more essays by DC Bueller at:
From: www.animaxis.com
The company Broccoli, well known for creating such works as Di Gi Charat and the Aquarian Age trading card game series, had announced the release of the English version of the Di Gi Charat manga as part of their campaign in strengthening their position in the US market. They are also going to create directly managed goods stores in the US.
The price of the English version manga will be about 1200 yen (10 dollars) per volume and they plan sell about 270 thousand copies on the first year of release and are planning to release from 30 to 40 volumes by the end of 2004. In line with the first direct management goods store they opened in 2001, Broccoli is going to build a 2nd chain in Los Angeles in 2004 and in the future are planning to open 3 stores just in Los Angeles.
Di Gi Charat had been rising in popularity in the states from several years ago and you could even spot some Di Gi Charat cosplayers at huge anime events. The recently published English version JUMP comic magazines are currently rising in popularity in the States, so the future movement on the side of Broccoli in spreading Di Gi Charat amongst users in the US market is under serious interest. We hope that some day, the trademark Di Gi Charat way of speaking with "Nyoo!" on the end of every word will popularize in the US!!!
From: www.animenewsservice.com
LOS ANGELES, July 18 -- TOKYOPOP Inc. has announced an alliance with RadioShack to create a series of remote-controlled products based on its highly anticipated Initial D anime DVD series. An enormous hit in Japan, the Initial D property has already sold more than 30 million graphic novels, boasted an enormous 47% market share in its television time slot and earned more than $300 million in revenue from the Asian market alone. The fast-paced, action-filled anime/manga series has a storyline built for speed. Its coming-of-age plot follows the adventures of reluctant hero Tak, a teenage tofu delivery boy who gets swept up in the world of street racers by battling some of the best drivers in town. With the pop culture appeal of The Fast and the Furious, the characters in Initial D battle with raw emotion, experiencing glory, passion, pain and revenge. "RadioShack's impressive growth in the overall RC market made them the obvious choice to partner with on this project," says John Parker, TOKYOPOP President and COO. Beginning in September 2003, Initial D toys will be available at RadioShack retail stores nationwide.
Produced by ADV Films
Reviewed by Will J at www.Anipike.com
Wow, where to start off when it comes to Excel Saga. Before I launch into my spiel about the series, let me tell you one thing: it's absolute chaos. And that's not a bad thing, in this case. Excel Saga takes place on the island country of Japan, deep within the city of F, in the prefecture of F. Everything seems normal in this city, but little do the citizens know that an ideological organization, aptly named ACROSS, has plans of conquering the city. ACROSS is run by the great Ilpallazzo, a man with way too much time on his hands. The two devoted members of ACROSS are Excel Excel, a fast talking, hard working, blonde spit-fire, and Princess Hyatt, a polite, well mannered, beautiful, and anemic woman. When Excel and Hyatt aren't busy trying to fulfill Ilpallazzo's orders (which range from infiltrating school systems to assassinating manga artists), we're introduced to a wide array of sub-characters, including a wondering soul named Pedro, the afro toting Nabeshin (also the director of Excel Saga), and a dozen of other zany, yet lovable characters. If there's one thing this anime has, it's character. And insanity. Story: What story?
The Dolby Digital Surround Sound really works well with Excel Saga, as the main character has a tendency to blow your eardrums away, even in monotone. The sound effects come across crystal clear, and the opening and ending songs (The ending consists of Excel and Hyatt's dog/emergency food supply, Menchi, barking the lyrics, with a translator standing nearby) are perfectly orchestrated, and the music is wonderful throughout the whole production, despite repetition of a number of tunes, but that's to be expected when it comes to a television series transferred to DVD. Sound: 9/10
With an aspect ration of 4:3, Excel Saga looks great on any DVD player, even a Playstation2. The colors are extremely vivid, and with art that's always full of life traversing across the screen. Excel Saga's art style is cartoonish, but it fits the series perfectly, when you think about how silly the plot of the series is in the first place. The animations are wonderfully drawn, with everything ranging from realistic to Looney Tunes-esque rubbery movement. One great thing about Excel Saga is that you never know what's going to pop on screen next. The digital effects, such as lens flares and filters, come across brilliantly, with a presentation that'll keep you glued to your seat. Video: 10/10
My only beef with Excel Saga is that the subtitles, while well translated, can be
very hard to keep up with due to the extremely fast pace that the main character speaks in. There's always the dubbed version, if you want to hear everything, and then some, but preferring subtitles myself, it looks like ADV did the best they could to keep up with Excel's rampant ravings. Not once did they miss a beat, but sometimes you might wish that they did. Subtitles: 7/10
If you're in the mood to laugh until you cry, pick up Excel Saga. It has everything you might ever want from an anime, from episodical parodies, to separately themed episodes. With extremely lively characters, witty dialogue, and a plot that I don't even think the director quite understands, Excel Saga is a definite must buy for the casual anime fan. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this anime to newer faces in the anime scene, as it takes in-jokes from many other series (some that have yet to see the light of day in America) and can move at a surprisingly fast pace, even for the most jaded of otaku. But overall, with all its flaws, I give the anime Excel Saga a 9/10.