Mecha anime & manga - Big robots. Other than Gundam.

[Trollblade69]

Where's the best place to go for subs of Dancouga? The highest-seeded torrent I downloaded turned out to have crappy subs.

Este contenido es privado.

 

[FatMebius]

Patlabor EZY File 1 is out and has subs. It's the first three episodes. I like it well enough. It takes place in 2033 in a version of Tokyo where the Babylon Project has finally been completed. You do get to see some of the original SV2 cast as well. Shigeru is in the first episode and it seems like he's going to appear off and on. Shinshi and Ota also appear in episode 3. Shinshi is now working for Asuma's small labor design firm and they've created a custom labor for a movie. Ota works for a private company that rents out professional pilots for commercial jobs. It seems like Hiromi's farm is doing well too. No word on Goto, Izumi, Kumagami (If she exists in this continuity lol), Kanuka and the rest. Trailer for File 2 seemed to show that Chief Sakaki has passed away though. I hope we see a grown-up Bud and witness the horrors of twink death.

I'm very curious as to whether or not this is in the TV continuity or the OVA continuity. TNG went with "Sort of OVA continuity but also here's the occasional TV reference".

The humor's still good. The second episode is a standout. It's sort of a riff on a Rashomon type thing, where the new not-Noa girl is tasked with writing a report and gets distracted. But each subsequent person comes by and adds increasingly silly details to the report. Very good series of gags in that episode in particular.

The new cast is good. They're not just carbon copies of the original SV2. Which was a complaint I had with Patlabor TNG, where they were all just slightly tweaked versions of the old cast, despite it being a sequel. The new mecha designs are also good. It's weird that Izubuchi really didn't contribute too many new mecha here, but it is what it is. I do like Kanetake Ebikawa's take on the Helldiver here though. Apparently he was specifically hired for this project by Izubuchi because labors and Arm Slaves seemed similar to Izubuchi lol.

The animation is really good. After some of JC Staff's more recent output, I was braced for this to look awful. But, I'd say it's one of the better-looking anime I've seen this year.

Good god that opening theme is so bad though. Calliope is such a fucking awful singer. I just know they're gonna have her shit out a cover of the TV version's openings or something. Kenji Kawai's music is still as stellar as ever though. His music is still a very integral part of the Patlabor experience to me.

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

I genuinely wish Japanese developers took the AI pill, fired all lolcalizers and used AI to translate their games. Better that than the dogshit we're getting.

Japanese and other east Asian developers are keenly aware of how shit the
lolcalizers are and do want to replace them with AI. The massive hurdle to that happening is their publishers who either aren't aware just how bad the lolcalizers are and or don't care.

 

[regalterry]

The massive hurdle to that happening is their publishers who either aren't aware just how bad the lolcalizers are and or don't care.

Genuinely begs the question why (though, not really, they want to pozz the games).

A single dev with access to the source files, structured properly (per scene, or bucketed depending on what they are - quests, lore entries, names etc.), and a good prompt could churn through the translation of the whole game in a matter of days, with a few weeks for an editor and a QA team to go through it to ensure everything is at a satisfactory level.

Modern AI models are powerful enough to determine tone, nuance, give each character their own distinctive voice and manner of speaking, and if you're at the enterprise level you can throw something overkill like Opus at it to get the best results.

Publishers could save themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, not needing to keep a large localization department on their payroll, or having to hire outside contractors of unreliable quality and loyalties to do the job.

 

[Trollblade69]

Done watching Dancouga and the three main OVAs that follow it. Couldn't find the Songs one, since that doesn't have a torrent, so technically I haven't actually finished it. Hope someone finds it buried somewhere and it isn't lost media. I won't feel worthy of watching Dancouga Nova until I do.

Pretty meh stuff, honestly. Weakly animated throughout the TV show, and the characters are underwritten despite all the focus on the component mechs. I liked all the stuff with Shapiro even if Sara's schtick got repetitive, and I'm amused by how Death Gaia and Gildorome were allowed to just go in temporary exile after their stint as the main enemy generals was up rather than dying to make room for the new generals, and it let them get good showings when they returned. Shame that their two lieutenants just got dropped and anticlimactically killed off two thirds of the way through. Alan totally should've gotten better treatment from the show as their Sixth Ranger, but they never gave his mech a Beast Form and then they kill him off just like Musashi in Getter Robo despite spending so much of his character to him protesting his father's example.

It's funny what later shows I found similarities to. Dangaioh was obvious given Obari worked on both, but there was also some Macross Plus and even some Sailor Moon despite how this apparently wasn't a Toei show. I think Dancouken is the main reason the Grungust in SRW has its Ketu-Rahu Sword rather than just a sword like the Great Mazinger's Mazinger Blade.