T5J8F8 said: Been trying to look around a bit, but there doesn't seem to be an official English site, and I don't know the channels by which to get scans of the North American release's print materials. If anyone does have the box set, would you mind dropping us some scans (by link, o'course)?
I have the R1 DVDs but the character's name isn't printed anywhere on the box or DVD cases.
I'd have to skim through them and find a scene with the dragon and hope they say its name to see what the official romanization is. Might or might not have time to do that tonight, I'm putting off my rewatch of Clannad AS ep 7 long enough tonight as it is =P
Heh, alright, though I do have a semi-inherent distrust of subs, particularly official ones, due to a perceived opportunity for flippance in regards to them, given an expectation that the dub would supercede subs in view-time, as well as the general rift between the two (most typically, in my short experience, the inverse orders of lists ("...item 1, item 2, and item 3.")). Then again, this may just have been a bad experience with FFVIIAC hitting me too hard...
EDIT: Not that this would cause me to disregard whatever's used; I'm (trying to) being anecdotal moreso than prejudiced (in a literal definition).
T5J8F8 said: Heh, alright, though I do have a semi-inherent distrust of subs, particularly official ones
R1 licensors are almost always contractually required to get approval from the Japanese for things like character names. They can't just make them up. Fansubs aren't always right, in fact they're usually at a disadvantage, not having official scripts available.
I'm not familiar enough with FF7AC to say if it was a well done release or not (It's from Sony though, so it probably isn't, they don't release much R1 anime and it shows). But I do have over 1000 *other* R1 anime DVDs, and while I have certain issues with how they're done (such as flipping name order), I do know that they don't generally screw things up for fun or out of "flippancy". Geneon in particular is one of the best there is.
Not, of course, that the Japanese always make sensible decisions when dictating what R1 can and can't do. There are many examples of licensors requiring R1 companies do very, very stupid things. But still, there you have it, the official English romanization is Sylpheed.
Not that that is the be-all end-all for this debate, but it's another data point.
jxh2154 said: There are many examples of licensors requiring R1 companies do very, very stupid things. But still, there you have it, the official English romanization is Sylpheed.
*is curious* I'm rather distant from any kind of hardcore knowledge about such matters, and everyone loves hearing about stupidity (even if forehead slaps verge on headaching, the LOL is worth it). Also, glad to hear/read that there is significant consideration about subs (though, as another point of curiosity, how many releases have actual closed captioning for the dub, as opposed to just drawing from the subtitles?).
T5J8F8 said: (though, as another point of curiosity, how many releases have actual closed captioning for the dub, as opposed to just drawing from the subtitles?).
Almost none. The only companies who provide dubtitles or close-captioned tracks (without a "real" sub track) tend to be the non-anime hollywood companies who license a random anime move here or there and release it without really paying attention to subtitling standards.
The primary companies like Geneon, Funimation, Bandai Entertainment, ADV, Nozomi/TRSI, Media Blasters, and even Viz don't do this, outside of a few weird exceptions over the years. I'd say this happens in significantly less than 1% of R1 releases.
As for dumb licensor requirements, they come in various forms, like refusing to license certain songs, dictating weird character and series names, or requiring a release to come out in individual volumes rather than a boxset. One odd (but harmless, really) example recently is how Nozomi's release of Marimite season two (originally subtitled "Haru" (spring) had to use the subtitle "Printemps", which is French for spring. Why? I have no idea, but it was a demand from Japan. The Japanese will sometimes dictate things like cover art choices too. Basically, most everything has to be run by the Japanese first, which puts legit releases under a lot more constraints than fansubs have, obviously.
If they wanted to, they could have demanded Geneon call the character Silfyd. =P Thankfully they didn't...
*skips along* Relatedly: http://www.socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff10 (a feature of the review is about how the dub came across, with a bit of pretense as to his position on the sub-dub issue overall; that pretense has a pretty mice take on non-direct dub jobs ("direct" as in "accurate/true-to/literal)).
We can leave dubbing out of it. The subtitle stuff was (well, tangentially) related because it was relevant to whether or not the R1 use of Sylpheed is reliable. Talking about dubs would just confuse the issue I think. The issue with dubs is more pronunciation than spelling.
At any rate I'm going to leave the tag Sylpheed until something else really significant crops up to force a reevaluation. It ain't broke, so let's not fix it, for the moment.
