Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Older Funimation DVDs Have Multi-Angle Credits?
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Also, most older Funi series were from the pre-Bubble late-90's/early-00's, when the GOAL of a popular series was to get a mainstream cable broadcast.
This meant, like Kodocha or many of Viz's series, the dub already had to be American-TV friendly on disk, with a credit-free opening and an English logo. For the purists who wanted the "original" show in the subtitled version, that usually meant branching the OP sequence, which means that clicking the Japanese sub audio gave you the original credits and clicking the English dub gave you the cable-TV credits. "Alternate angle" was one of the big buzzwords for DVD back in the beginning, but language-branching movie/TV credits were pretty much all it ever ended up being used for after a year or two. |
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AtoMan
Posts: 161 |
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The practice isn't really dead, though - a perfect example are european releases of Star Wars, where both DVDs and BDs contain alternate, localized text crawls and logos. Several Pixar movies also used DVD angles for any text that appeared int he movie, making fully localized videos for many countries.
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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There was an alternative to multi-angle credits, seamless branching for the credits, which allowed the inclusion of full bitrate video and audio. I don't know if Funimation did this, but Madman Entertainment used it once on their release of Kiddy Grade.
Choose Japanese and you get Japanese credits, choose English and you get English credits. But you couldn't switch between them on the fly, and on one occasion there was an error, one episode's Japanese end credits were truincated after 40-odd seconds. The other problem was that seamles branching introduced layer change like pauses. I think Funimation's authoring was just bad though, so often the English credits were created off rotoscoped Japanese credit sequences (when textless sequences weren't available), or they were just poorly encoded, that even without multiangle, there would be aliasing galore. |
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Cain Highwind
Posts: 315 |
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I think the latest practice as far as I can tell has been Translated credits, with Japanese and/or clean credits as extras.
Funny coincidence I was just thinking the other day why Funimation seemed to dub a lot of their shows' openings and endings back in the day, and they don't seem to do that anymore. Have there been any recent examples? Yeah I know, it's a more obvious answer of "time and budget". Makes me sad though. I quite enjoyed the One Piece openings and endings, and going through Case Closed, I really enjoy the music there too. |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1246 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2015-05-01/.87348 |
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c933103
Posts: 64 |
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Shirobako's special OVA feature two version of credit, one for in-universe staffs, another for actual staff, and yuyuyu's first volume BD feature two version of same content, one that simulate its initial airing's chained two episode showing without OP/ED in-between, and the other version is normal episode with normal OP/ED. So this is definitely technically viable and have already been done, the problem is just willingness.
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3994 |
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Probably the best way to do it IMO. I like translated credits, especially when they go all the way and attempt to match the effects that were put on the Japanese credits (like GITS SAC 2nd Gig where the translated credits still slide across the screen like the Japanese credits did). While they generally seem to include the Clean OP/ED as extras, I wouldn't mind if they included both Japanese credit OP/ED and Clean OP/ED as extras for those who want them since the extras are generally on the lean side anyway. |
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ultimatemegax
 Posts: 412 |
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While you could easily include an OP credit sequence since those only include the main production staff (producers, director, character designer, etc), you'd have to include ED credits for every single episode as those change each episode for different key animators, in-betweeners, painters, photographers, etc. It'd be more hassle (and much more space) than you'd think for little benefit. On a different topic, one thing that I enjoyed about the JP Toradora BD-Box was that King allowed an option to have the special EDs where there's either a late ending animation or none at all become textless during the episode instead of being included separately. It was nice to be able to watch that footage without anything covering it as the episode played. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Quite a whole lot is possible with one episode on a disc, yes. Note that it isn't the alternate angles but the seemless transition and has the disadvantages noted in the original article. |
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DuchessBianca
 Posts: 562 |
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I'm not trying to start anything but since it was brought up in the article I don't understand how anyone can possibly get upset over translated credits. Pretty much everyone watching NA anime DVD's/Blurays baring some extremely few exceptions aren't fully fluent in Japanese that's why subtitles exist and if that's the case how is having a bunch of kanji that you cant read at all appearing on the screen any benefit to you the viewer? If your a fan of a particular anime, Japanese Seiyuu, producer etc.. wouldn't it be beneficial to you to be able to see with translated credits who is voicing who, who directed what etc...? If the reasoning behind it is because of Japanese purity reasons then I'll have to extremely disagree because I fail to see how translated credits of all things in any shape, way or form takes away from the experience when all it does is let you be able to read and understand what is being said just like subtitles, and watching subbed anime kinda takes away from the Japanese purity in itself anyway as the Japanese don't watch anime subbed. If the issue is because the text could obscure the OP and ED videos I can understand how that might be an issue but doesn't nearly every anime DVD/Bluray set include a textless OP/ED song anyway?
Sorry if this was lengthy or off topic but I'm just trying to understand how its a possible gripe for anyone. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Speaking purely for myself, I'll say I don't THINK that the translated credits show all the Japanese names that show up in Kanji. Some may show "major" people, but there's a LOT of staff that don't get their names "romanized" (in part because NAMES can definitely be an "inexact" science unless you know what they all SHOULD be, since Kanji can have various readings). As for the larger point, I'll say this. My "spoken" Japanese needs a LOT of work, and my Kanji is practically non-existent. BUT, I can read hiragana/katakana pretty well AND there are a few specific people in the anime industry that I either know their names (in kanji) or am fully willing to look them up online to confirm things. I have definitely looked at Kanji in the credits to check on specific people that I had hear were involved with projects, say as an "episode director" or other "lesser" roles, and I appreciate being able to find them there. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I wonder if they're going to do that for Zootopia: One of the news anchors is different depending on the region and language the movie is in.
Hmm, I never really thought it to be a serious issue, and I always figured putting the Japanese opening and ending sequences as extras were just that: For the curious, just to see what they look like. Is it really that big an issue for some? |
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Buzz201
Posts: 266 |
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It doesn't bother me too much, but I don't like it. I want to see the original show "as is" where possible, changing the video content takes away from that. Plus, it's weird having the credits in English and the English-language voice actors credited when the entirety of the rest of the show is in Japanese. (If I'm watching a dub, fair enough, but if it's Japanese, please don't change anything.) The worst example of this I've seen is at the end of Accel World's first episode. On the UK DVD (and presumably all English-language versions), it has forced English-language credits that aren't subtitles obscuring half the screen, before the actual main body of the episode has even finished, deliberately timed and positioned to avoid clashing with any Japanese text, so it just ends up clogging half the screen up with the dub cast and a bunch of American people who's names are completely irrelevant, especially since I wasn't even watching the dub. I can normally deal with it, but the way they did that episode was just kinda obnoxious... |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6900 Location: Kazune City |
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One killing blow to Funi's alternate-angle credits came circa 2008 when they made the switch from 3-5-episode single volumes to 12-13-episode sets with 6-7 episodes on each disc. The space issues were somewhat workable with the lower episode counts, but not on the more packed discs -- an issue they ran into earlier with the original Fruits Basket DVDs, which were released in only 4 singles instead of the 5-7 volumes that were typical for 2-cour series at the time.
Though on some level, it's a shame they didn't carry on with alternate angles a little while longer, as it might've provided an alternative to some of the contortions and video mangling that some shows went through when Funi couldn't get creditless ending versions.
Last edited by Zalis116 on Mon May 09, 2016 9:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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futuresoon
Posts: 68 |
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I've seen a few shows that alternate between Japanese and English credits--i.e., one episode has the subtitled English translation, one episode has the subtitled romaji Japanese. Natsume's Book of Friends and Tsuritama come to mind. Is that too complicated a process for Funimation? Maybe because Funimation has to put out more shows than NIS and Sentai and doesn't have the time for it?
ETA: Just the OP and ED, now that I think about it, so maybe this post is irrelevant. Nevermind. Last edited by futuresoon on Mon May 09, 2016 3:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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