Hello there. I have a lot to talk to you about- regarding the supercell FC MAL Club. You are the last admin active in that club, and it pains me that the club is almost entirely dead. Is there any way you can assist me in either reviving that club or helping me set up a new one? The creator is absent until next year and the other two admins have not been online for at least a year. Thanks in advance.
I'm a bit of a language geek, actually. It's actually easier to learn a new language when you're bilingual already, and I've been bilingual since I was very young, so I have something of an advantage. Plus I'm interested in languages. They're more than a method for communication, they're a way of thinking.
And Chinese is very difficult if you've never had experience with East Asian languages. Don't be too hard on yourself. :P 好好努力学习啊！
Yah I went and watched it afterwards. Very good. I've always been impressed by compact storytelling, and especially considering it was done without any real dialogue. Sort of reminded me of the beginning of Up in that sense, but of course this told a much more complete and compelling story, seeing as the Up example was just an introduction to the main film.
Kinda wish I understood the lyrics to the songs (I know there are translations on the site, but it's just not the same as hearing them with the animation) but learning Japanese is already hard enough... o__o;;
Check it out, it's way good. Short - five episodes, and each is like five or six minutes at most, but really good and emotional, cute, and excellent animation, very fluid.
With streaming sites -usually- the video they have is the first passable sub that comes out and Superior was a day or so before gg. However it seems that since the Superior sub was hardly even a translation, if it was up at some point, it was taken down and replaced with the proper one, so s'all good.
If you want to check out some LN's, baka-tsuki.org has several at varying levels of translation. Like I said, they're analogues to anime/manga, and like anime/manga, most are just entertaining, although some are meant to have deeper meaning. Basically, don't expect high art from everything.
Never seen the flash series you mentioned, but I could look it up.
Don't underestimate what you can do with dialogue. In any case, I was just giving a general outline of the characteristics of the medium. Some will have more or less dialogue than others; in general a light novel is just meant to be more of a quick read than a normal novel, and its tropes tend to be more in the style of anime and manga, and when there's a series, it usually spans more volumes than your average Western book series. Shana is on the twentieth book I think, and Haruhi is at number 9.
And I suppose your tastes are your tastes, so we can let that one rest.
I see you've started Bakemonogatari and enjoyed it so far. Arc conclusion in ep. 2 is excellent and ep. 3 is hilarious with some great character interactions, only be careful of the subs because the streaming sites might have the Superior subs, which were mostly mistranslated (or made up?); gg's subs are actually accurate.
Oh, I never thought ILLUSTRATIONS are childish. After all, I'm a big comic book reader. I don't believe the medium can affect the quality of an otherwise excellent story. It's just the way you said it was mostly dialogue without description, it seems a little simplified.
I get the connection to mythology, but the thing is, who would really SAY something like that? I just can't connect to characters in a realistic setting if they're spouting mythological wordplay in a way that seemed, to me, forced and ridiculous. I mean, I haven't been to Japan, but I tend to assume that humans in general don't go around saying "If you're a tiger, I'll be a dragon," when something a lot more human to say would be more appropriate, like "I'm your friend" or whatever I don't really remember the context, but you see what I'm saying?
I guess that's that then. I can appreciate drama, but there's a limit. At a certain point it just enters Narm territory, and Toradora just spent too much time on that side of the line to be believable.
Not really a picture book the way you'd think of it. Pages of text definitely far outnumber illustrations, and some light novels actually don't have illustrations at all (like the Bakemonogatari novel series; the only illustrations were the covers and perhaps the inside flaps). There are actually Western non-children's books that have illustrations as well; I recall one Vonnegut book included some of his own illustrations to go with it as well, among other teen, young adult, and adult targeted examples.
For your comments on Toradora... as for the tiger and dragon thing, that's related to ancient East Asian mythology and symbolism; I recall in Chinese myth at least, the tiger was the king of the forest, and the dragon the king of the seas. Something like that. It's also a wordplay on the characters' names. Taiga = tiger (the Japanese name and English word sound similar), and the first kanji in Ryuuji's name, "ryuu," means "dragon." Also the source of the title of the series, as the Japanese word for tiger is "tora" and the Japanese transliteration of "dragon" is "doragon" (also why the "tora" is in hiragana and the "dora" is in katakana).
I thought the character development got really good in the second half of the series, but if you didn't like the drama, well, you didn't like it.
All Comments (19) Comments
And Chinese is very difficult if you've never had experience with East Asian languages. Don't be too hard on yourself. :P 好好努力学习啊！
Kinda wish I understood the lyrics to the songs (I know there are translations on the site, but it's just not the same as hearing them with the animation) but learning Japanese is already hard enough... o__o;;
If you want to check out some LN's, baka-tsuki.org has several at varying levels of translation. Like I said, they're analogues to anime/manga, and like anime/manga, most are just entertaining, although some are meant to have deeper meaning. Basically, don't expect high art from everything.
Never seen the flash series you mentioned, but I could look it up.
Do you know the site Zomganime.com? I was using the subs there, which I thought were quite good, but I don't know if they were gg or not. I'll check.
And I suppose your tastes are your tastes, so we can let that one rest.
I see you've started Bakemonogatari and enjoyed it so far. Arc conclusion in ep. 2 is excellent and ep. 3 is hilarious with some great character interactions, only be careful of the subs because the streaming sites might have the Superior subs, which were mostly mistranslated (or made up?); gg's subs are actually accurate.
I get the connection to mythology, but the thing is, who would really SAY something like that? I just can't connect to characters in a realistic setting if they're spouting mythological wordplay in a way that seemed, to me, forced and ridiculous. I mean, I haven't been to Japan, but I tend to assume that humans in general don't go around saying "If you're a tiger, I'll be a dragon," when something a lot more human to say would be more appropriate, like "I'm your friend" or whatever I don't really remember the context, but you see what I'm saying?
I guess that's that then. I can appreciate drama, but there's a limit. At a certain point it just enters Narm territory, and Toradora just spent too much time on that side of the line to be believable.
For your comments on Toradora... as for the tiger and dragon thing, that's related to ancient East Asian mythology and symbolism; I recall in Chinese myth at least, the tiger was the king of the forest, and the dragon the king of the seas. Something like that. It's also a wordplay on the characters' names. Taiga = tiger (the Japanese name and English word sound similar), and the first kanji in Ryuuji's name, "ryuu," means "dragon." Also the source of the title of the series, as the Japanese word for tiger is "tora" and the Japanese transliteration of "dragon" is "doragon" (also why the "tora" is in hiragana and the "dora" is in katakana).
I thought the character development got really good in the second half of the series, but if you didn't like the drama, well, you didn't like it.