I feel like an anime fan again! Wow! Of course I always worry about time management, but I think we're keeping it in moderation. This morning, we remembered something about each episode of Fairy Tail only being available for thirty days after its release on Crunchyroll, so we headed over there to try and make sure we didn't lose any episodes, since we're so far behind on everything we're watching (except for Miracle Train! We caught up on that last week and have kept going! Yay!).

We got as far as Crunchyroll's main page when we were distracted! by the adorableness that is the ad banner for Yume-Iro Patissiere. We saw it and immediately thought, "We have to watch!!" So we did. And then it turned out they weren't going to introduce the boys until the next episode, and we were dying to know if they actually cast men or women to play them. The art style is so cute, we were afraid they would all be played by women, and we are a little sexist about our bishounen voices I'm afraid. Much to our delight, they were all played by guys!

The show itself is actually like really cliche, and so far nothing really stands out about the characters, but we're addicted to it anyway. It's kind of a bittersweet show for us, because we enjoy watching it on the one hand, but on the other they keep showing all these amazing desserts. Maybe it will inspire us to start cooking! ...but I don't think it will. Anyway, I think the addiction comes in the theme of going out and following your dream!, which is one we always like a lot. We're kind of needing to reevaluate our status as far as chasing our own dreams, but this show is a good reminder to try and make some progress. Y'know, as long as we don't spend all our time watching cartoons.

After two episodes, we managed to peel ourselves away from the series and go obtain more chocolate and peanut butter Chex Mix from the 99 Cents Only Store, and then we finally got back to Fairy Tail, and managed to stay strong against the distraction of more Yume-Iro Patissiere. There was some trouble when our internet went out right about halfway through an episode, but we were able to get back to it eventually and now we don't have to worry about losing episodes for another... 18 days? That's a fun show, too. We're watching it for its all-star cast, but it actually does manage to hold our attention well enough even when our favorite voice actors characters aren't doing the talking.

We are intrigued by the Crunchyroll subtitles. It seems like whenever they're not sure how to translate something, they either a)ignore it, or b)make something up. That seems like a pretty good way to hide your ignorance, and probably doesn't effect most people's enjoyment, but oh, the translation of the ending theme song. I would go into it more, but we actually only ever half paid attention to it anyway. Still, even with only half attention, it's easy to tell that the translator doesn't know what the title of the song means. Usually not a problem, but in this case it's repeated several times throughout. Ah well, maybe one day they'll learn. Maybe one day we'll pay attention enough to know exactly what it's referring to and then leave a comment. Maybe one day...

Also! we finally started getting caught up on the new FullMetal Alchemist thing. We're on episode... um... 18! I think? Somewhere around there. We're really liking Ling Yao. We figured we would, since we already knew he was played by Mamoru Miyano♥, but we like him even more than we expected! Actually, to be honest, sometimes Miyano-kun has this "Look at me, I'm acting!" intonation, which we always dislike. Of course, when he does it, it's nowhere near as bad as some dub voices we've heard. I think it probably has to do with the voice director, because he doesn't use it with Tamaki, and you'd totally expect to hear it from him. But anyway, Ling is pretty different from most of the Miyano-kun characters we've heard (first of all, he's not blond. What's up with that?), and he's really fun! And Miyano-kun doesn't use that intonation we don't like for him, possibly because his personality doesn't usually allow for it. So we like him a lot and we're looking forward to seeing more of him. Eventually. When we get back to getting caught up on stuff.

And that concludes our occasional anime geek-out session.

Today I'm thankful for the chance to get out and get some exercise!, all those guys in Yume-Iro Patissiere being played by guys, getting closer to being caught up on our anime, having a good time watching anime, and having a little time to practice being creative.

Not having work to do makes it very difficult to decide what to do. Of course, we could just spend the whole day playing video games. We opened up the mini-game "Feed the Monkey" in Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday, and that is quite the delightful waste of time. Fortunately, last night we managed to feed the monkey to the max, so that game has lost its hold over us! Ha!

But then we think maybe, since we have the day off, we ought to use it to do some of those things we keep putting off with the excuse of, "We'll do it when we have more time." But we don't want to do any of those things. So, as usual, we end up sitting around asking each other what we want to do.

Not that we've been entirely non-productive. We sent another e-mail to Viz, seeing if we can get work with them. This time we decided to be more creative. We may or may not ever see if it was an effective strategy. We're also thinking about experimenting to see how long it takes us to subtitle an episode of anime from start to finish, so we can use that information when approaching Crunchyroll again. It seems like it could be fun, but on the other hand, it would be very time-consuming, and if it works, it would only lead to more time-consumption. And then we wouldn't have time for any of those things we keep putting off because we don't have time.

It's kind of complicated. It's like, we enjoy translating, and if we had more work to do, we would happily do it. But on the other hand, maybe we need to broaden our horizons, get out and do something else. And that requires us to do some of those things we keep putting off. But still, we need more work to get more money so we can support ourselves. But then we'd have less time for those other things, and it's just a vicious cycle. Maybe what we need to do is sit down and figure out what it is we really want. But that would take time from everything else! Aaaaahh!

Oh well, I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Today I'm thankful for Leia being kind enough to once again drive us to the vet, us being done with the fanbook so we can lend her our Fruits Basket manga and thus in some small way repay all her kindness, Oreo not needing another recheck for a month (unless he has a relapse or something, but of course we're hoping that won't happen), getting the day off to be more creative with our use of time (difficult as that can be), and having indeed fed the monkey.

The fanbook (dun dun DUN) has been turned in! Of course, we did worry that maybe we should have indicated certain things better... hopefully people will make good use of their powers of observation. But thanks to the kind efforts of lyschan, we were at least able to note where to find all the excerpts from volume one! Yay! Thanks again!

And now we're just kind of puttering around, taking care of a few things that need taking care of. And since I don't know what else to write about, ( how about some San Diego Comic Con pics? )

And there you have it! ...well, some of it, anyway. Tadah!

Today I'm thankful for being done! with the fanbook (dun dun DUN), getting to have Baked Ruffles to celebrate, all the various people who helped us find references and spellings and stuff, the girl we were rooting for the whole time winning this cycle of America's Next Top Model (but then we were really sad for the other girl; she'll probably be fine though), and having plenty of Wildlife Explorer Cards and Classic Composers CDs to keep us busy because I think we're going to have to cancel those subscriptions.

Proofreading the fanbook (dun dun DUN) is going much quicker this time than last time. It must be because we already looked (almost) everything up. If things keep going this quickly, we should be able to turn it in tomorrow! This is a very good thing, considering our deadline is Monday.

In the meantime, it's very cold. Oreo seems to have the right idea, hiding away in his little nook in the linen closet all morning. It makes me think it might be ideal to perform all our business inside a blanket fort. Just think! It's small, so there's less open (and therefore cold) air, and the walls are blankets! The ventilation probably wouldn't be the best if we want really good insulation, but it's not like we'd be in there all day. I think it could work.

On the other hand, we just got back from the grocery store, which reminds me that when you actually, like, move and stuff, things aren't as cold. I guess there really is something to this whole "exercise" and "blood circulation" idea.

Right. ( We watched the end of Final Fantasy: Unlimited yesterday. )

Today I'm thankful for finally getting some money with which to buy food and pay bills, getting to watch Final Fantasy: Unlimited, our check not having a hold put on it, blanket forts, and cookie dough being on sale.

Ha! We finished the fanbook! ...only not really. We finished the first draft of the fanbook. We still have to go through and proofread and stuff. But we've already looked up all the manga pages that are copied inside! ...except for the ones from volume one. We just can't seem to stick in people's memories enough for them to return our books. We considered asking Celeste to pick up a copy of it at the library, but she doesn't work close to the library anymore and she wasn't at Mom's house for dinner on Sunday anyway. Maybe we should, like, use the phone or something. Anyway, if that doesn't work, we may very well resort to just noting all the volume one references indicating that we can't find them because we don't have our own copy. That would be a little awkward, but hey, it's already public knowledge.

On a related note, who can tell us how they spelled the name of that chick in Tsubasa: Those With Wings who made the giant tree? Kayou or Kayo or Kayo with a thing over the O or... And then there's a guy in Phantom Dream who gets mentioned... What was his name? The kanji is "flying good," but I don't think that will help much. Oh never mind, we found it, it's Hira. That one's easy enough. Unless they spelled it with an L for some odd reason. And we just assumed that Eiji is spelled Eiji.

Now as we sit here, opening and closing our Neo Romance desktop calendar to see if we can get it to finally show the guy it hasn't shown us yet, I remember that today is the twentieth anniversary of the day The Little Mermaid came out in theaters (Athena reminded me earlier). That was the first movie that started us realizing that Disney was a company that made good movies. We saw it in theaters, of course, and... let's see what do I remember? Is that when we got in the car afterwards and somebody sat on a bee? (Yes it was, Athena told me, and that somebody was her.)

I remember seeing the commercials on TV before it hit theaters. We had seen an animated version of The Little Mermaid before, so we knew the original version (or a version closer to the original), and we hated it because of the sad ending. But something about those commercials made us think it was going to have a happy ending this time, and she was so pretty, and it just seemed like the kind of thing we'd really like, so we wanted to see it anyway. In fact, it's the first movie I remember wanting to see.

After it came out, we got the soundtrack and listened to it all the time. Mom bought it at Disneyland, and it was supposed to be a Christmas present, but we peeked in the bag when she wasn't looking, saw the tape (it was all on cassette back in those days), and asked if we could listen to it on the way home. Man, we had no sense of... I'm not sure what kind of sense that would have required to not find it, actually. But another side of me says that if it was supposed to be a surprise, Mom should have hidden it better. Anyway. That was also the visit to Disneyland when we met Chip and Dale and Dale tied Athena's braids together. (We both wore our hair in two braids almost every day until we were nine.)

They also made a special Little Mermaid float that they sent out ahead of the parade to promote the movie. They still sort of do that, but I think for The Princess and the Frog they might not, because they have some kind of show for it instead.

But anyway, The Little Mermaid will always hold a special place in our hearts, as the movie that started an obsession. I kind of wish I could be more articulate about it, but I didn't think to do a tribute until right as I was writing this entry.

Today I'm thankful for twenty years of Disney's The Little Mermaid, learning that it's okay to do re-tellings of stories, being done with our first run-through of the fanbook (dun dun DUN), having already looked up almost all of those references, and Natsuki Takaya being asked about video games in the second interview.

We slept in until about ten this morning, when we got a call from the office telling us there was a package there for us, and that it had been there for a few days. We had no idea, because our mail carrier tends to not leave us any notices. So we were excited, because we thought maybe the check we've been waiting for had finally arrived! But alas, it was just a contract. Though contracts are very important too, so it's still a good thing. On the bright side, when we went to pick up the package, we also reported out heater, and now it's working and we don't have to freeze anymore! Yay!

Yesterday we went to Mom's place for dinner, and, as usual, we started talking about Disney, at which point it was commented that the Disney discussions we have are in much more detail than other places. We didn't think they were all that detailed--I mean, it's not like we start going into who animated which character all the time--but then we were informed that this was in comparison to people who, for example, don't realize that Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are actually two different people. Of course, ignorance and stupidity are two different things, so we can't say that those people are stupid. It just seems very strange to us that someone would grow up without hearing fairy tales. It was an indirect encounter with the unknown.

After dinner, all the female people went into the other room to watch Cinderella, because the male people had to watch the game in HD. It was really fun to watch again, especially since Oreo's been a little bit of a punk lately, so seeing Lucifer was like, "Wow, that's exactly how cats are!" (Of course, it's always like that, but this time it was more pronounced.) For the first time we realized that they actually did address the issue of, "Hey, couldn't the slipper fit on anybody?" You'll have to watch it to see how!

We happened to watch the preview of disc two (we never could understand why the first disc in a two-DVD set would have to have a preview for the second one, but we watched it because we were still in the room with it on and everybody had left temporarily so we had nothing else to do unless we wanted to watch all the ESPN Cinderella stories, but we're like, "Hey, why does everything, including Cinderella, have to be about sports?"), and that, plus watching all the extras on Beauty and the Beast a couple weeks ago, had us in Disney DVD extras mode. So we borrowed the DVD in order to watch the extras at home! ...and then we realized we have about a million other Disney DVDs with their myriad of Backstage Disney extras that we have yet to watch.

We tend to want to favor the DVDs we've had the longest and watch them first, but we couldn't remember which ones we'd had the longest, so we decided to go in chronological order of when the movies first came out and watched Bambi extras instead. (We actually skipped Pinocchio, but that one's on Blu-ray, and we already had the DVD player (non-Blu-ray) hooked up.) And wow, it was amazing to see everything that went into making Bambi. (It's always amazing to see all of the making-of documentaries, actually.) I think this time the background art was the most interesting, because, after they pointed out that it was all painted by an immigrant from China, it was easy to look at the paintings and see the very Chinese art style. But at the same time, all the reference material was footage of forests in Maine, so while the style was Chinese, what we were seeing was definitely American landscapes. It's really neat, so keep that in mind next time you watch Bambi!

Oh! We also got Mom to start playing Kingdom Hearts! Yay!

Today I'm thankful for getting motivated to watch Backstage Disney extras, getting to watch Cinderella last night, getting our heater fixed (it just needed the pilot light lit, but you have to go onto the roof to do it), having time to watch the Milkquarious rock opera tonight, and learning all kinds of awesome things about the making of Bambi.

We meant to update earlier, but we kept getting distracted by a kitty. That's okay though, because we love him.

( This weekend has been stake conference... )

On the way home from church, we were talking with our ride and the other girl she was driving, and it got brought up that the girl sitting in front of us during the meeting was playing GameBoy. We all agreed that church is definitely one place where the video games should be left at home, but our ride mentioned that she thought it would be kind of neat if they made video games based on the scriptures to help kids be interested in them. We actually did rent a Nintendo game based on the Bible way back in the day... But it could be cool. For example, the story of Ammon in the Book of Mormon is a good action-packed story. But it would be even cooler if, instead of focusing on the arm-chopping, it focused more on him being King Lamoni's servant, and you get points for doing your job right. Like, not an action game, but a game with action in it. ...I think it would be cool, anyway.

Today I'm thankful for our awesome-smelling wild cherry blossom shampoo, Banri Hidaka giving us a more detailed cast list for the Berry Berry CD drama than the one listed at Marine (Akira Ishida as Kousaka-san! Eeee!), getting to sleep in tomorrow, Skippy peanut butter, and Akira Ishida in another Hidaka-based CD drama (that puts him in all of them except VB Rose!).

Today has been an interesting day. It was our ward's monthly temple trip! We had mentioned to our home teacher when he came over on Tuesday that we would need a ride, but he said he couldn't take us because he had other plans. But he assured us he'd call around and find somebody. Friday night came around and we hadn't heard anything, so I tried calling a couple of people but they didn't pick up. Later, the phone rings, and it's our home teacher! calling to let us know that they (I'm not entirely sure who "they" are, but he was definitely using plural; I think it might be him and his roommate and acting companion, who also happened to be our home teacher before his mission) hadn't found us a ride yet (acting companion only had a truck--not enough room for two passengers) but they were working on it, and we would! have a ride to the temple this morning.

So this morning comes around and our home teacher shows up... in Renaissance garb! He wasn't going to the temple because he already had plans to go to the Renaissance fair, coincidentally with one of the people we called when we were trying to take care of the problem ourselves. Anyway, they dropped us off, and we were jealous that they got to wear costumes, but we got to go to the temple, so it all worked out. Except that we needed a ride home.

After we finished doing baptisms, we told the bishop we needed a ride home, and thus we ended up riding with him and his wife to In-N-Out (it's tradition to go to In-N-Out after ward baptism sessions). We sat with them at the restaurant, too, which was nice because we like the bishop and his wife, and we hadn't gotten to talk in a while. Somehow, as it always does with us, the conversation turned to Disneyland. It really does manage to sneak in all the time with us. But of course we don't mind♥

The bishop said we probably don't remember his favorite attraction, since it's been gone for so long, and he and his wife both said... something I don't remember. And we actually hadn't heard of it before! It was really weird, like, "There's a ride at Disneyland we didn't know about? How can that happen?" So of course we asked them what it was. Apparently it was a really good date ride, the one where they shrink you.

Aha! We have heard of that one! We just didn't know what it was called. Not only have we heard of it, but we have a story. I don't remember if I've related this story on LJ before or not, because it's very cute and I can't see why I wouldn't have, but maybe it just never came up. And if it has come up before... well I'll just tell it again.

Looooong long ago, when we were three years old, Mom and Dad took us to Disneyland. Mom and Dad liked to take their kids to Disneyland right before they hit the "too old to get in free" mark, which we can't remember because we haven't been able to use it in so long. It was probably around three, anyway. But we went on this ride that shrinks you.

Now, to be honest, most of what we know about this ride comes from TV specials on Disneyland or Disneyland technology or whatever, because we were very very young. What happens is you go into something I think they called an atom-mobile, and you'd go through a microscope and get shrunk down so tiny that you get to go inside a snowflake! (how cool is that!?) and see the molecules and stuff I think.

So we went on this ride when we were about three. At the end, they bring you back to normal size of course, but (and I actually can't speak for myself because I don't remember a thing) Athena missed that part (makes sense; this is really scientific, and we were three), and so for the rest of the day, she couldn't tell if she was normal size again or if she was still shrunk. And since we were three years old, we were so little, everything else was so big, it was really really hard to tell! She doesn't remember figuring out that she was back to normal size, either. She says it was probably something like, "Well, I guess I must be big again, but Mickey Mouse is so big!"

Now that ride is gone, long since replaced by Star Tours (which I really like, by the way). And so the only really good date ride left is the Haunted Mansion. It seems to me that all the "date" rides at Disneyland mostly cater to specific tastes...

And that's our whatever-that-ride-was-called's story. I guess it's not very well structured, but we were three, so...

Today I'm thankful for adorable memories of Disneyland, getting caught up on Miracle Train, getting rides to and from the temple, rediscovering the possibility of Neopolitan milkshakes at In-N-Out (unfortunately not before we ordered; we will have to try them next time!), and getting to chat with the bishop and his wife (every time a friend or relative of ours who used to be in the ward but got married was brought up, Bishop'd ask, "Do they have any kids yet?" XD).

There we were, about two minutes from finishing work for the day, when we came across a reference to look up. We had a pretty good idea where it was, so it shouldn't take too long to find it, get it put in the translation, and call it a day, right? Wrong, apparently. We spent like half an hour looking for it and we still have no idea where it is. That being the case, does anybody happen to remember when it's revealed that Kyo has a habit of staring at people from behind when he has something he wants to talk to them about? We were sure it was Kazuma who brought it up, but our research seems to indicate otherwise. Unless we missed something, which is entirely possible.

On the bright side, we made a lot of progress today, thanks in large part to coming across the "bonus manga" section, which is exactly the same as translating regular manga. It's like a breath of fresh air... Aahh... And Kyo is tormented most amusingly.

Anyway, it came to my attention that our motives behind our little manga adaptation experiment (which we are still lazily procrastinating) may seem less than pure. It's true that we've done a lot of whining about our insecurities about our work being adapted, but I assure you, we are not trying to discredit adapters in any way. It all started long, long ago (cue flashback music) when we read an interview with a senior editor at TokyoPop, and that editor was asked who her dream team would be for getting a manga published in English. That editor said it didn't really matter to her who translated the script, but there were two adaptation writers that were her favorites. And we were like, excuse me? Doesn't matter who translated it!?

See, we interpreted this to mean that it doesn't matter how much hard work or effort a translator puts in to make the translation good, because whatever those two adapters change it to will be fantastic regardless. (Though to be fair, that editor did mention us because of our copious notes. Is that really all we're good for? Research?)

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, when we read an interview with the guy working to create Shojo Berry magazine. He was talking about their staff, and he said they had one person who knows Japanese, and if they needed it, he took enough Japanese in college that he's proficient enough to translate. That again made us go "excuse me?" Good translation takes more than proficiency; we know, because we've been watching stuff on Crunchyroll.

So it's seeming more and more to us that people don't understand that translating is about more than your ability to read hiragana and look something up in a dictionary (though yes, that is the foundation of it). We also think that maybe this idea is accompanied by the idea that an adapter can fix everything. But you see, we think it's kind of like cooking. Really good chefs like to use good ingredients because if they use crappy ingredients, the food will taste worse, no matter what they do to it. So while an adapter can make a script better than it was before, it becomes a question of do you want the adapter to take a crummy or okay script and make it good enough, or do you want the adapter to take a good script and make it great?

Of course, we've never adapted someone else's translation, so we couldn't say that's how it really is, but it's how we think it should be. And so we want to perform this experiment to see if it really is how we think it should be. But we'll see if we ever get around to it.

Today I'm thankful for Steve taking us to the grocery store yesterday, getting to eat cereal for breakfast this morning, a nice break in the form of regular manga pages, finally another video game reference from Natsuki Takaya, and said reference being about how incredibly scary secret boss characters are these days (it's so true!).

First of all, kilerkki posted a really good entry this morning about her reaction to the musical, Children of Eden. We thought it expressed what we believe as member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints better than we could, so we asked for permission to link to it, and she gave it to us! So check it out!

On a completely different note altogether... so we're working on the fanbook (dun dun DUN), right? They had three different votes, and for the top twenty ranks in each vote, they list comments from voters. One comment came from one "Banri-san." Of course, it was in kanji, so it might not actually be "Banri-san," it could be like "Mari-san" or something, but you know most of the Hana to Yume manga artists are fans of the whole magazine and are reading everyone else's work. And of course we know Banri Hidaka is a fan of Fruits Basket, because she designed a costume for Momiji. Anyway, this time, if it's who we think it is, she voted for Machi as her favorite character. It does make me wonder if anybody voted more than once...

I think I had something else to talk about, but I can't remember what it is. Right! We got an e-mail about our column today! We were a little nervous about it, because over half the e-mails about our column seem to be sent to correct us about something (this does nothing to disprove our theory that most people in the anime/manga world just love to show off how smart they are), but this one turned out to be purely supportive! Yay! And it was from a fellow translator, too (which actually does help to disprove our theory)! Since this week's column was about some of the mistakes we've made, it seems like maybe he wanted to help us feel better, which is very appreciated (and also adorable♥). ...Come to think of it, maybe we should respond to that before posting about it on LJ... hmmm...

Today I'm thankful for supportive e-mails, the rainy weather, good posts on our friends list, being a bronze member on the Japanese Square-Enix Members site, and having a CD with the William Tell Overture on it.