Last night, we got home from the Family History Center and discovered a Blu-ray disc in the mail. Well, we assume it's a Blu-ray disc, because it's from the Disney Movie Club. We haven't actually opened it yet, but the only thing we could possibly have been expecting is The Muppets. It was the featured title for a while, and we weren't sure if we wanted to order it or not. We finally decided that we could always order it later if we decided we wanted it that badly, but if we weren't so sure, we should save the money. So we went to decline the offer...and it was too late. So tadah! Now here it is! ...We think.

It's not like there's been a whole lot of discussion of this movie in our lives lately, but it would come up occasionally, so we would think about what it was that made us so sad when we saw it. I think part of it really is what we discussed in our reaction post back when we first saw it, but there's something else we've identified that is really a lot less of our business, ( and yet... )

Today I'm thankful for getting to be helpful at the Family History Center last night, the cathartic effect of translating Chisame (though on the other hand, it's possible that it's less "catharsis" and more "bad influence"), having plans to have a Cheesy Bites Pizza for dinner, the real Book of Mormon, and being given cupcakes today.

So I was thinking about what to post about today, and I remembered that we finally saw the end of Gals! last night, so maybe I would write about that, and then I remembered something that we've been wondering about for a very long time. We keep seeing, at Anime News Network for example, reviews of, like, volume 37 of a manga. Is there really much point in reviewing volume 37? I mean, most reviews are written to let people know if a piece of entertainment is worth consuming, but by the time people get to volume 37, we figure most people will already know whether or not they want the continuation.

It would be one thing if it were like us posting on LJ about the end of Gals!, for example, because that's so we can talk about the end of Gals! with our friends. Review sites seem to be a different story, but I guess maybe not?

Anyway, ( as for the end of Gals! )

In a complete change of subject, today we translated Ken Akamatsu's comments on the character Nagi Springfield, and he said something that got us thinking. He said that he kind of got the feeling that the name "Thousand Master" was kind of odd English, but none of his overseas readers commented on it, so whatever. At first we were like, "...Yeah, I think it is kind of odd," but then we were like, "Wait, maybe it's not so odd." And now we're really not sure! (Which is kind of sad, since it's our job to know good English.)

We think that if he got the name because he's the master of a thousand spells, it works, because eventually it would turn into the Thousand Spell Master, which would in turn be shortened to Thousand Master, which sounds much better. And more than anything, as long as it sounds cool nobody really cares about the grammar anyway. Like the Avengers. If they're already avenging people, that technically means people have already died, but the idea is to prevent deaths, not kill the killers. ...I think. (Our knowledge of the Avengers is strictly from the movies, so we could be very very wrong.)

Anyway, thoughts?

Today I'm thankful for getting to see the end of Gals!, thought-provoking author comments, finishing our first draft of that volume of Negima!, knowing what we're doing tonight, and getting more of the cards we were missing from Labyrinth 1.

Last night, we saw Mirror Mirror (there may supposed to be a comma in there...), and I'm happy to say that not all domestic re-adaptations of fairy tales make me want to throw things! Yay! ...We actually knew that, but some people questioned that point, and now we have proof of the truth.

( Let's talk about it! )

Today I'm thankful for getting to see a great fairy tale movie, Negi being taught a lesson (mwa ha ha), our package coming today, the weather being nice and cool, and My Beastly ABC's making its Kickstarter goal! Yay!

Well, I held off on posting it because I had two other things I wanted to talk about first, but! Athena gave a talk on Sunday, and now I'm going to embarrass her by posting it here on LJ.

( Athena's talk. )

Today I'm thankful for having plans to go see Mirror Mirror tonight, fun chapters with Fate, the super yummy ice cream we had last night, making decent progress on Negima! despite all the talking and talking and talking and talking, and having filled a gap in our Disney/Pixar education.

It's hard going back to Negima! after marathoning Higurashi (although not as hard as going back to Love Hina after marathoning Higurashi, because with Love Hina, we start confusing Keitaro and Keiichi). First of all, when we've marathoned a series, it's weird to think of any other series as actually existing. So it's like, "Negima? What's a negima?" And second, as expected, now that the fighting's over, there's a lot more talking, so progress is a lot slower. But that's not what this post is about.

So yesterday I mentioned something about a fiery rage. Sometimes, as with most fiery rages, I think about it and wonder why I'm even so upset about it, and sometimes, I think about it and come close to flying into another fiery rage. The trigger was a Disney Parks blog post, letting us know that the cost of admission into Disneyland is going up yet again. Most people's reactions seemed to be pretty much, "Sigh. Well, I guess it was going to happen anyway." Some people rushed to buy their tickets before the prices went up (it was announced Friday; the prices changed Sunday). And we flew into a fiery rage.

Okay, it was actually more of a smoldering rage, because we had other things to worry about, but it burned hot and deep. I think the Deep Psychological Issues are at play here somewhere, but it's difficult to pinpoint where without delving into them, and that's just not pleasant. Mainly, we've been feeling like we're being shut out of everything we've loved for so long. Just about every manga title we're working on has come or is coming to an end, and we haven't been able to go to Anime Expo for the last two years. This year, we're not sure we even want to go (so I guess in that case, it's more like we're shutting ourselves out, but a main reason we don't want to go is that they seem to have turned more into being about the fans than about the anime...anyway, that's another rant, I guess).

And now Disneyland is shutting us out, too. Okay, so technically they're not shutting us out--they're happy to have us, as long as long as we give them more money. The annual passes we normally buy have gone up in price 24%. That's kind of a lot. And on the one hand, we're definitely of the opinion that if you like something, you should be willing to support it with money. But on the other hand, we don't like to pay people to be greedy.

...Okay, again, that's not necessarily fair of us to say. People have given us reasons they think the prices have to go up. The main argument is that they need to pay for all the super awesome stuff they've been adding to California Adventure, etc. That's why we bit Donald's head off on Saturday about the lack of awesomeness in the new Little Mermaid ride. The Little Mermaid ride, to us, is kind of like The Princess and the Frog. We wanted to like it a lot, so when we went on it and it wasn't magical, we had to go on it several more times to figure out why, and so we've been analyzing it for some time now. We can tell you a lot of things that could use improvement, and how and why, and how the ride compares to the other Disneyland dark rides, and why those rides are better, so we don't really buy the "but it's just your average Disneyland dark ride" excuse.

Anyway, we had been feeling for a long time that Disneyland prices are too high. Before we were like, "It hurts, but not much compared to our love for Disneyland." Now we've had enough. And it's like they're saying, "But look at all the awesome stuff we do for you!" And we're like, "Um...it's not really awesome enough..." Especially this whole Cars Land business. We don't doubt that Cars Land will be fun, but our feelings toward everything about cars have ranged from indifference to outright dislike, and some of our least favorite places are the ones where we're surrounded by cars and automobile accessories. And to top it all off, the whole Cars movie, and consequently Cars Land, feels like driving through Nevada...which is another thing we've never really thought of as "big fun." (We've made several trips through Nevada, going to and from Utah.)

So...the rage has calmed down some. We don't know all the numbers, so we could be way off when we seriously doubt that they'll need that much extra money to run Cars Land (or to have California Adventure open for an extra couple of hours during the summer), and we shouldn't judge them too harshly. But the one thing we do know is that we won't be renewing our passes this year.

...On the other hand, after thinking about Anime Expo, I wonder if Disneyland, too, will turn into something I don't care about in our absence, especially since we already kind of see that happening. The hard part is figuring out if there's anything we can do about it.

Today I'm thankful for making good progress on Negima! (even if it's not as much progress as we would have made on Higurashi), chapters with lots of Chisame, working air conditioners, getting to watch Third Man on the Mountain last night (that's the movie that inspired Disneyland's Matterhorn!), and having chocolate.

So yesterday we kind of ditched Live Journal, because we were in too much of a fiery rage to respond to comments on our post (rage that was inspired by something that will be discussed later, but not today; it's Sunday), and then we had a big long activity to go to, and by the time we got home, we really needed to unwind.

Anyway, yesterday we had a big long activity! At first, we were fairly indifferent to it--not really excited or unexcited, just like, "Oh well, I guess we have this thing to go to." Then, as mentioned earlier, we were in a fiery rage, so we started looking forward to this activity even less. And to top it all off, about five to ten minutes before our ride showed up, Mom called and asked if we wanted to go see Dark Shadows. Well yes, we did want to go see Dark Shadows, but we had a big long activity to go to, and our ride was probably on her way, so we really ought to go to that.

So we did, and found out it didn't actually start until an hour after we got there. Blarrrrrrgh. So we killed time by accompanying our ride to the shoe store so she could get some shoes for work, and there we found! the perfect shoes for cosplaying Dahlia Hawthorne from the Ace Attorney series. Just sitting right there on the...shelf-y thing. They weren't exactly like Dahlia's, but they were close enough that we figured nobody would complain. And then we proceeded to not buy them because we didn't have any money on us, or any official plans to go somewhere where one of us might wear a Dahlia Hawthorne costume.

The activity itself turned out to be less blarghful than we had begun to anticipate. Part of this may have had to do with the appearance of Disneyland Associate Donald, at whom we proceeded to let off a bunch of steam by ranting about how the Little Mermaid ride is really much less awesome than it should be. And then we found out that they weren't going to make us do stuff in the sun unprotected--the activity people had brought sunblock for everyone! Yay! (We did think of putting some on ourselves, but not until we were already in the car on the way to the activity.)

There was a lot of fun stuff going on, I guess, but we weren't really interested in most of it. They had a couple of pretty awesome bouncy things (a slide and an obstacle course) which were super fun but also super exhausting, and in the sun. So we didn't really do much except hang out, which was a little boring because we're not so good at the "mingling."

But there was one thing that made me pretty glad that we went, and that was the discovery of a long-lost cousin! ...Twice or three times removed? We don't know. She was a cousin or second cousin of Dad's. Anyway, she came up to us one time, and said, "So I understand you're Nibleys? I'm a Nibley, too." And we were like, "Whoa!"

And then she told us stories about going to family home evening at Grandpa's house. She told us one story about how Grandpa found out she was learning French, so he picked up an Asterix comic (an anthology maybe? she said book) that was sitting there, in French, and said that it would be the best thing for learning good, colloquial French. So she asked if she could borrow it, and he indicated this little boy who had to be about four, and said, "Well, it's his comic." She said she was really impressed that Grandpa showed that much respect, to not lend out the comic anyway, even though it was just a little boy's, but we were like, "Well, yeah. It was his comic. You can't lend it out willy-nilly."

...That being the case, hopefully Donald's mom is aware of the fact that he just loaned us her copy of Cars 2. (We told him we hadn't seen it, and we didn't want to pay any kind of money for it. He couldn't blame us, because he hates it, but we all agreed that we ought to see it, just so as to not leave that spot blank in our Disney/Pixar education.)

So anyway, we had a good time talking to our distant relative, and then we played a game that was pretty much invented to be awkward. Everybody sits in a circle, and then the person in charge reads out a statement, like, "If you moved out of state to go to college, go three spaces to the left." But not everybody moved out of state to go to college, so not everybody's moving. So if you go three spaces to the left, and someone's sitting in that chair, you sit on their lap. It was actually kind of fun once you get over the whole "personal space" thing. We got piles of five people, but not any more than that.

And then we talked with Donald and Michelangelo some more about the state of Disney, and while the conversation was fun, it filled us with a bit of despair mixed with a twinge of rage, so we weren't exactly in the best of spirits when we got home. But we were glad to be home and play some Kingdom Hearts.

Today I'm thankful for meeting a long-lost cousin, managing to improve our attitudes over the course of the day yesterday, Athena being done stressing over her talk, getting to hear a good talk in sacrament meeting today, and having happy manga to read.

Yesterday we saw something that started us on another one of our tirades, but now that I'm thinking about it, I've got so much on my mind related to it that I'm not sure I could write anything coherent. Well, we'll see.

See, we happened to catch sight of an anime review that mentioned a "stilted script." That immediately had us saying, "Wait a minute!" I'm afraid we jumped to conclusions, but our conclusion turned out to be mostly accurate. Most anime these days is watched on Crunchyroll, which means people are watching it in Japanese with subtitles. Chances are, the viewers (including reviewers) don't know enough Japanese to tell if the script would make a native Japanese speaker groan, "Who talks like that!?" So we jumped to the conclusion that the stiltedness was not of the Japanese script, but of the subtitle script. And the flow of a subtitle script is not a reflection of the anime's quality, but of the translation's.

So we were like, "How dare you accuse an anime of having a stilted script when you're most likely reading a bad translation!?" And that started us on our tirade about how one-to-one translations simply do not exist. (In fact, one of the things that leads to stilted subtitle scripts is translators trying to make one-to-one translations.) So many people seem to think that a script is going to be exactly the same in every language, regardless of who translated it, and it's just not true.

We suspect this might be why there are people like our brother-in-law, who think that video games from Japan are good, but manga from Japan is terrible. You can get badly written video games just as easily as you can get badly written manga, but video game companies seem to have a little bit more of an actual screening process. On the other hand, the Final Fantasy VII translation had some serious issues, but it got to be super popular anyway, so I guess that's really more about how video games have stuff like gameplay and graphics to consider, and if it's fun enough, people don't care so much about whether or not the dialogue makes sense.

And I think I had something else to say on that, but it's completely fled my mind.

Anyway, the point is one-to-one translations don't exist. In fact, if Athena and I were to pick up something we translated a week ago and translate it again, the script would probably be different. Not as different as if we re-translated something we picked up ten years ago, but different. Why? Because there's so much more packed into a group of words than just the first thing listed in the dictionary with each word. Words represent ideas, and ideas are conveyed differently based on the context, and even word placement. And how those idea are interpreted can also change based on the mindset of the person translating.

A little while ago, we were looking up quotes about translation, and we found one we really liked that was something about how translators are just readers whose interpretation is the one in print. And I think that pretty much sums up our whole rant.

On the other hand, since most American viewers can only watch anime subtitled or dubbed, the translation quality would be a factor in entertainment value, so a stilted subtitle script is still a problem. We just want people to realize what's causing the problem, so it can be addressed properly. ...But on the other other hand, if the characters and story had been interesting enough, the reviewer probably wouldn't have cared how stilted the translation was.

Today I'm thankful for figuring out why we couldn't complete those collections in Legend Cards, the super yummy mozzarella Cheez-its we had for a snack, not being seriously hurt when the ball hit me in the face during foosball last night (human foosball; a regular foosball probably wouldn't have been as much of a concern), protective eyewear, and my glasses not being bent out of shape (I think).

There used to be days, back when we were afraid of everything, when the clouds would be all billowy and stuff, which wasn't exactly uncommon in Southern California, but wasn't exactly common either, and we would be afraid of thunderstorms even though it was still mostly sunny, and we'd be scared that it was time for the apocalypse or something. There was no real reason for it that I can think of; just...we were scared of everything.

The point is, despite the clouds being fairly normal when we went outside today, it feels like one of those end-of-the-worldy days. I think there are several reasons for this, not the least of which being that we finally watched the last four episodes of Star Driver. It was as good as we expected, but we would have liked more of an epilogue.

And speaking of TV show endings--or season endings, anyway--one of the things we did toward the beginning of the week that I sort of wanted to talk about but didn't because I had other things first is that we watched the season finale of Once Upon A Time (and the episode before it) on Monday. ( Can't talk about it without spoilers. )

Today I'm thankful for finally having finished watching Star Driver (we wanted to watch all the last episodes together, and we just couldn't find a good time to do it!), Page not seeming to be too damaged after her fall from the desk (I know she's a cat, but she landed on her back), the 99 Cents Only Store having two-packs of Bizu thingies, finally getting our bills paid, and Oreo being super cute lying on top of the newspaper.

We decided to run a full virus scan on our computer today, so I thought about not updating LJ until it was done, which would be good because then the link to the My Beastly ABC's Kickstarter page would be on top longer, but as you can see, I changed my mind. But if you haven't checked out the Kickstarter page, please do! And spread the word!

Anyway, there are a couple of things I've been thinking about sharing this week, and today is a day of wanting to save time, so I'm going to go with the copy and paste one this time. See, on Sunday, we had a really nice lesson about prayer, and there was a very touching story, ( so I wanted to share it. )

Today I'm thankful for the ability to pray, finishing (what we call) the Total Slaughter Arc of Higurashi, getting to try Disneyland's mint chocolate popcorn (very tasty, but I think I ate too much...), having time to watch Gals!, and handy websites that have the stories we want to share already typed up.

A couple of weeks ago, we found out about a Kickstarter project that we really really really wanted to back, but we couldn't until we got a paycheck, which took a little longer than we'd hoped. But we finally went to the bank today, and one of the first things we did was make a donation to help fund Duncan Studio's "My Beastly ABC's" Interactive Storybook App.

See, Duncan Studio was created by Ken Duncan, who is one of our favoritest Disney animators, probably best known (by us anyway) for his work on Meg in Hercules. And the studio is working on this super cute app about a little boy who's afraid of everything! I know I've talked about how when we were little, we were afraid of everything, and sometimes we're still afraid of everything, so this seems like a pretty great idea. One day, he goes to school and finds out his fears have come to life as monsters from around the world!

Actually, you should probably just check it out yourself, because the Kickstarter page has a really cool video (hosted by Susan Egan, voice of Meg!) that will tell you all about the project. They're halfway to their goal, and they only have eight days to go, so go help, go help, go help! If they don't meet their goal, they won't get any of it!

They have some pretty great rewards for the different pledge levels, too! We pledged enough to get a t-shirt! (Plus an extra $20 so we could each get one.) But if they don't get enough money, we won't get our t-shirts, and we will be very very sad. But we'll be sad for them even more, because this is a really cool-looking project! Any little bit helps, so please go check it out!

This commercial has been brought to you by...wait a second, commercials don't have sponsors! They are the sponsors! Well, whatever. Go donate! (Please!)

Today I'm thankful for finally being able to donate to this project, getting to go grocery shopping today, getting to go to the bank today, finishing work in time to deal with long phone calls, and sales on mozzarella Cheez-Its.