Alethea & Athena

So now that we've beaten Final Fantasy XII, we can finally, finally, finally look up the cast! And so we have. We actually already knew one member of the cast for each version. From listening to the trailers (we didn't want to watch them, so we just listened as they played on out computer to see if we could identify voices), we knew that Hiroaki Hirata (Gojyo, Sanji, Genma) is Balthier. And from looking up Phil Lamarr (Green Lantern, Wilt) for some unremembered reason, we knew he plays Reddas.

And, thinking that they got the voice of Wilt from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, I thought, "Hey, I wonder if they got the guy who plays Bloo to be in it?" So I went through the voices in my head and thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if he played Basch?" Little did I know that I'd be right.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Other interesting cast notes, on the Japanese side, Sailor Venus is Fran (we've met her! She said we were very beautiful. Fran said we were beautiful... (awe)), Ansem is Gabranth. Rikiya Koyama is Basch, which we really should have known, because since he played Gat in Saiyuki Reload, that type of character is what we think of when we think Rikiya Koyama. Um... Arisa (Fruits Basket) is Larsa...

And we have the best timing ever because the English dub voice of Balthier is going to be on 24 on Monday! And Heroes just went in to reruns! We are so watching 24 on Monday, even though we're completely out of order.

We get to be censors now! Okay, so not really censors, but TokyoPop's got a new ratings system where they tell everybody why a book has the rating it does (language, violence, etc.), and so, since we're among the first people to read the books, we get to help! On the one hand, it's like, "Power..." and then we think about it and it's really not so great.

It was just really interesting reading the descriptions of what counts as what. Like non-sexual non-descript nudity. Of course, the real "fun" was reading about all the mature rated stuff. Bleh. Fortunately, we don't translate a whole lot of mature rated stuff, so that shouldn't be much of a concern. But it was really interesting because it's so matter-of-fact about everything (like sexual violence and stuff). It's actually kind of funny to us, but we're not sure what that says about us.

The most interesting thing is the bad language stuff. Because that all depends on how we translate it. We can just as easily add a really bad word as take it out. We try to stay true to the Japanese of course, but it's also true that it's not necessarily inaccurate that the swearing in Saiyuki is made more excessive by the rewriter. I have no idea what I'm trying to say here. Ah well.

The weirdest thing is that words like "brat" are grouped with "hell" in the mild language category. ("Damn" is moderate.) I wonder who decides on stuff like that, because it obviously has something to do with public reaction.

The whole thing seems a little excessive (closed-mouth kissing counts as a sexual theme?), but it's true that even I would like some warnings on stuff like this (though in Ai Yori Aoshi, we really should have seen it coming from much farther away). It's all very complicated.

In other news, today strange people are going to invade our apartment and take our furniture. Well, technically, it's Steve coming to take Mom's furniture, and before Celeste moved in, we would have been happy to see it go. But now it's all just a big giant hassle, and the furniture in question is securely held in place by the rest of the furniture and tons of junk on the floor that's in the way. (A lot of the junk is our fault, because before Celeste moved in, we used the room for storage, and she came in so suddenly that we didn't have time to fix that.) We called Mom to try and see if we could all figure out what was going on and how things were going to work, but it seems that communication is so last decade. Mom didn't even know anything except that Steve wanted to come tonight. Oy.

I just can't stop talking today. Speaking of Final Fantasy IX's director, the credits came up for FF12, and one of the directors listed was Hiroyuki Ito, and I thought, "Well what do you know, I think that's the director of FF9." So when we looked up the cast, we checked, and lo and behold, it was! He also directed Final Fantasy VI. Apparently he really likes thief main characters.

Anyway, Twilight Princess awaits, so today I'm thankful for being able to move on to a different video game, the awesomeness of Balthier and Fran, the ability to judge entertainment for myself, the hilarity of Basch and Bloo being played by the same guy (I want to meet him and say, "Okay, do Bloo! Now do Basch! Now do Bloo again! That's amazing!!!"), and not having our furniture stolen.