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REVIEW: Midori Days DVD 1

Although Midori Days has a good amount of violence, none of it is bloody and a lot of it is on the cartoonish level.

Rated: Teenagers (May contain bloody violence, bad language, nudity)

Review wrote:

Although Midori Days has a good amount of violence, none of it is bloody and a lot of it is on the cartoonish level.

Rating wrote:

Rated: Teenagers (May contain bloody violence, bad language, nudity)

Erm, is this a generic rating? I find it confusing.

Can anyone tell me why the DVD is sideways, or what the benefit of doing that is?

Even though there are dubs that are extremely well done (Cowboy Bebop, GiTS, Wolf's Rain), I only watch the anime subtitled, and won't watch it dubbed unless I'm with other people.

So, your best bet is to ignore the dub and watch it subtitled.

And to reply to Godaistudio's comments: yes, my basic reviewing philosophy puts the dub at an even rating with the sub unless I have a compelling reason to rate it down - which I do sometimes do. I don't go into a review automatically assuming that the dub is inferior just because it's not the original performance, however. There's enough other people around here who do that, so I feel a certain commitment towards providing an alternate viewpoint.

Besides, I've never made my bias on this point a secret. Just look at my staff profile.

Guess we'll have to disagree on this dub, then, darkhunter. I like the performances of the leads quite a bit and thought both well-suited the characters. (And really, "one of the worst dubs ever?" I could name at least a half-dozen titles off the top of my head that are far, far worse than this one.)

The dub outtakes on the extras, while probably forced, at least gave me a chuckle or two (acctually, a pretty good one in the diary scene).

See, I put more thought into it than that for some reason. I can't assume both ratings will be the same from the get-go because the performances are different.

Acting, cast ensemble, script, and direction all have meaning to me and are important in my reaching my judgement of the performance. Since it's originally in Japanese, I do keep artistic integrety in mind as well. This does not mean one is inherently better than the other, but it does mean comparing the two.

If a performance is stale on one side compared to another, I think the rating should reflect that. There several dubs that I think are equal or better than the original Japanese. I appreciate experimentation, and love it when studios try to take a different approach to do things better.

I enjoy the performing arts and am going back to school for it. It may be for personal reasons, but I care more about the effort that goes into judging how well a dub is done. Somehow, putting things at an even rating in order to "equalize" what the dub bashers do somehow cheapens the efforts of all the actors and crew involved, regardless of the language and performance.

Godaistudios wrote:

See, I put more thought into it than that for some reason. I can't assume both ratings will be the same from the get-go because the performances are different. Acting, cast ensemble, script, and direction all have meaning to me and are important in my reaching my judgement of the performance. Since it's originally in Japanese, I do keep artistic integrety in mind as well. This does not mean one is inherently better than the other, but it does mean comparing the two. If a performance is stale on one side compared to another, I think the rating should reflect that. There several dubs that I think are equal or better than the original Japanese. I appreciate experimentation, and love it when studios try to take a different approach to do things better. I enjoy the performing arts and am going back to school for it. It may be for personal reasons, but I care more about the effort that goes into judging how well a dub is done. Somehow, putting things at an even rating in order to "equalize" what the dub bashers do somehow cheapens the efforts of all the actors and crew involved, regardless of the language and performance.

Apparently I didn't explain myself as well as I had intended. My primary intent isn't to "equalize" ratings; I just assume that the dub is starting on the same footing and rate it up or down from there.

I do look at the scripting and performance qualities when I rate English dubs as well as how well the dub represents the original Japanese performances. Most of the time in more recent titles, at least in my experience, there isn't a substantial enough difference in quality to warrant a variance in rating. (I also do not judge that some variance on the scripting automatically warrants a lower rating. It depends entirely on the context of the variance and how close the rewrite stays to the spirit of the original script.)

And I fully agree that some dubs are improvements on the originals. Unfortunately there's some people around here that absolutely refuse to acknowledge that such a thing is even possible.