Jay says: New article from Andy today. He's put together a few photos he took at Anime North earlier this year and takes a look at translation differences in the new Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne manga.

Andy says: A Genvid Exclusive! I saved these pics out just for Genvid. Sorry they took so long in getting to you.

Andy says: The Luna Plushie is mine and it's the talking one from PGSM. ^_^ Look on my blog for his write up for Anime North 2k6 - and hopefully I'll get another set of pages and pictures ready - one of my favorites was four girls from Slayers who did a little scene for his video camera.

Andy says: This is my favorite for 3 things: cute girl and the dress she's got on, and her smile (WHO IS SHE!?!)

Finally FINALLY got to order and receive the first Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne book from DC's CMX translated manga label. I've had the first tankoubon for some time but never got around to translating it. I've seen only the first episode and I think it was an Nth gen fansub copy a friend stuck at the end of a tape I got from them. Gotta hunt that one up. Kinda wonder if any fansubs exist still. Warner Bros. kinda owns DC and CMX so you can be sure if they wanted to go after the anime, they'd have some heavy fingers to use.

tonikaku, how does the CMX effort rate? Let's look...

Overall, it's not bad. There's some finer points I really got annoyed with. When working on something like this, it's important to get the key signature lines in place and get them right.

When Jeanne goes off doing her kaitou thing, she simply says "Game Start!". In fact, the Rosario Rouge toy's game feature does this, too when you run it at first. In the CMX book, this became "Let the game begin!" Eh. Could have stayed simple. (I'll have to look up the verb used for when Maron's rosary detects evil.)

There's other lines. I had to translate these more or less from my tankoubon to see if they got it close.

"koyoi mo 'mayakashi no utsukushisa' itadaki" - I came up with "And tonight I take a false beauty" - For some reason the word "beastly" was used in the CMX book. The Rosario Rouge toy, if you're lucky enough to get to the final 4th thingy, will play this line and you see an angel, which is what the paintings turn into after Kaitou Jeanne has captured the evil within. I finally understand why the toy does what it does. (Not much Kaitou Jeanne exposure. T.T)

"yami ni umareshi aku w(o) fuuin suru tame ni Kaitou Jeanne! kami ni tsukawasare tadaima sanjou" Pretty much speaks for itself.

"In order to seal the evil born of darkness, I, Kaitou Jeanne, am sent by God!"

OK. For some reason, the people who worked on this for CMX made some sort of rhyming thingy with this, and as you can see, does not involve flights or taking them.

This is another line the Rosario Rouge toy plays: "kami no na no moto ni yami yori umareshi ashiki mono w(o) koko ni fuuin sen!" and then "Checkmate!" - "In the name of God, I seal here the evil born from Darkness!" yadda yadda

If I remember right without looking, the CMX thingy comes close to this. I mean, it's not what I got, but it's not annoying.

AND... other bits:

The cover of CMX Jeanne volume 1 is the same from the Japanese tankoubon, though blown up, not as sharply defined or as dark. The image on the original looks much better. It could have been left alone. (shrug)

One building on one page was called an Apartment building, while it really is "Tanemura Corp.".

The Rosary or Rosario is now simply a pendant. Geh?

Kaitou is mis-spelled, but then that _always_ happens. It's definitely a long O at the end there.

And finally, on one page, one character asks Maron to cook something for him. CMX changed this to spaghetti. What he asks for is "guratan" or Gratin. Au gratin potatoes? I think if they meant spaghetti in the Japanese original, it would have been more specific than that, and in one episode of Angel's Tail that I have, they do say Spaghetti in Japanese phonetics, so it's probably not like Arina-sensei to put Gratin in there when she didn't mean Spaghetti. This is one of those minor story details that just shows what gets changed along the way for absolutely no reason.

Was the book otherwise enjoyable? (shrug) I guess so. The author sidebars were translated. One of her assistants calls her "Arina-chi" which if it was romanized like that famous toy would have a T in it, but this works just fine.

It's not a bad buy, and I'm sure if rabid fans bought the CMX offerings, they're getting what they want if they can't read Japanese.