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Old 2008-04-10, 15:29   Link #151
Vexx
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
Aye... what MB did was simply concatenate two episodes together to produce "an episode". It is only annoying if you're trying to, for example, jump directly to an ED because the scene selection menus lack sufficient resolution within an episode. A DVD episode consists of "OP-Episode_A-interstitial-Episode_B-ED+bonus_moment"

The dub is passable (caveat: I hate dubs). The voicework probably wouldn't bother anyone already fine with dubs and maps the original dialog fairly well. The english voice for Arusu is pretty grinding whiny at times. The other voices I found no issues with.

The DVD limitation on subtitles really hurt the magnificent scenery though when watching with Japanese track+subs -- I really wish anime distributors would do something with the standard like letterboxing the scenery with the subtitles in the black space.

On the ANN "review",
Yeah, someone copied me a transcript of the ANN site since I don't "send them money" in the form of page views if I can help it.
I'm with Xris.... the ANN review is actually quite a positive review so I'm either wondering what crack was being smoked --- or that the purpose of the post was simply to drive pageview counts up for the ANN website. At the least, its a misleading characterization of the review. I'm a bit confused because if I'm remembering right, driftr was involved in the original fansubs so he'd definitely know about the quirky camera angles and off-screen dialog that were part of the original airings.

Some Fair Use snippets of the review for those who also don't want to visit include:
Quote:
And the background artistry and overall artistic style is where the series most triumphs. Wonderfully bizarre settings, stylized witches' garb, and strange robots and critters, all done in a heavily earth tone-based color scheme that makes brief shots of the real world seem bright by comparison. Character designs range from stylized elementary school kids to crude caricatures, with Arusu's broad-smiling design almost certain to win a viewer over, but no one goes around toting wands or uniforms with hearts on them (though hats do seem to have eyes, as well as other things that should not normally have them); think of what the Harry Potter movies might look like if they were animated and took a walk on the wild side and that will give you at least a basic impression of what this series looks like. Some CG animation and renderings get almost seamlessly mixed in to sharp effect, while the opening visuals resemble Renaissance and Reformation-era European paintings. What animation actually gets shown looks good, but as mentioned before, the series takes a lot of shortcuts. Amusingly, the panty-flashing scenes one might normally expect to see have been replaced by bloomer-flashing scenes. Also watch for odd bonus visuals after the credits for each double-episode, where Next Episode previews would normally be.
Quote:
Tweeny Witches mixes some mildly serious themes in amongst its wonder and fun, giving the series a little more meat than might normally be expected from magical girl fare. It may suffer from some problems, but lack of vision and creativity are not among them. It is worth a look even by those who do not normally care for the genre.
There's a lot more, but it is almost 95% positive.
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Last edited by Vexx; 2008-04-11 at 01:11.
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