(L) Flag - war-documentary style series

[CelesAurivern]

Originally Posted by orion

Raws are out up to ep. 3 now. Do you think that a group will do this title?

No, potentially good shows like this always get left in the lurch.
If anyone does pick it up, expect a crawling pace of 1 ep per 3 months.

[MrProphet]

Wasn't it just 6 episodes long? Meaning that it wouldn't be that huge of a commitment of time and manpower....

[CelesAurivern]

Originally Posted by MrProphet

Wasn't it just 6 episodes long? Meaning that it wouldn't be that huge of a commitment of time and manpower....

13 eps, but that's besides the point.
The point being that groups, especially random short-lived start-ups, are all too busy popping up do do a smut series or two.
These days you're considered a heretic to even consider doing a mature themed show like FLAG

[clem-kun]

How did I know Celes was going to reply? When I saw orion's post, I was about to reply, "CelesAurivern's group would be the most likely to pick it up"... and voila! Celes pops up.

If I was 100x smarter than I was now, and I knew photography terminology, and I was interested in war/mecha shows, I'd translate it.

[orion]

But clem-kun, this could be your chance to gain more knowledge; expand your horizons; and satisfy your inner self that always wanted to work on an anime title with mature themes and deals with war , mecha and photography.

[CelesAurivern]

Originally Posted by clem-kun

How did I know Celes was going to reply? When I saw orion's post, I was about to reply, "CelesAurivern's group would be the most likely to pick it up"... and voila! Celes pops up.

If I was 100x smarter than I was now, and I knew photography terminology, and I was interested in war/mecha shows, I'd translate it.

Yeah, so I was thinking, maybe someone is already on it and waiting to rip the R2 DVDs.
Or as orion suggests: Bandai Visual = R1 = someone will do ripz

I'm just taking a wait and see stance now. Still got a coupla of small projects here and there to finish off.

[MrProphet]

Originally Posted by CelesAurivern

13 eps, but that's besides the point.
The point being that groups, especially random short-lived start-ups, are all too busy popping up do do a smut series or two.
These days you're considered a heretic to even consider doing a mature themed show like FLAG

That is besides the point as well.

I was talking about the fact a group that would be partial to subbing such a series would not feel discouraged if the series was not a big commitment.

But maybe 13 episodes is a big commitment as well. I wouldn't know anything about that. Take Windy Tales, for example.

[wao]

The show is actually not too difficult if you read some of the explanation/terms on the main site. I think it's also got more ah.... "energy" or whatever you call it compared to Windy Tales, which leaves me hoping it'll have better commitment/speed of subbing than that... Of course, this show (as far as I can see from ep 1) deserves mature and sensitive treatment in the way the dialogue is handled so that it accurately reflects the quality of the show and scriptwriting; and hence shouldn't be subbed too quickly.... but at the same time it'd be nice to be done by people who aren't unfortunately stuck in limbo or something.

I'm going to watch 2 and 3 soon, and if the quality keeps up I'd volunteer as an assistant translator or something, except I have little time (bloody or otherwise) ... not until after September... well, I shouldn't be having the time.

[DaFool]

I agree, the editor will really need to brush up so that the language befits this show. There is a reason why 'smut' shows are translated by the bucketload: they're simple to translate.

This is no worry since a show with quality can take its time.

[kujoe]

There's something about this show, that despite not being able to understand it word for word, that keeps my eyes glued to the screen. Needless to say, this show is pretty damn amazing. As wao already said, the sound really flows well with the visuals, and together they all build up an atmosphere that presents the show in a meaningful and refreshing way. Even better is the fact that it's got the trappings of a raw but insightful documentary. Everything simply fits.

[wao]

I watched all three episodes so far, and I'm still as impressed by the amazing way they make it seem so realistic. Not in an ultra-realistic way with really realistic movements, but the colours and the way things blur in and out... some things are heard at times and not at others; and how light plays with darkness. I was quite impressed by the touch they had when we see the night through Shirasu's camera, and there's that 'banding' effect. Another "wow" moment was in episode 3 with these prayer wheels and a smoke effect. They've really considered every shot carefully: although it seems like it's just a 'filler' or 'random' shot, it's got a purpose. One interesting case in point:

Spoiler for small thing that happened in ep 3:

When Shirasu was getting her food from the canteen, she put her camera on the tray. When she was looking for a place to sit, you could see, momentarily, that she had first turned to the place where Ichiyanagi was sitting (as he was the only one at the table there). Then, as if she was quite sure about not going there she turned towards the other side and sat down.
Not only does it seem to show that Ichiyanagi isn't exactly friendly with most of the people there, but Shirasu doesn't seem too eager to sit with him either, since he can seem so scary. Although by the end of the episode at least she got to take a nice photograph of him.

(If it matters, I like how they haven't made them have some obvious chemistry or whatever. I mean, they're the only Japanese there and they're pretty good-looking and Ichiyanagi seemed to look all playboy-ish in the first episode... and a lesser anime writer would have made obvious hints that they'd get together, or start setting them up by now. But they've kept it surprisingly non-existent or subtle (well, relatively anyway). It's quite enjoyable and refreshing!)

The narrative itself, while not super-engaging, is interesting indeed. (To someone like me, anyway) While 'nothing much' has happened over the three episodes, more about the background of Uddiyana is revealed as Akagi starts on his trail to a. find out more and b. find Shirasu.

Meanwhile it's interesting to observe Shirasu herself as she handles the camera and observes the rest of the world. So much of the show is seen through a lens, that when we look at Shirasu herself you feel a little surprised. By hiding behind a camera she gets to clearly look at others, but they don't get to look at her...
It's also interesting to consider what the black guy (O'Rowcandy???) said about how war photographers in his time were an insensitive lot who shot with no regard to the atrocities committed around them, and left without changing a single thing. I guess it's that debate photographers would inevitably have about whether one should record, and purely record, or record and yet not let people just die in front of your eyes...

I guess it's because

Spoiler:

Shirasu chose, in the helicopter, to extend a hand when things went wrong right in front of her, and hence put the welfare and safety of the real people in front of her before photography. She may seem to approach them as mere objects of her lens, but actually she is concerned with their individual personalities as human beings. I guess it's after some people in the team (Ichiyanagi and the leader especially) realised this that they seem to be less harsh on her.
Perhaps she came to this conclusion after she saw the 'other side' of the team in the second episode, and took a picture of herself taking a picture of herself (to remind herself that just like there's a person behind the lens, there's personalities behind the photographs as well).

I can't seem to understand much about the background and stuff without watching through a second time because some of it just flew past me. Except I'm sure that there are two main religious powers in Uddiyana: one is this really scary looking dude who says nothing and has these seriously scary 'council' which wear very eerie masks; the other is what seems like a holy girl or young lady called Kufura (Kufla? Kufra?) who we'd find out more about in episode 4...

[Aniki Meiski]

The scarey guy is the living Buddha Nyucient Ru Pou XXIII (23rd reincarantion) (Ishizuka pronounced the name as Nyuchalanto Rah-Poh), the leader of the Geluto Sect that controls Uddiyana. The holy girl is the reincarantion of goddess Kufura (Kuflah?), the one praying behind the Flag. A lot of religous stuff is modelled after tibetan buddhism.

[wao]

Ah, I see. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff there related to Tibetan Buddhism: the robes of the monks, the types of small flags in Buddhist colours, the architecture, the PRAYER WHEELS... it's very obviously related to that.

Although I wonder if they're going to allude to the whole Dalai Lama debacle, what with two leading 'powers' (in Tibet there's one religious authority installed and backed by China, while the 'real' one, the Dalai Lama, has been exiled). For some reason now I've got Eureka 7 (also with references to Eastern Buddhism, and a guy called Norbu!) and Tide-Line Blue (with a female Dalai Lama sort of thing) mixed in my head...

[Aniki Meiski]

This is the script writer Toru Nozaki's blog. He sketches out some of the background ideas behind the show. It may answer your questions.
http://playlog.jp/nozaki/blog/2006-07-21

[Guido]

For anyone interested Shinsen-subs has already released episode one in subbed format.

[orion]

(Hell has just suffered a cold spell. )

Thanks Shinsen!

Can we move this to the fansub section, pretty please?

[v1cious]

does this series remind anyone else of Metal Gear? even the mecha bears a striking resemblance.

i gotta say i love the weapons sound effects, they're so realistic.

[Zappster]

The first episode was ok. It was really slow(boringly so) and I say that having appreciated and enjoyed some of the slowest anime of recent times. If it stays like this for the rest of the series I might stop watching it, the setup is interesting but for a first episode I didn't find it that entertaining.

Sure it's different, innovative, unique for an anime and all that but I found myself yawning at a couple of points(could just be me feeling tired ). It really did seem to drag on for too long. It all looks very nice though and I thought the use of CG was good. I liked the ending song too. It's Lights by Eri Nobuchika in case anyone's interested. I recognized it from Lumines(possibly my favourite and definitely my most played PSP game) as it's the ending song in that game.

I'm not one to judge stuff after one episode so I'll be checking out a few more before I decide. First impressions are that it may just not be for me.

[Cruzz]

I guess it was obvious someone would eventually release if I continued procrastinating. Unfortunately I can't say I'd be particularly impressed by the translation work, but you can't have everything.

Meanwhile, if someone is interested they can get my kind of work-in-progress script file for the very same first episode here, timing (my first time ever, wooh ) was done with the l33t raw(24:48.570 length), so using that with it will probably give best results. It's missing a few things (like an ending song translation, or a second opinion in editing), but I guess it's pretty watchable overall. Also, if someone wants to use it for whatever vile purposes, feel free. Just don't give me credit if you do, I'd rather live in blissful ignorance.

edit: Extra space added. This really needed to be fixed, it was such a horrid mistake!

[Aniki Meiski]

Cruzz, I guess you must be finnish cause you get that finnish name right (Jan Nikkanen). Keep up the good work.