The Song Fight Bulletin Board

<font size="1">For those who don't know, Adult Swim is a programming block on Cartoon Network airing 11pm-2am, then repeated through 5am.</font>

If you are not watching at least Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021 yet, you are only cheating yourself out of laughing. And if you don't like laughing, you can leave.

This thread also doubles as a flamewar about Home Movies. Remember kids, no matter what anyone says or thinks, Home Movies is not funny whatsoever.

Finally: Fullmetal Alchemist premieres tomorrow night. I can't vouch for the dub (haven't heard it, and 99% of dubs are completely terrible), but the series is excellent. I recommend checking it out.

I can't stand home movies.

i think sealab's kind of dumb. or maybe i just don't get it.

i don't get sea lab either. it has a good theme song though.

*edit* just for the record, i like home movies.

Concerning Sealab: If you're watching the newer episodes, then there's reason you wouldn't find it funny. The new ones are okay, but the show was much better when Captain Murphy was still around. (RIP Harry Goz.)

Captain Murphy is gone? (Sorry, we dont' get much TV here.) Sealab 2021 and ATHF are both really amazing shows.

However, I'm on Dan's side with the Home Movies. I thought it was funny. Just very dry. Totally different camp of humor from Sealab and ATHF.

Dry humor is good. Home Movies is trying so hard to be good dry humor, but it ends up just being awkward and dull. Really dull.

I like Home Movies, though it's among the weaker ones. The Oblongs takes the cake for the weakest, though--it's just annoying, for the most part.

SeaLab is awesome. Aqua Teen is even better. Brak? Little annoying, but has its good moments.

Venture Bros.--definitely going somewhere, I just hope they can keep it up.

Did I say Oblongs is the weakest? I meant, all the anime sucks even more.

You were almost right, and then you were all full of it.

Brak is terrible, and while some of the anime sucks, a lot of it is good. To deny that Cowboy Bebop is good is just... well, I don't want to be mean. Trigun is good, but holy fuck that dub is bad.

Cowboy Bebop is awesome. I am very sad that there are no more episodes to see. Always watch them in subtitles, not dubs, if you can help it.
Is there not a readily available subbed Trigun? I heard I should watch that too.
-bill

1. I love Home Movies. I wouldn't say it's laugh-out-loud funny, except sometimes. But it has the best dialogue of any TV show ever.

2. I'm also looking forward to Full Metal Alchemist. I liked Read or Die (what they showed last week).

3. I love the Cowboy Bebop dub, and the Trigun one is great too. In fact, I like dubs better because they let me pay more attention to the graphics (which in FLCL are soooo gorgeous). Also, my ear isn't trained and all the japanese voices sound the same to me (mostly).

4. Sometimes Sealab is hilarious, sometimes really stupid. Faves are the credit card scam one, the time warp/explosion one, the trapped under a soda machine/scorpion one, and of course, bizarro!

5. I freaking love the bumps. I even want the 1st season bumps on DVD. And I want all of this season's photo bumps available on their site.

HeuristicsInc: Yes, Trigun has been licensed for a long time, so subs are available. I'm saying, they would (of course) air dubs on television, and I dislike Trigun's dub very much.

FLCL is the greatest thing ever. Of all categories. I don't think anything gets as much sheer overwhelming enjoyment out of me than that. And it introduced me to super-awesome j-rock band The Pillows, so that's even more added to its credit.

Cowboy Bebop's dub is the 1% I omitted in my statement. Trigun... meh. Meryl is voiced pretty well, but that's about all I can take. Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash is a travesty in my mind. (Really though, I would like to have been able to be at the brainstorm session for that one. "Okay, we need someone to voice Vash, the most feared man on the planet, a legendary outlaw with a colossal bounty on his head." "How about the second black ranger from Power Rangers? I hear he's free." "Perfect.")

Seriously, FMA is so worth it. I recently finished the series (all 51 episodes), and I totally loved it. I am so completely anxious for the movie next year.

Best dialogue in any TV show ever would have to go to the best TV show ever, Sports Night.

john m wrote: (Really though, I would like to have been able to be at the brainstorm session for that one. "Okay, we need someone to voice Vash, the most feared man on the planet, a legendary outlaw with a colossal bounty on his head." "How about the second black ranger from Power Rangers? I hear he's free." "Perfect.")

See, it is perfect, because yes he's the most feared outlaw on the planet, but he's also a goofball. Half the time, he acts like a bumbling idiot (even if it's only an act), and I think that voice is perfect for it.

And how on earth did you know he was one of the Power Rangers? Hmm?

"Dude, I finally get Sports Night! It's a comdey that's too good to be funny!"

"Dude, you're trippin'."

Bebop is the best there is as far as anime goes, and as far as I can tell it will be for all time. Oh yeah. Trigun is also very good, the dub doesn't bother me too much. Sealab, no Murphy? I haven't seen those episodes yet... haven't been watching adult swim for a while now.

FLCL, I kept missing one of the episodes, they repeated it like 3 or 4 times and I missed the same one every time! Damn!

You can kind of divide Adult Swim into three categories: Anime, Williams St, and simpsons-esque. Nobody mentioned Harvey Birdman - sometimes I laugh more in that 15 minutes than in the entire rest of the lineup! And sorry to break it to ya, but Family Guy pwns Futurama almost every single time.

c hack wrote:Half the time, he acts like a bumbling idiot (even if it's only an act), and I think that voice is perfect for it.

True, but he can't pull off Vash's serious voice at all, which is very important. I am probably being unfair in comparing him to the original Japanese voice actor, who was fantastic, but it still bothers me.

c hack wrote:And how on earth did you know he was one of the Power Rangers? Hmm?

Snicker. When you're in as many anime communities as I am, stupid little facts like this are common knowledge, sadly.

the Jazz wrote:Bebop is the best there is as far as anime goes, and as far as I can tell it will be for all time.

Yeah, I agree. (It battles daily with FLCL for top spot in my heart.) It probably will be the best ever, but that doesn't mean there aren't other damn good series worth watching as much as CB. RahXephon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Samurai Champloo, GunGrave, Planetes, Full Metal Alchemist... I could go on.

the Jazz wrote:Sealab, no Murphy? I haven't seen those episodes yet... haven't been watching adult swim for a while now.

They replaced him with Tornado Shanks, a football coach who becomes their new captain. He is voiced by the son of Harry Goz, which is a nice gesture on the part of the crew, but that still doesn't make him funny enough to replace Murphy.

FMA first episode thoughts:

Ed's voice isn't bad, but Al sounds way too sedate. He's supposed to be the cheery, uplifting one, but he sounds depressed. The mystery woman (whose name I will withhold for spoilers) is voiced pretty well, thankfully. Can't really make more judgment on the dub, since most of the main characters haven't been introduced yet.

Saw the L'Arc~en~Ciel song listed as "Ready Set Go," but it's actually "Ready Steady Go." Also, I wonder about their choice of music; I heard they're going to keep that song as the US closing theme for the whole series. In actuality, that song is the second opening theme (of four, the other three of which are better than it, though it still is okay). The first two closing themes are far better songs (particularly the second). Oh well.

This series is so great.

Re dubbed Bebop, I started watching it in Japanese with subtitles because I generally do, knowing that dubs are often terrible. Later on I saw a bit of the dubbed one and it was just so weird having those voices, they didn't seem like the same characters to me at all. Very bizarre. So I went back to the subs. They may be great, but I just couldn't grasp it (:
-bill

Oh, I still definitely prefer the original voices; I sincerely doubt I'll ever prefer any dub to the original work. I'm just saying, compared to everything else out there, it's impressive.

I doubt that the Japanese voice actors are significantly better at their jobs than the people doing the dubs, I've always held the opinion that what makes the sub better is that you don't notice the crappiness of the voice acting because you don't speak Japanese (presumably), and they don't have to word things strangely to make them fit the mouth movements.

I disagree. (Of course.) When I judge a dub, I don't do so based on the movement of the mouths being in sync with the speech (because it would be unfair - though, when they do line up, like in Bebop, it's a great bonus). Rather, I judge whether the voice actor sounds believable as the character, and whether they can properly convey the range of emotions the character onscreen experiences. To that end, Japanese voice actors perform far, far better. Whether I speak the language or not doesn't enter into it at all; it's all about emotion. For example, in Trigun, when Vash gets all serious and dark about the events in his past, Masaya Onosaka is able to convey sadness, weariness, and fear perfectly. Johnny Yong Bosch sounds like a 12 year old stiffly reading his lines; his voice doesn't match whatsoever, and his emotions are too weak.

What I was thinking about more than syncing the mouth movements is actually fitting the English line into the length it took to speak the Japanese, whether it means compressing or lengthening the phrase... Takes a really good sub director to make that work, and even then you get strange/awkward/confusing lines sometimes. But I like dubs and subs about equally, as long as the person directing them is reasonably competant. Like if you've seen Metropolis, the dub is incredibly bad. It's literally unwatchable.