05-26-2011, 03:42 PM | #126 |
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OWNED!
But maybe because of that meek admission of Ohtsuki's ("I almost made it to 20M...!") I felt sympathetic toward him. I don't understand his circumstances at all, and to me Kaiji felt almost demonic doing what Talon predicted so far back, but it's necessary for Kaiji to escape from heck, and Ohtsuki really deserved his comeuppance. Yet I still felt pity.
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05-26-2011, 04:09 PM | #127 |
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ACTUALLY, to be honest I felt kinda bad for him too, toward the end when his voice got all meek, and he picked up his strongbox and was like, "Well, I'm done for tonight." After all, he's an indebted prisoner too. He shouldn't have been such a dick, but does he really deserve to have his ENTIRE stash destroyed? I dunno.
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05-26-2011, 04:29 PM | #128 |
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Lest you guys forget, he tried to murder Kaiji with the crane. At the very least, "fair's fair." I don't condone murder; and, as we've discussed before, Kaiji has effectively condemned Ohtsuki to die in the underground; but, so long as "fair's fair", since Ohtsuki tried to kill Kaiji, Kaiji's entitled to milk Ohtsuki like this and we can't really blame the guy. Had Ohtsuki succeeded in killing Kaiji, Kaiji would actually have died. While Kaiji has virtually killed Ohtsuki now, he hasn't actually, literally done so: the man can still breathe, eat, sleep, and dream. He's just doomed to die underground now.
Nah, I can't really join you guys in saying you felt sorry for Ohtsuki. I felt bad for Tonegawa post-E-card, but Ohtsuki? The situation's completely different.
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05-26-2011, 05:57 PM | #129 |
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It's weird, even if he was a monster, when he's curled up in the fetal position like that, I'd feel something. I remember having that same kind of weird feeling when I saw Saddam Hussein captured.
If I were in Kaiji's shoes, it would definitely be easier - 1. This guy tried to kill me. 2. This guy has fleeced me and the money of a bunch of other guys. 3. I want to survive and escape this nightmare. I guess it's a combination of the atmosphere ("we're all prisoners of Teiai") and Ohtsuki's wounded humanity that stung. Tonegawa, I was dancing on his grave until Hyoudou brought out the cooker.
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05-26-2011, 06:02 PM | #130 |
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As was Kaiji. ^^; Yeah, that was definitely the game changer. One second it's "BWAHAHAHA, EAT THAT, TONEGAWA!" and the next it's an incredibly somber and tight-lipped "Oh fuck. "
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05-31-2011, 05:42 PM | #131 |
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It's pretty much official: Triad has completely dropped the ball. If they can manage to get Kaiji Ep05 out by tomorrow evening, they'll be four episodes behind Nutbladder. Otherwise? Five weeks.
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06-01-2011, 08:55 AM | #132 |
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Like I said, they're thrown in the towel already because of the existence of other sub groups. Judging by their inactivity in the past couple years, it looks like they had practically retired, but decided to "get the band back together" for Kaiji season 2. As it turns out however, they couldn't get the whole band back together, and succumbed to laziness after a decent effort in the first few weeks.
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06-01-2011, 11:44 AM | #133 | |
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Underwater-Commie strikes again!
Quote:
Regardless: Kaiji S2 Ep09 is out!
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06-01-2011, 02:20 PM | #134 |
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Underwater-Commie runs in with a steel chair again. To be honest, it's a brilliant marketing technique. They detect an opportunity to sub an eagerly anticipated episode, and do it for the drooling masses, without making a time consuming commitment to do the entire show. It lets people know, "Hey, we're Underwater-Commie, we're both fast AND good. So for next season's hot show, choose Underwater-Commie for all your subbing needs!"
Spoiler: show
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06-01-2011, 02:31 PM | #135 |
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06-01-2011, 03:25 PM | #136 |
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I've been disciplined in not reading manga spoilers, but I still couldn't help hearing about various famous arcs in Kaiji ... pachinko was one of them. I had never even heard about chinchiron before I saw it in the anime, so I was surprised that it was so long. Damn, just think about all the epic we saw in an arc that was apparently not even worth mentioning? What are we gonna be in for in this arc that actually is famous?
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06-01-2011, 03:27 PM | #137 |
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:O~~~
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06-01-2011, 04:45 PM | #138 |
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I'm curious to see what you guys will think about the Pachinko arc. The real reason it's famous is because of its antagonist, who, like Washizu Iwao, has taken on a fanbase of his own.
Also regarding Pachinko, (MAJOR SPOILER BELOW) Spoiler: show
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06-01-2011, 05:00 PM | #139 |
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See, I'm curious to see how anyone could be an antagonist this arc since it seems like it's just Kaiji vs. the machine. What I had originally thought it might be, but it's not seeming to be the case any more, was that Kaiji and what's-his-name would each be sat down at their respective pachinko machines (identical) and that they would take balls from the same pool, i.e. one player's win is directly responsible for another player's loss and vice versa. That is to say, the pipes that feed the balls into these machines would be supplying their two machines from the same source and if one guy hits the jackpot well then duh it fucks the other guy over.
But since that doesn't seem to be the case here, I'm really stumped as to how this is going to be another psychological warfare story arc. I welcome it. I even expect it from Fukumoto by now. But I'm just not seeing how he's planning to do it this arc.
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06-01-2011, 06:49 PM | #140 |
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Saw the episode.
It was really great! And I welcome Ohgi's voice actor back into the Fukumoto fold, it was really great to hear him return as Sakazuki. Talon - as you must have noticed, the casino is Teiai owned and run. As with all the Teiai functions (Espoir/Starside, The Penal Colony) there's a Teiai executive in charge of the operation. Clearly, if Kaiji intends to scam Teiai out of its own funds, the executive is going to worried if Kaiji drains the Bog. That's not paltry cash. Spoiler: show Now, something I've been thinking about since S1 has more or less been confirmed - Hyoudou Kazutaku is way, way, waaaaaay richer than Washizu Iwao ever was. Washizu was worth a Ľ1,000,000,000 at his peak (about $10M) while we've seen Hyoudou juggle Ľ100M almost casually. It's pocket money to him, and while Ľ100M wasn't a TON to Washizu, it was still a good chunk of his fortune, especially after he was left with a paltry Ľ600M after all those bribes he had to make after Fake Akagi's death. I used to think, "well, Ľ500M in 1954 is probably worth an unimaginable fortune in today's yen" but in 2007 I was a full-fledged economics student, and I remember having access to inflation tables that told me Japan's inflation rate didn't change much from the 1965-1997 period. There was deflation in the 1990's that counteracted inflation during the 1970's, so Ľ100M yen in 1965 was roughly equivalent to Ľ100M yen in 1997. Unfortuntely, I don't have that data at my fingertips anymore, but I'll see if I can find something. Suffice to say, Washizu was portrayed as the shadow king of Japan, but to our eyes he's not nearly rich enough to wave around that kind of power (influence on social elites notwithstanding). His Ľ500M yen would have been enough for him to live lavishly, if quitely, overseas. Ľ20M would have sustained Akagi modestly for the rest of his life while it's just big money to Kaiji. Yet we have Hyoudou's Teiai juggling tons of cash in all of its operations, and if Hyoudou himself is really like Washizu (I think not, to me he's merely a very powerful, very rich, insane socialite) he's definitely far more wealthy.
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06-01-2011, 08:19 PM | #141 |
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Actually, I had no idea that it was Teiai operated.
Spoiler: show When you put it that way, okay, I guess the idea of "competition" makes sense: Kaiji vs. the house. I still don't see how the house is going to cheat, though, beyond what they've already done in constructing the machine -- and I fail to see how Kaiji is going to be able to pwn them. Losing $5,000,000 of the mafia's == insta-death for that manager. As for Washizu vs. Hyoudou, that's some interesting insight but I almost wish we hadn't had it XD because it really neuters Washizu in my eyes. In Akagi, he was marketed as what Hyoudou was marketed in Kaiji: a mover, a shaker, a true kingpin of the underworld. We're not talking "boss of a mafia family," we're talking "shadow government of Japan"-level stuff. We're talking "the man who owns all the mafias"-level stuff. And Washizu was ostensibly marketed in much the same way, what with all the talk about how he helped rebuild Japan post-WW2 and how all the prime ministers owed him favors, etc etc. But at the very least, it certainly goes a long way towards driving home the point that Hyoudou is not merely some crazy old rich man who gets his kicks by watching people play Battle Royale-style games: he's an important figure in shadow global politics because he's that fucking wealthy. Oh,
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06-02-2011, 02:38 AM | #142 | ||
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I'm surprised, I thought the logos stood out:
Spoiler: show Quote:
Quote:
But if one compares, it's pretty consistent - 1. Washizu owned a consulting firm, and was able to personally pocket most of his wealth. Hyoudou owned a conglomerate, perhaps a latter-day zaibatsu, staffed by hundreds and involved in all matter of legitimate and unscrupulous business. The scale of the companies can't be compared, though if we look at ages, Hyoudou would be in his 20's when Washizu was still active in the business world, so it's possible the two could have overlapped or even met one another. 2. Washizu was never portrayed as having billionaire-style wealth. He didn't own a garage full of the same type of car (like Bill Gates), just a single elegant car and a mansion in Tokyo. A mansion in modern-day Tokyo is unimaginable. By comparison, Hyoudou (either through his own wealth or his company) owned a ship, a skyscraper, another building and has a personal mansion all to himself. In terms of land alone, this is way more than Washizu's. I'd like to think that, even though Washizu's wealth by our modern standards isn't really impressive, in an era where a millionare (not multi-millionaire, millionaire) was rare, Washizu's total wealth clocked in at ten million and is still unimaginably rich compared to the average Japanese citizen of the day. Billionaires are pretty common in our time, but most of their wealth is evaluated in terms of financial assets that aren't very liquid (since they're tied to corporate influence, like Bill Gates' shares of Microsoft) so while they can be very flashy, they don't have a ton of free cash. Washizu not only had that money, it wasn't tied to his political influence.
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06-02-2011, 10:30 AM | #143 |
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I'm going to have to disagree with you about Hyoudou not being a "shadow king" with his hand at least partially in government for one very simple reason: the underground fortress. Having seen how expansive that thing is -- not just deep, but wide -- and judging that, if the Espoir arc directly ties into the chinchiron arc in terms of penal colonies, the underground fortress is somewhere off in China (b/c we know the Espoir ones were iirc), Hyoudou would have to have connections in high places. Why? Because no modern-day government is going to just allow a private citizen to build an underground fortress to live in for 50+ years while weathering out the effects of the nuclear apocalypse. A, governments are probably going to want in on that shit. But B, governments are going to have concerns that the project isn't what Hyoudou claims it to be, e.g. he could really be producing an underground testing center for nuclear arms rather than producing an underground Noah's Ark, and they're going to insist on regular inspections and such, telling Hyoudou "if you don't like it then you can GTFO."
Pre-seeing how enormous the underground fortress was, I might have been persuaded by your argument that "he's just some ridiculously wealthy guy but no more involved with the government than is Bill Gates." It's a sound argument. But the underground fortress kind of hampers it. And for me, it not only hampers it but dismantles it completely. Maybe it's not enough to convince you, but me ... I can't imagine any world government today allowing any private citizen today to get away with that sort of project, whether or not he legally owns the land. (Btw, by the same logic that land ownership does not equal airspace ownership, I imagine that land ownership does not equal subterranean ownership past reasonable [i.e. agriculturally and irrigationally relevant] depths.) As for "I thought it stood out ..." dude, give me a break on that top picture. That's desperately grabbing at straws. You were LOOKING for the words there, because so too did I have to just now: and in the episode, that cel is shown for like 0.5 second before it cuts to the next one. C'mon, man! Now your second screencap ... that's a much better example. The buckets are big, in your face, etc. I guess they were just so much in my face that they fell out of my focus. I was intently focused on the subtitle text.
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06-06-2011, 03:57 PM | #144 | |||
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Yesterday, someone lamented on Triad's weblog that:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
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06-06-2011, 04:58 PM | #145 |
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It's exactly as you say. Whenever the makers of a show find out that a particular thing about the show is a hit, they feel this need to do more of it to please them, and it thus becomes overused, unnatural, and loses its impact as a delightful treat.
A prominent example of this was Happy Days with The Fonz. He became such a popular character that he started hogging all the screen time, became the focal point of most episodes, and the network actually considered renaming the show "Fonzie's Happy Days". Erkel from Family Matters, same deal. That's why as much as I love Hosaka from Minami-ke, it would not necessarily be a good move to increase his prominence. That guy never wore out his welcome!
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06-06-2011, 05:26 PM | #146 |
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While it's true this season's zawa zawa's aren't doing much for me, I didn't really take exception to them, either. In the previous seasons the zawa zawa's were like vampire bats that would swarm Kaiji when he was most fudged, but once in a while they turned on the antagonist (Funai, Tonegawa) and it was really awesome.
This season...there wasn't a situation where I felt Kaiji was truly fudged. I mean, comparing the previous seasons, it always seemed like Kaiji was risking death or injury at every turn. The penal colony was reputed to be basically death, and Human Derby was instant death falling from the beam. Kaiji was risking his eardrum and then his life against Tonegawa, and bet his fingers against Hyoudou. But here...Kaiji was still risking money. Even if we take Talon's "inevitable death from tuberculosis" scenario, it's less frightening than the "UNKNOWN" of the penal colony during Espoir, and is a far cry from the death risking scenarios in the other gambles. So, the intense scene for a zawa zawa never really presented itself, so my attention was never drawn to them enough for me to notice something was wrong. Definitely agree that last season's zawa's were much more intense.
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06-07-2011, 10:56 PM | #147 |
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In this episode of Talon Posts on Triad's Blog, I write:
(spoiler boxing this sucker 'cause man is it LONG!) Spoiler: show Let's hope for the best: that LordBrian (a) takes what I've had to say seriously, (b) makes an official announcement in the next few days, and (c) that the announcement is positive. Or at the very least isn't "Yeah, Mcsweeney totally called it. Sorry, guys. We wanted one last broo-hah-hah but it just didn't pan out. *sigh*" Mind you, I think Mcsweeney's 100% correct. But let's hope for the best all the same. In the meantime, here's hoping I wake up tomorrow to discover yet another Underwater-Commie fansub of Kaiji S2. Will be sorely disappointed if they've gone back to their "tee-hee! ;3 You don't need us when you have Nutbladder doing timely subs for you!" shenanigans. Your guys' Kaiji releases are good, c'mo~on. ;_;
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06-08-2011, 06:00 PM | #148 |
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They've dropped some shows in the past, especially recently (Gunslinger Girls season 2, Nanoha StrikerS, Legend of Koizumi), which is why I said they've basically been inactive for years now. They said it was because the shows sucked, but those were probably just excuses for laziness. Well they can't use that excuse this time, it's Kaiji for gods sake! Time to ride off into the sunset for good, I think.
The mystery of what happened to a.f.k.: I've heard two versions of the story. One is that a.f.k. was actually one guy like I said before, who did the whole fansub himself. His legend grew to be so great that he had no choice but to vanish without a trace. The other version is that the other people in a.f.k. were at odds with Strato: he insisted on almost exclusively doing Kyoani shows, and the other guys wanted to do other stuff. They were like, "All right, enough with the moeshit! How's about Darker than Black or Bartender this time?" And Strato was like, "NOOOOOO GOD DAMN IT, LUCKY ☆ STAR ALL DAY!"
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06-08-2011, 09:43 PM | #149 |
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I have a hard time buying either of those theories. Theory 1's problem is that takes Strato from being a god-tier translator (which is already amazing) to being a god-tier individual period. As in, holy shit, how could ONE GUY hold a steady job -and- be that awesome of a translator + typesetter + editor + raw acquirer + yeah. Theory 2's problem is Strato's repertoire: in addition to subbing KyoAni works, he also did Seto no Hanayome iirc and didn't he also do Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei? I could be wrong about one of the two, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about the other: and neither's a KyoAni series. (Seto no Hanayome does admittedly feature a large-breasted lolifaced beauty ŕ la Asahina Mikuru. I guess you could shoehorn in the "he only does lolimoe shit!" argument that way, but it's a bit of a stretch to me. >_>)
I dunno. My theory is an optimistic one: that he got discovered (God bless him, he deserved to be) and is now working as a professional translator in some corporate or government capacity, e.g. aide to a UN ambassador or something. Guy had a definite gift for translating. Would be a shame if he wasn't able to make a mid-to-high paying career out of it with some fun perks attached. Anyway, Episode 10 is out. I got through half of it earlier in the evening before heading out. Will probably resume either later tonight or else some time tomorrow. Spoiler: show
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06-08-2011, 10:18 PM | #150 |
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Spoiler: show And IIRC, a.f.k. was a two person gig. Strato did the TL, the other person handled the subbing/encoding/distro. Strato found time to sub Haruhi because it was fairly easy to handle, and then decided to be a bit more ambitious and try to sub the next popular-in-Japan title SZS, which lead to a burn out for both staff members. The only reason a.f.k. wasn't more prominent was because of SZS.
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