Rage Gundam… Is Raging
More than 30 years after its initial release in Japan and 12 years after my initial exposure to the original Kidou Senshi Gundam, the United States finally got a release of the original TV series in uncut Japanese with English subtitles. Bandai released it as "Mobile Suit Gundam Complete Collection" (parts 1 & 2), but the "complete" should definitely have either been omitted completely or at least had a footnote indicating that some liberties were taken with regards to the literal definition of this word. The collection is far from complete. Episode 15 of the series, "Kukuruzu Doan no Shima" (Doan Cucuruz's Island), is not included. This causes the total number of episodes to reflect 42 instead of the actual 43 created.
This episode was originally omitted by Bandai USA when it was broadcast on US television and on the English-dub-only DVD release. The episode does not, in all fairness, directly pertain to the overall plot of the series, but does show a bit of character development for Amuro. I was both a little shocked and a bit angry to find it had been left out of a "complete" release of the series in the original Japanese with English subtitles.
Overall, though, I can't fault Bandai too heavily, as the primary story episodes are all there, and the translations are pretty good. The primary exception to this is the opening (Tobe! Gundam), where great liberties were taken with the translations. Adding some words to song translations is a very common practice with Japanese themes as, due to the nature of the language, some words are often omitted and left as understood or implied. A good example of this is the opening to Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, Blue Water, which begins with "ima kimi no me ni ippai mirai" (literally "now, your eyes, great/infinite future" - often seen as "the great future is reflected in your eyes"). With Gundam, however, this was taken a bit further. Certainly sentence fragments were adapted ("kimi o hashire" - literally "you, hurry / run" becomes "you surely must run"), but for some reason the translators also chose to completely change the meaning of words. "Moeagare" is used three times in the song prior to the word "Gundam!", and this is the entire sentence. Rather than go with the literal translation of "Burn³ Gundam!", they instead chose to go with "Rage On!" (three times), hence this article's title :)
So, should someone complain to Bandai? It probably wouldn't do much good, since US corporate executive Iyadomi Ken officially made an announcement in January of this year. The full article can be read here, but the gist is that anything currently in-print will remain available to distributors until the license expires, but nothing new will come out after the February 7, 2012, releases, including compilations or alternate versions (so, for those of you hoping for an "Anime Legends" collection of the first K-ON! series on Blu-Ray are out of luck, but DVD fanatics lucked out as that was the release date set for the complete collection on DVD!). Other titles which will now not see a US release for some time (if ever) are Gosick, Nichijou, and Turn A Gundam, along with other titles owned by Bandai in Japan which have previously been skipped over (such as the sequel & movie for K-ON!; other Gundam series, presumably including Victory, X, and the remastered Wing; and DVD versions of the final episodes of Gundam Unicorn).
Where does that leave the English-speaking anime enthusiast? If you're not incredibly wealthy, it probably means you'll never get to own legitimate copies of some of your favorite series. Aniplex of America has experimented a little bit (successfully, based on the sell-out status of some of the shows) with releasing Japanese BD sets which already contain English subtitles (and occasionally English dubs) in the US with an additional booklet of English translations for the Japanese booklets already included (for examples, see Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners, the two OAVs and movie for Rurouni Kenshin, and the upcoming first half of Fate/Zero). The only problem with this is the price: Fate/Zero will carry a staggering (to US audiences, at least) MSRP of $498.98, making the discounted rate of $369.98 sound a bit more palpable. Sure, it includes the first OST and a drama CD, but it's still only half of the show. Unfortunately, this type of pricing is not uncommon in Japan, and Japanese distributors can apparently make a sufficient profit of the US market by selling far fewer copies at far higher prices (not to mention the cutting out of a "middle man" and additional production of discs & packaging since they're just exporting the Japanese releases to the United States). Of course, $370 is still a lot more than the $20-90 US audiences have gotten used to paying for this much of a show. Gundam Unicorn is another great example, as even though it was marked on websites as a US release (for the BDs), it's just an import of the Japanese discs which included English subtitles already (among a plethora of other languages). The US market just isn't used to seeing a series come out one episode per disc with an MSRP of $59.98 on each one (admittedly, the first one was $10 cheaper), especially when that series is going to run for more than just one or two episodes.
If you want to ignore the translation Bandai gave for Tobe! Gundam and yell "yomigaeru!" at Bandai USA, feel free - unfortunately, I fear it will do about as much good as attempting to use a Phoenix Down on Aerith after the end of disc 1 of FFVII.
This episode was originally omitted by Bandai USA when it was broadcast on US television and on the English-dub-only DVD release. The episode does not, in all fairness, directly pertain to the overall plot of the series, but does show a bit of character development for Amuro. I was both a little shocked and a bit angry to find it had been left out of a "complete" release of the series in the original Japanese with English subtitles.
Overall, though, I can't fault Bandai too heavily, as the primary story episodes are all there, and the translations are pretty good. The primary exception to this is the opening (Tobe! Gundam), where great liberties were taken with the translations. Adding some words to song translations is a very common practice with Japanese themes as, due to the nature of the language, some words are often omitted and left as understood or implied. A good example of this is the opening to Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, Blue Water, which begins with "ima kimi no me ni ippai mirai" (literally "now, your eyes, great/infinite future" - often seen as "the great future is reflected in your eyes"). With Gundam, however, this was taken a bit further. Certainly sentence fragments were adapted ("kimi o hashire" - literally "you, hurry / run" becomes "you surely must run"), but for some reason the translators also chose to completely change the meaning of words. "Moeagare" is used three times in the song prior to the word "Gundam!", and this is the entire sentence. Rather than go with the literal translation of "Burn³ Gundam!", they instead chose to go with "Rage On!" (three times), hence this article's title :)
So, should someone complain to Bandai? It probably wouldn't do much good, since US corporate executive Iyadomi Ken officially made an announcement in January of this year. The full article can be read here, but the gist is that anything currently in-print will remain available to distributors until the license expires, but nothing new will come out after the February 7, 2012, releases, including compilations or alternate versions (so, for those of you hoping for an "Anime Legends" collection of the first K-ON! series on Blu-Ray are out of luck, but DVD fanatics lucked out as that was the release date set for the complete collection on DVD!). Other titles which will now not see a US release for some time (if ever) are Gosick, Nichijou, and Turn A Gundam, along with other titles owned by Bandai in Japan which have previously been skipped over (such as the sequel & movie for K-ON!; other Gundam series, presumably including Victory, X, and the remastered Wing; and DVD versions of the final episodes of Gundam Unicorn).
Where does that leave the English-speaking anime enthusiast? If you're not incredibly wealthy, it probably means you'll never get to own legitimate copies of some of your favorite series. Aniplex of America has experimented a little bit (successfully, based on the sell-out status of some of the shows) with releasing Japanese BD sets which already contain English subtitles (and occasionally English dubs) in the US with an additional booklet of English translations for the Japanese booklets already included (for examples, see Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners, the two OAVs and movie for Rurouni Kenshin, and the upcoming first half of Fate/Zero). The only problem with this is the price: Fate/Zero will carry a staggering (to US audiences, at least) MSRP of $498.98, making the discounted rate of $369.98 sound a bit more palpable. Sure, it includes the first OST and a drama CD, but it's still only half of the show. Unfortunately, this type of pricing is not uncommon in Japan, and Japanese distributors can apparently make a sufficient profit of the US market by selling far fewer copies at far higher prices (not to mention the cutting out of a "middle man" and additional production of discs & packaging since they're just exporting the Japanese releases to the United States). Of course, $370 is still a lot more than the $20-90 US audiences have gotten used to paying for this much of a show. Gundam Unicorn is another great example, as even though it was marked on websites as a US release (for the BDs), it's just an import of the Japanese discs which included English subtitles already (among a plethora of other languages). The US market just isn't used to seeing a series come out one episode per disc with an MSRP of $59.98 on each one (admittedly, the first one was $10 cheaper), especially when that series is going to run for more than just one or two episodes.
If you want to ignore the translation Bandai gave for Tobe! Gundam and yell "yomigaeru!" at Bandai USA, feel free - unfortunately, I fear it will do about as much good as attempting to use a Phoenix Down on Aerith after the end of disc 1 of FFVII.