Mese: giugno 2019

Komoto Jun’ichi’s Shichi-Henge

23 giugno 2019

・Streaming / Download on MEGA: Koumoto Jun’ichi’s Shichi-Henge
・Streaming on VK: Koumoto Jun’ichi’s Shichi-Henge

Alright guys, here we are again.
First of all, and most important thing, make sure to have read this post, it’s important and it will explain how some things about this Gaki No Tsukai translation project are going to change.
Just few more words about it before getting to notes & infos on today’s episode.
Lots of you didn’t exactly grasp the meaning of this change: it’s not because I’m sick of videos getting removed or I’m mad about upvotes or such, those were just examples of trivia stuff which, overall, doesn’t make subbing as good as one could wish. But I like working on Gaki episodes regardless of such things.
The main issue is that while I’ve been more free to do whatever the hell I wanted, I won’t anymore. I have IRL plans, I’m about to move to Japan for God only knows how much, and stuff like that. So of course I won’t be able to keep up the pace. I’d still like to translate Gaki, but my free time will be very limited. And spending my free time on typesetting… uh-uh, not in my plans. But if we’re talking about already typesetted episodes… that might change things a little bit. You can read more about this on the previously linked post and on the updated suggestion/typeset page.
Now, back to today’s episode. I personally love Shichi-Henge as you know, it’s one of the first Gaki series I ever watched and one of the first I ever subbed (Tanaka’s, like a million years ago – also my oldest videos links are still down, I’m going to fix this eventually). Today is about Jicho-kacho’s Jun’ichi Koumoto, which you already probably saw on several other Gaki no Tsukai episodes, like Hamada’s Cram School, for example.
Why did I choose this as my “last” typesetted & subbed episode? (ps: “last” because in the future I might typeset more stuff, who knows. It’s last for now)
Because it’s short, fun and deserves to be subbed: we’re talking about the legendary Shichi-Henge episode which got Komoto on this series’ podium, after all.
I wrote too much, I’ll leave you some notes about this episode and some final greetings after them. Please enjoy this episode!

Notes:
– The first transformation is a parody of the rakugoka Katsura Kobunshi. They also refer to Umeda Kagetsu, which I already wrote a note about for this episode, and lastly to another senior rakugoka, Katsura Bunchin. The reason for why they look shocked is because he’s a major rakugoka artist. They even call him “shisho” (lit.: “master”) to show respect. I translated “shisho” as “teach” or “teacher”, hope it doesn’t sound weird.
– His third transformation is a parody of the manga “GeGeGe No Kitaro“. I wanted to leave the word “youkai” as “youkai” in the translation, but decided to translate it as “spirit” so it’s overall easy to get.
– About the GeGeGe no Kitaro part, here’s an additional note pointed out by reddit user josh06025 (note credits to him): 7:14 Matsumoto said “Komoto’s face was [Mizuki Shigeru face].” What Komoto imitate there was the Glasses man who often appears in manga of Mizuki Shigeru. That’s why Matsumoto lost himself when he saw Komoto. Komoto nailed it.
– During his fourth transformation, Komoto is dressed up as a woman who goes by the name of “Jun” (from Jun’ichi, his actual name). They all laugh in the end because he mistakenly says “ore”, a pronoun only used by males in japanese.
– Wikipedia entry (in japanese) for Rai Rai Ken, quoted during his fifth transformation.
– 15:15 – I don’t know what’s the correct translation for those two lines, as it’s impossible to find online whether Katsura has a son / daughter or not. I can hear him saying “naze, kodomo ga chissai mon de” (lit. “that’s cause (the? my? his?) kids are small”), but I don’t know what he’s talking about. If you happen to know the correct context / translation, please let me know.
– The song he keeps on playing during his final transformation is part of a Gottsu Ee Kanji skit. I actually subbed this clip when promoting this new Shichi-Henge episode on my FB page, you can watch it subbed here on youtube (further notes about it on the video’s description):

Alright then, everything’s set.
There won’t be new fully typesetted + translated episode (by me) for a long time, as I already said. I’m going to Japan soon and I simply won’t have time to do it.
But please, feel free to send me any PM, e-mail or whatever about episodes typeset: I’d be glad to work on translations (that alone won’t be too much of a burden) on my few spare time, as long as you’re ok with long waits and possible delays / rejects (so be sure to talk about what you’d like to typeset for me to sub with me before you actually start doing it).
I hope we’ll be able to bring more content not only to this wordpress, but to the entire Gaki no Tsukai community as well. The reason for why I decided to study japanese and for why I’m about to go there for a while it’s mostly because of this show, it’s been really important to me.
And I hope thanks to my Gaki subs and every other Gaki sub done by all the other great translators / teams now and in the previous years (Team Gaki, TofuPanda, GodzillaRadio, Conjyak, DTR subs, Zurui, FreshUdon…), you’ll earn something, whether it’s a passion for japanese culture / language, an interest for J-comedy, or simply a good laugh which sometimes can be the best medicine for life’s hardships.
And that’s what we subbers aim for. Donations, upvotes, likes or anything like that aren’t our main goal (which doesn’t mean we don’t care about or appreciate em, though). It’s mainly about having a good laugh, and wanting everyone else to experience it too. And I hope we’ll keep on sharing few good laughs in the future too.
With that being said, we’ll catch up again with new content, sooner or later. Who knows? This wordpress won’t close and I won’t give up on it. As I said before, it’s just a big change of pace, not a farewell.
We’ll definitely catch up again, I promise.

Thanks for all your support, hope you’ll enjoy this episode / every other episode I’ve translated / every other episode other translators and groups have worked on.

ラブラブ,

– Shion

Info:
episode #753, aired 2005/04/17

The Future of Shionの使い [06/04/2019 UPDATE]

4 giugno 2019

⚠ Important! I know it’s long, but if you care about my subbing activity, make sure to read this post, please. ⚠

Shion no Tsukai – as its stupidly narcisistic name suggests – was born as no more than a small archive for few subbed clips of my favorite japanese tv show I decided to work on while learning japanese – pretty much like a training. And I hope that’s enough to justify how crappy my first subs were (that probably explain why I didn’t bother reuploading old stuff, which is still online, uploaded by unknown third parts).
As time passed, I started getting better at it and making more subs. As a result, my website started to grow: people were talking about it on r/GakiNoTsukai, Team Gaki and Tofupanda knew about it and let me join them, and it even appears on Google’s search bar by now! I mean, that alone is kind of incredible to me.
But of course, the road this website has been walking on has never been the smoothest. There have been several different reasons for why I often thought about setting aside this Gaki no Tsukai fansub project of mine.
Like, so many reasons I could even put them in few categories:
– Technical difficulties (accounts being deleted / videos being removed / FPS and encoding issues / constant need to keep track of everything / lack of organization…)
– Personal issues (creating subs takes time / self-imposed-deadlines / personal matters / delays / schedule issues…)
– Personal butthurt (not receiving as much feedback as wished)
And I gotta say, the last one is the worst of them. I’m not joking around when I say I care about all of this and wish to translate Gaki no Tsukai so people would enjoy it (‘cause other subbers did the same before I could speak japanese), but it’s almost unavoidable to feel like you deserve more when you’re promoting yourself on the internet. And it’s fucking stupid.
Not some long ago, I remember posting a full lenght Gaki episode on reddit which only got like 60 upvotes, while a Gaki no Tsukai meme had like 300 upvotes. I thought like “I’ve been working on this fucking episode for weeks and that guy probably just opened paint and did that thing in like 20 seconds, and this is what I’m getting. It’s unfair.”… or shit like that. Again, it’s really fucking stupid, but I can’t deny I felt this way more than once.
I mean, it (probably?) does make sense, but do I really need to get this butthurt for such stupid reasons? What will some upvotes ever change in my life? How can this digital “popularity” actually make me feel better in real life? It doesn’t, in fact. All it takes for you to realize it is just taking few steps away from your pc.
It’s not about becoming popular, and it’s never been. This is a big reason for why I can’t keep on focusing so much on translating Gaki and expecting so much. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. I need to move on with my life and head towards something more concrete and less abstract than this.
…And my life is actually about to change, somehow.
Starting from July, I’ll leave my country for [undefined timespan], and I’ll go study and work in Japan. So of course I can’t keep on creating subs for my website as regularly as I’ve been doing over the past few months. But hold on, this doesn’t mean I’m done with Gaki no Tsukai. Let me try to explain what’s going to happen soon.

First of all, I think I still have some time to share with you one last 100% Shion-no-tsukai produced Gaki no Tsukai subbed episode (or at least some j-comedy subbed clips), which will probably be online before the end of June. But after that, things will change.
I won’t have time to create new subtitles or to stick to self-imposed schedules, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be any chance for new content.
There could be new content, but that depends on your help.
As you may already know, the process of creating subtitles is composed of several steps, the first one being typesetting (aka: creating lines on assigned timestamps).
That’s the process which takes most of my time when creating subtitles anew, and it’s completely unrelated to translation itself (which is easier and way quicker to me).
I won’t have time to typeset and focus on any subtitles-related activity which is not purely translation. But you can help this activity by typesetting a Gaki episode yourself!
You can read more about it on the suggestion/typeset, but here’s how it’s going to be like:
1) If you want to typeset a yet-untranslated Gaki no Tsukai episode and – hopefully – see it subbed, you can write a comment on the “Typesetting” page or send me an email to this adress with a link to the RAW episode.
2) We’ll discuss the episode and see if it’s feasable (some possible issues: low audio quality, extremely specific context, part of a series which is currently being translated by someone else, part of a series of which previous episodes hasn’t been translated yet…); if so, you’re in charge of typesetting the whole episode.
3) Typesetting doesn’t need to be flashy: you won’t have to add any complicated animation or font styles or anything like that. You don’t even have to worry about few mistakes or things you’re not sure about (ex: who’s talking?): I’ll fix all the small issues myself. Your name as typesetter will be literally everywhere: on the encoded video as on-screen subtitles (at the beginning and ending of the episode), on the video’s description / post, on every platform on which I’ll post the episode (facebook / twitter / reddit / etc…).
4) It’s not a job – just like my whole activity isn’t – so there won’t be any payment. If you have a patreon / ko-fi, though, it will be published too along with mine when everything’s done: donations are, of course, up to viewers, just like I always got mine.
If I could work on already typesetted episodes, I think it will be way less stressful to me and the whole activity will be more focused on releasing new episodes for everyone to see.
And this way, even if I’d be far away or submerged with work or study, I think I can still manage to find some time to translate some more Gaki no Tsukai stuff for everyone to see.
In short: you help me, I help you. If we both feel like it, of course.
All of this doesn’t mean I’ll keep on translating regularly / I’ll choose to work on every possible typeset request I’m provided, but it’s the best I can do for now and it’s the only way I can keep on subbing videos, even if not as regularly as it has been until now.
I hope you understand this, and I hope everything I wrote in my sloppy-ass english is clear enough. If it’s not and if you have any question, feel free to comment this post or send me a PM on my facebook page, or twitter, or e-mail, anywhere is fine (links are on the right column of this website’s homepage).
I hope I didn’t let you down, and I hope you’ll keep on supporting this activity.
Some things will inevitably change, but nothing is really lost.

Sincerely yours,
– Shion

PS: Also, I’m currently looking for someone with a vk / dailymotion / whatever streaming website account to re-upload all my missing episodes deleted from my old vimeo account (those marked as “sorry – this video does not exist”), if you feel like helping me out just let me know! – Special thanks to M. Vooremäe for creating Shionの使い’s vk community!