The result is Wish Upon the Pleiades (放課後のプレアデス, or Hōkago no Pleiades). One would assume, being sponsored by a car manufacturer, that said show would be about driving. Y’know, like Initial D or something. But no, that just wouldn’t cut it! Yes, Magical Girls are back in fashion this season, so what better way to promote your range of automobiles than with a cute, colourful cartoon that has nothing to do with cars?

Perhaps I’m jumping the gun here. It’s more representative of the Subaru brand than the Subaru product line; the word Subaru, as well as being the name of the main character, is the Japanese word for the Pleiades star cluster – hence the name of the show – and the girls do get to ride around on some magic wands that make engine noises… Yeah. It’s probably better if you just watch it first. And, thanks to a wonderful lack of region locking, you can! Right now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmR3cqgoldU

They even provided English subtitles! That was nice of them. Not that you need them to tell what’s going on: A girl stumbles upon a secret room in her school, meets a boy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMvrukJrrDU

In the second part, she stumbles upon another secret room in her school, discovers a secret extra-curricular club that one of her friends is in, joins said club, becomes a Magical Girl…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpUi8XMeqrE

It covers a surprisingly decent amount of character and story development for just one episode. Some shows’d take months to get this far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BU2ayif4cs

So that’s Pleiades. I enjoyed it! It’s cute, it’s charming, it tells a nice story, it’s brevitic, the soundtrack is nice… The ending kinda reminded me of Black★Rock Shooter in the way that the title character defeated the bad guy with the Power of Friendship, but it’s a nice ending nonetheless. (I also detected some hints of Nanatsuiro Drops and the works of Makoto Shinkai in there, but they’re not that noticeable.) I’m not sure how well it works as an advert for Subaru, but it did give me that primal urge to purchase Pleiades-related merchandise. I guess that we can call it a success!

Your move, Honda. Put that power of dreams to use and sponsor a cartoon of your own! ㋼

It’s said that of the 70% of planet Earth covered in ocean, mankind has only explored a small fraction; it’s practically an alien world down there. Indeed, when video game developer Tomihiro Nishikado created the iconic aliens of Space Invaders, he drew inspiration from author H.G. Wells and designed them based on marine life such as octopus and squid.

It cannot be a coincidence that Squid Girl, too, is an invader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzBQsnNhfYg

In Squid Girl (Shinryaku! Ika Musume), the invader comes not from space, but from the bottom of the sea (as the subtitle, “The Invader Comes From The Bottom Of The Sea!”, emphatically declares). A self-proclaimed ‘messenger of the sea’, Squid Girl comes ashore with determined ambition to conquer the surface world, punishing the human race for polluting her home.

Any underlying ecological themes are, however, promptly brushed aside; as it turns out, Squid Girl is no better at subduing humanity than Invader Zim was. Despite her special squid abilities (bioluminescence, a personal armada of tentacles and a seemingly never-ending supply of squid-related puns), she only gets as far as a beachside café before she, herself, is subdued by the kitchen staff; a demonstration of her squidly powers only results in her being forced to work there to pay for their newly tentacle-damaged wall.

Having presumably lived as an ocean-dwelling squid her entire life, Squid Girl harbours a childlike naïveté when it comes to land matters; many episodes feature Squid Girl discovering a new, exciting aspect of human culture, getting to grips with it and factoring it into her plans of conquest, often with hilarious consequences. But as the series goes on, Squid Girl makes many human friends & acquaintances and discovers that there’s much more to the surface world than she anticipated…

Broadcast last Autumn, Squid Girl is one of Japan’s latest animated series to make a splash online, inspiring many fan tributes. And it’s not hard to see why; the title character’s counterpoint of cute innocence and overzealous would-be dictatorship stirs up appeal in all facets of the Japanese – and international – fandom. But it’s more than just a simple cute-’em-up; Squid Girl’s interactions with the colourful cast of characters (including a scientist who’s convinced that Squid Girl is a space invader; a young boy who becomes her playmate; even her own personal fangirl) provide some great scenes, and there’s even the odd moment of melancholy: the final act of episode five, in particular, is a beautiful dialogue-free short subject guaranteed to leave you in tears.

At just twelve episodes, Squid Girl doesn’t require a huge time investment, and earns a hearty recommendation from me. With its cute, clean character designs and universal appeal, Squid Girl is a charming comedy with real laughs and real heart. Squidalah! ㋼

An English-subtitled version of Squid Girl can be watched for free on Crunchyroll.

The image that you see above has been my desktop wallpaper for four months now. It is also the primary reason that I have been highly anticipating this particular show. Milky Holmes, a franchise that has so far spanned the media of card game, UMD, plastic figurine, wrist towel and audio CD alongside desktop wallpaper, is now receiving its inevitable anime adap. And, like much of today’s animated fare from Japan, it’s getting an English-language release much sooner than one would have expected in the past.

See, piracy is an ever-existant problem. Television series are posted online within hours – or even minutes – of their broadcast, and, with the rise of easy-to-use subtitling tools and the fall of translation quality standards, an episode of a popular Japanese television series could be ripped from its home, slapped with a quick-’n'-nasty subtitle track and hoist, kicking and screaming, out to thousands of BitTorrent leechers. The English-language anime distribution industry, recognising this problem, decided to counter these “fansubs” by lowering themselves to their level; with permission of the Japanese publishers, anime episodes are released to the masses as they are broadcast in Japan, with a slap-dash translation that at least bears the privilege of being legitimately funded. To the end user, the benefit of not having to wait the 10-18 months for the traditional home video release is apparently worth sacrificing almost all other benefits.

This New & Exciting™ distribution method is known as simulcasting, which, as you may infer, is all about simultaneous broadcasting. Usually, the term refers to the transmission of the same programme on more than one television channel at once, such as an international sporting event or some other live broadcast along those lines. As anime simulcasting relies on pre-subtitled, pre-encoded files streamed from a server (as a couple of premature leaks have revealed), it’s not strictly simulcasting in the literal sense, but that’s what everyone calls it for some reason. Perhaps the most popular service of its kind is Crunchyroll, a once illegitimate anime-on-demand website that has since changed its tune and now makes an honest profit out of giving fans the newest – and, therefore, best – anime series that they can get their hands on.

I've already amassed a fair pile of Milky Holmes-related rubbish.

With all of the promotion that Milky Holmes has been receiving, a Crunchyroll simulcast was inevitable. I was perplexed that they announced it only one day before its premiere, though, when they really should’ve coincided their announcement with Hyper Japan 2010, a recent London event dedicated to Japanese culture featuring a prominent presence by Bushiroad, the driving force behind the Milky Holmes franchise, who brought along the four lead voice actresses as well as a few boxes of merchandise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DSY3ElFCGM

During the Q&A at the presentation, one audience member asked the panel what Milky Holmes was actually about. The brevitic response from the translator: “They are all detectives.” Aside from the characters being named after famous detectives and possessing a variety of obligatory superhuman abilities (called TOYS – I assume that the T stands for “telekinetic” and the other letters also stand for words), mystery-solving would appear to be the sole premise. Coupled with the fact that the show is currently only available online, this’d be the sort of production that I’d usually skip. But I’d been looking forward to this one; I wanted to at least give it the benefit of the doubt. So, although Crunchyroll’s subscription-only episodes become free-to-view after a week or so, I decided to give their free trial a try and experience the first episode of Tantei Opera Milky Holmes in glorious subtitled H.264.

Being a simulcast, I wasn’t expecting a particularly good translation, but alarm bells started to ring when I checked the announcement and found that they had referred to main character Sherlock (or “シャロ” for short, which I read as Shirley) as “Sheryl”. This is to be expected from a hastily-transcribed press release, but, remember, this is simulcasting that we’re dealing with; this apparent mistake was, indeed, present in the show’s subtitles. Aside from a couple of other questionable decisions (TOYS is now lowercase & plural, some of the names are given in Japanese order for seemingly no reason), the subtitles are cheerfully adequate. The awkward phrasing and timing issues are certainly not something that I’d expect from a home video release, though.

The episode itself begins with the title characters locked in combat with the bad guys, a standard issue four-strong group of “Gentlemen Thieves” who, we can assume, will serve as the sole antagonists throughout the series. As the evildoers make their escape, there is an explosion and, in the confusion, the Milky Holmes girls realise that they have lost their TOYS for seemingly no reason. We’re then treated to a sample of what their life is like a month later; being students at the prestigious Holmes Detective Academy, losing their abilities has also lost them their powers of deduction and their high social standing within the school. What’s more, the bad guys from earlier are now stationed at the academy, posing as students and/or members of staff, whose nefarious goal is apparently to drive the girls out of the school and generally make them miserable. Still, despite their accommodation being downgraded to a wood cabin at the hands of the villain’s leader/student council president, they appeared to be in reasonably high spirits as the episode came to a close.

With my expectations as high as they were, disappointment was guaranteed. But from the first episode alone, which was practically nothing but exposition, it’s hard to gauge an opinion. The animation was passable, I suppose. The art style didn’t make me want to kill myself. And I’ve got to give it credit for actually succeeding at being cute, unlike the attempts of other popular franchises. I think that the thing that annoyed me the most was that this preview clip (which appears to represent the PSP game) featured a lovely little activation jingle when their TOYS are enabled, but in the show they just made a generic “ka-shing” sound. Maybe they’re saving it for when they inevitably get their powers back. I dunno. Seeing as they didn’t actually solve any mysteries in this first episode, I’ll be suspending further opinion until later on in the series.

Signing up for Crunchyroll, by the way, was relatively painless, although I had to give them credit card information in order to begin the free trial (which, I’m told, I can cancel at any time). It does automatically sign you up for their e-mail newsletter, so watch out for that. My main issue with Crunchyroll is not so much that it’s also a social network, but that there appears to be no way to disable social features like comments on the video page. I don’t need to join yet another social network and I don’t want other people’s opinions showing up whenever I’m watching something. If I wanted commentary, I’d go to Twitter. I did, however, think that it was nice – if a little tacky – that they have an achievement system.

My very first Crunchyroll achievement. Emotions overflowing.

I’m not going to continue my subscription after the free trial’s up. Crunchyroll still doesn’t have many shows that I care about; I prefer watching my anime on the ol’ CRT; I am morally against simulcasting; they put their shows up for free anyway. But for the time being, at least, I’ll be sticking with Milky Holmes. It’s cute.

And so are these exclusive Milky Homes statuettes, individually bundled with the upcoming home video release of the series. I must have them. Even if they do end up costing me another £250. ㋼

Last Thursday’s film class involved watching some stock footage compilation called something like Poyahniskwazzi. It was depressingly boring. If this is pure cinema, I’d rather wallow in the mud of the latest Hollywood action flick.

Thankfully, this bout of anti-tainment was followed by a visit to my local anime society, whose antics are usually enough to keep me amused for the rest of the week. Our weekly showings go something like this: Attendees are allowed to bring in anime episodes. The congregation then votes on what they would like to watch, and the four or five shows with the most votes get shown – barring any (annoyingly common) technical difficulties. Hardware aside, one particular flaw in this system was demonstrated to me during the most recent showing: There’s no quality control. People are free to bring any anime in any format, regardless of whether it’s a 5-year-old fansub¹ or a poorly-mastered DVD Video (although DVDs are generally discouraged at the society due to the aforementioned technical issues). Last week, when the first episode of the frighteningly popular anime series K-ON! was voted in, us anime society denizens were treated to this:

That's "Just not to join any club will turn into a home dweller?" for those of you with images switched off.

Yep. Awkwardly phrased English, low video quality, annoying subtitle typesetting – they didn’t even include the title theme or ending credits!²

Comic Sans MS is the much-loathed font used in this fansub. Much media attention has surrounded the Ban Comic Sans movement in recent weeks; the abundance of the typeface and its usage in unsuitable situations are the points of contention that they seek to put a stop to. What would you think if you went to an up-class restaurant and discovered that the menu was written in the very same cartoon font used on banner ads and office circulars? Thought so.

Comic Sans may be a discredited font, but that’s not the worst of this particular fansub’s problems. See for yourself in these undoctored screencaps:

"Stop the nonsense!" "Once we've become professional, the ticket profit share will 3/7 split, OK?"

"We have to keep her stay by all means!"

o(`ω'*)o

There will always be bad translations. And, if a series is popular enough and some other bright young translators make the effort, there’ll be good translations out there as well. It’s up to you, the consumer, now: DO THE RESEARCH. Don’t just grab the first file you see on Tokyo Toshokan. Download only from accredited fansub sites like AnimeSuki. Make use of fansub comparison websites. Download and compare several different versions yourself if you have to. Just, please, don’t subject us to any more of these failsubs. Yes, that’s right. I said failsubs. ㋼

1. A fansub is a film or TV show subtitled into a different language by fans of the series. The quality tends to be a lot more hit-or-miss than professional translations, and there are different translation and presentation styles that can cause one series to be fansubbed by different parties.
2. The opening theme (OP) and ending theme (ED) are more prominent in anime than their equivalents in foreign TV shows. They usually run for at least a minute and feature a catchy, mass-marketable song that may or may not be directly related to the show itself. In the case of K-ON!, the OP and ED music CD singles went straight to the top of the Japanese charts – quite a rarity for an animated TV series.

This is big, guys. gímik {sic}, the three-kin anime powerhouse behind such series as Kiddy Grade and Uta∽Kata, are working on a new show. For real, it seems. It’s a spinoff of the aforementioned Kiddy Grade franchise, and it is to be entitled “Kiddy Girl-and”. I kid thee not (pun not intended). Much thanks to my Twitter followers who alerted me of this, and to the Anime News Network for discovering it in the first place. Man, this gives me a great idea for a blog post: a gímik retrospective. Just as soon as I’ve finished watching Gigantic Formula. And, come to think of it, Kiddy Grade itself. I’d better make preparations for a marathon showing…

EDIT: Shiroi Hane, to whom I give credit for promoting gímik awareness across the English-speaking world, has mentioned us on his blog. Wow… *sniff* I’m so moved. Has this blog hit the big time already?