Semantic Nonsense: The End of an Eva

Last week, all four Rebuild of Evangelion movies landed on Amazon Prime for worldwide streaming. This would seem to indicate that Netflix joined Funimation on Hideaki Anno’s shit list. Which is fine by me; people shouldn’t think they can mess with “Fly me to the Moon” and not face consequences.

But before we sink our teeth into it, a public service announcement:

All of old Eva finally on Blu-Ray

GKids Films (I’ve never heard of them, either) is handling new home video releases of Evangelion, specifically the original series and the pre-Rebuild films. This will be the first time any of those get the Blu-Ray treatment outside of Japan.

Preorders for a so-called Ultimate Edition set will be opening at high noon (Central Time) on Thursday, but there’s a lot we still don’t know about it. Including pricing. Which is probably $Texas.

It remains to be seen whether they are simply producing the Netflix version (or the ADV/U.S. Manga Corps version…. unlikely) or having to start from scratch on a new dub. It’s also not known at this time if they will be releasing Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01: Thrice Upon a Time given that Amazon shops out their physical releases. It’s also also not known whether there will be a re-issue of the original Funimation discs or a publishing of the redone Amazon rebuild movies will see the light of day.

Look, just be happy that the original series can get in the Blu-Ray player, Shinji, outside of Japan, OK?

But in light of this, I should probably go into more detail about Amazon’s new dubs and subs for all of Rebuild.

Dubbing around subbing around

So I watched Eva 3.0 + 1.01 twice. Once as soon as I could on opening day, and a second time after having rewatched the first three Rebuild of Evangelion films. And the whole way through, my experience with subtitles was less than satisfactory. They were certainly beneath industry standards of quality for 2001, much less 2021. Even on the fundamentals.

The timing of the subtitles are poorly done and the phrasing of the translation isn’t very natural.

Grunting is often subtitled as [struggles] or [efforts], which I guess would be useful for stage directions to actors, but not so much for the purposes of closed captioning. Though that would be consistent with the notion that the Netflix subtitles were simply a dry translation of the script by order of Studio Khara.

In that same vein, the subtitles are often tagged with the name of the person speaking, but not consistently so. Such tags are oddly absent during the time they would be most useful: When the top and bottom line of the subtitles are spoken by different people. And there are other times when a line is tagged, but with an incorrect name.

In most cases, crosstalk is handled by not handling it. Many lines of NERV operators get [background conversation] subtitles or none at all, even the lines that include information relevant to the understanding of the movie.

All of the dialog that was originally spoken in English blatantly does not match the English subtitles. Sometimes it’s completely different.

The ending songs were subbed in 3.0+1.01, including the third occurrence of “Beautiful World” in the series. However, “Beautiful World” goes unsubbed in Eva 1.11 and 2.22. The two musical interludes in 2.22 likewise went unsubbed.

I will also never be used to spelling Gendo with an “h” at the end.

The quality level overall is better than a Chinese knock-off bought on eBay, but worse than all but the trash-tier fansubs. It is, in a word, embarrassing. It has all the hallmarks of being rushed, being cheap or both.

As for this new dubbing, it’s nothing special. They kept some of the voice actors from the Funimation dub (which, in turn, had several reprising their roles from ADV’s dub of the original series), rather than the all-new Netflix cast. It also invaded redubing all four movies, either due to rights issues with reusing Funimation’s work or because Studio Khara wanted the earlier movies redone their way given what happened with Eva 3.0

I find myself in the same place I’ve been for almost 30 years on the subject; the original actors tend to do a better job conveying emotion, which the local actors apparently directed to always hold back, even when making an anguished scream. Or perhaps not knowing the language plays a factor; in separating the words from the inflection, I can feel a line better than hearing it.

That still doesn’t explain away inconsistencies in directing between the versions, though, even when the line is able to be identical without any adjustments needed for lip flaps or localization. In the original, Mari’s line of “Excusez-moi, Eiffel,” was delivered as an apology for breaking the eponymous tower. In the English dub, it was delivered like an action movie one-liner.

Air/My pure post for you

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of the first half of my Evngelion coverage. Come back next week for something a bit more than a review of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, and as always, more fanservice.

…which is now “special goodies.” Thanks, Studio Khara.