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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/12/19 in all areas

  1. As I proud myself with my poor life choices, I'm flirting with the idea of getting into this wonderful, overcrowded and grossly underpaid niche known as editing and I was wondering whether the wise people around here, such as @Decay or @Fred the Barber could recommend any sources to learn about common tools and skills associated with said craft (preferably free, but reasonably cheap ones, like audiobooks or online courses, are also within my interests). If I ever go for it, I'd probably start with offering my services for free to some small-time EVN devs, to gain some experience (you don't need any unpaid workers in your projects @Zander? ), but it's still not something I'd like to go into blind. I obviously have experience with editing journalistic and academic work, but hardly in truly professional capacity. Any and all suggestions will be appreciated. PS And, of course, if anyone is willing to share their experiences on what editing work for VNs looks like in practice, it'll also be highly appreciated.
    1 point
  2. I'm currently waiting for a few weeks to pass by, in order to throw the rule of three episodes in the general direction of several anime. Fire Force looks promising, and I actually watched the first episode dubbed because why not. It was really well done, honestly, except for the voice of the MC as a kid and his mom. I had read some of the manga beforehand, and I know its from the author of Soul Eater, so this adaptation has a bit of a VIP pass. Dr. Stone is in a similar situation, which is probably good. Because the initial episodes past the first are going to be (most probably) fairly boring, as they were in the manga before its author made a critical turn and saved it. So I'll wait a few weeks and then rush it. Apart from this... I'm full of doubts. Dumbbell nan kill moteru could either be dumb fun or a gross whorefest of cheap fan service. While I'm a huge fan of the fit anime girls and back muscles, as we all are since Kabaneri, anime are too often prone towards the cheap products. Let's see... I won't watch Danmachi, since everything I've seen from it (both the manga and anime) were just terribly bland. Vinland comes so well-recommended that I'll definitely have to check it out. There are a few ultra-trash isekais: Arifureta, Isekai Cheat, Maou-sama, Tsuujou... The first I know from the manga, so I'll save myself the horror of attempting to cut my own veins from the edge and embarrassment I feel from this show, and the others just sound like really bad, run of the mill isekais. Maybe I'm doing myself a disfavour by pilling them all together but, at this point, it's just so difficult to grant them an honest chance when it feels they are not even trying to make something interesting or good. I don't bemoan the isekai trend, but it truly is a sub-genre that tends to offer the worst of the worst (god I'm salty). Uchi no Ko no Tame Naraba is one anime I'll also watch due to knowing it from the manga. Simple, dumb cuteness overload. @Mr Poltroon This is what you need to waaaaaatch. Dunno, might give a chance to Kanata no Astra. Aaaaaand, guess I'm glad Diamond no Ace II is still ongoing, and I still have all of Kimetsu no Yaiba to watch. However, JoJo Part 5 has almost ended, which has me super down. PD: Just found out that not only there is no JoJo this week, but the final two episodes will air together in 2 weeks.
    1 point
  3. No one ever made any in-depth guides on editing visual novels. It's so niche that even those who have some decent skills editing them didn't have time/will to write up any in-depth guides. However, that's not to say there aren't any. You can find some old editing... I'd like to call them "tips"... on this very forum. You can find these in Darbury's blog and Fred's blog. Not sure who else had them, but there's probably a couple of more that I may have forgotten. Other than that, you may want to look into what I like to call "generic editing guides", not specifically aimed at editing Japanese media. There's a couple of books on this matter that you can find easily on Google. Look for tips on good writing and such. That said, the most important editing guide that nobody can really offer you is... to be a creative writer. Actually, most editors aren't creative. You may get away with being a "shit editor" in this scene, but if you really want to become a good one, you need to practice a lot of writing and having a general idea at what good prose sounds like. And to achieve this... you need to read a lot. Preferably works with stellar writing (up to the point of real literature). But if you want to be just another editor, then that's easy. Anyone can join this scene as an editor, based on what I observed. Even as a pro. Yes, the barrier is that low. I guess you just need to know English well enough, and they'll hire you. Another thing you may want to look up for is feedback. Edit something and then ask people around (both pro and amateur) what do they think of it. If they are any helpful, they'll let you know where you screwed up or where they think you can improve, etc. etc. Just collect all these tips for a while, and you'll get the "editing guide for VNs" that you are looking for. For example, sometimes you'll get feedback from TLers themselves on what they think is a good editor. Like, this one for example, written by Quof. The only real way to learn editing is to practice it and ask for feedback. I don't really know any other way. Not like anyone has ever written a very detailed guide on editing for VNs. So you just gotta make do with what's available.
    1 point
  4. Not to sound too discouraging, but I don't think non-native English speakers should be editors. Non-native English speakers who become known as writers of English are such a rarity that everyone will give you the exact same two examples when the topic comes up (Nabokov and Conrad). It's very, very hard to make up for all those formative years missing out on constant immersion in a language. Now, all that warning delivered, regarding how to learn... - Every line editor I know has said that what they do, they do based pretty much purely on instinct. However, instincts can obviously be honed. Most of what I've learned about line editing in the last couple years, I've learned from people critiquing my work (mostly QAs on projects; I've been fortunate to be blessed with a lot of good QAs over the years). Giving and receiving feedback is always a sensitive thing, though, so people offering critique have to be careful about how they approach it, and people receiving it have to do their damnedest to try to take it constructively. Sometimes there are failures on one or both sides of that equation, but don't let that turn you off the process; it's the most important thing to constantly improving. - Beyond that, still on line editing, I think I've just read a few random internet articles over the past few years which helped give me things to think about and to process (e.g., "conciseness", "precision", etc.). I have a blog on this site (here) where I've tried to write up some things in that vein myself, but take my opinions with a grain of salt (in the first place, they're old and from when I was still fairly inexperienced; and in the second place, I'm still not all that experienced or that high up on the totem pole anyway). - Copy editing, on the other hand, is a much more technical process with a lot more black-and-white issues, more rules to remember, and so forth. Lately I've been reading Dreyer's English, which is an approachable and entertaining general survey sort of book on the topic which I would recommend. Depending on how serious you are, you could also look into getting a big fat style book. - And above all else, read constantly: read authors writing in their native tongue (not translations), and especially read good writers. Read across various genres. Read poetry. Let me say that again and italicize it, because it's important: read poetry. If you find some you like, memorize it; memorizing a few pages of poetry is not nearly so hard as it sounds, and it's extremely good for your writing brain. To the last question: in my experience, editing work for VNs involves clicking through rows in a spreadsheet or a tool, fussing with wording constantly, occasionally rewriting things wholesale, and rarely checking the original line to see why the thing written in the translation box doesn't make sense to me (not an option if you are working on an OELVN, I suppose, but I assure you, it will still happen...). It's like very, very slowly playing a VN where the writing has a tendency to make you groan.
    1 point
  5. Clephas

    Dead Days

    On request and because I am a Kurashiki fan, I decided to play this, despite worries about the concept and the characters... and I came out finding my worries perfectly justified. First, the protagonist Teru... in a standard chuunige, he would be the jackass that gets killed after begging for his life in the opening act after doing something totally scumbag-like. Worse, rather than being merely a cold-blooded manipulator (which is how the Getchu page presented him), he is actually an irritable kid who thinks he is a lot smarter than he is. Second, the heroines... first, the punk-like Aira who overdoes her makeup and generally speaks like an airhead but has definite anger issues. Second is Asami, another man's wife who is generally weak-spirited and only clings to her second life out of a desire not to lose what she has left (her husband and child). Third is Mao, the protagonist's osananajimi who has a strong sense of justice, is pretty naive in general, and tends to get on the protagonist's nerves constantly (this gets worse after he dies and gets resurrected). Mao is the true heroine of the game... and also the single most annoying character in the game, even setting aside the protagonist's issues with her. To be blunt, she is yet another Victim A heroine presented as the true heroine of a serious game with violence... Third, the writing... I wanted to cry at how low-quality the writing in this game is compared to Kurashiki's previous two Clock-up games. Both Okami and Maggot showed off his skills in full, and as a result, they have a cult fanbase even amongst those who don't like the sexual themes involved in the latter or the social ones in the former. The basic narrative quality is scaled down to the level of the protagonist, which is hugely disappointing. Last, though this is more of a universal complaint for all Clock-up games... too much meaningless h-scenes. I hate Clock-up's visual style for H-scenes (there aren't any torture rape scenes in this one, outside of the bad endings which I didn't watch), and the presence of loli content made me vomit... twice. Seriously, was that really necessary? The good points of this VN lie solely in the individual heroine paths, because the common route is just poorly handled and paced. The heroine paths, on the other hand, are slightly stronger, though only Mao's has a decent epilogue (even by VN standards). Overall, this game felt like a really inept attempt at psychological horror. Considering how good a job Kurashiki has done previously at this kind of thing, it startled me how huge the gap in quality was between this and his previous works... both for Light and Clock-up. Even Sora no Baroque was better, and that is saying a lot.
    1 point
  6. Judging by your second paragraph, I'd say it is a fairly faithful adaptation. The story, be it the original or any of its adaptations, IS fairly unimaginative, and the author gets stuck, not to say becomes obsessed, with the idea of the suffering martyr, to the point the MC gets a bit of development early on, and then absolutely nothing for practically forever. What I personally found funny is that, very early on, tons of people realise that he's not the scumbag they're told he is, and he gets tons of support and the undying loyalty of his slaves allies, but every single conflict is basically him going into a rage because "the world is unfair and everyone hates meeeeeeeeee". It's the kind of cheap drama that really gets the blood pumping when you're a teen. To be fair, the original concept is pretty good. It's just that the author is incapable of doing anything that's not edgy af with the MC, or to have him grow past his first steps into "herohood". It probably doesn't help that the show tries its darnest to make the other heroes so uncharismatic and dumb, to the point that it's difficult to care about them both as potential enemies or allies.
    1 point
  7. Yeah definitely check out Subahibi, it was genuinely terrifying at times. I can also recommend G senjou no maou, not as horrific as Subahibi and a different atmosphere as well, but it's really dark and may be to your liking.
    1 point
  8. Well, my basic stance is that it's impossible to have a perfect adaptation, but you can have a good one depending on what's adapted and how. Light Novels, as "light" as they are, are "novels" in the end. And what most of novels are made from? Narration. And you can't get narration across in anime. Depending on the novel and the author, narration is far more important than others. For example, narration is pretty important in Hyakuren with all the explanations. If you know Infinite Dendrogram, this novel has some amazingly well written info dumps in narration making the story so amazing, and everything will be lost in the anime adaptation coming up in a few months. Still, the novel having really good action scenes, anime will be liked, just that people won't know anything about its awesome world building you can only see in the narration. Take another well known example about narration with SAO. People say Kirito is some emotioneless shit, but in fact, LN being 1st POV you see that Kirito isn't as emotioneless as people say. Also, being mostly action (and having a not rushed adaptation to add to that) made it the popular anime it became. (they still skipped content though, like in the second part in Alfheim Online) Another one, let's take Konosuba. Most of Konosuba's comedy is in the dialogues and situations so it ended well. But Konosuba, like SAO, is a 1st POV narration, and having Scumzuma's (lol) thoughts is awesome, and impossible to reproduce in anime. So yeah, once you remove the narration, you lose a great deal from the original in the first place. Then you also have rushed adaptations that remove even more things by skipping content. (for example, Hyakuren adapts 7/8 volumes in 12 episodes with anime original ending. 7/8 freaking volumes in ONLY 12 episodes. Shows you how rushed that was) So yeah, in the end I would say that the best animes adaptating LNs are comedic ones, and action packed ones. Of course others can be good if the anime isn't rushed and carefully done, but in the end you'll always lose all the informations contened in the narration. It's not something new anyway, just looking at novels and movies (for example Harry Potter, skipping contents in the 4th or its horrendous 6th movie) shows you that. Just that in LN to anime cases, it's worse because they don't get as much care and are mostly just made to promote the series. That and, while there are many LNs I love, I do agree that there are many shitty trash LNs too, and it doesn't help to have them adapted to anime too. Hmm... I'm not a great writter when it comes to get what I think across, so I hope you understood what I mean. ^^'
    1 point
  9. For Hyakuren: That's what happens when something is adapted badly and rushed. If you ever have the chance, try the LN. I won't say the LN is amazing with stellar characters, but most of the stuff people hold against it in the anime aren't present in the LN. (like you clearly see the author made his researches and all with everything explained carefully, answering most of the complaints people have against the anime) For Danmachi: I agree the first 5 volumes are rather average. But after that it gets better and better, and more mature to accompany Bell's growth. Also, his Argonaut skill isn't "you'll always win if you really want to", but the ability to charge his force in one attack. It's kinda OP, but really, from what I heard from people reading Sword Oratoria (I don't) many people have far stronger skills than that.
    1 point
  10. Yume Miru Kusuri tbh, if there's anything I learned from it is that footjobs can cure your depression
    1 point
  11. Since you ask for something with a good story, i will focus on that. If you already have seen steins;gates anime, maybe you can enjoy is sequel, as steins;gate 0. They have anime too, but is really bad, anyway if you dont have seen the first one, you can enjoy the both titles. https://vndb.org/v2002 https://vndb.org/v17102 They have a really good story, with drama, sci fi and mystery. Without +18 content and only focus in the story+drama. In other way, this is one of the lasted VN i played, Rance VI Collapse of Zeth. I know, i know... Rance is bestial +18 title with h-scenes in every stage and full of rape. But if speak about the story... well, rance VI is one of the best story i eved played and i really enjoyed the time i played this title. https://vndb.org/v2047 To finish, but not for that, less important... i can present you... Utawarerumono saga! This is one of the best sagas i played in my life, really good, with a amaising story and drama/sci fi content. With a bit of adventure and rpg gameplay style. (like disgaea) The saga has 3 games, the first one is for PC, but the others can be played in psvita or ps3/4. (Only the first game have h scenes ) https://vndb.org/v3 https://vndb.org/v7721 https://vndb.org/v18717
    1 point
  12. Well, announcements are announced, so let's see how they look... The order in which they appear more or less reflects my interest in them. Excited: Interested: Indifferent: Won't Play: Now, let's do a counter for each publisher to see who had the most interesting stuff for me. So yeah, this was a good round of announcements! Good thing I'm part of the casual pleb audience that actually makes these publishers some monies. If you didn't like this convention then... sucks to be you!
    1 point
  13. i guess you should tell them it's kirikiriz... a naughty looking one, probably a custom encryption in a tpm
    1 point
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