"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

GX Finalized-Subs!75 - Translation Note

(Had this in my drafts to post up over a week ago, but things coming up and all, lol.)

So, in 75, there’s a scene after Sugoroku goes missing and Judai and co split up to find him where we pan over to the mountains Mizuchi is based in, and she’s chanting something that leads to the Monarch barrier around Domino Town that Air Hummingbird clues Judai into shortly after.

When I originally handled the ep years ago, I forget where I’d read it–a Janime summary or a forum post at the time, possibly–but it had seemed to be old Chinese, so I included this in the episode:

(Something I like to avoid with my subs unless I have to, like I thought I did here, lol.)

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GX Finalized-Subs!76 (WIP)

Working on a fix to this error with the red orb on Kenzan’s Disk not being lit up as Shou worries about his summoning Element Saurus; the first is the original frame (the orb being drawn as unlit happens over three zoom-out frames of Kenzan’s movement, held for three frames each [so nine total–what I did is I just edited the third zoomed-out frames then re-zoomed them]), second image is my edit (done by just screen-layering a lit-up red layer around the orb [color-dropped from the third image]), and the third image [unedited] is his Disk as it appears once it’s lit up properly.

But really just sharing this because

Shou’s face lol

[Also, just an update: both episodes 75 and 76′s scripts are fully revised; just doing a couple quick-ish fixes for errors I picked up on as I worked on 76, then I’ll quality-check ‘em. Should probably be ready this weekend, if not sooner; depends how much I do on this week off from work, lol.]

Little thing I noticed while editing in the translated Domino guidebooks that Shou and Kenzan have early in GX 75:

These two frames are from two different scenes–the first is as Ed first approaches the group and Misawa asks him about Saiou, while the second is Misawa noticing the others up and left him behind [poor guy]–and while it’s a recycled shot, you’ll notice that everyone’s in the same spot on both frames; the only difference is that the background was shifted a little in the second shot. Maybe to differentiate it a little as a recycled shot, but hard to tell, lol.

Did make it easier for me to slip my edit into the second shot, though–all it took was first masking the ground behind Kenzan from after he’s invisible and then layering my edit on top of it. This makes it so as I fiddled with the transparency/opacity of the edit to blend it in as he blinks in and out of the frame, it was “fading” into the background, versus “fading” into the Japanese shot and having the Japanese text on the guidebooks slip through.

Altogether, I’ll be editing it into eight different scenes, and with this one, I’ve done the first two; should knock out the others, and probably the handful of card errors I picked up on during the Tag Duel, this weekend~

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 73 and 74 Subbed (Finalized)

(Previously: Episodes 71 and 72 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

73: Kenzan VS Saiou! It’s Dinosaur DNA, Don

To see the “unwavering power” he had foreseen for himself, Saiou visits the Academia and challenges Kenzan to a duel. The cards in Saiou’s Tarot deck cause fate to alternate through their upright and reversed positions. Kenzan faces him with his Dinosaur deck, and for a moment it looked as though he was in the lead, but Saiou seemed to foresee even that. As he cleverly uses the upright and reversed effects of his Strength, the symbol of this “unwavering power,” Saiou drives Kenzan into a corner.

74: Treeborn Frog! Living Toad! Death Frog!

To decide the destination of the upcoming field trip, Judai duels Rose, a fair lady representing Saiou whose deck is a Frog deck. She opens by accumulating T.A.D.P.O.L.E.s in her Cemetery to summon three Death Frogs (ATK/1900), using her Death Chorus Magic Card to wipe out Judai’s Monsters for a direct attack–one that inflicts a massive amount of damage. She then fuses all three to summon her Three-Death Frog. But Judai thinks something is off about Rose and her obsession with frogs…

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Ding, finalized!73 and 74 are done!

This next double-release is good, 73 is a bit of an infamous Kenzan ep as we find out about his *deep breath* DIIINO~~saur~~ DNA, but we also have Saiou making moves to make sure there aren’t any hitches to his plans, as he makes it to Duel Academia to see what this “unwavering power” is that he foretold through his Tarot. We also have a nice callback to the Drawiches from Season 1 (and Ed just drawing the Golden Eggwich like it’s nothing), in a few scenes that the dub for some reason decided not to include, and we see some more of Saiou’s interesting deck and how it ties into his idea of fate.

74′s also neat as it introduces the field trip we’ll be going on the next few episodes (BYOBento), and we’re introduced to Princess Rose, with her Frog deck and the nods to the Frog Prince fairy tale–also showing that Saiou seems to have connections to some big people in the world (coming in handy later). She also works to tie in Judai’s Spirit-seeing abilities (and we get this good scene), while also establishing that Manjoume so far still has his despite joining the Society of Light. It’s also a Kyoung Soo Lee-team episode in terms of animation direction, and it looks gorgeous–this is around the point his episodes start to look really good, and there are a lot of really nice shots. (Though I may be noticing that much more because of the DVDRip quality of the video ~~remember when it was so hard to get 74 in good quality~~)

In terms of animation fixes and stuff, both episodes got a fair amount of them that I picked up on, from little quality-of-life stuff to card fixes and bigger animation error fixes that came out nicely, along with an onscreen translation teasing what I’ll be doing in 75. Details below the cut, as usual, along with a few Translation Notes for some things that came up.

Enjoy, folks! With these done, we’re off to Domino Town for the next couple releases! (Oh, and I opted to work with “Domino Town” for the name, since “Domino City” struck me as a bit of a mistranslation of 童実野町 (Domino-cho)–I went through my logic here.) The next double-release will be with 75 and 76 as Shou and Kenzan’s bonding the last while comes full circle in a Tag Duel (as we revisit Mizuchi’s first appearance too), then I’ll likely try to knock out 77-79 together so that I don’t end the release after on a cliffhanger, lol. Stay tuned!

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GX Finalized-Subs!74 Preview: The Spirit of It All
[73′s Preview]

(Quick little preview since it’s taken a bit long to get 73 and 74 finished up; both episodes are all done and uploaded, just have to post ‘em up tomorrow! But did want to show this scene off just because I liked how Judai makes a pure case for Rose seeing her Prince “Spirits,” and also seeing that Manjoume still has his Spirit senses [I know in 82 after his duel with Misawa is when he seems to lose that power, so I’m curious to revisit that].

Also, the art throughout this episode is great–it’s a Kyoung Soo Lee animation team episode–but love those side shots of Judai. Think this is around the point where their art-directed episodes start to look really good, too [the last one before this was 69 and 63 before that].)

GX Finalized-Subs!73 Preview: A Strength Encountered
[74′s Preview]

(Quick little preview since it’s taken a bit long to get 73 and 74 finished up; currently over halfway into 74′s script now, and both should be done by mid-week, hopefully~)

Wanna highlight that Taiki Matsuno, Manjoume’s Seiyuu…

…just cameo’d in the newest Digimon Ghost Game episode as MoriShellmon lol

GX Finalized-Subs!75 (WIP) - Field Trip Sights

Just finished working on the animation fixes I picked up on for 73 and 74, so as I’m working on 74′s preview for 75, I wanted to take a crack at translating these guidebooks Shou and Kenzan carry in a few scenes early in the episode, since one of the clips comes up in the preview (as they and Judai come up on Sugoroku’s Game Shop). Thought I’d start here as it’s the clearest shot of them and then I’ll retroactively add it into the other shots they show up in.

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Final title I’m using for episode 74 in my finalized subs–I remember reading that this title’s layout is a callback to another anime, but the name escapes me now, lol.

The three lines are referencing the cards that Princess Rose uses, but the puns aren’t quite as easy to get across in English while trying to stick close to the Japanese card names as I like to–that’s why I opted for the TCG’s “Treeborn Frog” over “Reborn Frog” like I did before, since the “tree” and “reborn” pun is there (though the kanji in its name make it a pun on “underworld” (yomi) and “to be reborn” (yomigaeru) while “gaeru” is a reference to the Frog archetype).

Ikikaeru (punning off イキカエル “ikikaeru”/”to restore to life”) is the one Magic Card she uses to summon a Tadpole in her Cemetery, which the TCG/Crunchy name “Frog Resurrection,” but 1) it has “kaeru” and not “gaeru” in its name so it’s not part of the Frog archetype but the supporting “Toad” one, and 2) it stands out not being named “x frog/toad,” lol. I had “Living Frog” before but went with “Living Toad” given the Toad archetype thing.

Death Frog is just referencing her Death/Des Frog, so that’s easy.

And so, you get this title that’s a bit of a life cycle thing, haha.

GX Finalized-Subs!73 (WIP) - Diskcoveries

Getting work started on 73 and spotted this animation error where… for some reason they forgot to draw the Zone parts on Saiou’s Disk, lol. That part is admittedly in view for only a few frames, as it’s at the start of the upward-panning shot where he orders The Chariot to attack Kenzan’s Dark Tyranno (about 11m42s into the A_U DVDrip). I’ve fixed some Disk errors before–the one with Taizan’s in episode 17 comes to mind–so I figured this should be a bit in my wheelhouse. And… actually wasn’t that tough to pull off, lol.

There unfortunately wasn’t another shot in the episode with either Saiou or Kenzan holding their Disks in that position, so I went back to other episodes by this animation team (it’s a Chi Man Park-team episode) and then eventually just looked for similarly positioned Disks in other episodes regardless, stumbling onto one of Orgene/Ojin in 84:

So what I did in Photoshop was, I spliced out the two halves of this Disk and repositioned them to fit next to the middle orb on Saiou’s, erasing the background and rotating/slightly resizing as needed. After that, I had to draw on the rest of the fourth Monster Zone and M/T Zone that were offscreen, applying an outline to the Zone and then to that part of the Disk itself. Finally, in a layer I made Screen-blended, I painted over the middle of the Disk using the bright red of the orb, spreading it a bit over both Zones 2 and 3 and then erasing the middle (since the orb’s already there); I then did a big Gaussian Blur to make the light fade over those two Zones–that way, the brightness from the orb on Saiou’s Disk extends a little before fading.

Hopefully this looks good as a start–I think it came out well, though I may look it over and maybe tweak the left side, tweak the coloring to match a little better, or extend the orb light glow. Or maybe it might work for the quick couple of frames it’s visible in. 🤔 Then I just have to add Saiou’s two face-down cards in Zones 2 and 3 and The Chariot in Monster Zone 4.

(EDIT: Update!)

GX Finalized-Subs!71: Oh, 4Kids… (Food Edition)

Having just finished this episode up, wanted to briefly compare to the dub to see if anything was cut, and this exchange just… oof. Up to this point, I already re-heard (it’s been a while since I’d seen this stretch of episodes dubbed) the odd angle they went with framing the setup to the duel being a “date with Alexis at the planetarium” (when originally they were literally just randomly approached as they minded their business lol) which replaced the “sneeze superstition” and hypothetical flirty girl scenario from Shou, Judai’s worrying about Asuka/Manjoume/all the weird White guys turning into worry about just Alexis and then lack of dating experience…, Tyranno made to forget that Syrus used Cyber Summon Blaster against him (since Kenzan naturally recognizes it), and Jaden just having Burstinatrix use her attack on Tetran when Judai made a point to say it’s to take out one of its shield (I just really like the way they went about the BES cards’s shields thing like a game lol)–along with errors like Bastion saying Lorenzo can’t [Normal-]Summon due to Boss Rush… no longer being on the field (Boss Rush kept him from doing it, which is why he wanted MST/Cyclone lol)–but this was… groan

So, after the bit about saving the best aces for last from Judai/Jaden (which was kept; don’t mind me keeping in the Italian accent a bit),

Lorenzo: “Hey, I don’t need yer advice! No offense, kid, but I’ve met cannolis that are tougha dan you!”
Jaden: “Cannolis?! That’s not cool–now, you got me hungry! Now, how about we end this and get some lunch! In fact, I’ve got just the card to do it–so, good thing it’s my turn now!”
Lorenzo: *shocked gasp*

~~it’s funny because food~~

It’s more of Ryusei’s character there showing, playing into Judai’s belief that no card is worth calling a runt which works well to demonstrate why his comparing shooter games to dueling doesn’t work, and given Ryusei’s revelation earlier that he’s just in the cult to become a pro, it’s a good insight from Judai that Ryusei’s being a duplicitous “runt.” Which all gets replaced so we get the “let’s end this and lunch” line that hilariously doesn’t match Jaden’s face there, and Lorenzo also somehow being shocked that it’s Jaden’s turn, lol.

Judai’s thing is he’s more happy-go-lucky, but he also picks up on a lot and can offer some points of insight in moments like this (so much so that his using “profound” earlier catches everyone off guard, except Kenzan). Jaden’s written to be happy-go-lucky too, but it’s played up more, and while some of those insightful moments are kept well enough (like his heroic “save the best for last” thing here), we get things like this which feel like a real change in character and adds to the feeling that the dub can be a totally different show. Which on its own, sure, can be enjoyable–but coming in as someone who wants to see the original treated well because it’s so good, it just comes across as unneeded to me. (and he sounds like abridged!Goku here lol)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 71 and 72 Subbed (Finalized)

(Previously: Episodes 69 and 70 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

VS the Game Champ! The Giant Battleship Tetran Takes Off

Ryusei Gin, a champion at shooter games, is sent as an assassin by the white Society*. Judai and Gin go on to battle using a dueling system akin to space battleships. Gin’s “Giant Battleship Tetran” gains three shields, making it fairly indestructible, and his “Boss Rush” Permanent Magic allows him to summon Giant Battleships like his Crystal Core and Big Core back-to-back. Judai uses his mole-like “Gran Mole” to create a wormhole in the vacuum of space, but…

(*The summaries I’m translating from refer to the Society of Light as 白の結社 [shiro no kessha/white society] vs 光の結社 as intended; likely its earlier name, though since Manjoume already namedropped the Society of Light back in 67, not sure why it’s still here for now, lol.)

Destroy the Deck Destruction

The Pro Duelist known as X is sent in as an assassin by the white Society and duels Judai. X’s strategy focuses on deck destruction, and that unique tactic makes it difficult to defeat him when first encountered. Falling into that tactic’s trap, Judai’s put into a pinch as many of his cards are sent to his Cemetery. And while it briefly seemed that he would break through using his Glow Moss, X is able to avoid it. Before long, it even causes the trust he shares with his deck’s Monsters to sway…

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Happy new year, everyone! Here’s to 2022 bringing us all the growth and life development we want to see for ourselves, and of course to more card game shenanigans in this franchise. 🎉

To usher in the new year, I’ve got our next finalized double release here with GX 71 and 72, which aren’t quite New Year’s-themed, but they still kinda work, haha. 71 treats us to Ryusei Gin, the first of a couple of assassins Saiou will be sending to Judai to test his potential as a threat to him, and it makes for a unique episode; Ryusei being a shooter game champion (Crunchy decided to go with “shoot ‘em ups”, which also works) and incorporating that into his deck/style with the Giant Battleship/BES cards, along with the references to older Konami influential shooters like Gradius–some of which I had to brush up on as I translated a bio sheet on Ryusei!–while he and Judai duel in the Academia’s planetarium makes for an interesting setting, and I love how they worked with the BES cards’ stipulation that they lose a shield in battle by having Judai’s Heroes take one out as they go down.

72 gives us the first use of deck destruction in GX, as Pro Duelist X backs Judai into a corner and actually seems somewhat menacing with the history Ed gives us about him never losing his first duel with someone. Judai’s big strategy of exploiting Glow Moss’s ~~anime-only~~ send-two-away effect using Elixirer, then Fusion Undone/De-Fusion, then Flash Fusion (which I named so and not Instant Fusion/インスタントフュージョン as Judai names it for later consistency, as it’s called 瞬間融合 [shunkan yuugou] in its next appearance when used by Ryou in 95 [kind of a mess that the other Instant Fusion being released before this one gave it a different OCG name lol]) was interesting, and also works as a light callback to Yugi’s duel vs Strings and Osiris (since X’s own cards made Glow Moss indestructible), which is also neat given upcoming events. The dub gets a point for naming X “Howard ‘X’ Miller,” giving the milling card game term a nod, but then I don’t get why they opted to make him Sartorius’s lawyer vs a Pro Duelist (since Saiou’s connection to him that way as a manager makes sense) and Jaden was fooled into signing a thing and not coming to duel out of some worry for Manjoume… but that’s a rambling for a different post, lol.

Animation-fix-wise, worked on a fair amount of them; 71 mainly had card fixes, but also got some quick quality-of-watching ones, while 72 had more of the latter but also one or two card fixes. And as I noted above, Asuka’s file on Ryusei was translated for the hardsub, but I’ll type it out when posting the softsub on NAC for the curious. List below the cut, as usual!

Enjoy, folks! These are now up on NAC; I’ll start prepping for the next double release covering 73 (DINO DNA) and 74 (FROG PRINCES); stay tuned!

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GX Finalized-Subs!72: X Mills the Deck

GX Finalized-Subs!72

One of my favorite lines to sub, now in finalized form haha

(Also, I’ve finished up finalized!71 and 72 and should have ‘em up later today to belatedly ring in the new year~)

GX Finalized-Subs!71 (WIP) - To Confirm Fate… [ft newly-White Asuka]

Mainly posting this scene as a teaser while I prep my finalized subs because

while we really should have had an extra scene or two of Momoe and Junko (and Ayukawa) lamenting that Asuka’s been roped into the Society of Light, it’s nice they included the three here watching her.

(Also more on how I translated that file on Ryusei here)