FLCL

[ryanitenebrae]

When you're in a town covered in smoke, you forget there's a world outside.  Nothing amazing happens.  Everything is ordinary.  Every day feel as if you're being smothered to death.  But there's Haruko.  And she reminds me that there's a world outside.*

I have no idea what happened.**

But it was awesome.

I'm not sure I can say anything else on the

Comments

[ethelflaed]

The choice of when to sing vs. when not to sing might have something to do with whether or not the actresses they cast can sing.

Or they might have thought some songs worked better than others.

If you have the ADV version, there might be commentary about that. (I don't know. ^^;)

Edit: here we go.
In supporting roles little difference exists in tone, casting, or performance quality between the dubs, which both suffer from minor flaws; the Japanese cast thoroughly mangles the pronunciations of some English names, but the English cast balances that out with weaker singing in two songs. (English VA Melissa Davis, aka Kate, even reads one song as poetry instead of singing it.)

(From the ANN review.)

[ryanitenebrae]

^^; I guess it depends on preference. "Rozu," "Cureru," and "Racheru" don't bother me at all, but the random poetry dialog . . .thing was just kind of bizarre. But, yeah, that does make sense to me. If the actress couldn't sing, then eliminating the song is a much better choice than, I don't know, making her sing anyway. ^^;

Also, that character, Kate? Her character design is essentially Robin Sena with shorter hair. I've been finding that amusing.

[ethelflaed]

Though the best choice is, of course, casting an actress that can sing.

Sort of surprising, though, since almost all of the ADV actors are good singers.

[ryanitenebrae]

I watched three more episodes last night, and. . .my problem is really with Kate's voice actor in general. She's sort of flat. Otherwise, the dub's pretty good, but suffers from not being able to hold a candle to the amazing voice acting of the original. I do keep rewinding and switching to dub in order to hear JC speak. He's a male supporting character (May or may not be the biggest male character at this point, every lead is female) and. . .voiced by Chris Patton. ^_^

I didn't listen to the second song in English, but if disc two doesn't have any songs, I will, because it was an ensemble and I want to hear what Karbowski's voice sounds like. (I haven't heard her "What if God Was One of Us," and I'm not sure I want to, but I do want to hear her sing as Rose.)

[unitomega]

Protip, never miss two of the six episodes, or else you will have even less understanding than what they give you. Also, if your mind is not blown while watching FLCL, you weren't paying attention. If you want to understand FLCL, watch it from beginning to end. The desire will pass. It doesn't make sense even after you've seen it like five times (Like I have. Sure you understand the "plot" easily enough, but the sensefinding is not happening.)

BTW, I really like the WMG that the entire show is basically meaningless symbolism, and has no deeper meaning, no serious connotations and no true purpose. It's all a great big mind-screw for you to try and find some sort of hidden truth in it, but you can't, because there isn't.

[ryanitenebrae]

Well . . .FLCL does make sense, it's just that you have to stick to the plot itself when sensefinding, and not ask things like, "Why were those thirty seconds in South Park style? Why are we in manga format now? Why is Haruko behaving in this way?" Because that's really not the point, and you need to just accept that those things are happening, sit back, and enjoy.

[happy_myaow]

I love FLCL. It's great.

...Yeah, that's about all I can say on the subject too.

I've been kind of interested in Red Garden for a little while, mostly because of the whole "doubles as a musical" thing. I'd been wondering how the dub handled that, but eck. ADV has always been "the company that dubs songs", I wonder why they did that?

(Funimation is the new "company that dubs songs", though. ADV, your thunder is stolen!)

[ryanitenebrae]

As far as I know, it's just that one song, and I guess it's because that actress can't really sing. Either way, I mean, the original acting's so amazing, one would probably want to stick to the Japanese, at least in my opinion.

Red Garden is actually surprising, because it's really, really quiet and sort of sedate, and because it spends more time on the girls, their emotions, and how what has happened affects them then it does on the supernatural plot.

Also because at one point there is a close-up of a Wicked poster, and at least one Seinfeld reference.