so, still looking for some general theme advice which doesn't involve syntax or some other literature-restricted devices. Anybody?
Glajummy, I use the Japanese terms for all thing Digimon. So I say "evolution", you say "digivolution". It gets confusing, doesn't it.
you think that's confusing? Try getting into the whole "Perfect/Ultimate/Mega" thing? Or how about Anomalocarimon's name change (if only Bandai of America knew there'd be a true Scorpiomon years later)? Though really, and I may just be saying this seeing as I tend to favor the original versions of things, it's for the best that fans get accustomed to the Japanese Digimon names. Aside from not being too hard to memorize (most of them use English words anyway), or even to research in the first place (whole online encyclopedias featuring them are in abundance... and unlike Pokemon, where people like myself are a rarity and can only hope the forums we visit are generous enough to provide a name list to stop complaints, the majority of the online Digimon fandom seems to use the original names without a second thought), Bandai of America is just too damn inconsistent with names for their own good (Saban/Disney might also be to blame, assuming Bandai didn't look over the anime dub).
BTW, I've been meaning to bring up this up earlier: in that NaNo sample you provided, Destiny Stones were called "Holy Stones" in the original.
Ahh...I wouldn't know about the evolutions since I'm still at early season one. I only got myself into actually watching the show about a week ago since our national dub traumatized me deeply (I think its horror is best explained by the simple fact that it's a dubbed version of the American dub. That's right: the crappy dub of a crappy dub.) and just totally killed my interest in the show until I watched my first fansubbed anime and realized just how huge that difference is. YouTube's war on fansubs isn't exactly helping matters either; it's so hard to find subbed episodes and veoh is drawing a blank too. >_< So yeah, I'm still in the stage of enjoying the characters while waiting for the plot to start making sense. xD
I'm a big fan of the original myself... it particularly disappoints me how Saban ditched the music, because that soundtrack's pretty damn good (actually, I still hold it to be among the best I've seen in anime... though, this may be bias speaking, as Digimon Tamers was the very first anime I've watched wholly in Japanese, and much like you, Alter Ego, I too was in awe over the difference in music from Saban's dub of the first two seasons... similarly, I felt the same way when I saw Sailor Moon S's English dub prior to that). However, after the whole fiasco with 4kids (which finally seems to be dieing now that they've lost Pokemon and blew their chances with One Piece), I've gained newfound respect for the Digimon dub (as well as DiC's Sailor Moon and various other previously "bad" dubs.... except Nelvana. Cardcaptors is arguably near as bad as One Piece). Seriously, looking back, the Digimon dub approaches a level of quality, both as an English adaption and a stand-alone show, that you'd never dream of 4kids accomplishing.
A good majority of the dialog's changed and they punched up jokes constantly (especially earlier on), and a few names were changed almost needlessly... but on the plus-side, they actually acknowledge that the characters are Japanese, and make almost no attempts to cover up Japanese writing as a result (and if they do, it's usually for the purpose of actually translating something important rather than leaving background material blank, like Vademon's signs, or some of those e-mails in 02... though, I think the characters read them out loud, which kinda offsets that, unfortunately). A few snips were made to tone down the violence, yet a good bit of it was also left intact (the shot of Beelzemon stabbing right through Leomon, anyone?), and they even acknowledged death several times. Finally, while I tend to despise music changes in general, 4kids has taught me that such an act can at least be tolerable (or at least a lot more-so than what they did). In Saban's case, the stuff was actually orchestrated, and fit the situations somewhat. My only complaint now, aside from the first two seasons sounding too much like the soundtrack to that mid-90s Spider-Man cartoon (sheesh Saban, recycling your music much?), is that the stuff friggin' pales in comparison to the original music (except for Savers.... while a select few catchy pieces will be missed in the current dub, I've never been too big on Savers's soundtrack... speaking of Savers, I'd like to point out that they're now using the original sound effects in that series. Finally, dub-viewers can experience all of those cliche, yet nifty, anime effects in Digimon ^^). The voices were decent as well (though quite a few seemed out-of-character from the Japanese version), featuring a ton of big-name actors in dubbing (including Steven Blume... and NOT using the Spike voice at that), as well as some actual variety (IOW they don't use the same 10- actors for a billion roles)... though, I guess the English voices would probably be irrelevant to someone who watched a foreign version. ^^'
So, yeah... their dub could've been better, but considering it's a made-for-TV dub centered towards kids/tweens, it's pretty decent overall, especially for the time period it was first released (their merging of the first three movies sucked balls, though... I'll make no attempt to defend that trash). Would be nice if they'd released the subs on DVD... sadly, Digimon doesn't seem to be getting so much as a dub-only DVD release (hell, practically every show that's been dubbed by Saban/Disney seems to be lacking DVDs... a bit of a shame, because with all the 80s/early 90s nostalgia going around, a Samurai Pizza Cats collection would no-doubt sell).
Oh, Alter Ego, I hope that you're not talking about the Finnish dub of Digimon. That was scary, especially Takeru's 01 voice. The lack of emotions...!
Alter Ego said the dub was based off the American dub (much like how everyone except some Asian countries had to dub off of 4kids's version of Pokemon, and probably TAJ's version as well). I'm familiar with the Finnish clips you speak of, and they used the original music (and possibly the original script... I don't know crap about European languages outside of English, but I tend to make this assumption with some foreign Digimon dubs because they keep silence when there's supposed to be silence, as opposed to making jokes constantly when the characters are off-screen... that, and usually the presence of the aforementioned original music alone is a good indication of faithfulness to the source material), so it couldn't be that one.
