Bouncing off the walls in gleeful expectation!! Woohoo! This month's Previews has the first Basara and Hana Yori Dango graphic novels listed for Viz!! ^_^ I'm SO glad I waited and didn't buy all the HYD manga in Japanese! Viz is frustratingly slow, but at least I'm going to be able to eventually read all of Basara and Hanadan in English, without sititng in front of a computer screen! So exiting!
Oh, and this weekend I finally had a chance to start on some of my anime "backlog". I finished off the last two episodes on the first Noir disc, and started a bit of Chobits, although I didn't even get through the entire first episode. Somehow the Chobits' opening song doesn't seem to fit my impression of the series; it's too bubbly or something. Maybe it's just because of the "City with No People" or whatever those books are called, but I was expecting the opening theme to be more...pensive, or something, like a slowish ballad with deep, thoughtful lyrics.
Ah, I also watched Spirited Away with some of my friends on Friday. It was pretty interesting because I had watched it the first time in theatres with the dub track, so I was able to pick up on the lack of information in some of the subtitles.
SPOILER AHEAD
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For example, near the end when Chihiro realizes that Haku's real name is the Kohaku River, in the English dub Haku explains that he's a river spirit, but it's never clarified in the English subtitles. Also, in the English dub they added/explicitly stated the idea that the reason Haku couldn't return to his home was because the river had been drained and built over. The fate of the river is mentioned in the subtitles, but that's near the beginning of Chihiro's remembrance of the river, so it's never really tied to Haku's particular situation.
So I guess the English dub is pretty useful for expanding/clarifiying ideas that aren't really explained in the direct translations.
Anyway, it's ridiculously late, and I haven't exactly been getting a lot of sleep recently, so I'm off to bed!
