Linking to…other people’s reviews!
I actively seek out reviews of manga that I’ve worked on (although “actively” mostly involves reading MangaBlog every day, which I would do anyway), but I don’t usually link to them. Usually they’re not as relevant to my work as you might think, since very few reviewers mention the translation or adaptation. But there are exceptions, and they’re usually very nice to read.* ^_^
Anyway, this comes up because this week AnimeNewsNetwork reviewed the Genshiken Official Book, and I particularly appreciated the review–not only because Carlo Santos said good things about the readability of the book, but because he really got what fanbooks are for. I’ve worked on several fanbook-type projects now, and quite often reviews boil down to “but it’s just a collection of facts about the characters and interviews and statistics and…”, which is not, in fact, a flaw. It’s the point. Sure, some of them offer a more interesting collection of odds and ends than others, but that’s how it goes.
Here’s the most relevant-to-me passage, since I’m already blogging about it:
As a quasi-reference book that covers all the angles of modern visual culture, this is definitely a translator’s challenge when it comes to Japanese slang and otaku jargon. The American edition is sure to have its share of nitpickers, with word choices like “fanzine” for “doujinshi” (then again, it’s not like “self-published work” rolls any easier off the tongue), or “girly games” for “bishoujo games” (there is a difference between something being “girly” and something having pretty girls in it). But looking at the big picture, this translation does a remarkable job of making almost any style of writing understandable—character summaries, nonfiction articles and short-story dialogue all flow easily.
(As it happens, I read another review a while back which criticized the inconsistency of using both “fanzine” and “doujinshi” in the book. I read the series and worked on the book so long ago that I can’t absolutely swear to this without digging around, which I haven’t done, but I think that’s a holdover from the English version of the actual series using both terms at different times. There’s always a certain amount of “well, I want to do something my way, but internal consistency with the overall series is more important”, at least to my mind. We want to create the illusion that a given body of work is still coming straight from the individual author, rather than being filtered through translators and adapters.)
*Since I’m saying that much, I’ll add that Michelle Smith’s review of Shinobi Life vol. 1 included such a positive comment about my work on the book that I was a bit giddy for days. I’m totally okay with the fact that the English scripts rarely get commented on, because–as I indicated above–I believe that part of our job is to draw as little attention as possible to our existence. But it’s still a good feeling when it happens.
Catching up on a series, and a few reviews
Whenever I get sent a review copy of a manga volume that picks up well into a series I’ve never read, there’s a certain period of debating whether to just read it cold or try to dig up earlier volumes in order to give a more educated review. Sometimes I luck out and my local library has older volumes readily available, which is particularly nice when it’s a series I’d been meaning to check out anyway (Love*Com and Skip Beat! both come to mind).
Sometimes the earlier books aren’t as easy to lay hands on and yet I find myself unwilling to just jump into a series. That’s what happened with Beauty Pop when I got a copy of volume 9–it sat around giving me the evil eye until vol. 10 arrived too, and between them they made me put in the effort to track down the rest of the series. But now I’ve read vol. 1-8, so those two patient books will finally have their day in the next week or so…
Three recent MangaLife reviews:
Captive Hearts vol. 4 (C+)
Otomen vol. 2 (B+)
St. Dragon Girl vol. 2 (C+)
Miscellany and review links
Copies of Phantom Dream vol. 2 have been turning up in the wild, although its release date isn’t until tomorrow. ^_^ And reading reviews of Shinobi Life is still an inordinate amount of fun. The premise really doesn’t sound brilliant, but Conami handles it so well that it’s a very entertaining read. (It’s not just me–the reviews back me up.) So one of the fun things is seeing how other people summarize the story when they’re writing it up.
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A lot of my reviews have gone up on MangaLife in the month since I last updated. Usually the list doesn’t grow quite this fast! It included another “what I’m reading” installment, which involved quick looks at vol. 8 of Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden, vol. 10 of S.A., vol. 3 of Captive Hearts, vol. 10 of Crimson Hero, vol. 12 of Inubaka: Crazy For Dogs, and vol. 10 of La Corda d’Oro.
Regular reviews:
High School Debut vol. 8 (A)
Honey Hunt vol. 1 (B)
Love*Com vol. 11 (B+)
Monkey High! vol. 5 (B)
We Were There vol. 3 (A-)
A Radical Interpretation of the Text 