The Story of the DragonBall Z Script Book!
I've decided that I need to take the time and start documenting some items of my DB collection. With every item, there's of course some sort of back story behind it. And I just know that as time goes on, these stories may not be as readily available when I want them some day.
So, years and years ago (sometime around 2000), I set out to collect all of the DragonBall daizenshuu, and while doing so, something fell into my lap by complete happenstance. I had won an auction for the remaining daizenshuu I was missing, four in total I believe. When the package arrived, I was shocked to see the seller had included two books not listed in the auction; a Macross video game guide book and a DragonBall Z script book. I'm not quite sure why, but who am I to complain, right? Either the seller accidentally included these items on accident (lucky me) or they just wanted to get rid of them. So, anyone want a Macross book?
At the time I had never seen a script book before, and at first I didn't really know what it was. After closer inspection, it was pretty obvious. The books themselves are set up like a typical episode, with the first few pages listing the staff credits and lyrics to the opening and ending themes. The most interesting thing is that the specific animation staff for that episode are all blank (animation supervisor, episode director, key animation, etc). Following that it lists the characters, although all the voice actor names for each character are left blank. Of course, following all that is the actual script itself. Not only does it provide the dialogue, but it tells the voice actor what's going to happen; i.e. when the title card will appear, commercial break, and change of location. The best parts are the acting notes, describing what's happening and the mood of the scene. At one point it notes that Kame-sennin is doing something lewd toward Bulma, who slaps him.
My script book was for episode 251, which aired on 21 December 1994. The neat part is the difference in titles. The script book shows an episode title different from that used for the actual episode.
Script Book Title
フュージョン完成！超戦士 その名はゴテンクス！
Fusion Perfected! The Super Warrior - His Name is GotenksActual Episode Title
合体超人誕生！！その名はゴテンクス
The Birth of a Superhuman Warrior!! His Name is Gotenks
Of course, it notes that it is just a preliminary title. But nevertheless, it's neat to see what the original draft title of the episode was, and what it could have been.
The big question that I don't have an answer to is, where did this originally come from? Could someone simply buy them from Toei, or did someone go dumpster diving for these? There's no price, date, or publishing information listed anywhere in the book. So if anyone knows, feel free to let me know. I know there are original draft script books, where the script is actually hand written by the scenario writer, and then final script books, like the one shown above, where the final script has been typed.
So there you have it, the story of the DragonBall Z script book! At some point, I'll probably have to make a feature on Kanzentai going over the script books for each series.
Lost in Translation: Naoyoshi, or Tadayoshi?
As many of you know, I'm a huge sucker for translating credits, especially from DragonBall and One Piece. However, every once in a while there's a name that's more often than not translated improperly, and of course those bother me. I will admit that I like to think that it's more the fault of the Japanese language than the translator himself. That's because Japanese names are generally written in kanji, and said kanji may have more than one common pronunciation. However, only one of which is actually correct for any given individual. This can make the pronunciation and romanization of Japanese names very difficult considering you'll almost never see a name written with furigana, which indicate the proper pronunciation of kanji.
Anyway, there's one animator's name in particular that's been bugging me lately, especially since he's such a prominent influence on both of my beloved animated series. I'm talking about veteran animator Yamamuro Tadayoshi (山室直儀). His name is most often translated as Yamamuro Naoyoshi, and rarely as Yamamuro Tadayoshi. Now before it sounds like I'm just criticizing everyone else on the internet, I myself have been making this mistake on Kanzentai for years. Unfortunately, it hasn't been until recently that I've really started correcting this mistake.
Before I dive into much else, let's break down his name, piece by piece. Yamamuro (山室) is his family name, and Tadayoshi (直儀), or Naoyoshi, is his given name. Yamamuro is a fairly common Japanese family name, and there's really no confusion as to whether or not it's the proper romanization. It is comprised of the kanji for "mountain" (山; yama) and "room" (室; muro). Tadayoshi on the other hand isn't used very often, and can be somewhat confusing. It is comprised of the kanji for "honesty" (直; nao) and "ceremony" (儀; gi). However, according to Jim Breen's Translator, when the two kanji are combined their readings change to "Tadayoshi". But since the first kanji is typically read as nao, many translators simply leave it as-is in the name as "Naoyoshi".
A lot of times when this sort of confusion comes up we have to wait for something official, like a guide book, that reveals the proper furigana for the name. Unfortunately in this case, we have examples of both. In 2003, the official DragonBall Z TV anime guide, Son Goku Densetsu, reprinted his design for Janenba, along with his name. In this case, the furigana above his name is as follows: やまむろ なおよし (Yamamuro Naoyoshi).
Later, in 2010, an interview with Yamamuro was printed in the DragonBall artbook, The Golden Warrior. In the interview his name is actually written twice; once in English, and once in Japanese (kanji with furigana). In this case, the furigana above his name is as follows: やまむろ ただよし (Yamamuro Tadayoshi).
So which one is the correct pronunciation? Well, based on everything noted above, I'd say it's definitely "Yamamuro Tadayoshi", and here's why. Jim Breen knows his stuff, and is very credible when it comes to Japanese names. Also, in Son Goku Densetsu, his name is merely mentioned in an image's caption. These captions are usually added by the books editor, who most likely had no real contact with Yamamuro and simply guessed at the pronunciation. Therefore it's unlikely his name was double checked for any sort of accuracy. Conversely, in an interview, the interviewer will usually ask the interviewee for their name, ensuring accuracy (literally straight from the horse's mouth).
I've yet to check any One Piece guide books, but with the evidence already provided, I'm not sure it's really necessary. Nonetheless, I'm sticking with Tadayoshi, and I'm hoping others will too.
We’re Not Friends, and You’re Not Helpful!
As we all know, the internet can be a great place. It's full of information, entertainment, and some genuinely nice people. Unfortunately, it's also full of idiots, and lots of them. Some are manageable, while others are just mind boggling, irritating, and horribly out of touch with reality.
In a community I frequent, we've had a large influx of such annoying people lately. At first the issue was the language barrier, but eventually it went beyond that and became their complete disregard for self conduct and the forum rules. They do just enough to piss everyone off, but hold back just enough to not actually be breaking any real rules. It doesn't help that they think they're being helpful, when in fact, they really bring nothing to the table. I hate to be so mean about it, but it's just true.
These people take credit for other people's work, and are so delusional about it, they actually think they did something themselves. One of these individuals actually "runs" his own website, which is full of stolen material, mostly from my own DragonBall fan site (Kanzentai). He will go out of his way in discussions to bring up his website to show it off, and even compares it to my own, and other great sites like Daizenshuu EX. He truly believes his site is actually on the same level as both of them, when it clearly is not. And that's not just me being chauvinistic or arrogant, it's the truth.
Just the other day this individual sent me a message to let me know how much he had helped Jake, my cohort in running Kanzentai. Now Jake and I have worked together for a couple years now and have become quite good friends, both online and in real life. So here's the message I received:
Hello Heath, Jake and I just anaylzed the Race guide on the forums this Morning
Grammar aside, I have to wonder, how much analyzing did this individual really do? Here's a copy of his post:
Jake, I read the guide. I should fix up some race names to match closely with the Daizenshuu.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10743
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8602&p=194502
http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/List_o ... ragon_Ball
And here's a copy of Jake's post:
Speaking of that old "dub/fan races" thread of mine, it seems the DB wikia hasn’t changed any of their incorrect race names. They’ve still got a page for “Bas-jin”, the name for Gurd’s race that came from that unofficial tabletop RPG. There’s a page for “Bune-jin”, supposedly Pui-Pui’s race, despite him being clearly identified in the series as coming from Planet Zun. There’s still a page on genies, which Popo apparently is. It even has this great tidbit: “Diet: Unknown, but Mr. Popo did swallow one of Goku's weaker Kamehameha waves”.
[ Jake included 5 more paragraphs of further discussion after this. ]
So, this individual read two guides that Jake had written, and then posted links to them. Jake in return posted some additional information, and truly added a bunch of stuff to the discussion. Then the individual decided it would be great to inform me that Jake had done all this, because I guess I just had to know, but decided to include himself as well, since we're all friends and he had clearly done so much himself. You'll also note that he addresses us both by first name, as if we're on a first name basis or something, which we're most definitely not.
Unfortunately, I don't foresee this ending anytime soon. And now that he's posting on my own site and constantly e-mailing us with requests of things to do so that he can steal them for his site, it's just so fun.
So there's my rant, or my grand story of the internet, if you will. And this is just one example of my experience with fans of my site. Maybe I'll have to rant about those at some point, but this one has been so ongoing, I just had to let it all out. Seriously, why do I do this?!
Weird Things I’ve Learned – Part 1
So this is something I've wanted to type up for a while now, and with today being a slow day at work, now is my chance. There are some things that I, and many others, forget here in the United States... not everyone knows the little Americanized intricacies of the English language. For instance, the number "oh", or zero (0). When the number zero precedes another number and itself is not preceded by a decimal point, it is typically pronounced "oh". For example, when we say abbreviated years, like '07 instead of 2007, we say that it's the year "oh seven", not "zero seven". Now you can fall into tricky cases, like 05429.012, which is a project number I use at work. This can be pronounced multiple ways; "oh five four two nine point zero one two" or "oh fifty-four twenty-nine point zero twelve". You'll see that a lot of people combine will numbers into something they're really not, mostly just to get the point across faster.
Anyway, this all started bouncing around in my head when a member of the Daizenshuu EX forums wrote in to the site's podcast. When the host, Mike LaBrie, read the member's name, he would pronounce the "03" at the end of his name as "oh three". On multiple occasions the member would post that Mike kept pronouncing his name wrong, and eventually wrote in to the podcast again, strenuously saying it should be pronounced "zero three", because it was the number zero and not the letter "O". You see, the member is from Dubai and Mike is from New Jersey, and Mike wasn't thinking anything of it when he read it. He simply read it the way most anyone in the U.S. would. Unfortunately, our friend from Dubai was a bit confused as to why his name kept getting screwed up. Needless to say, Mike had to explain that it wasn't really a mistake, just a misunderstanding.
And then you have the whole "zee" vs "zed" thing for the letter "Z", which I didn't learn about until I was in high school. But that's a discussion for another time, I suppose.
Meet the Mousse Family
One thing that I've always enjoyed about DragonBall were the name puns. I've always thought they're a really nice touch that makes the characters interesting, and a little more special to some degree. Anyway, the other day I was working on some yet to be disclosed content for Kanzentai, when I once again came across this lovely family. In a way, I guess you could refer to them as the "Dessert Family", although they're officially listed in the daizenshuu as the "Mousse Family", based on the father's name being Mousse. The family appeared in DragonBall Episode 128, when Goku is sent to an unknown land while training with Mister Popo before the 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai.
The fun part about this family is that if you only follow FUNimation's English dub of the series, the puns are for the most part retained. This is actually nice, considering FUNimation is known for changing many of these types of names to more American-friendly names. So you may already be familiar with the family, but maybe not as much as you might think...
As I said earlier, the father of the family is named Mousse (ムース; Muusu). He is married to Écla (エクレ; Ekure), and together they have nine children, who like their parents are named after popular international desserts. Here's a look at each family member, including the basis for their name pun:
- Mousse (ムース; Muusu) － The father of the family, he is named after mousse, a light and creamy dessert typically made from egg and cream. In Japanese, mousse is simply written as ムース, exactly the same as the character is named. (Wikipedia)
- Écla (エクレ; Ekure) － The mother of the family is named after a french pastry, known as the éclair, a long thin pastry filled with a cream and topped with icing. Interestingly, and I assume this is a completely unrelated coincidence, éclair is French for "lightning". And as you may recall, in this series of specific filler episodes, Goku is trying to learn how to become faster than lightning. Anyway, in Japanese éclair is written as エクレア (ekurea), making it pretty easy to pick up the character's name pun. (Wikipedia)
- Puri (プーリ; puuri) － The youngest child of the family, she is named after pudding, specifically for custard pudding . In FUNimation's English dub she's renamed "Cupcake", for some unknown reason. In Japanese, pudding is written as プリン (purin), which is quite similar to the character's name. (Wikipedia)
- Crepe (クレプ; kurepu) － The second youngest child of the family, she is named after crêpe, a type of very thin pancake popular in France, and now internationally. In FUNimation's English dub she's renamed "Pudding", but I assume most American's know what a crêpe is these days, right? Her name is only missing the vowel elongation, as crêpe is written as クレープ (kureepu) in Japanese. (Wikipedia)
- Donuts (ドナッツ; donattsu) － He is the third youngest child of the family, and is obviously named after the worldwide famous deep-fat-fried pastry known as the donut, or doughnut. The spelling of his name does differ slightly from the proper Japanese writing of donuts (ドーナツ; doonatsu), with the emphasis being placed on the last consonant. (Wikipedia)
- Jelly (ゼリ; zeri) － The fourth youngest child of the family, she is named after what most countries would call fruit preserves, but is simply called "jelly" in North America. Jelly is written as ゼリー (zerii) in Japanese, elongating the last vowel. (Wikipedia)
- Bisce (ビスケ; bisuke) － Bisce appears to be a twin with Jelly as they look almost identical and wear the same type of clothes, but while it is strongly hinted at, it is never actually confirmed. His name most likely comes from what most Americans call a biscuit, rather than the English biscuit, which is a small, sweetened, and flour based product, very similar to what Americans would consider a cookie. I say this because most Americans put jelly on the biscuits, further enforcing the notion that the two characters are twins. However, in the FUNimation English dub, he is renamed "Jam", most likely to even further connect him with his "twin" sister Jelly. While I'm not so sure it was really warranted to dumb it down that much, it does still retain their connection. So I guess I can't complain too much, right? Anyway, biscuit is written as ビスケット (bisuketto) in Japanese. I will note that oddly enough, the name Bisuke, written in katakana, is actually a common Japanese female name. (Wikipedia)
- Bavaro (ババロ; babaro) －The fourth oldest child of the family, he is name after bavarois, or Bavarian cream, which is a classic Swiss dessert. The dessert is a gelatin-thickened cream pastry flavored with liqueur. Bavarois is written as ババロア (babaroa) in Japanese. FUNimation chose to rename the character "Cream Puff", which fits the character well and gets the name pun across.
- Choco (チョコ; choko) －The third oldest child of the family, he is named after chocolate. His name isn't actually a shortening of the word, as in Japanese "chocolate" is simply written as チョコ (choko), just as the characters name is written. In the FUNiamtion English dub, the character is simply called "Cocoa", which again, makes much more sense to most Americans. (Wikipedia)
- Cooky (クッキー; kukkii) － She is the second oldest child of the family and is named after the cookie. In Japanese, cookie is simply written as クッキー, exactly the same as the character is named. However, the word クッキー can also be translated as biscuit, depending on the context and origin of the word, which I discussed earlier in regards to the character Bisce. (Wikipedia)
- Chouc (シューク; shuuku) － The oldest child of the family, he is named after the French pastry chou à la crème, a sphere of light airy pastry split and sandwiched with a thick layer of whipped cream. The phrase is written in Japanese as シュー・クリーム (shuu kuriimu). As you can see, the last part of the phrase was left out of his name. Now, I'm guessing that FUNimation got the characters all sorts of confused, because they renamed this character "Crepe", even though they had already renamed the original "Crepe" to "Pudding", and renamed "Pudding" to "Cupcake".
As you can see, although they were only around for a single episode of filler, there was quite a bit of thought put into naming them. Fortunately, this is very common for most DragonBall characters, and gives me plenty of stuff to work on. Now it's never been officially stated who named these characters, but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say it was most likely Terui Keiji, the man who wrote the episode's scenario and script. However, I have to say that the best part about the whole thing is after Mousse has introduced all of his children, Goku's stomach growls, he says he's famished, and everyone laughs hysterically. It's just such a classic DragonBall gag!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go eat something sweet. Can you blame me?
I Wish I’d Written That!… But Not Really
I know it's been some time since my last post, but I keep forgetting I have this "blog" thing. That, or whenever I get an idea of something to write about that I think may be considered interesting, something else shiny comes along and catches my eye, subsequently distracting me for long periods of time. However, this time I told myself that no matter what I was going to sit down and type this, and here I am. But be warned, a lot of this is me rambling about things you may not care too much about, so feel free to skip down to the end where the good stuff is.
Last Friday I attended the 27th Annual GEO-Omaha Conference at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha, NE. In short, it is a "Geotechnical Engineering Seminar" that keeps everyone in the profession up-to-date on the latest geotechnical projects and solutions, or at least that's what the conference notes said. So as you can imagine, unless you're really into it (like me), it's pretty boring stuff. However, this year we had a special guest lecturer that I was quite intrigued to hear. His name is John Bachner, founder and CEO of Bachner Communications, Inc. His firm provides a variety of services based upon John's main area of expertise, effective writing and communication! Unfortunately, John couldn't be there in person because he was stuck in his house in Maryland due to massive amounts of snow... which no one in Nebraska wants to hear complaints about!
Now, as anyone in my profession (geotechnical engineering) can tell you, we spend the majority of our time in front of a computer writing technical reports for various engineering projects. On top of that, proper grammar has always been one of my pet peeves, which makes the internet my enemy most days. This also overflows into my "sometimes" more-than-part-time hobby of DragonBall, which is why I don't stray too far from people with proper typing skills. Most of the time, if someone can't form a proper and grammatically correct sentence, easily communicating their idea, they won't be talking to me for very long. As you'll see, in my line of work, not being able to properly communicate in writing can be disastrous.
Anyway, Bachner's lecture was entitled, "I Wish I'd Written That!", a look at engineers and the written word. It started out by going over how much geoprofessionals write, saying that "typically, geoprofessionals do not like to write, but few other professions write more". But the interesting parts were more about the English language in general, and just how complex it is. He gave an example where a misplaced comma in an engineering contract cost a company $13 million. The use of the comma changed the entire meaning of a sentence in the contract, giving all liability to the contractor, and costing them big time. I will note that as he gave this presentation over Skype, he was not very kind to those that make the following mistakes:
- its / it's
- there / their / they're
- Using words that you think mean one thing, when they actually don't mean that at all!
- Putting commas where they don't belong.
- Writing a whole paragraph with just one sentence.
- etc...
Toward the end of the presentation he said a couple things that really got me thinking (this is directed more toward the internet and how others write). He noted that we "need to relearn and apply the basics of our own language", and that you should write properly to "uphold a professional image". On the internet, do people write the way they do to uphold some sort of image, or even how they see themselves? Of course they do. I write the way I do because I want people to understand what I'm trying to say, and look a little professional in the process. And it's our language, we should be proud of it, not degrade it to something that looks like a 5-year old wrote it (unless you are 5).
I understand the need to dumb things down sometimes, but leaving one letter out of a four letter word is just idiotic. Is the one-thousandth of a second you saved not typing that letter really worth it? Also, what's so hard about hitting the shift key, especially when you're only capitalizing the first letter of a sentence? You're most likely using it only once for every couple hundred key strokes you make? Is it the fact that you want to be l33t, so you must use l33t-speak constantly to show you know how and you're better than all those proper-typing know-it-alls? But the best part is when you ask someone to type properly, and they say they don't know how... What?! Education is so much easier to access these days than it used to be. There's no reason you shouldn't know something about how to write properly.
Now I'm definitely not saying everyone should be an absolute expert at English, because no one really is. The language is just too complex. All I'm saying is why can't you use a shift key, or insert periods to tell people where you're ending one statement and beginning another? This seems to be especially prevalent these days with the internet, which provides an easy avenue for anyone to post their ideas, thoughts, or concerns.
The other kicker is, most foreigners know our language better than us, or so it seems most of the time. Do we Americans just not care anymore? And I know it just isn't Americans that have this problem, but those are the people that I typically interact with. I also realize that me writing all this will in no way make any difference, but I do think there are some interesting questions that everyone should at least ask themselves every once in a while; "Why do I write the way I do?", "Do I really want to write this way?", and "Did I get my point across so that everyone understands it?".
Finally, I'll leave you with an example from one of my technical writing professors, I kid you not. Read it out loud (if you're somewhere you can) straight through just as it's written. You'll notice there are no pauses inserted with either commas or periods, so don't insert any on your own.
i h8 ppl who tipe lIkE ThIs!!!!!!
i also hate people that type like this sentences with no periods commas use of a shift key or anything the sentence just keeps going and going and going it never stops sometimes i think people are just stupid and they usually are anyways look at me i cant type
Take it, or leave it. But don't ever say "I Wish I'd Written That!", because you can if you want. Just grow a pair and do it correctly, please?
So, I have a blog now?
Well, I've thought about doing this for a while now, but I never actually got around to doing it. I think it was mostly the fact I didn't want to be "one of those guys with a blog". So as I sit here in front of my computer drinking some hot chocolate with Baileys, I decided it's time to just do it. Whether it was the Baileys or something else that convinced me to do it, I have no idea.
I assume only certain people will actually read any of this anyway, so who knows what'll happen. If anything, this'll mostly be a way for me to archive all the random shit that goes through my head. As most of you may know I run a DragonBall fansite, which doesn't really give me an outlet to express too much, unless it's DragonBall related. I also have a Twitter account (which you can follow on the right), but sometimes it's rather difficult to say everything all the time in 140 characters. Oh, and I'm on Facebook, although very rarely these days.
In the end, you'll hopefully get to know me a little better, whether you want to or not. I still have to figure out exactly what I'm gonna do with this "thing". It's basically gonna be a lot of random BS!
Pages
Links
Meta
