AA Issue 10, Letter from the Editor

by Judy Wu

After another torturous term, we’ve come out with another newsletter. It seems that while watching anime is fun, writing about it is a whole other matter altogether. So I wonder, is reading about anime torture? As editor, sometimes it is, but I think it’s mostly because of my background (or lack thereof) that contributes to that feeling. When I first started reading articles, my only experience with anime was SailorMoon. I’ve come a long way since then, and I’ve learned that what might not make sense in the real world is a perfect norm in anime. ("Fourteen-year-old" girls, to name the most prominent one.)

Recently, I decided to learn a more efficient way of typing Chinese. Typing in English is easy; there’s only twenty-six characters. Chinese, however, has a few tens of thousands. Previously, I had been using pinyin, which relies on sound transliteration, but that is a very slow method, as one sound has many different characters associated with it. In addition, if you don’t know how to pronounce the character or you speak a different dialect, then you’re out of luck. However, in Taiwan, they have a more efficient system for typing in traditional characters, called Cangjie. Each letter of the alphabet represents a possible part of a character. Figuring out how the character is "put together" to type it in is almost as overwhelming as the Chinese characters itself. Since Japan also uses kanji, in addition to katakana and hiragana, they probably face a similar, if easier task. If computers are involved in the production of anime, you can bet that they have to somehow type it in.

Speaking of monumental tasks, this issue, Henry Lee explains the efforts that go into a fansub. For just one episode, many people spend lots of time and love to translate it for more people to appreciate. Unfortunately, that does not always guarantee that the general population will be able to view it. Lately, the rights of many series are being bought by American companies, which effectively bans the further distribution of that title. Despite that possibility, fansubbing continues. Fansubbers deserve a round of applause for their efforts.

Carl tells us about one of his favorite anime series, Kimagure Orange Road. It sounds like a very cute romantic story, with a few twists involved, of course. All in time for Valentine's Day! Maybe we can get a few pointers from the anime? :P

Hope you enjoy this issue!

Judy

 Create your own free wiki!Support CommunityPublic, Premium Early Adopter wiki Privacy Policy RSS