'If you want a tall, cool glass of awesome, I'll be in the kitchen.' by Kara
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 9:25 AM

I'm almost glad I don't have Rock Band yet. I can't imagine how much time I'd kill when new songs come out. Well, although we're talking about me here, the girl obsessed with deadlines and keeping ahead on things. So maybe I'd be okay.

Nonetheless, I don't have a band. And guinea pigs don't have opposable thumbs.

So I watched the first episode of Tytania last night, finally. Very pretty, very Galactic Heroes-esque in its pacing and plot (not surprising, since the original books were also by Yoshiki Tanaka), and I'm enjoying the music. I do have one complaint, though.

Dear fansubbers:

FOR FUCK'S SAKE JUST PUT THE WORDS DIRECTLY ON THE VIDEO AND STOP TRYING TO BE BLOODY FANCY.

You know why I watch things subtitled? So I can read and understand them. If I'm having to decipher the text on the screen because you're busy trying to make it look pretty, you have failed. Different coloured text for different characters doesn't hurt anything (hell, sometimes in crowd scenes or with similar-sounding characters I like that), but animated karaoke? Ridiculous fonts for attack names?

I have a surprise for you, children. .mkvs with separate subtitles have only one use, and that is to go in and change the subs to make people say funny shit.

The first sub of Tytania I downloaded had the OP and ED edited out into their own files. WHY. Please, tell me WHY this may be. I can understand if you wanted to offer those sequences separately, but taking them away entirely?? (One of the groups doing Casshern Sins also did this, but they didn't even put the OP and ED in the download.)

Oh, and when the new Giant Robo came out, you know how the one group doing it offered it? They gave you the raw video and then gave you the subtitles in a separate fscking file. Now, there are a few of us who have the programs to do something about that, but ... WHAT!?

This has gone below and beyond people encoding files that Just Don't Play. They can pretend to justify high quality or file size and say it's the downloader's fault because they don't have the right codecs. (Which is bullshit, but they've managed to formulate a semi-believable argument there.) This is pointless. It doesn't make your subs special or more convenient. It makes them more retarded and less accessible.

Thank God not every group does this. It's not even that every group subbing things I'm following closely does this. Just a handful. But if there are viewers out there who believe complex .mkvs with separate sub tracks (that aren't multi-language releases, let me qualify that, because that's an actual legit reason) are awesome, do t- Actually, no, don't tell me. Because you're retards.

If you have been, BAWWWWWWWWWWWWW.