The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)

Press conference about Tokyo Babylon 2021 has been given. The main info is:

  • Series will start in April.
  • Subaru will be voiced by Shouta Aoi (Sakura Shiomi in Persona 3 stage show, Hideaki Tojo in Ace of Diamond) - who cosplayed Subaru during the conference.
  • Hokuto will be voiced by Nana Mizuki (Hinata in Naruto, Tsubasa Kazanari in Symphogear).
  • Seishiro will be voiced by Yuichiro Umehara (En Yufuin in Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Goblin Slayer in Goblin Slayer).
  • Aoi will sing the show's OP, while Mizuki will sing the EP.
  • CLAMP themselves appear to have no involvement with the programme.
  • New character art and a new trailer have been released.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1329397584117510147


ETA: Directors - Shingo Suzuki and Susumu Kudo. Script - Jun Kumagai. Character design - Makoto Furuta. Chief animation directors - Makoto Furuta and Keiji Tani. Composer - Noriyuki Asakura. Strangely ANN also lists someone a mecha designer. There isn't anime mecha in the series.
 
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Vincentdante said:
So that's why there's so much Isekai
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I think one of the main reasons why isekai is so prevalent is that it allows you to have a complicated fantasy setting with an ignorant but capable protagonist. This is useful as you can have characters explain stuff to the protagonist and thus the audience over a short span of time.


Combine that with fish of water humour and making the audience feel smart for recognising how the protagonist can solve issues with their knowledge of our world in the new one.
 
CommanderZx2 said:
I think one of the main reasons why isekai is so prevalent is that it allows you to have a complicated fantasy setting with an ignorant but capable protagonist. This is useful as you can have characters explain stuff to the protagonist and thus the audience over a short span of time.
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It's not like this was an issue in the thousands of fantasy stories that came before Isekai was a thing, where the main character belonged to the setting from the start. Everyone seemed perfectly okay with those for centuries, I blame C.S. Lewis for this (but mainly lack of originality and the taking of "self-insert protagonist" to its logical extreme).
 
ayase said:
It's not like this was an issue in the thousands of fantasy stories that came before Isekai was a thing, where the main character belonged to the setting from the start. Everyone seemed perfectly okay with those for centuries, I blame C.S. Lewis for this (but mainly lack of originality and the taking of "self-insert protagonist" to its logical extreme).
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Narnia has its niche heavy handed religious allegory.
 
CommanderZx2 said:
I believe the reason for the long titles is quite simple. Anyone can write a light novel and self publish therefore there is an excessive amount of content.

Readers aren't going to read an abstract of every single LN that comes out, so instead they have turned titles into short descriptions.

And adaptations are almost always more successful than original anime, due to the existing fanbase, so they keep the original overly descriptive LN title.
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These things are all true, but it's also worth bearing in mind that written Japanese is a much more compact language than languages using variants of the Latin alphabet are. By far the main reason reason why titles in English tend to be so short is because once you get more than 3 or 4 words the title can get too long to even be readable on the spine, or totally take over the cover, whereas in Japanese a title like, say, Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabu-Come wa Machigatteiru. fits just fine even on a small bunkobon format book, and with space to spare for the obi beneath it - the English translation has to have the title doubled up even with the larger book size. Even a longer title like Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love-Come wo Zenryoku de Jama shiteiru doesn't look particularly long on the cover. It's only 25 characters, after all. Compared to 74 in romaji and 75 in the series' English translation.

Plus a lot of genuinely longer title series originate as web novels, where spine/cover space isn't a consideration at all.
 
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