How come so few Gundam manga and novels are localized for English speaking territories? Does Banrise think angloids are dyslexic or something?
not angloids but americanst. american
Mecha doesn't sell.
>>23882857spbp but also Japan in general doesn't necessarily put a lot of money into translations, which are expensive, leading to many needing to rely on piracy to read stuff. I seem to recall there being some arguments about this between japanese speakers and many others on shitter recently due to this dichotomy.
>>23882862Not to mention how much more expensive English manga volumes usually are than their Japanese counterparts (often times two to three times more expensive). Moreover, American weebs are notoriously picky about which Anime & Manga they consoom, hence why only the most normalfag of ani/m/e and /m/anga are localized, let alone make a profit outside of South East Asia and/or Europe.
English version of Origin has such catastrophically shitty typesetting and prose I'm surprised it made it past an editor. When you have shit like that and it's being sold at premium why bother?
>>23882824All things considered, Gundam fans have it pretty good for official manga releases. Glory of the Losers, Ecole du Ciel, Thunderbolt and I think even Frozen Teardrop got an official release. Considering that most other gundam manga that people drool over like Crossbone, F90FF, Revival of Zeon and CDA are relatively niche side stories that you’d only get if you’ve completed the UC canon there’s no profit incentive for a publishing company so they’d rather import, translate and sell more BL for fujoshits.
>>23882946Yeah, I was just checking it out for the first time pretty recently and I was shocked too by how shitty the wording of some of the dialogue is and even sometimes how hard it is to take in a panel at first glance in terms of how the words are arranged on the page. I'd have to compare it to the Japanese directly but it feels like in some instances the character voices are off, like they use a word/phrase that doesn't match the speaking style otherwise given to them in the rest of the translation.About the one thing I can say in defense of some of the weird shit is that the original panels often use a lot of speech bubbles that are broken up in a way to match the rhythm of actual Japanese speech, like often a few from the same character in one panel rather than maybe one like is more commonly done in manga. And since the translation didn't remove/rearrange any of these so as not to fuck with the original layout or whatever (which makes complete sense), the characters' speech, in addition to all the other translation weirdness, gets broken up in ways that don't sound natural at all in English. I get this is something the translator probably couldn't work around but it's still bizarre.I wouldn't be surprised if one day they do a retranslation or something just to make it read less awkwardly.
>>23882857Also, most Gundam manga artists don't know how to draw action, it's like they're too focused on making the mobile suits look meticulously detailed over flow and motion. Just pick any Gundam manga by Koichi Tokita, who's been at this for decades: it's all striking cool poses and shouting out "beam rifle something-or-other!" while motion lines and special effects are slapped onto it. He's a good illustrator but if you aren't into the actual robots this shit is just boring to read.The only two Gundam manga that pull it off are Origin and Thunderbolt, and funny that, those are the only two that actually got animated.
>>23882946>>23883017I bought one volume and promptly returned it for poor proofreading. they didn't seem to fix it for this deluxe volume either. i recommend just buying the japanese edition. they feel much nicer and have thicker pages. Eventually they will release the full color edition done by yas and everyone will just buy that, for now either get the full color ebooks or the jp hardcovers. this is laughably translated and the Hey say now and shit sayla says to kai will live rent free in my head and piss me off when i randomly think about it.
>>23883174I'm lazy to go to my other bookcase but I have a decent amount of the original 80s ones along with my other ones that I wish if they picked up some mech manga they would do the older versions that have been out of print+with no ebook for ages
>>23883017WHATDOYOUME-AN
>>23882824Probably not as marketable a medium in the west.
>>23882824It's really a shame I wish we got more physical Gundam manga over here.
>>23882946>>23883017If you thought Vertical Press' Gundam the Origin localization was bad, wait till you see what Toy Press shat out.
>>23883017Remember when Vertical Ed came on here announcing how happy he was they scored the Origin and then promptly blocked anyone who called him out on Twitter for his shitty take at making Char speak Shakespearean and used Game of thrones to spin the families as Houses. Then he tried to act like the Japanese by Yas was like Shakespeare prose when it fucking wasn't. Yeah. Fuck that guy. And Fuck Denpa while we're at it because BC is TWO YEARS LATE NOW
>>23883182What's that book laying in the foreground?
>>23882862That is, until recently since digital distribution somewhat alleviates some costs, but it's mostly out of necessity since the japanese can only support so much nowadays.
>>23882955>and I think even Frozen Teardrop got an official releaseNo
>>23883171These and most Gundam manga made in the last 10 years just use 3D models. Staying "on-model" may be important for Bandai to preserve their brand, but it makes for shitty action scenes because there is no stretch, no squash, no exaggeration or any principles of animation that other manga use. It's one of the reasons 3D anime has always looked like shit with few exceptions for studios who go out of their way to apply said effects to the models per scene.
>>23882824I hate how soulless the new covers are
>>23882824Anime and manga are broadly popular in the West, but most individual titles are still niche in terms of overall audience size. Plus most weebs tend to chase after whatever's new, causing publishers to allow titles to go out of print relatively rapidly to make space for more recent titles (since that's what sells). Add all that together and it's amazing that an AU title like Origin got translated at all.
