Consumer Alert: Air Master

[thepanda]

I've just recently watched the first two DVDs of the Air Master domestic release, and the only thing I can say is...

What.

The.

Fuck?!

I've watched fan subs from back in the VHS snail mail distribution days and I've also seen my fair share of HK imports so I'm no stranger to shoddy worksmanship. Hell, even some digisubbers have carried that terrible flag (Animejunkies anyone?). But for a domestic release this was less than subpar. It was crap. Pure, unfiltered human feces in digital form. Allow me to break it down for you.

Dubbing. About the best thing going for this release was that the dubbing wasn't too bad. It wasn't good, mind, but it wasn't Fortune Quest either. Maki has, perhaps, the best voice on the show, with the blonde friend a close second. Everyone else was just bleh.

Hm. I suppose there was nothing wrong with the video quality.

The subs. Holy crap, these were aweful. It is customary to have two sub tracks these days, one just to translate text and the other for full vocal translations. Well Air Master had two sub tracks, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Track one was made for the hearing impared.

I shit you not.

They not only translated the vocals, but every grunt got a (grunts), every foot step got (footsteps approach) ect. I was left wondering if the company who released it (which appears to be some new company, by the way) completely missed the point of having subs. But wait, two sub tracks, right? Maybe the other is minus the sound effect queues that infest the first track!

Lo and behold, it WAS lacking the sound effects. And the vocal translations. And most of the text translations as well. The second track was SUPPOSED to be the text translations only track. I say supposed because it only managed to translate the episode titles. That's it. It never once translates what's written on the phone when people are being text messaged or ANY other text at all. Apparently someone missed the point here in a big way.

The design of the DVD is godaweful. Each time you play an episode you go back to the title screen. After every episode. There is no 'play all' option. You can fastforward during an episode, but you can't scene skip. At the end of every episode they tacked on the english DVD credits in such a way as to force you to sit through them every single episode. You can't fast forward through them. At all. You're just stuck.

And the extras...

...

...OH! I'd almost forgotten, there ARE NO EXTRAS! None! Not a trailer or a few screen shots passed off as a gallery or anything. Nothing whatsoever.


Add all of this together and you get a DVD that feels like something out of the lower ranks of the HK import stock. Hell, even bootlegs sometimes have extras. This is just rediculous. And what's worse, they're charging as much as a well made DVD from the more respected companies. I'm angery I even rented this tripe.

Buyers beware. My advice to you would be to avoid this release, period. If you really need to watch Air Master again get someone to send you fan subs. You'll be getting a better quality production.

[Dracos]

*nods*  good warning.

Dracos

[thepanda]

Add Interlude to the list of poorly made DVDs as well. All the bad points about Air Master plus really small and hard to read font. Also, seeing this (A dream...................... Only a dream) abuse of the english language repeatedly hurts. Someone needed to take a middleschool english class. -_-

Seems to be by the same people who are releasing Air Master. I have yet to rent Slam Dunk's domestic release, but seeing as Geneon and Toei have teamed up to distribute some of the shoddiest DVDs in recent history I'd stear well clear of anything released under their combined distribution agreement.