Bucket

[Side view of a girl looking into an open fridge. The room is dark, lit only by the fridge light.] What is with your fridge?

Wrong answers only #kanokari

I haven't forgotten about the Skelter Heaven thread, by the way, but life does have a way of getting in the way of finishing things that aren't super important in the grand scheme of things.

Part 6 of the Skelter Heaven thread is finally out! We take a look at the OP of the alt track in this one.

Preview of the scene immediately after the OP. News headline (sign, badly masked): "Mysterious object in Air On Tokyo Airspace Is Moving" News reporter (dialogue): "Apparently the mysterious theatre stage is beginning to move."

Next up, we'll cover the main dialogue and signs of the Weattphropet track.

Discord message: [14:00]Maribel: @Myaamori @bucket3432 Pleasae check out my OP. I had to retranslate it cause whoever did it made a lot of mistakes. [React: :CarolSmug: 1]

Big shout-out to Melancholy for the "translation checking", The0x539 for the "editing", and Shinon/Cocoa for the karaoke effects. The work done for the OP really cements the mood and expectations for the rest of the track.

Repeat of the title card with "Heavenly Arbiter" once again in a colour-picked yellow outline despite the rest of the card in an orange-red outline.

The OP ends with the title card again, and of course it keeps the colour-picked yellow.

Up to the sky

Many groups will often omit either the romaji or the translation if the song switches to English to avoid having the lyric show twice. This is a legitimate technique.

Our eyes behold a fate that opens Me no mae no unmei kirihirake owaru koto nai

to a truly endless future. mirai he

Unlike in the primary track, we had no issue splitting this long line in two. Notwithstanding the specific English split, this might actually be one of the rare times the alt track made a better decision than the primary track.

Light of hope! Kanji in the sky! Kibou no hikari kanji in the sky

The next line immediately after is easily the best line in the OP for its misinterpretation of "kanji".

The naked heart-to-heart is trying to connect! Hadaka no kokoro to kokoro de

The naked heart-to-heart is trying to connect! tsunagatteitai you

The0x539 did a great job with editing the lyrics on the alt track, but there is one line whose original text by Melancholy I want to highlight.

This line was originally "The heart of nakedness and heart are trying to connect!"

There is nothing that scares me. kowai mono nante nai

Song lyrics are allergic to terminal periods. Don't end lines with periods for songs(.)

We risk our lives to challenge you I CAN FLY Inochi wo kakete idomu I can fly

This one reads almost like a threat.

Excerpt from the OP: Our pounding chest won't lose, it'll keep running! hashiri tsudzuketai (ah-i-a-i-a-i-a-i-a)

Excerpt from the Japanese lyrics: 見知らぬ街　僕等は何処へ行けばいいんだろう 高鳴る胸迷わず　走り続けたい(ah-i-a-i-a-i-a-i-a)

"(ah-i-a-i-a-i-a-i-a)" came from the official lyrics, which had that text as a pronunciation guide.

j-lyric.net/artist/a04cd...

One thing I wish we did was play with the spaces between words. Spaces in romaji isn't standardized, so you'll find them in different places sometimes.

The romaji was done for the primary track and edited later for the alt track. We were focused so much on the words that we forgot about the spaces.

We also strictly romanized 行けば as "ikeba" in this track despite it being sung as "yukeba" (which we used in the primary track). The "i" pronunciation is the normal pronunciation for regular speech, but the "yu" variant is commonly used in songs.

Where should we go in this town that's unfamiliar? doko he ikeba ii n darou

The Japanese particles は, へ and を are pronounced "wa", "e" and "o" but spelled with the characters "ha", "he" and "wo" respectively due to historical reasons. Modern fansubs will typically use the "wa", "e" and "wo", but a strict or naive transliteration may opt use the literal spellings.

If your English lyrics span across two lines of romaji, you need to edit and split your English lines so there's one English line per romaji line and vice versa.

That said, using the primary track as a comparison is not entirely fair because the words and meanings need to be stretched more to fill a certain syllable count. There is a level in between where you stick more closely to the original text but edit it in a (non-singable) way that flows lyrically.

Excerpt of the OP lyrics from the alternate track: Tozasareteku taiyou sagashi ni tabidatou We are on a journey to find a sun that went dark Nakushita yume wo torimodosu tame For the sake of finding the lost dreams Mienai chikara ni ima michibikareru mama An in-visible power guides us Haruka tooku no GOAL mezashite and we aim for a faraway goal

Excerpt of the OP lyrics from the primary track: Tozasareteku taiyou sagashi ni tabidatou You'll always find us chasing in pursuit of a sun that's hiding away Nakushita yume wo torimodosu tame 'Cause there's a dream that we have lost and want to find again Mienai chikara ni ima michibikareru mama There is a hidden power deep inside and it's always guiding our way Haruka tooku no gooru mezashite Out in the distance, our goal is there to attain

Common in amateur song translations online is the tendency to consider only the meaning of the words without regard to form. The result is a stiff translation that's very to-the-point. While translations don't have to be singable, they should at least be lyrical and have some sense of flow.

We also started each romaji line with a capital. Typical romaji usage in modern fansubs is all lowercase.

Excerpt of the ED showing a katakana-sourced word in all caps. Song lyrics: and we aim for a faraway goal Haruka tooku no GOAL mezashite

There's an element in some style guides that says that words in katakana should be transliterated in ALL CAPS. This is no longer widely practiced in modern EN fansubs.

This is a guideline we followed, but we never documented it in the doc.

Screenshot of the OP showing part of the fansub credits. TS: Sodra, Shinon; KFX: Shinon

Info.txt credits, excerpt: - Timing: Kuzu (dialogue), Luceo (dialogue), Cocoa (songs) - Styling: bucket3432 (dialogue), Cocoa (songs) - Typesetting: Cocoa, Sodra

Nyaa comment: Shinon71 User 5 years 3 weeks 5 days ago Welp, I got my name out, you cam blame QC of the alt subs. Anyway… TSCamp = Cocoa = Shinon

If you look closely, there's a discrepancy between the in-episode credits and the Info.txt credits. Shinon expressed wanting to release under the pseudonym "Cocoa" later on in the process, but we accidentally left "Shinon" in the OP credits.

More staff credits. These are the individuals who worked on this track.

This scrolling effect is still wholly doable with the Aegisub GUI. This also features classic bad perspective from using the perspective rotation tool, because perspective rotations are hard.

\blur1 is okay to use here instead of \be1 despite SketerSubs not knowing of the former because the effect "presumably came from elsewhere".

The two lines of the effect template in the Aegisub subtitle grid. template line: {\fade(200,200)\blur1\k$kdur} template pre-line: {\fade(200,200)\blur1}

You may also notice that the text feels like it fades in late. This is because the fade starts as soon as the audio line starts. Normally, you'd want to retime the line so that the fade more or less finishes by the time the audio starts.

The template for this effect is extremely simple.

The guidelines say that the karaoke effects should look like a premade effect. I don't think we pulled this exact effect from anywhere, but it's heavily inspired by similar ones.

Also, the text appears before the cut. That said, it's not as bad here because the audio also starts before the cut.

The group list in the OP showing the haphazardly aligned columns. In Collaboration with: ButterFS 0x539 Kaleido LCE SMC-Subs Obelix Kantai HRI Chyuu TSCamp PAS Sodra NotSoHorribleSubs Nice-Boat

The ASS source showing all the groups in one event aligned with spaces.

The misalignment is intentional, of course. unanimated seems to have a preference for keep things in one line, and this follows that. The columns are all best-effort aligned with spaces.

And the text spilling over at the bottom was a happy accident. The last two were added later.

"Staff credits are good. You remember that some older sub groups put staff credits in the OP and wonder why they stopped. People should be credited for their hard work, after all."

We have a fancy animation here, but it's all stuff that's doable with Aegisub's visual typesetting tools.

"It goes without saying that we should also put "SkelterSubs presents:" before the title in the OP. We worked hard at this too, you know."

English groups tend to prefer not to advertise themselves in the subs nowadays, but "[Group] presents" is a classic in older fansubs.

Now that I look at it, I wonder if we should have also translated スケルターヘブン ("Skelter Heaven") despite it being written in English above already. Then again, that would probably be overkill.