In the past week I think I watched more anime than otherwise in a whole year. I finished Strike Witches, i watched Railgun, Code Geass (both seasons) and Steins;Gate.

As a result, my biorhythm is an ugly mess. I’m actually making some “effort” to sleep at more healthy times for more healthy intervals, but of course that’s easier said than done. Especially when thursday nights i’m translating three shows – it was originally two, but for a few weeks now the translator for Sasami has been busy with school (i think), leaving me in charge of the show.

This year i haven’t really watched any anime i wasn’t working on. Luckily i worked on quite a few, so let me just write down which ones i enjoyed the most. Before anyone mentions Star Driver, which is obviously the best anime of the past 4 seasons, i don’t count that as 2011 since it started in 2010.

The first one i worked on was Gosick. I only translated the first five or so episodes, then watched another five or so, and then forgot about it completely. The next was Madoka, which i translated from episode 9 on, and it was fun, but looking back it’s a bit too insane for my tastes. It was the big hit of the year for sure though.

Then came a lot of stuff at once. C, Hen Zemi, Denpa Onna, Blue Exorcist. C could have been the best, because the whole idea and all the economy stuff was very close to me (studying economy), but the story and the ending was crap squared. Hen Zemi was pure fun, and the kind of fun i’d rather not show to kids before they could appreciate it (and thanks to this series i got to know the awesome band 横浜銀蝿), but i can’t really say it was the best. Neither was Ao no Exorcist, which turned out to be a bit too general shonen anime with a very weird ending. I’m still reading the manga though.

So Shana. RHE asked me to do it, and i jumped on the chance of translating such a legendary series, even if i haven’t seen the second season or any of the specials or movies, and it’s been ages since the first season, so i hardly remember anything of it. (Let’s be honest: nothing.) I expected it to be a relatively easy show, but contrary to my expectations it ended up the hardest. After translating the last two episodes of Dantalian without any major problems, i was pretty surprised that i had so much trouble with Shana. It all comes down to that i had no idea of the context, so i was furiously googling for ages by the time i realized the word i can’t make any sense of is a name or a phrase specific to the series. As by now i more or less picked up the vocab and i know what to expect, from the second episode on, the translation mistakes will be all mostly gone (rather not make hasty promises). Not to mention that if i don’t have to investigate for half an hour whenever a phrase like Crimson Denizens or Torch shows up, it’ll be faster too. Don’t give up on me just yet.

I’m translating Phi Brain for WhyNot. It’s an anime about puzzles, on the NHK Education channel, so before and after the show there are plenty of related programmes too for the kids, all about the various puzzles, the mythical and historical references in the anime and so on. The main characters are all there during the opening song, and from the first two episodes i have a rough idea of where the story is headed in the first ten or so episodes, but i really can’t even guess how it’d progress after that.

The script is easy, so if i screw up something, i honestly apologize. Also, this is the first show i work on to have the lyrics for the opening and ending songs in the captions.