Dantalian no Shoka has been great fun, and watching it inevitably makes me think about Gosick, another light novel-based anime set during the 20s starring a goth-loli. In turn, it also makes me think about the creative voices behind these two adaptions. This post is entirely speculation and fun on my part. It is neither my goal to interpret what the creators of these shows intended, nor to compare the shows in terms of quality.
Holy fuuuck, talk about blinking off the map! It occurred to me that besides the people I talk to through AIM and emails or the occasional comment I left here and there, my internet presence has been non-existent, which is pretty impressively the opposite of what it’s ever been.
Edit: By the way, I never said anything about it, but apparently I made honey-bunny worried, so I’ll take this chance to say that I’ve been on a twitter sabbatical, which is why I haven’t been posting there. (Why I never mentioned this should be obvious lol.)
Art by Ayakashi
So anyway, I’m sure some people (namely the contributors) are concerned about the fate of the Acadime Awards that were supposed to go through this month. I haven’t decided how I’m going to release them yet. Obviously, I hadn’t finished them at the start of the month, and between my becoming violently sick and figuring out how much work the posts would take, I decided to push the whole thing back. Thankfully, the series isn’t really time-sensitive, since it’s not like 2010 is going anywhere, so the posts will all come out at some time. I love the contributions I’ve gotten and will definitely make sure they all get seen (especially those of Taka, who’s managed to put thoughts into words about seiyuu that I’ve always wished I could.)
Which reminds me! Taka, who will be known as Thoughtcannon from now on I guess (aka @denpapopcorn), is now a member of this site! What he’ll post on or whether he’ll post at all is his choice, but he has no site of his own, and the way he looks at anime seems to me very similar to the way I do, so I begged him to join, and hopefully he seizes the opportunity~~
There are two Gosick light novels available in English, and they’re likely to be the only two unless fans get to work on the others. I bought the first when it came out because it was translated by Andrew Cunningham and he enjoyed it—two things that guarantee it’s good. After that book, Tokyopop cancelled the series, and it looked like there’d never be any more Gosick in the US. Imagine my surprise when two years later I see volume two on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. The second book has no translator credit (it literally says “Translator: “). I asked Cunningham about this, and he said that he’d translated the second book already before they cancelled the series, but had heard nothing about the release. I can’t imagine that they’d continue with another translator (nor do I think it’d be a good idea since Cunningham is the best light novel translator).
For those who have never heard of Andrew Cunningham, he is a translator who has done such series as the Boogiepop novels, the Kino’s Journey novel, Gosick, Missing, Death Note: Another Note, Goth, Parasyte, XxXHolic Another Holic, and several of the stories in Faust. Cunningham has received massive praise for his work from the few out there available to recognize him, and is one of my personal favorite people around in general (to the point I will pretty much buy anything he translates, and I actually follow his livejournal.) While there is no way to make this a definitive statement, it’s best to just consider Andrew Cunningham the absolute king of Japanese-to-English translation, namely in the light novel department. He is also a member of Eastern Standard, a general anime blog he shares with two others, which used to be a review site.
Long ago, on his LiveJournal, Cunningham made some very insightful and interesting notes on the importance of a translator and the difference between translating and editing. It’s a must-read in my opinion, especially for light novel and video game fans – the last paragraph in particular being something that I cite often. I am reposting this both to spread the word on this as well as to have an easy citation source as opposed to an impossible-to-find livejournal entry.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 