AKB0048 / AKB0048 ~ Next Stage

I have 2 quirks about this so far.

  1. In the english dubbed version of this on episode 1, it stops at 24:17 where the acutal episode length even on the japanese dubbed side is at least over 25 min.

  2. there is no usual subtitles that translate what the girls are singing in japanese while watching the english dub. While Japanese dub has this usual featurre.

I just hope the subtitle problem is not on the official release.

Overal, Call me dumb but I like Molly Seary as the negative thinker even though she sounds a bit old when she goes insanely scared. Geneive Simmons as Konata (kanata or whateva) is very good IMO, plus I have a strange idol/schoolboy crush on her and Yuko who is voiced by Tiffany Terrel which I thought was a strange yet awesome choice. And I thought Sonataā€™s VA was Magret Mcdonald but was wrong and astounded by her first big (or incognito if she just wanted a different name in credit) performance so far making me think she was better than the Japanese VA IMO.

Luci Christian fixed the problem I had with Nagisaā€™s Japanese voice actress for sounding way to young, script read sounding, and annoying IMO. Plus Emily Neves brings a deeper yet very very great Cherri which fits how she was a ā€œcute rich girlā€ to ā€œcute rich girl that learns harshness of reality and dose not care about money anymoreā€.

Downsides are Nagisaā€™s name pronounciation but its not like Clannad (a dub I still like though) where you can make a incredibely dangerous drinking game out of :silly: .

I will review the show later down the line after watching all of it.

Administration is aware of this and is looking into this.

Iā€™ll send in the rest of your info to them.

Looks like the Ep. 01 time differential that I reported in the ANO error thread (and bs3311 mentioned in here) is fixed now.

Iā€™m amazed at how much has been added to the Directors Cut.
Thereā€™s approximatly 1:26 extra footage to the actual episode, which is rather impressive, even for a DC.

Episodes 02 - 13 are now back up.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sentai-filmworks/sentai-filmworks-announces-akb0048-english-dub-cast/685975688096213

English Dub Cast

Director - Christopher Ayres

English Vocal Cast

Nagisa Motomiya - Luci Christian
Chieri Sono - Emily Neves
Orine Aida - Brittney Karbowski
Yuka Ichijo - Monica Rial
Sonata Shinonome - Juliet Simmons
Makoto Yokomizo - Molly Searcy
Minami Takahashi the 5th - Cynthia Martinez
Yuko Oshima the 9th - Tiffany Terrell
Yuki Kashiwagi the 6th - Margaret McDonald
Mayu Watanabe Type 3 - Hayley Adams
Haruna Kojima the 8th - Nancy Novotny
Tomomi Itano the 11th - Allison Sumrall
Sae Miyazawa the 10th - Shannon Emerick
Sayaka Akimoto the 10th - Beth Lazarou
Kirara - Tiffany Grant
Mamoru - Greg Ayres
Nagisaā€™s Father - Christopher Ayres
Nagisaā€™s Mother - Nancy Novotny
Teacher - Mark X Laskowski

Additional Voices

Hayley Adams
Meaghan Avocato
Christopher Ayres
Greg Ayres
Kalin Coates
Tiffany Grant
Josh Grelle
Mark X Laskowski
Margaret McDonald
Brent Marshall
Nancy Navotny
Tiffany Terrell
David Wald

Luci is playing Nagisaā€¦ why does this sound familiar :wink:

The concert in the first episode was almost like something out of Metalocalypse. Unfortunately this AKB0048 music was pretty forgettable though better than I expected (I was bracing for something ear=splitting like the intro to Bodacious Space Pirates). AKB0048 is, in this show, the Japanese Wyld Stallions.

ā€¦Iā€™m thinking that some serious mind-altering substances need to be ingested before watching this. The people who made this had to have been more stoned than Otto from The Simpsons. This was way too hilarious, however. I might have been wrong about this show earlier lol. Thanks for that Karbowski, Cynthia Martinez and Greg ā€œheartbreakerā€ Ayres (et al).

BTW, if art & entertainment is banned then how does the pink-haired moeblob have an iPod, a speaker and, more importantly, how can she go around with it in public? Also, did I just hear several instances of singing in an English dub by Sentai?!!

Brutal: Chris Ayres went back to arbitrarily using honorifics. Out of all the lines in the first ep, so many of which use honorifics in the Japanese, I heard 4 (arguably 6). Use them all the time or (preferably) none of the time. This is too inconstant.

Who are they? Their characters are introduced virtually back-to-back in Ep 2.

BTW, a 3rd new(isH) actress and her role were omitted from this dub listing

BTW, do they not have Hyundai commercials in Texas?

EDIT: Dammit, Chris Ayres put in another random honorific. They said ā€œSonataā€ a bazillion times without an honorific but at ~7:39 all the sudden she becomes ā€œsonata-sanā€. At ~12:23 Karbowski says ā€œSuzoko-sanā€ for no reason. What is going on with this; did they record early lines with the honorifics and then abandon them for later recording?

This is the first English dub (by Sentai) in how many years to have English singing?

BTW, for all the inconsistent awkwardness with the honorifics Chris Ayres deftly avoided using ā€œsempaiā€ in a situation where it would have been so easy to have done so. Props for that.

The HD streaming issue has to be fixed as the upscale of the non-HD stream looks worse than a DVD.

The main lessons to learn from this series:

1. Sometime to realize your own dreams, you have to crush the dreams of somebody else.
*
2. Practice can sometimes pay off
*
3. Kanata is the real hero of this series B)

I thought the take-away from ā€œK-On in Spaceā€ was that men were bad.

There have only been 2 shown male characters who havenā€™t been trying to kill/oppress the moeblob militia so far as Iā€™ve seen, and one of them is a cross-dresser so he doesnā€™t count for that.

These sort of shows donā€™t portray dudes in a good light as something of a rule but Iā€™d prefer the Strawberry Panic route of simply having no male characters to this, where the majority of the male characters shown are grown men beating up on/shooting at the quasi-loli moeblobs. At least give us some female villains; if Blue Drop can do itā€¦

EDIT: oh, and ā€œWORD UP, MAH HOME-SKILLET!ā€ Yep. You know what Iā€™m talking about.

Sorry that argument doesnā€™t fly because almost all the WOTA members are guys.

I guess I havenā€™t gotten that far yet (Streaming issues have been oppressing me). Iā€™m still at the time where underage moeblobs (some dressed in trenchcoat dresses) are fighting against the ā€œevil powerā€, which so far consists of adult males and their giant robot minions.

Also, Nagisa is so suspicious of men that when a random hipster on the street tries to talk to ā€œCheeryā€ she automatically assumes that the hipster is hostile and is out to get them. Not only was the guy a hipster, making him automatically incapable of brutality, but they were on the AKB0048 home planet.

Did anyone else think that the backstory of the Itano Family was extremely creepy?

Since I donā€™t have the ā€œmoe-visionā€ all I saw during that was insanity. I thought it was funny, but that doesnā€™t mean that I donā€™t think that the Itano family should be carted off to the nearest insane asylumā€¦

ā€œ[Theyā€™re] the Twin Towers of ā€˜lame-clothesā€™ā€

Did I hear that correctly?

Also, is there Borat on ā€œKazakhsta-rā€?

ACK! After a good run Chris Ayres finally took the cowardā€™s approach and used ā€œSempaiā€ in the dub. Making matters worse, and more mysterious, the very next line actually uses the subjunctive properly. Thatā€™s a rarity, and it is an English success right on the heels of an English failure. Downright mind-boggling.

After Shining Hearts I thought that he might have decided to stop half-assing his English adaptations. Maybe he just isnā€™t there yet. If dub directing were like baseball pitching I would say that Chris Ayres isnā€™t starter material yet.

Thereā€™s no excuse for Japanese honorifics in an English dub. However, if the dub is consistent then I can grin and bear it. This dub is horribly inconsistent regarding its usage of honorifics. The only time honorifics shouldnā€™t be used is to a)insult or b)represent a close relationship between characters, yet when the honorifics are suddenly dropped after use in this series the inflection of the voices reflects neither choice.

Where is Chris Ayresā€™ ā€œA-Gameā€?

I believe they were inconsistent in Japanese audio itself.

Ah. I havenā€™t gone through the Japanese audio track. I donā€™t think that Iā€™d survive that lol.

Iā€™m not sure how Iā€™d rank some of the actresses in this dub but Iā€™m thinking that it is still the best Sentai dub that Iā€™ve heard Chris Ayres do. Definitely one that should have had a commentary track. Maybe Sentai can do that for the sequel?

Though it does make me wish that Kelly Manison were still active in voice acting.

Do you think administrators can correct the subtitle problem? With the exception of the opening and closing songs, in the songs sung in japanese, the subtitles are not present, so there is no way of knowing what the words are in english,or even know what is being sung. Is there a way to fix this?

I have a question about the storyline. I wonder why in AKAB0048, entertainment, especially singing was banned? What is the reason? I never got an explanation behind the entertainment ban, why it was enacted, and whoā€™s idea it was?

I also wonder what the DES stand for anyway?