[Guest]

I checked just out of fascination and MIP isn't in the lineup (just to save anyone the hassle)

I really can't comprehend thosee who listen to video game soundtracks -- or movie scores for that matter. If you go for the moody feel of Persona's soundtrack, or ever wondered what David Bowie on estrogen would be like -- I'd recommend Kate Bush's work.

Did you seriously just recommend Kate Bush???

Be running up that road, running up that heeel, be running up that building...

You know she's pretty much famous for making some of the most unlistenable records in music history.

Does anyone have/know where I can find the soundtrack to the first Persona?  I've been playing a little bit here and there and finding I quite like the moody, slightly creepy music.  I figured someone around here must of uploaded it somewhere.

Just make sure you cast any kaja skill on your party (suku is best really) every round, that way they'll cast dekaja on you instead of dekunda on themselves.  Once you cast randomizer (debilitate) four times Hitoshura will most likely be missing or doing next to nothing damage wise and if you keep on with the sukukaja and randomizers pixie and arahabaki/whichever will waste their turns trying to dekunda (who can't with no MP) and dekaja respectively, leaving you open to waste hitoshura at your leisure.

It really is preferential, what I was objecting to is that the preferences of others seem to take priority over the preferences of the relatively fewer.  I'm also unsure of how pirating something somehow disqualifies you from value-judging the artistic merit of a given thing, but the logic of people who "lightly skim overly verbose" posts on a board of people discussing their OPINIONS doesn't really concern me.

I think we're all just agreeing to disagree here and perceiving differences of opinion as personal attacks.  Although I just had to address this:

You are the one that is really uneducated for not understanding my inital post and going on with a jab at America and a jab at dub viewers.

I *did* understand your original post and you still have yet to explain how exactly commenting on my own country's education system and dub viewers make me uneducated?  In fact, all I said was, and rather off-handishly I might add, "the education system has failed you."  Which ISN'T even calling you uneducated in the first place.  In fact, I went on to say how it's failed all of us (and continues to do so), so you aren't the only one.  If anything you completely misunderstood my meaning and took it as a personal attack against you, when really it was intended as a generalized comment about current events in our nation, making it actually ironic that we're even having this conversation.

Also, the way Night Savior describes subtitles sounds more like Closed Captioning, which is designed for the hearing impaired.  Most subtitled movies/shows have white or yellow text, which in the case of wide-screen movies will often appear below the main image in the letterboxing and are usually quite legible and often much larger than necessary to accommodate those with sight problems.  Although I can't really speak from experience since I have perfect vision, I find it much more difficult to read black on white text that appears on the computer screen for extended periods.

I finally beat Hitoshura the other day.  Basically the only way I could really beat him was to make Pixie run out of MP by casting Sukukaja and Randomizer every round and then healing or Dekunda-ing from Arahabaki's Randomizer.  It took me about six or seven tries though.  You kind of have to use Cielo to survive that initial Mother Earth's Repast, since at 99 Luck you almost always recover from Bad Status the next round, so you have to have Pixie score an extra press turn from Dorumina in order for Hitoshura to cast Mother Earth's Repast on the same round.  It takes about 30 or so rounds for her to run out of MP to cast Dekunda and interestingly enough when his Nakama cast Dekaja and Dekunda they don't count as actions towards the inevitable Recarmdora, which from my experience can happen anywhere from 25 to 30 press turn actions after being summoned.  After Pixie runs out of MP basically you can fully Randomizer Hitoshura and Pixie and Arahabaki as long as you keep casting Sukukaja every round to keep Arahabaki from casting Dekunda, he'll just keep casting Dekaja on you every round.

Also, though all my party was over level 90, none of them were level 99, although I did Max out everyone's Magic and Luck scores and everyone had Mastered the entire Mantra Flow.  I didn't really have the patience to hunt for the other noises, except for the random Vital Noises I got from hunting Titania to pay for the last Mantras.

Right now I'm going through DDS2 again.  This time I think I'll try and take on the optional bosses since importing my Extra data from the first DDS.

Actually it would have been. You said I was uneducated, yet you couldn't comprehend what I was saying in a post. Thus, you were showing your lack of education. Why do you think you're so much better than us because you like subs over dubs? I never said "Only give dubs, let the art be destroyed by translators!"

Um, so yeah, still not ironic, sorry.  IRONY (n) is the use of words to express something other than their original intention.  Thus, you continue to prove my point.  I also have trouble following your logic: Assuming you are uneducated when you claim to not be somehow makes me uneducated? :footinmou

In any case, that's not what I'm debating.  Notice on how that seems to be the only thing anyone seems to have picked up from my posts...

Though I tend to agree with Tony (that both a dub and sub should've come with it), I disagree with the assumption that we should just accept this as the norm and be glad that we can now have some "emotional connection" to the characters by virtue of them speaking in English.  That doesn't make any sense... How can I have a greater emotional connection to the same ten Canadian VAs that they get to do everything?  And just because I don't know their names off the top of my head doesn't mean you can slide one over on me, I can recognize voices.  In fact I'm very good at recognizing people by their voices and a decade of putting up with shitty dubs has taught me a few things about the way they do business.  

To me, it completely detracts from the story, not to mention the simple inability of the English language to be able to convey the same ideas and intonation as in Japanese.  Also I've noticed quite frequently with dubs blatant and completely unnecessary dialog changes, usually adding some bullshit North American or British colloquialism to possibly add "a greater emotional connection," like you talked about, but to me comes off as trite and stupid.  Personally I just don't see what the big deal is.  To me a dub seems unnecessary and a complete waste of time and money.  I figure something like Persona 3, especially with a niche PLAYSTATION 2 GAME (coz we all know how much Americans don't like to buy console transition games), I don't really think subtitling it would have really hurt or increased sales (Well, ATLUS USA might've gotten my buck if they would've put the sub in, but cest la vie).

Also, I don't recall making you guys out to be the way you seem to think.  All I said was "God bless America," which was really more of a slam at the U.S. for failing us all so miserably in the public school system, which is far from calling you guys "America FUCK YEAH"-ers (though a hilarious movie, btw).

Basically we're all saying the same thing although I still can't understand why anyone on this Earth would watch something dubbed over.  Watching [ adultswim ]'s anime night is like auditory torture.

Your inability to understand what I said makes your response ironic.

Dude...  You just completely proved my point.  Even if I didn't understand your original post, it wouldn't have been ironic.  You may want to look that one up in the dictionary.

In any case, far be it from me to distract you guys from your love for mediocre crap.  You all assume that I'm demanding something from you or something.  I don't care if you're too blind to read subtitles or have attention deficit issues and text distracts you.  They sound like excuses to me.  It just seems to me that it isn't ridiculous to demand from North American distributors that they don't dub everything, or at least present the option of hearing the original audio track.

And I'm sorry for insinuating that you may be dumb for preferring to watch things dubbed.  Sometimes I get a little bitchy and preachy but seriously, it just seems like a no-brainer to me.

God bless America... :beaten:

Look, if it takes you more than a split second to read subtitles then the education system has failed you.

Oh, and "putting it in my native language so I can understand what the hell is going on," is definitely dumbing it down.

I'd pretty much stress that the dubbing is not bad myself. I think we're also talking about someone who would find any dub to be unacceptable, though lol.

Pretty much.  You didn't watch Pan's Labyrinth dubbed, did you?

I always am amused by how those that desire these things feel that the want for a subbed version somehow surpasses the desire for a dubbed one. Where were they during the dubbed vs. subbed VHS anime situation before all of that stuff exploded? Even when that was niche, subs weren't exactly a majority preference.

Paying effin' 30$  god damned dollars for subbed VHS is what.  Viz especially used to charge upwards of 10$ more than the dubbed versions of the same anime.  Let's be honest here.  Cartoons are a children's medium in North America.  Action cartoons from Japan especially are marketed to children.  The education system in this country being woefully behind as it is, its not surprising that any chance to dumb down easily marketed crap will be taken.  Dubbing dumbs down content.  It will never be a majority preference because the majority is a bunch of A.D.D.'d out Ritalin-children who can barely read.  

Do they really think a company such as Atlus is going to do a secondary "special" print run so that a couple hundred people (if that) can have a Japanese language version? There's a very large discrepancy between those who will just download something and those who will pay $50+ for something. To some of these people offering only the Japanese track is the way to go, but we're not in Japan (regardless of the game's locale) and it seems as though Sony has some rules about that stuff.

No, ATLUS would never do it.  I don't really expect much from the NA branch.  The fact that they release the games at all in America seems kind of surprising to me since I almost never see them at any game store and I can't imagine them doing very well in the American market.  They are just too distinctly Japanese, not to mention a niche game type even in Japan.

However, I would like to say this.  Capcom released Onimusha with both English and Japanese audio tracks, you could even set it so the subtitles would be in Japanese.  I fail to see why this is so difficult for NA releases, or why developers just refuse to do it in the first place.  Maybe I'd have more say if I joined the Atlus boards, but I like to swear too much, not to mention my fringe opinions and lifestyle, plus you have to sign up for some ridiculous BBS system to actually post there, so not for me.

That said it's a pretty cool offering. Personally, however, given that I don't understand Japanese it's pretty hard for me to sit and listen to this and really be like "well they're definitely better voice actors!". If you understand it, why not just buy the Japanese version and read it "the way it was meant to be!" read too? Although that's obviously far less feasible.

To me its not about feasibility, it's more whether or not you respect artistic integrity.  It's also not about what country is better at acting with their voices, that is a non-issue, because Japanese VAs are just as hackneyed as their Canadian counterparts.  It's about whether or not you want to hear experience something as it was originally intended.  To me it also seems pretty disrespectful to the culture as well.  'Let's take your art/game/movie and edit it to suit our arbitrary tastes and lack of education!'  

Hopefully this will just become a non-existent issue as we move to larger storage mediums. If this still happened on PS3 with Blu-ray or some other system in the future, I think there will be a lot more room for complaint.

I'd say it's not a complaint as much as it is criticism.  Though I think storage capacities currently on DVD-ROMs are sufficient for subtitles tracks.

Hillary, you whore! :stoic: Stop playin' with my emotions!

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Side note:  While looking the the emoticons, I stumbled across this :whitecast

Tony, you like them sliders, hunh?

Is it really like "dish{ing} out an ass kicking to the forces of evil like Ashe from Army of Darkness?"

You might want to think about editing that bit.  Just a suggestion...

I was just joking, but okay...  

For some reason this is making me think of that scene in Spartacus with Tony Curtis: "Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral? Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it? And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals. My taste includes both snails and oysters."  

Pretty heavy stuff for 1960.:lurk:

Basically everything Miyazaki has ever done is excellent and I would say probably the  highest quality animation I've ever seen out of any studio, Japanese or otherwise.

I'm pretty international when it comes to my taste in animation though but these days most televised serial anime seems so terrible to me.  Last good ones I've seen though are  the Tekkon Kinkreet movie and some old Gegege no Kitarou cartoons.

It's "who has their copy," not "there copy." Grammar police.

Are you saying I don't have morals?