Well, it seems that two different groups, yesy and DamagedGoodz, has made releases to StrikerS. Triad has stated that they are currently waiting for better raws. If you’re like me and can’t be bothered to wait, it would probably be in your interest to catch one of the two groups above. I have watched the episode three times already, the first run in raw format and the two subsequent runs over the two aforementioned fansubs.

Without further adieu, let’s get on with this episode’s review and a subsequent subbing analysis.

I’d say that this first episode is a very good opener for the series. There’s plenty of action to be had as you can tell from the screencaps that I took but it is also balanced out by your average whiny parts that all anime just has to have. I often laugh hysterically during those scenes since I can’t take it seriously, but of course, it wouldn’t be a Nanoha if they didn’t have these scenes.

The action scenes are all well done and you can tell that they’ve got a pretty big budget at their disposal, although it is questionable as to whether it rivals Haruhi’s or not, since lord knows that was a huge production. Subaru, the blue-haired one, for your information, brings nothing new to the scene what with her fists, since that was what Arf and Zafira fought with in the earlier seasons. She also plays the role of your average crybaby. In contrast, Teana is much more outspoken and apparently is using a gun, both attributes of which are essentially unheard of in the Nanoha universe. Teana also gets bonus points from me since Mai Nakahara is voicing her.

All three main returning characters are still there usual self (minus the whole ten years older aspect of course). Nanoha and Fate still talk in soft little voices and Hayate still has her oh-so-annoying Kansai-ben. Donna Burke is still bound by her contract to read out grammatically incorrect lines for Raising Heart. The whole Nanoha works is here that reminisces of the past seasons, so I have no qualms about it really. If you were worried that they might all have disappeared, be at peace that this is not the case. To wrap up this episode’s review, I’d like to point out that Reinforce Zwei is super cute, by the way.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at this subbing business. The pictures on the left are from yesy and the ones on the right are from DamagedGoodz. Before we get started, I’d like to note that both fansubs has opted to use ‘Raising Heart’ instead of ‘Raging Heart’. ‘Raising Heart’ is the name that is on some official item (that was included with the A’s DVDs I think) and as a result is the one that is adopted in Wikipedia articles. Triad has noted that they will stick with ‘Raging Heart’. If you have a problem with this whole naming thing, well, pick your subs accordingly. Oh, and if anyone cares, yesy did karaoke whereas DamagedGoodz didn’t.

In the first scenario depicted above, the gibberish that the firefighter says is pretty hard to listen to. However, I’m pretty certain that I heard こども (子供), which means children, so yesy would be correct in this regard.

The second and third comparisons presented here are a question of accuracy and taste. In both cases, I can hear that the literal words voiced by Donna Burke are ‘A firing lock has been cancelled’ and ‘There is no dangerous object either’. Of course, it would make more sense if she was saying ‘My firing lock has been cancelled’ and ‘There are no dangerous objects either’. Pick at your discretion.

リインフォース II: でわ、スタートはあと少し。ゴール時点にが会いましょう？ですよ！

I may have been off by a little in the transcription above, but that’s the general idea. I can see where yesy’s coming from by putting in the ‘ですよ！’ as ‘Okay!’, but the line ‘Let’s meet at the finish line, okay? Okay!’ just sounds way too awkward. I think DamagedGoodz was the one that handled this one properly by not having appended it at all.

Crossfire’s a real world and the first definition that Merriam-Webster provides is firing (as in combat) from two or more points so that the lines of fire cross. Which, of course, is exactly what this move Teana and Subaru is using entails.

スバル: だから！こんな所で。。。私の目の前で！

I personally liked how DamagedGoodz handled this scene with by adding ellipses and the exclamation marks and am curious as to why yesy didn’t do likewise. Both translations work obviously, but yesy is the one that used the literal meaning with ‘in front of my eyes’.

This one is another handling issue. If you actually listen to the audio you can see that Subaru is stuttering and trying to correct herself and all that good stuff, but yesy just sits there with stale monotonous subtitles.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed reading my analysis of these two fansubs. I think I’m going to go with DamagedGoodz since I don’t care about karaoke and I’d rather have the text follow what’s going on with the audio. Most of the translation issues aren’t huge (obviously), and if you don’t speak Japanese, it wouldn’t even bother you anyway.

I may do another one of these for the second episode (or for a different series entirely) but that may have to wait a while since I’ve got some exams on Wednesday and Thursday and doing these comparisons takes a bit of time. I will continue to review Nanoha StrikerS even if I don’t do anymore subbing comparisons for groups, so be on the lookout for that if you’re going to be watching this series.