Todd Blankenship Profile picture
A boring person who likes stuff. This year’s themes: Dragon Ball, Kinnikuman, Avan

Jul 25, 2021, 16 tweets

Rewatching the DBS panel, there’s a few things I want to note about the subtitles. They’re fine overall but there’s a few things I think are oversimplified or left out. Going through roughly in order of importance…

When discussing the artwork for New Character 1 and 2, in Japanese Hayashida says how it’s Toriyama’s original artwork, unlike the Piccolo/Pan/etc images that have been developed into full-fledged anime designs. The subtitles instead say it was made before movie production began

Now, it might indeed be true that Toriyama would’ve made the initial artwork before movie production began, but that’s not really what Hayashida is talking about. He’s contrasting this image with the earlier ones shown of Piccolo and co, which weren’t Toriyama’s original artwork

While making this point, Hayashida and the interviewer refer back to the Piccolo and co designs a few times, but this always gets left out in the subtitles, leaving it unclear that those are examples of the “anime designs” based on Toriyama’s original art.

Again, the designs for Piccolo and co (and Piccolo’s house) were all based on Toriyama’s original designs of course, but it’s only for the new characters that we’re shown Toriyama’s untouched original artwork. That’s what Hayashida is saying here.

A related mistake (or oversimplification) occurs when describing the design of Piccolo’s house. Hayashida says how this is an image board made by remaking Toriyama’s design for anime use. The subtitles instead say Toriyama sent them the image board, which was then redesigned.

In other words: Toriyama doesn’t make image boards. The anime staff makes image boards based on what Toriyama sends them. Also, the term in question is 美術ボード (art board), if that makes a difference for the production-minded among you.

Speaking of this scenery image, when the interviewer tries guessing where it is, he notes it looks like the sort of place where battles are often fought in the series. In Japanese Hayashida says “let me tell you the answer” then reveals it’s the area around Piccolo’s house…

…The subtitles have Hayashida’s answer as “you’re close”, making it sound like a battle will indeed happen there in the movie, which I wouldn’t really say is implied by Hayashida’s Japanese answer (or at least not nearly as much).

When they discuss Kuririn’s eyes being de-skinned, Hayashida says it was Iyoku who requested during the development process to fix the eye coloring to match Toriyama’s. This gets glossed over in the subs.

Iyoku says that the most important thing Toriyama did for the movie was make the script. The subtitles have this as "creating a story is the most important part of making a movie", without specifying that this is what Toriyama did.

Still, Toriyama writing the script gets mentioned again later on anyway, so it’s not like the subtitles omit this aspect entirely. But it still seems odd to make the initial statement so vague.

On that note: Iyoku says Toriyama began the new movie’s script while DBS: Broly’s production was still ongoing. The subtitles say he was “on the set” of DBS: Broly, but his physical presence isn’t really implied by the Japanese (and do animated films really have “sets”…?)

I mean, I’m sure Toriyama visited the Toei studies at some point during DBS: Broly’s production, but I think most of his script-writing was does at home (and again, they don’t mention him being “on set” in Japanese)

When talking about how Pan plays an “integral part” in the movie, the word used is 活躍, the same word Toriyama uses to describe the “unexpected”character in his comment. Maybe a sign that Pan is indeed who Toriyama meant? But not hard proof, of course.

There’s various other minor stuff, but those are the only things I noticed that seem worth mentioning.

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling