What in the world is a "vibebuddy"?

Untranslatable words are probably the bane of every fansubbers' existence, especially when they end up being part of the title of the work. Of course it's always possible to leave it untranslated but when I saw the word "bittomo", I really wanted to make it work.

For the trailer, I pretty much lifted the name translations off Kevin N. from the Tokusatsu Network. The names were taken off the image links of the official website and it reads okay so I don't see why I shouldn't use them. Here's his Twitter thread discussing it:

https://twitter.com/DraikenTalkos/status/1399508316292751362

(And is the link to the article!)

https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2021/05/bittomo-x-heroine-kirameki-powers-announced/

But even Kevin was rather stumped on how to translate "bittomo".

So, what is "bittomo"?

I decided to wait a while to see how they utilized the word. To be honest, while I can see that they were also going for "beep" like the video game beeps, after watching the trailers, the YouTube extras and the first episode, I found that they barely reference it that way. Instead, it's actually short for "ビビッとくる" (Bibittokuru). Here's the dictionary definition from Weblio:

ビビッとくる

大きな衝撃を受けたかのような心理状態を感覚的に述べる言い方。閃き、直感、一目惚れなどを表現する言い方として用いられることが多い。

A way to emotionally convey the mental state of experiencing something incredibly shocking. Often used as a way to convey your feelings of inspiration, intuition, love at first sight, etc.

Japanese Google searches also brought up a lot of threads on "fated encounters", "soulmates". Basically, it's a very emotional word to describe good chemistry with people.

It took me at least a week to figure out if there were any words in English that could translate this phrase. At the very least, I wanted to keep the translation as close to the original as possible. And wouldn't you believe it, there is miraculously one word that has similar emotional connotations: Vibe.

Here's the Oxford definition:

Vibe

(Noun) A person's emotional state or the atmosphere of a place as communicated to and felt by others.

(Verb) Enjoy oneself by listening to or dancing to popular music

(Verb) Transmit or give out (a feeling or atmosphere)

It's not a direct correlation with bibittokuru, but it's close enough (also vibe is an emotionally neutral word so it's actually more correct to say good vibes) and it thematically fits the show! And it can be used as both a verb and a noun so that actually solves a lot of issues with when the show dumps ビビッと all over the place.

1) ビビ〜ときたキラリ

Kirari who is feeling good vibes

2) 心おどるとビビ〜ときちゃうアッツイ小学5年生

An energetic fifth-grade elementary student that starts getting good vibes when she gets excited

3) 友達になりたいとビビ〜っと思った相手と「ビッ友」に！

Will become "vibebuddies" with people she wants to be friends with that she gets good vibes from!

ビビッとセット Vibe and Set

ビビッとショット Vibing Shot

ビビクトリー Vibe-victory

I ended up creating the word "vibebuddy" as it's a decent enough translation of the word "bittomo" with similar syllables. That was my whole thought process behind translating this word~ Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!

Vibebuddy x Heroine Kirameki Powers! Web Trailer Released

Torrents:

HD1080

YouTube link here!

I had some time and this season looks pretty dope so I decided to sub the trailer.

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

The State of Affairs - 27 January 2021

Hmm. This will probably be the last State of Affairs I'll do in a long, long while.

It's almost 1am here and I have a whole day of classes tomorrow, but I figured I should write all this down and then take a long, long, long break from fan-subbing. But it's still quite unbelievable thinking about it.

I'm done subbing all 51 episodes of Miracle Tunes.

I've cleaned up most links on this blog, so they should all lead to the latest releases, and the final torrent files should stay up.

I thought it was a very well-done show, honestly! When Miracle Tunes was airing, it aired alongside Ex-Aid and Zyuohger for the most part. Kinda dropped Zyuohger while Ex-Aid was in its sloggish mid-section, so I remember a period of time when the tokusatsu I most looked forward to was Miracle Tunes. Of course, I was also an actual idol fan back then supporting actual idol groups, so I guess that helped to get me hooked.

One thing I did enjoy when watching the final episodes of the show was the fact that Maou was tuned up by the Song of Blessings. Because they had mentioned very early on that "only the Song of Blessings can tune Maou", so I'm very happy they didn't pull some plot twist out of nowhere. Then again, I reckoned that the show's staff worked very hard to ensure a good first season - it was going to lead into the Girls x Heroine series, after all.

While this was mostly a one-man team, I'd like to spend some time thanking @rukakikuchi and @pushmipullu who offered their help for a chunk of the mid-season episodes. Unfortunately I ended up just working on my own again because unfortunately it was just really hard to work together in an online setting, but I did appreciate the work they were able to help me with!

Fan-subbing a project solo has its ups and downs. Working alone meant that I was able to work at my own pace with whatever workflow I wanted, and it really helped. But it also meant that I sometimes burned the midnight oil to get episodes out (especially during periods when I felt like I haven't released an episode in a while, until I finally stopped bothering to keep to a schedule). It feels a little irritating to leave stuff incomplete, so even if I had to take three years, I was determined to finish my subs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Three years feels like a long time, but it also felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. When I started, I was working full-time. Now that I am done, I'm a university student in his last year. I'm at a totally different place from when I first started on this project, and while I can't decide it that's a good or bad thing, I don't really regret where I am.

(Also, if you told me in 2018 that COVID would be a thing WHEW I'D HAVE THOUGHT YOU'RE CRAZY)

The results for JLPT N2 released a day or so ago and I'm happy to say that I passed it too. One of the reasons why I started this fan-subbing project was to hone my Japanese, and it definitely did help with me doing well for N3 in 2019 and now passing N2. (It wasn't a great score but it's not like a borderline thing either...it was a decent score.)

One reason I decided that I would finish Mirachuu and leave it at that was because real life is really starting to get in the way of more and more things and I can foresee taking even longer than what I do now to release things. The only reason I was able to concentrate on finishing up during this period was because my last semester is more relaxed compared to others (I'd already hit the required credits so this semester has less workload compared to previous semesters). I don't see myself ever having this sort of time ever again.

But it was fun while it lasted. No more trying to optimize my output by leaving the computer to run to render episodes through the night while I slept. No more panicking when I screw up a release. I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm not sick of the show, actually. I've probably watched most episodes more than 3-4 times by now.

But anyway, I really need to get going. Thanks for sticking with me throughout and let's chat on Twitter sometime! (Still fairly active on there even if the series is complete!)

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Final Batch Released

Part 1 (Episodes 1-26):

SD | HD720 | HD1080

Part 2 (Episode 27-51):

SD | HD720 | HD1080

I really tried to catch and fix most inconsistencies and translation issues, but there may be one or two left uncaught. That said, this is the most latest version of the files. If you have any incomplete downloads, please do switch over to this one instead (sorry for the inconvenience!!)

I have mentioned many times that this release will be the last time I ever update these, so I guess if people e-mail or tweet me about errors, I'll probably create a list here to note them all or something...LOL.

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Episode 51 Released

Torrents:

SD | HD720 | HD1080

Please check out the final batch torrent here!

Or watch it on Google Drive here

(*I usually upload to YouTube but this episode in particular got blocked so Drive it is)

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Episode 50 Released

Torrents:

Please check out the final batch torrent here!

Watch it on YouTube

(...I seriously hope I didn't miss out anything this time......)

(EDIT on 27/01/2021: Updated with final batch link and YouTube link)

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

The State of Affairs - 20 January 2021

Hi there! I'm here to provide yet another update on the final few releases and my housekeeping progress! (And yes, 50 and 51 are coming real soon!)

1. General housekeeping

As mentioned, I've been going back to clean up older episodes to fix consistency and spelling issues as best as I can. While that means I'm updating most scripts to new versions, it doesn't mean I'm updating all the scripts. If the script requires one or two changes to fix consistency and spelling, I'd go ahead and polish up the rest of the script. However, some scripts only have very minor formatting issues which didn't really warrant an update, so I left them as is. (There really aren't much that are left untouched, to be honest...I think out of the 30+ episodes I've checked so far, only 3-4 files survived edits.)

I think the hardest part of doing this is the fact that I'm always catching minor mistakes - part of being a (mostly) one-man team, I suppose! But it kind of stresses me out to decide if I want to put the episode through another hour of render just to fix a tiny error. Regardless, even if there ends up being errors that still got through the gaps, I'm going to finalize the files and not touch them anymore.

I should mention that I'm actually doing these clean ups out of order to try and maximize my efficiency, and unsurprisingly, Anyway, this leads into...

2. YouTube uploads

I have been reuploading the re-done episodes in batches (and also out of order mostly, so apologies if you are the kind that feels uncomfortable about that kind of thing...haha), and as of now I think I'm three-quarters done, with most of the undone episodes in the first half (again...lots more to fix in the first half). There may be periods where episodes go missing, but I'll try and get it back up as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

There is one thing, however - Episode 1 will be the un-updated version, because YouTube has gotten really strict with uploads and it now blocks Episode 1 from showing up at all. These shows were never meant to be uploaded onto YouTube anyway, so unfortunately that'll have to stay as is.

3. Final Batch Release for Episodes 27-51

I did mention that I'll release a final batch release for Episodes 1-26, but I may end up releasing a final batch for Episodes 27-51 first, just because there's a lot less to clean up in the back half (I've become a lot more consistent by then). Also, I am aware that the newest episodes have pretty much no seeds, so this will really help fix the problem too.

I'm actually almost done with the clean up, so this will likely release with the last two episodes.

4. Final Batch Release for Episodes 1-26

For the front half, I'm about 10 episodes into cleaning up (so 16 episodes left!), and I'm hoping to be done with them by the start of February. To be honest, I'm probably going to take this one slow since I'd be done with the latter half by then, but we'll see. I'm hoping not to take too long because it'll be nice to finally not think about fan-subbing work so much. Hahaha.

This half will include the social media videos that they did for a while before stopping.

5. The extra stuff

I have dabbled in subbing other stuff here and there. Here is most likely what I'll do with them:

Miracle Tunes Episode 7 April Fool's Sub
Probably will dump it in together with the Final Batch for 1-26.

Catch Me! MV (DVD version)
Now that the HD version is released on YouTube, I might update it for that. Most of the work for this is done anyway.

Parallel World MV
Highly likely I'll collate this with Catch Me! and release it together, if I ever get around to doing that.

Magimajo Pures Episode 1 (for April Fool's 2019)
So I went out of my way to sub a full episode of Magimajo Pures for April Fool's 2019, and I might just clean that up (update the terms, such as from "Magic Warriors" to "Magical x Heroine" now that they've firmly established their branding).

Majoke Porte DX Toy Demo
Highly likely that I'll collate it with Episode 1 if I ever update this one.

#KizunaPlus MV
Oh god I was watching what I put out and the karaoke timing was soooo off it's crazy. I don't really have any idea where and when I'm going to re-release this

Girls2 Revolution Episode 1
I subbed this for fun and I'm really not looking into subbing more, but I'll probably collate this with #KizunaPlus.

If I ever decide to work on these extra stuff, I think the most likely thing that's gonna happen is that I'll probably get someone to do up the karaoke for the rest of miracle2's music videos (they only have 4 including Kari x Kari so I'm already done with half, in a sense) and release all 4 videos as a set. We'll see how it goes, it probably won't be so soon if I ever decide to work on them.

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Episode 49 Released

Torrents:

Please check out the final batch torrent here!

Watch it on YouTube

(EDIT on 27/01/2021: Updated with final batch link and YouTube link)

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

The State of Affairs - 13 January 2021

I've decided to do a little housekeeping as we are nearing the end. Here are some things that I will be doing before I get too busy with school again.

1. Final Batch Release for Episodes 1 to 26

I've always wanted to redo the first two batches (Episodes 1-14, Episodes 15-26) as one big batch, so with things about to come to a close, I figured I might as well start doing it.

I've seen fan-subbing groups that go in and fix things for a batch release, and I figured I'm going to do that for Episodes 1 - 26, and not touch them forever and ever and ever. Yes, that means I get to fix all the mistakes I'd talked about in my last post...HAHAHA. I mean, I was going to batch it anyway so I might as wel fix the consistency of terms, and polish up some of the translations while I'm at it. I'm pretty sure I'll still end up missing stuff, but at the very least I'll feel more at ease with what I put out (I...think I'm kind of a perfectionist? I'm too lazy to be a perfectionist though...)

This isn't going to impact my weekly releases so don't worry about things slowing down!

2. YouTube channel

I'm going to trim the channel so that only the full episodes remain. And since I'm going to be updating all the past episodes for the batch release, I'll likely re-upload old episodes too. So don't be alarmed when you see older episodes popping up again - it's just me sorting things out!

3. Episode Schedule for Everything Else

Episode 49: 16 January (maaaaybe 17 January if I have to go home to release it since my campus blocks torrents)

Episode 50: 23 January (maaaaybe 24 January, for the same reason as above)

Episode 51: Hopefully 30 January, but I might delay it a teeny bit into February depending on how busy I get.

I actually want to note that yes, Episode 49's script will be based on the batch releases, so there are officially no more "dogus". The dogus will be missed.

4. Final Batch Release for Episodes 27-51

Naturally, since I'm doing up a batch for the first half, it's only natural that I'll be doing a batch for the second half. I plan to get that done by March latest. The reason why I split it into two is because I didn't want the batch torrent to be too big (HD1080 would be at least 20GB even at half). It also allows me to take a breather when checking through everything. (That said, there are far less things to fix for the back half because by then I'd gotten slightly better at doing fan subs...so really, the only thing to fix are the dogus. Haha.

5. Purchasing a new seedbox

I am very aware that there are rarely seeds for my releases, so I'm actually going to purchase a new seedbox to host my releases, at least until March or April so that anyone who wants to grab the releases would have enough time to do so. Regardless, the show is always available on YouTube so you won't ever have to worry about missing the show ever again!

So that's all I have for you for this update, and I'll see you in a few days!

My Personal Thoughts on Translating Miracle Tunes

I am almost done with all 51 episodes of Miracle Tunes and some extras, over the last three years. I had some help from people for a significant amount of episodes, but I was on my own for the most part. And I am almost done!

When I first began subbing Miracle Tunes, it wasn't a thing outside of Japan, and the only other countries to broadcast it were China and Thailand. I began my subs doing releases using my own DVD boxsets, before I found a way to obtain the HD raws and moved on to release from those.

And now that I'm almost done, I'd like to spend some time talking about translating as I have some free time in my dorm room right now.

When I started, I had decent Japanese knowledge, but zero access to the captions. My listening skills were terrible (they still are, not gonna lie). Honestly, the only reason I wanted to sub the show in the first place was because I wanted to improve my Japanese.

Now that my Japanese is miles better than when I first started, it feels a little cringe to go back and look at stuff I've subbed only to see that it isn't 100% accurate. There were also occasions where I felt that I could've translated some stuff better. So let me begin with writing about this. Most of what I'll take about will be related to things from when I first started.

I did document some of my thoughts on translating stuff, such as when I explained how I translated the opening lyrics to Catch Me! over here. 

1) Dogu-Dogu Dan --> Doku-Doku Dan

This was a pretty major thing so I really need to clarify this - Dogu-Dogu Dan has always been "Doku-Doku Dan" and looking back, I seriously have no idea how I let this hiccup go through for so long. I guess I spotted this mistake halfway into subbing the series and thought it's probably not too big of a deal to go back and release Version 2s of 20 episodes' worth of stuff. Either way, it's far too late to change something so small, so it'll have to stick. Maybe you can take it as a sort of stylistic translation?

What I do know that spoken Japanese is a pain to decipher, and I definitely misheard "doku" as "dogu" a lot when I decided to start subbing the show (before I was able to obtain captions and before I brushed up on my Japanese, which was around halfway into this - I was certified JLPT N3 in Jan 2020, when I was 40 episodes in). This was even though it was a small mistake that could be rectified through a quick Google search ("poison", "toxic" and whatever has ALWAYS been "doku", and never ever turns into "dogu" ever so I can't even justify it LOL).

Not gonna lie, this is probably one of those things that'll haunt me in my sleep, haha. It's not a back-breaking issue, but I really wanted to clarify this for everyone who doesn't understand Japanese that it's always been どくどく and not どぐどぐ, especially since I know that people have used my subs to translate into other languages.

So if you see people talk about the "Doku-Doku Dan", that is why - I messed up something when I started and it's too late to change it...Haha.

2) The Emperor of Darkness, Maou

The final boss's full name and description is Yami no Teiou, Maou (闇の帝王・魔王), which literally translates to "The Emperor of Darkness, the Demon Lord". This one I'm not as frustrated about, because I've always argued that Maou is actually his name, even now. It's kind of like translating "The Star Festival, Tanabata" as "The Star Festival, the Seventh Evening", if you get what I mean. It's a name.

That said, I did have moments when I'm translating and I go "hmm, maybe I should've translated his name as Demon Lord after all" but it never really affects the flow of the story. The reasoning above is also why I sometimes translate instances of "Maou" as "the emperor". 

You may then wonder, "if that's the case, why translate the Negative Jeweller's names?" Honestly, I didn't put in the time to be consistent when I first started subbing, and now that I'm almost done, these little things are becoming very obvious. That's when happens when you sub a project for the first time I guess!

That said, the Negative Jeweller's names have always been puns on medical or nuisance problems (back pains, sore feet, what have you) and it was always really fun trying to 'localize' these names. I always felt that if I didn't translate them, the English-speaking viewers would've missed out on these amazing puns...which brings me to......

3) I religiously watch TV-Nihon's subs but I don't follow their subbing style

I know how TV-Nihon does their subs. I've watched their content since Kamen Rider Decade and I know they tend to leave stuff like honorifics in. I personally have no issue with that translation approach, and even considered doing that when I began fansubbing. Ultimately though, I decided to be a little more localized.

Even then, it's a bit difficult to decide the ratio. Do I sub every instance of "Ichinose Kanon" as "Kanon Ichinose"? (I decided to just follow whatever was spoken.) I remember instances where I decided to sub "Kanon's daddy and mummy" as "Mr. and Mrs. Ichinose" because while it sounded fine in Japanese to refer to someone as "[Name][Father]" and "[Name][Mother], it just sounded super off in English. I face the same issue with "Sensei", especially when they never bother to introduce the teacher's name, because you tend to address teachers as "Mr/Ms/Mrs [Name]" and I rarely hear instances of people referring to their teacher as "teacher".

And of course, the extremely Japanese puns and episodes that would never make it to English 100% no matter how hard I tried. Honestly, I FELT it when Stomachpits (Mizuochi) said this in Episode 44:

But of course, not everyone has the time and dedication to learn a new language, so it's necessary to translate and try and convey as much as possible.

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Episode 48 Released

Torrents:

Please check out the final batch torrent here!

Watch it on YouTube

So uh, sorry to burst your bubble, but this is kinda a recap episode too. LOL

(EDIT on 27/01/2021: Updated with final batch link and YouTube link)

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

The State of Affairs - 3 January 2020

Hello there! Whew, when was the last time I provided updates this frequently eh?

Anyway!

Release Schedule

Subbing is going surprisingly smoothly, and I'd like to put up some release dates. They should be accurate but eh, things happen so as always, take these dates with a grain of salt!

9 January 2020 - Episode 48
16 January 2020 - Episode 49

Just for the record, the above episodes are actually rendered and ready for release...but I'm spreading them out to give myself more time to work on the remaining episodes. It's more bearable to watch 1 episode a week than watch 3 episodes in 1 day and have nothing for the next month, am I right?

I'm looking through Episode 50 at the moment (it's technically just Episode 49 Part 2 so the overlap means some of the work is already done). It should be out by the end of the month latest...but...

Back to School

Yes, I'll be officially back in school next week to finish up my last semester in university. Having said that, because it's my last semester, my workload is below the average semester workload so I'm not going to be TOO busy. So I don't see it impacting my releases since there's literally only 2 episodes left. I can see myself being done with Episode 50 right before school picks up, and I'll hopefully be done with 51 by end of February latest, just as I had planned previously.

Contingency Plan
If I somehow don't get any releases out, I do have Episode 1 of Magimajo Pures which I'd subbed before for an April Fool's joke - I might clean that up and re-release it along with some Magimajo Channel toy reviews (those were really cute, you should watch them if you haven't already). I've subbed one before (the Majoka Porte one) and I have a half-done file of the Majoka Lumina video sitting in my drive somewhere.

And that's all I have to say! I have a part-time job to catch tomorrow so I'm gonna head off now. See you again soon!

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!

Idol Warriors Miracle Tunes! Episode 47 Released

Torrents:

Please check out the final batch torrent here!

Watch it on YouTube

(EDIT on 27/01/2021: Updated with final batch link and YouTube link)

As always, you can send in feedback or any translation errors to miracletunessubs@gmail.com!