My thoughts and comparisons of groups subbing the anime I'm watching this season. Note that most of this is based on only the first one or two episodes so group quality may change throughout the season.
The tag listed next to each title is my current group of choice for that anime.
You can also find screen shot comparisons for a lot of current anime on ji-hi.net.
Comparisons Available
The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Mitsudomoe
Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi
Shukufuku no Campanella
Screw this season. I'm going to watch more Precure instead of picking up so many current shows.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
[Commie]
• Released v2 patches for ep1 and ep2 which I'm using to compare.
• Translation is from Funi's streams I assume.
• One typo in ep1.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji. No karaoke.
• Video is 720p. There's one pixel of very faint edge noise along the bottom.
[EC]
• Released a v2 of ep1 which I'm using to compare.
• Video is downscaled 576p. (Also releases 400p.) A small amount of detail is lost from downscaling to 576p but probably not enough to notice during playback.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Mitsudomoe
[RaveSubs]
• Released two v2s of ep1. I'm using the latest one, which has a CRC of C16B4122, to compare.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji. No karaoke.
• Video is 720p. It wasn't decimated, so every fifth frame is a duplicate. There's black borders on the left and right sides and distortion on the bottom.
Comments: No decimation is an instant fail because it makes the video horribly jerky. AniDB says their ep2 and 3 are 23.98 fps, though, so I might give them another chance.
[FFFpeeps]
• Released a v2 patch for ep1 which I'm using to compare.
• No honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Translates a bit more than SubDesu.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji simple karaoke.
• Video is 720p. It's encoded with crappy settings and starved for bitrate, resulting in terrible blurring, blocking, and noise around the line art during fast motion.
[SubDesu]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second.
• Timing has a lot of little errors plus lots of scene bleeds.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 720p. It has the same problems as FFFpeeps, just not as bad. Most of the background texture is still blurred out, though.
[HorribleSubs]
• Straight rips from CR with the subs restyled.
• Video is 720p. (Also releases 480p.)
Comments: lol at them reusing the old Shugo Chara subtitle styling for this.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi Waiting for BD versions
[Mazui]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves name order in family first, given second. Leaves "senpai" untranslated most of the time.
• Grammar errors are sprinkled throughout.
• Dialogue styling has very little horizontal margin. Could use a bit more vertical margin, too.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Uses notes to translate most on-screen text.
• ED is soft-subbed with English translation, romaji, kanji. No karaoke.
• Video is 480p. It looks like crap because it was encoded from the AT-X broadcast.
[Hasaki]
• No honorifics. Reverses name order to given first, family second.
• Dialogue styling uses an annoying font and has barely any margin.
• Typesetting is hard-subbed.
• ED is hard-subbed with English translation, romaji karaoke.
• Video is 720p but I'm pretty sure it's an upscale. It wasn't decimated, so every fifth frame is a duplicate. Looks like it's been sharpened a ton, and nearly all background texture has been smoothened out.
Comments: No decimation is an instant fail because it makes the video horribly jerky.
[Coalgirls]
• Translation is from Mazui.
• Video is 480p. Encoded from the Tokyo MX broadcast.
Comments: They dropped the TV version and are going to do BD rips instead.
General Comments: Looks like the OP animation was used in place of the normal ED for ep1.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Shukufuku no Campanella [Doki]
[God-Speed Subs]
• Includes honorifics.
• They love to use tildes on the ends of lines instead of correct punctuation.
• Timing has a few significant errors and lots of scene bleeds.
• Video is 480p. Deinterlacing jaggies are abundant. Banding and blocking is terrible in all the color gradients and grainy backgrounds. Improper decimatiion makes motion jerky during the text crawl and leaves duplicate frames at the start of motion directly after still scenes. There's one pixel of edge noise along the top and a bit of distortion along the bottom with diagonal lines getting warped straight down for the last couple pixels.
[Commie]
• No honorifics in ep1, but includes them in ep2.
• I do not think em dashes mean what the editor thinks they mean. Also, tildes are used on the ends of some lines.
• Timing has a major error in ep2 where a few lines are timed to the wrong dialogue, one missing line, a couple smaller errors, and there are tons of scene bleeds.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed. Doesn't translate as much as taoyaku and Doki.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation only. ED song isn't subbed in ep1.
• Video is upscaled 576p. Ep2 has improper decimation that leaves duplicate frames at the start of motion directly after still scenes. There's some edge noise along the top.
[toayuku]
• Includes two versions of the script, one with honorifics and one without. There's a couple small differences in translation from Commie and Doki which I think are errors, but nothing major.
• Timing has an error in ep1 and could use better key frame snapping. A lot of lines begin only a few frames after a scene cut.
• Dialogue styling has tiny horizontal margins.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are soft-subbed with English translation, romaji. No karaoke.
• Video is upscaled 576p. Retains the most detail but also has the most noise. A lot of grain was added, presumeably to help prevent color banding. Improper decimation leaves duplicate frames at the start of motion directly after still scenes. There's some distortion along the buttom with diagonal lines getting warped straight down for the last couple pixels.
Comments: They do a nice job of making the dialogue sound natural without over-localizing. But they stalled after ep2 so I switched to Doki instead.
[Doki]
• Includes honorifics. Leaves "nee-san" untranslated. Includes translation notes for some of the terms used in the series.
• Phrasing seems a bit over-literal and awkward at times. I noticed quite a few grammar errors.
• Typesetting is soft-subbed.
• OP/ED are hard-subbed with English translation, romaji and kanji karaoke.
• Video is 480p. (Also releases 480p Xvid in AVI.) There's lots of deinterlacing jaggies, which also screws with the decimation and leaves duplicate frames here and there. Their encoding has improved after the first couple episodes. Retains a bit less detail than Commie.
General Comments: There's no proper OP or ED in ep1. The ED song just plays during the final part of the episode.
