Shoutout to the 2009 fansub group that put translator notes in the opening credits

I was rewatching an old series from my high school days last month, the one with the magical girl who fights with a paintbrush. The original fansub I watched back then had these little yellow notes pop up during the theme song explaining puns and cultural stuff. I never paid them much mind until I saw a clean version on a streaming site last week and realized I missed half the jokes. Those notes taught me more about Japanese wordplay than any class could. Has anyone else had a show where the fansub notes were actually better than the official subs?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessefoster1d ago

Honestly, that's such a real point about learning from translator notes. It makes me wonder, what's the one joke or pun you finally got because of those notes that totally changed a scene for you? For me it was in an old comedy where a character's name was a pun on a type of seaweed, and the whole bit suddenly made sense.

beth_patel41d ago

Yeah, @jessefoster, that seaweed one sounds painfully relatable.