The Official Gundam: The Origin Manga Thread

[Kratos]

Well, they're not gonna change it now, are they? Consistency and all that. And if you accept that "Bunch" is just funky UC Engrish (which was the case for years, it's not like this is a misreading unique to Vertical), then it's not exactly totally nonsensical. If you know that it's referring to "colony" (which is easy enough to infer from earlier contexts) then Dozle saying that makes sense.

[Dendrobium Stamen]

Interesting that Vertical refuses to acknowledge that バンチ (番地) doesn't mean Bunch. They have Dozle screaming "This is Dozle of Capital Bunch Command." Cuz, ya know, that makes soooo much sense.

So... what does it mean, if not "Bunch"? (Which, curiously, is what Google Translate suggests - "bunch [address]".)

As I recall, that was more-or-less the accepted naming for UC-era colonies back in the day, as in the 30 Bunch Incident (as the Gundam High Frontier website illustrates). Obviously the subsequent Zeta dub turned that into "Colony 30 Incident", just as the CCA dub gave us "cyber-Newtype"; but to Vertical's target market for The Origin, "bunch" as the term of a space colony seems quite reasonable, if that's what the katakana more-or-less translates as, since it'd make sense to people who're familiar enough with the Gundam universe to be buying this manga.

[toysdream]

I dunno, we did manage to make it consistent in all the English versions of the UC anime. I think Vertical's translators just didn't know any better, or didn't think to ask.

-- Mark

[Kratos]

So... what does it mean, if not "Bunch"? (Which, curiously, is what Google Translate suggests - "bunch [address]".)

"Banchi" is the Japanese word for address (番地 in kanji). Katakana is used constantly for stylistic purposes, often even with Japanese words, so that's apparently where this old misunderstanding arose. I didn't know about it until Deacon brought it up earlier in either in this thread, but it makes a certain amount of sense - "30 bunch" was officially changed to "colony 30" after all. I'm willing to forgive the oversight, though, considering that it's a fairly obscure term and you'd have to be watching the localized Zeta DVDs to see the correction, while all other official sources use Bunch. Fans know what it means and it's easy to glean the meaning for newbies. It's an honest mistake.

[Deacon Blues]

Interesting that Vertical refuses to acknowledge that バンチ (番地) doesn't mean Bunch. They have Dozle screaming "This is Dozle of Capital Bunch Command." Cuz, ya know, that makes soooo much sense.

So... what does it mean, if not "Bunch"? (Which, curiously, is what Google Translate suggests - "bunch [address]".)

As I recall, that was more-or-less the accepted naming for UC-era colonies back in the day, as in the 30 Bunch Incident (as the Gundam High Frontier website illustrates). Obviously the subsequent Zeta dub turned that into "Colony 30 Incident", just as the CCA dub gave us "cyber-Newtype"; but to Vertical's target market for The Origin, "bunch" as the term of a space colony seems quite reasonable, if that's what the katakana more-or-less translates as, since it'd make sense to people who're familiar enough with the Gundam universe to be buying this manga.

It was an old school terminology that even I fell into the habit of fiercely defending as "bunch". Simply because I never gave it much thought... as it was always presented in katakana. However, when you say "30 Bunch" it was being misconstrued as being a cluster of thirty colonies or what not by a lot of fans. バンチ (番地) means address or street number. Hence why it is "Colony 30". It's a proper designation of a particular colony. The Japanese, I believe, were the ones who coined cyber-Newtype for 強化人間. It's popped up in Data Gundam quite a few times, but I believe that was after CCA anyways. Makes sense as opposed to "strengthened/augmented/enhanced human" in context.

I guess it just rubs me the wrong way after we've established a set of terminology over the years that just gets tossed out the window by yet another publishing company who can't cite properly... or as Tanaka stated she was using the Wiki as a resource... *bashes head on the table*.

Well, they're not gonna change it now, are they? Consistency and all that. And if you accept that "Bunch" is just funky UC Engrish (which was the case for years, it's not like this is a misreading unique to Vertical), then it's not exactly totally nonsensical. If you know that it's referring to "colony" (which is easy enough to infer from earlier contexts) then Dozle saying that makes sense.

I don't see why not? They've hardly kept uniformity throughout the volumes with some things I don't recall the Viz version running into this issue, but alas my old copies are locked away 1500 miles away and I can't double check. Sure, something to us hardcore fans it is an easy oversight, but to the newbies it just adds to confusion.

They could've just omitted the term completely and said "Capital Command" because we know they haven't been hopping colony to colony so... *shrug*

Perhaps I'm just being overly critical as usual. It just frustrates me how the bigshot companies just don't take the extra five minutes of quality control... Delray, Viz, Bandai, Tokyopop, Mixx (aka old TP), and Vertical just toss all that to the wayside. Honestly, I think it falls on the translator. At least the guy who worked on X Astray and Ecole tried his best to reach out to fans (a la MAHQ's IRC channel and what not) back in the day to get clarification...

I dunno, we did manage to make it consistent in all the English versions of the UC anime. I think Vertical's translators just didn't know any better, or didn't think to ask.

-- Mark

It's just one translator working on the project... who, in an interview, said she cites the Wiki. -_-;

[toysdream]

I'm willing to forgive the oversight, though, considering that it's a fairly obscure term and you'd have to be watching the localized Zeta DVDs to see the correction, while all other official sources use Bunch.

...such as? Seriously, when was this ever an official thing, rather than a misunderstanding among the English-speaking fan base?

As for "Cyber-Newtype," as I recall this was a request from Tomino himself. The term 強化人間 was meant to sound kind of cheesy, like something out of a kid's show (maybe they were thinking of 人造人間 Kikaider), so they wanted something similarly cheesy in English. Once that was decided during the CCA adaptation, it was used pretty consistently for all subsequent projects.

-- Mark

[Kratos]

I could have sworn that I'd seen it in guidebooks before, possibly even in that old guide that you authored, Mr. Simmons

Maybe it is a fanbase-exclusive mistake though, I dunno. I'm defending it because the meaning is easy to glean and it was so common in English stuff in the past that somebody researching it coming upon it and deciding it was the way to go is a fairly understandable, if technically incorrect.

Deacon, I know you have issues with the translation choices made by Vertical, and plenty of that is justified, but when have they been inconsistent? Names and terminology have been stuck with throughout, for better or worse (particular peeve of mine? Organ, as in Flannigan Organ).

[toysdream]

I could have sworn that I'd seen it in guidebooks before, possibly even in that old guide that you authored, Mr. Simmons

Hah! You're right. So we can add me to the list of people who've fostered this fannish misconception.

-- Mark

[Deacon Blues]

That guidebook also came out in... what? 2000? 2001? 2002? Well over ten years ago... and it was rectified earlier than that!

[toysdream]

Yeah, the "Official Guide" came out in 2002.

In terms of the standardization of UC terminology, the first round of releases - the Gundam movies, Gundam 0080, 0083, and 08th MS Team - were done before I came on board. So that was pretty much up to the translators (principally Neil Nadelman and Dave Fleming), with Sunrise weighing in via a terminology list they'd drawn up for First Gundam. I don't remember when that latter list was compiled - there doesn't seem to be a date stamp on my digital copy - but I think it was around 2000.

After that, I worked on Char's Counterattack in 2001, which was probably when "Cyber-Newtype" was decided. The issue of colony nomenclature wasn't addressed until we started Zeta Gundam in 2003.

And in case you're wondering, there isn't a single unified spelling list anywhere, either public or private. Whenever I get asked to check a script or game text or whatever for consistency with previous English adaptations, I have to go trawling through dozens of different files. :-\

-- Mark

[Kratos]

That guidebook also came out in... what? 2000? 2001? 2002? Well over ten years ago... and it was rectified earlier than that!

Where was it rectified though? Genuinely curious, not being snarky - was it just in the Zeta DVDs, or was it in any other publications (Japanese or English)?

The translator's use of the wiki is weird. I wonder if it's a strange sort of pride that prevents her from engaging in dialogue with the fanbase, like she has to do this all on her own (or maybe it's a similar policy of Vertical's). So she does passive research, considering that more reliable than getting the wildly varying input of fans (never mind that the wiki is fan maintained, of course). Speaking of...has there ever been talk of bringing that wiki up to snuff, or starting a more reliable one? Considering all the resources members here can bring to the table, surely a better resource for Gundam could be brought to the internet.

[toysdream]

I can't fault people for being shy about wading into the fandom. People always say "why don't they listen to the fans!?" but it's not like the fans are terribly consistent about what they think. As a newcomer to a fandom, it's a fairly rational approach to go to the namesake wiki - if I were researching Star Wars stuff, I'd probably start with Wikipedia - but for all I know, the wikis for all fandoms may have the same sorts of problems the Gundam one does.

Personally, I think you'd really need a tighter editorial grip, and less of a "more stuff the better" mindset. The current state of the Gundam wiki may be exactly what you get when you have a whole bunch of fans all trying to "bring resources to the table".

-- Mark

[AmuroNT1]

From what I understand, the fan Wikis vary greatly from series to series. Trek and Wars' Wikis, Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia, are thorough and detailed enough that they've actually been used by official staff writers in the past. In a similar but sillier tangent, Mike and Matt Chapman have likewise admitted to using the Homestar Runner Wiki for references, saying that the fans keep the details much straighter than they ever could have.

But the Gundam Wiki is a major case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Maybe you could overhaul it to something decent, but it would take many hours of work from many dedicated fans and contributors, and that's assuming a mod over there doesn't just revert the changes because they don't like them.

[Chris]

But the Gundam Wiki is a major case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Maybe you could overhaul it to something decent, but it would take many hours of work from many dedicated fans and contributors, and that's assuming a mod over there doesn't just revert the changes because they don't like them.

I don't think that can happen with the Gundam Wiki. Compared to Memory Alpha or other wikis, there's too much of a knowledge gap due to the language barrier. You have people relying on bad translations for things, running text through a machine translation, or just outright making things up. There aren't enough Marks in the world to clean up the sheer number of articles on there.

[HellCat]

So to give another point of comparison, this is like how people heard 'Shuffle Doumei' in G and insisted the Shuffle Alliance was actually called the Shuffle Domain? A bit of cross language coincidental monde green?

[sdwoodchuck]

I was given the first volume of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin as a birthday present from a buddy of mine a few weeks back, and it is absolutely excellent. I'd passed on them earlier, both because I'd been away from Gundam for so long, and because I'm not much of a manga guy in general, so the pricing seemed a little steep to me for something that wasn't really up my usual alley, but reading through that first volume was enough to get me to order the rest of the so-far printed series, and rekindled my interest in all things Gundam. That's both good and bad; it's hard to justify model kits when you're paying Maui rent.

[Kratos]

I was given the first volume of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin as a birthday present from a buddy of mine a few weeks back, and it is absolutely excellent. I'd passed on them earlier, both because I'd been away from Gundam for so long, and because I'm not much of a manga guy in general, so the pricing seemed a little steep to me for something that wasn't really up my usual alley, but reading through that first volume was enough to get me to order the rest of the so-far printed series, and rekindled my interest in all things Gundam. That's both good and bad; it's hard to justify model kits when you're paying Maui rent.

Welcome back to Gundam! We may not agree much on Unicorn, but we definitely agree on THE ORIGIN. It's a pretty rare thing to find truly great Gundam manga, but I think ORIGIN can count itself among them. I'm really glad Yas applied his considerable talents to retelling the story of the White Base, because the results are incredible. Hope to get more of your thoughts on it as you read on!

I finally got a chance to read through volume 6. I'll put my thoughts in spoilers, for the sake of sdwoodchuck; we're still in the middle of content outside the scope of the anime, after all.

Spoiler

So I basically thought that volume 6 was the weakest of the bunch so far. That's not to say it was bad, but the entire middle third felt so half-finished and rushed through that I'm shocked it's part of this particular manga.

I enjoyed the first bit in the Academy; Char's machinations are always fun to watch, after all, and it was interesting seeing his "friendship" with Garma form and grow, clear as it is that Char really doesn't see him as much more than a pawn. Char being effortlessly great at basically everything veered into tiresome territory, thopugh; it was sorta tempered by it being clear that he's irredeemably off his rocker, but he still felt like a "villain sue" at times.

I also didn't like Dozle's proposal to Zenna AT. ALL. When she held him at gunpoint during the raid on the barracks, I thought it was a cute easter egg, the sort of of thing that would be made all the more amusing when she shows up as his wife in the main story. But then having him outright propose to her? And so soon after what I'm pretty sure was their first meaningful interaction? It felt forced and bizarre. It would have been better to have him ask her to become his assistant or something. When they show up as married later on, we can then assume a courtship happened and developed over time. I'm not sure why Yas shoved that in there.

I thought the bits on Earth with Lalah were interesting, though I'm glad it was connected back to the main narrative by him working on Jaburo construction and learning of the Orinoco tribe's extreme opposition to it, because otherwise it would have felt largely pointless, at least at this point in the story.

The stuff with Minovsky and the Fed MS program was so weird and jumbled. I'm not sure why Minovsky was in it at all - about the only thing his presence accomplishes is giving new readers an idea of where the term "Minovsky Particle" comes from. Other than that, he just appears, defects, and dies (and were Ramba, Char, and the Tri-Stars hunting him, or on a test mission? If they were hunting him, how did they know? Did Kycilia tell them? If she did, that could have been more clear). The corporate politics, meanwhile, were even more muddled and unclear, and kinda gives me the sense that outright political intrigue just isn't one of Yas' strengths.

However, I really enjoyed the final bits inside Side 7. I especially liked how it gave context to Hayato's suspicions regarding the colony construction, although it kinda makes Kai's early lack of attitude towards Amuro specifically a bit conspicuous (surely he would have had stronger feelings about Amuro getting out of trouble that would have affected his interactions with him on the White Base). That's minor though. I thought that part of the volume was great.

A bit of a general question, though, perhaps for Mark: Zeon's political development is quite a bit different in this, isn't it? Here, they declared independence RIGHT before the war started, but weren't they independent for a good decade longer in the movies/TV show? That was quite surprising.

[toysdream]

A bit of a general question, though, perhaps for Mark: Zeon's political development is quite a bit different in this, isn't it? Here, they declared independence RIGHT before the war started, but weren't they independent for a good decade longer in the movies/TV show? That was quite surprising.

Just remember that, technically, we never heard the details of this in the animation before. There's been a variety of info published in books and novels and such, a lot of it based on Tomino's novels, but nothing official as per Sunrise's "only filmed works" rule. If Yas's interpretation is the only one that ever makes it into an actual anime, that kind of puts his account over everyone else's.

This is part of the reason I'm always nattering on about original sources. It's fashionable to mix every darned thing up in a bucket and assume it's all equally true - the Gundam Officials encyclopedia set a really bad example there - but on the actual production side, Sunrise seems to maintain a pretty clear distinction between what's official and what's just hearsay, and I imagine watching The Origin will be less disorienting if we try to remember that as well.

-- Mark

[sdwoodchuck]

Man, the whole Gundam political/technological timeline gets so murky with changes to what existed when and to what degree that at a certain point I had to just give up and take every individual work as its own thing, with thematic and chronological links to the rest, but not grounded in a consistent continuity.

[Dark Duel]

Spoiler

And so soon after what I'm pretty sure was their first meaningful interaction? It felt forced and bizarre

Oh, I dunno. It worked for Max Jenius, after all. But maybe that's because Max is just that awesome.

All kidding aside, I do agree that this volume overall felt a bit weaker than the previous one at least, but I for one still enjoyed it a great deal. Mainly because watching Char manipulating Garma was fun. And I like Garma and don't like Char, so it's kind of a weird place for me.
Still, really enjoying this.
Also, more Dozle is always fun too - he's probably one of the most entertaining Zeon characters for me.