Anyone have or know of any plans to create English subtitles for Ultra Q? I really wanna watch that shit but I've only ever found the straight Japanese version. An official US DVD release would sure be sweet.
This has been brough up so many times here, but it seems the answer is always the same - no. To be frank, the Japanese film industry does not seem very concerned about exporting its movies/TV shows, and it is only for the efforts of studios here that is happens I think. I remember contacting one of the manfacturers when they recently reissued Blu-ray discs of a restored Daimajin collection and was told they had no plans to do this in English, despite the subtitles being available from other versions. Our best bet might be to approach a smaller release company (something like Rhino or ADV back in the day) to see if they'd be willing to work towards getting the distribution rights, and then get a team together for subtitling. I would love to see a quality release equal to the Japanese version, but considering the Funimation Ultraman release, and the poor sales of that domestically, I doubt we will anytime soon.
I've done quite a it of exploration on this topic but run into dead ends on a variety of avenues. The closest I've come is finding a custom sub crew that would be willing to all the technical work - providing and ripping of the video itself, polishing and formatting scripts, timing the subs to the video, hosting the completed episodes, etc. - but they don't currently have a translator with the time or interest in doing the show. Golden-age toku gets a lot less love and attention from the fansubbers than modern anime. I'm told a handful of the shooting scripts have been published, that's the easiest format to translate from, but I've yet to unearth any of them. Beyond that the only way to get the dialog down is to transcribe it by ear. That's a lot of work, sure, but doable over time if we can find some interested bilingual parties. If anyone here with the skills wants to try their hand at transcribing and/or translating an episode, or if you know someone who might be interested (or if you know someone who knows someone who might) please give me a shout and I'll put them in touch with my guys. A pipe dream, I know, but a worthy one!
That currently seems to be true with legacy media, but in the '70s and '80s Ultraman, Kimba, Speed Racer, Raideen, etc. were easy to find on the UHF TV stations in many regions of the USA. Not sure what changed. Now there's one local Chinese station I know of which runs Japanese programming for a few hours each week IIRC ... usually soap operas set in the shogun era. With a little promotion, I think the old Ultra Q shows would sell very well "overseas," as many kaiju movies, Kurosawa films, the baby cart movies and the first two seasons of Ultraman have done.
Agreed; I actually think with the right promotion that Ultra Q would do better than Ultraman, and appeal to a wider audience... esp. the new color Blu-Ray edition! (Still dying to see the full Gara-eps in color!) David, very interesting to hear of the research you've put in and contact made; I know a couple of translators who would probably be great fpr the job, but alas, they would not do it out of fan love- they would want money. Keep me posted if you ever get further info on those tranlsated scripts... I'd be interested in two episodes, in particular, if translated copies exist!
The old dubbed version of the first episode has been making the tape trading rounds for years. I was talking with someone who is in the know with that stuff who claims that someone unearthed similar dubbed versions of the rest of the series.
As far as I know the only episode of Ultra Q that was dubbed was the third one, featuring Namegon. It was done as a kind of pilot episode, to see if someone wanted to pick up the whole series for syndication. They didn't. What have been unearthed, or so I've heard, are the original English dubs (done in the early seventies for the Hawaiian market) of Ultraseven. I've also heard that Shout Factory tried and failed to license them for US issue. If I'm wrong about the Q thing I will shit nine bricks of joy - tell me more! Hey Mitch! Sorry if I was unclear - the scripts I was referring to are in the original tongue. I was just saying that it's much easier for translators to work from printed specifics than by ear. By the way, a little over a year ago I thought I'd found a translator. Fell through. It was my plan to have him begin the work on a certain two episodes that you just might be referring to, and then I planned to lay them at your feet as an offering! Not to be, I'm afraid.
Sorry for the typo - I meant the third episode. A lot of the dubbed Ultraseven episodes have been in circulation for a while as well. I'd love to have the whole series dubbed or anything I could get of the following couple series.
The Ultraseven dubs that are commonly available are actually from a Canadian dub done in the mid-eighties and used for TNT's early nineties airings of the show. They're pretty awful, actually. The Hawaiian dubs, long thought lost, are still kind of a holy grail in that none of them have been in circulation since the original mid-seventies airings. For those interested in reading their toku, the Hi no Tori fansub group are slowly but surely custom subbing the entire run of Ultraseven. They just hit the halfway mark, episode 24, last week!
Guess what I just learned? The dream is slowly becoming true - a dude name of Ben has taken it upon himself to sub Q in English! Episode 1: Defeat Gomess! Episode 3: The Gift From Space 2 down, 26 to go! Make sure to hit the CC button at the bottom of the screen to activate the subs. Oh, and don't forget to subscribe to his channel, 'like' the uploads and maybe even leave a comment - let's do everything we can to encourage and support his supremely cool project! Also pretty neat - someone else took it upon themselves to sync the dub for episode 3 up with the colorized edition: Namegonzo!
In 1967, Ultra Q was licensed from Tsuburaya and TBS by CBS Films, producers of The Twilight Zone. It was a package deal that not only included Ultra Q, but also Ultraman. For the task of dubbing, CBS hired Film House in Toronto, Canada, what is now DeLuxe Toronto. Tsuburaya provided translated scripts, plus English language opening and closing credits, and a custom, swirling title-card. The series itself was dubbed in its 28 episode entirety. At some point, CBS Films backed out of licencing the series, and it was picked up, along with Ultraman, by United Artists Television, producers of The Outer Limits. With dubbing of Ultra Q complete, United Artists hired Titra Studios to dub Ultraman. Ultraman was syndicated, however, Ultra Q was not, due to being in Black-and-white at a time when most television was switching to color. After Ultraman finished its run in syndication, audio and film masters, and other materials, of both series were stored in the MGM vaults. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, all materials reverted to, and were collected by, Tsuburaya. It is commonly believed that only one episode, specifically Episode 3, was dubbed as a pilot. This has proven not to be true as other episodes have been found either in audio prints, like Episode 3, or film or video prints. From here it can be concluded that this was not the only episode produced.
Awesome find D. Love to know all these little history tidbits. Now we just need to dig through all the old vaults and find the prints the Tsubu crew 'missed.'
Definitely. See you there! Hard to believe that the primary reason for this amazing show not reaching the airways might have just been a simple lack of colour as the medium was transitioning to the new technology. Such a loss for the public as a whole.
In 1967... Tsuburaya provided translated scripts, plus English language opening and closing credits, and a custom, swirling title-card. The series itself was dubbed in its 28 episode entirety... Ahhhhh! The truth, it burns! Moving right along - I'll speak neither for nor against the content that comes before and after it, but if you follow this podcast link you'll find an extremely interesting interview with August Ragone about the birth, influences on and influences of Ultra Q. It begins at the 14 minute mark and culminates about 35 minutes later with a surfed out cover of the theme tune. I so wish I would have heard this chat when it first became available just about exactly three years ago.
Once you follow the links you should see it in the toolbar at the bottom of the viewing screen, towards the right.
You may be having the same 'problem' as I was initially. It is only there for the B&W versions that are linked to by the URL, if you are trying to find it for the third, colourised one, it is not available.
Been trying for 15 minutes to find it on the Black and White, maybe because I am in Japan there is nothing? That seems weird though.
I don't know if it will help, but I changed the links to go to the episodes directly rather than through the uploader's playlist. The button placement looks pretty much just like this on my screen: You might also have to fiddle with your advanced settings. Seems this page has some good tips: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/a ... wer=100078
Thank you! The screen that appears for me is totally different, now I know why I cant find the CC, its not there! UPDATE: I tried all the options and nothing works, it must be because I am in Japan.
What an unfortunate irony... Have you considered staging an action outside of Tsuburaya headquarters?
