New Zoids Project Teaser!!! Zoids Field of Rebellion

[Hanyoutai]

A cheap translator still costs a lot, and that really depends on if they limit themselves to hiring professionally. The cheapest translator I've used iirc cost $50 for a single page of Zoids Generations. To translate an entire game or book is many thousands, even when using a 'cheap' option.

[lordofdragons]

For a normal company that one-time investment is nothing compared what development and what not else costs. That's really the smallest problem. One developer/artists costs more than that.

[SteelRain]

Sept 30, 2016 14:59:46 GMT -5 lordofdragons said:

For a normal company that one-time investment is nothing compared what development and what not else costs. That's really the smallest problem. One developer/artists costs more than that.

Yes, but you've got to look at it in terms of returns on the investment. I know it looks like there are a lot of western zoids fans, but that's because, well, all of us here are western (or at least non-Japanese) zoids fans. Really, we are a very small fandom, and would it be worth it to spend money translating, then licensing, then marketing, for western audiences?

[Hanyoutai]

Steel more or less summed it up. Why spend that money when not much will come of it? I'd be very surprised if enough English-speaking fans bought the game to offset the cost of putting in the effort. They get a fraction of game sale costs, so it'd have to sell quite a lot of copies to even get close. It doesn't just have to cut even, it has to yield enough profit to bother. Especially if it's not being exported overseas.

[CeilYurei]

Maybe if they stopped *Watch your language!* neglecting every single memebr of their fanbase who isn't Japanese they could make more money, they just A) Don't give a flying F*** and B)are to F***ing cheap to take a risk

One of the primary reasons there are so few western zoids fans is we haven't gotten a new piece of media to generate new fans since Zoids Alternative/Assault and that game freaking SUCKS. And before that we got Legacy and Battle Legends, both of which are the middle entry in a game TRILOGY and not the best n their series. we never got some of the best Zoids Games, just like in gen6 pokemon, western fans got a giant middle finger when it came to event pokemon releases.

Japanese companies still act like all that matters is Japan and don't give a rat's buttocks about if anybody else might be interested in a franchise, the substandard dubbing of Fuzors shows that. And we never got Genesis translated. Beyond poor animation, it was that substandard dub that helped kill the franchise outside Japan.

From a marketing standpoint, TakaraTomy has a massive potential market outside Japan that they are too scared to try to tap into. There are tons of Western anime fans, and a good number of mecha fans. But all e ever get is Gundam and even that franchise ignores the global fanbase they have a lot of the time. The cost of adding an english option is relatively minor compared to the profits they could get, hell they could cut manufacturing costs by making the english version available by download only over steam or whatever.

[Hanyoutai]

Business is business, and I think people sorely overestimate the support of foreign audiences. It has nothing to do with being holier than though against other countries, and they're not afraid. They've done it before. They're better equipped than anyone to know what their franchise is worth, and Tomy has held Zoids for so long that they've seen the rise and fall of countless model kit lines, even in their domestic territory. Even with a 50 episode anime. It's not personal, it's experience and knowing when to not.

If I could go work for 5 hours in another city, for $50 a day, but had to spend $40 on gas I wouldn't bother. Yes, there's technically profit, but it's not enough to make it worth all that effort. If I spent $7,000 on a new car with better gas mileage that's not going to pay off nearly fast enough to make the job worth it.

I also wouldn't go so far as to say they don't care "at all." They translated the Concept Art Books, which they didn't have to do. If we're talking about English dubs to anime, that's a whole different ballgame. You aren't just hiring one or two people to work on text translations and transcribing, you're hiring an entire team. An entire cast, interpreters, etc. which requires a LOT more expense since recordings have to be done in studios and all that.

TL;DR throwing money at something doesn't always make it work. It's not always worth it. There are likely good reason it's not released overseas anymore, and they're the ones to know.

[CeilYurei]

They're just slowly letting the franchose die in the overseas market, and f the dubbing for fuzors hadn't been so *Watch your language!* up it might have been worth dubbing Genesis.

ANd it sure feels personal when there are tons of projects from Japan that get butchered or not translated at all for the western market because of SJWs and other arseholes who don't even play the games or watch anime and just live to complain. ANd until people stop taking it n stride it will continue to happen

[Hanyoutai]

I'm not sure that applies to Zoids? Just cut whatever doesn't work. Nobody will miss Felme's bath scenes. Over 110 scenes were cut from CC/GF, and only 2-3 were relevant or even missed much by fans.

Moving back to the announcement, if it turns out to be a mobile game there also may be hope to play. The last 2 accepted card charges from foreign players and you could jerryrig it to play on mobile devices. I hope it is not mobile though. I'd be happy with anything but it is very sad when things disappear after a year. unless you have a lvl 10 Falcarius.

I'm not sure what the newer consoles' situation is on region locking, since I haven't been a gamer for quite a few years.

The more I have been thinking about this though, the more I have wondered about a new battle story. I realize it is very unlikely, but Kotobukiya is, and has for a long time been the main merchandise for this series. It'd be cool if they tried to expand the instructions into a full blown story, putting their designs center stage of a media. Maybe it is because of the detail, but I have been scratching my head for a long time about all of the media being based off of a line with 4 kits, instead of the main model kit series that has carried Zoids for years.

I would be especially excited if they'd stick their neck out a bit further, and try to provide insight into Zoids that didn't have it before. I loved that they tackled the Psycho Geno Saurer and gave it some expanded stats but also very sad they did not flesh out the basic stats.

[Falcarius]

Sept 30, 2016 18:47:47 GMT -5 CeilYurei said:

One of the primary reasons there are so few western zoids fans is we haven't gotten a new piece of media to generate new fans since Zoids Alternative/Assault and that game freaking SUCKS. And before that we got Legacy and Battle Legends, both of which are the middle entry in a game TRILOGY and not the best n their series. we never got some of the best Zoids Games, just like in gen6 pokemon, western fans got a giant middle finger when it came to event pokemon releases.

Japanese companies still act like all that matters is Japan and don't give a rat's buttocks about if anybody else might be interested in a franchise, the substandard dubbing of Fuzors shows that. And we never got Genesis translated. Beyond poor animation, it was that substandard dub that helped kill the franchise outside Japan.

I should probably point out that Japan hasn't had much new media since Alternative/Assault, either, just two mobile games and a handful of books. And out of those, they did actually translate the Concept Art series and (parts of) Material Hunters, even though they weren't marketing them outside of Japan and therefore might have made a loss on the translation. TT probably figures that the handful of Western fans who do still care about the series can keep track of it and import new stuff without them needing to bother with overseas marketing.

As for the anime, Fuzors was English-first, so technically the Japanese version of Fuzors is the "dub". And there was an English dub of Genesis in the works, but it never got released (unless the rumours of a broadcast in South-East Asia are true), which means it was probably Viz that pulled the plug. That's a Western company deciding that it's not worth marketing to the Western audience.

Sept 30, 2016 22:07:37 GMT -5 CeilYurei said:

ANd it sure feels personal when there are tons of projects from Japan that get butchered or not translated at all for the western market because of SJWs and other arseholes who don't even play the games or watch anime and just live to complain. ANd until people stop taking it n stride it will continue to happen

Yeah, that's not really relevant to Zoids. They only sacrificed a handful of scenes that didn't even affect the overall story (well, apart from Rease's backstory and Laon joining the Backdraft Group) so that they'd meet national regulations and be able to broadcast to a much wider audience. Zoids probably wouldn't have been nearly as popular in the US if they'd only marketed the anime to late teens/adults rather than kids, purely to keep in a few extra clips of blood/guns/alcohol/naked Fiona.

Sept 30, 2016 23:01:59 GMT -5 Hanyoutai said:

Moving back to the announcement, if it turns out to be a mobile game there also may be hope to play. The last 2 accepted card charges from foreign players and you could jerryrig it to play on mobile devices. I hope it is not mobile though. I'd be happy with anything but it is very sad when things disappear after a year. unless you have a lvl 10 Falcarius.

I'm not sure what the newer consoles' situation is on region locking, since I haven't been a gamer for quite a few years.

The more I have been thinking about this though, the more I have wondered about a new battle story. I realize it is very unlikely, but Kotobukiya is, and has for a long time been the main merchandise for this series. It'd be cool if they tried to expand the instructions into a full blown story, putting their designs center stage of a media. Maybe it is because of the detail, but I have been scratching my head for a long time about all of the media being based off of a line with 4 kits, instead of the main model kit series that has carried Zoids for years.

I would be especially excited if they'd stick their neck out a bit further, and try to provide insight into Zoids that didn't have it before. I loved that they tackled the Psycho Geno Saurer and gave it some expanded stats but also very sad they did not flesh out the basic stats.

Mobile (or possibly PC) is actually our best bet for being able to play it straight away, since basically every console is region-locked now. [EDIT: Actually, after looking this up, physical PS4 and Xbox One games aren't usually region-locked, but downloads from the online stores usually are.] On the other hand, a console game is more likely to get a physical release that we'll be able to play and analyse years in the future, even after the inevitable shutdown of any online stuff.

And while I'd love more Battle Story stuff (particularly if they somehow managed to keep it consistent for once), the stuff in the HMM manuals is too disjointed and self-contradictory to blend into a single story - it's mostly just expansions of existing stuff (some of which squishes together multiple universes). Plus, given the tagline "a new setting begins here", the new project is unlikely to have any direct ties to earlier storylines. More details on existing Zoids would be nice, but the best we're likely to get is some Pokedex database entries or complete reimaginings (which almost defeats the point).

[Hanyoutai]

That is more or less on point~ I do not mean to take the existing story (since while nice, it is just that -- the same story retold) but to expand beyond just instruction books and boxes. Their kits are amazing, and would make for some excellent diaroma-esque story books like the old ones. It would be neat if they expanded their own media based on the most supporting model kit line in recent years. Especially since it would unchain them from having to remake pilot customs and what not. Re-imaginings are just fine for me~ As are pokedex entries. It is one of those "Well that's neat to know!" things.

The 'new setting' would be amazing if, whatever it may be, started a new story. Even if it was not exactly the best seller of the year, it is one thing I genuinely appreciated about Zoids Original. It took a new direction, and went forward in the story.

[Maethius]

All I can note about that original splash page was that the style and the character were very western. His attire, pose, and look seemed very much like a western-centric move. It feels more like a Hollywood movie poster or American book cover than it does a typical manga/anime style. It will be interesting to see what they feel is worth the effort.

[CeilYurei]

I guess I'm just wants his art of all forms delivered fully intact, and I thought Tokyo Kids was a japanese company, they are the ones who made the animation for Fuzors.

As for keeping up with zoids, I didn't even have internet till 3 years ago and only found out about HMMs through a friend, and with no money I didn't see a point in following them

[kpstormie]

A lot of the CG from Fuzors was recycled from NCZ and CC if I'm not mistaken, and even that has nothing to do with the animation's country of origin.

Tokyo Kids was indeed a Japanese animation studio, but that has nothing to do with them being the studio to animate the series. It's quite commonplace to send animation overseas due to cost, and this is just me speculating, but it was probably easier for Hasbro to bill a studio overseas than to hire a full team of animators in the US to take on the show. Cheap animation from a brand new studio, scabbed together CG, and horrible voice work was a recipe for disaster. When the series was dubbed into Japanese, not even that could save it.

Fuzors was literally only made by Hasbro to try and sell the toyline, and they did a pretty crappy job at that.

On the flip side, Tokyo Kids going belly up gave me these beauties, so I'm glad I got something out of it.

phen0type.proboards.com/thread/14781/fuzors-storyboard-cels-artwork?page=1&scrollTo=181315

[Snowflake]

It didn't look recycled. there were a bunch of changes (mostly bad, a few good) and a totally different style

[CeilYurei]

If the models were recycled you wouldn't have this:


NC0 on left, Fuzors on right. About the only good thing here is the smaller guns on the model kit being on the new animation model. Either way it killed zoids in western release. Heck, the Fuzors Tiger looks almost as if it is made of plastic with lights on it all angles, or almost all angles, and there is almost no detailing on many parts.