Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Hawkfrost]

Well, he did hook Joseph up with a robotic arm later, which seems like an altruistic thing to do.

[Darvi]

It's also worth mentioning that Good Guy Nazi kind of had a bunch of people locked up for his experiments on Santana. He only became a "good" guy after his cyborgification.

[Frumple]

Mm... well, do remember we had that discussion in relation to kancolle a little bit back that noted that anything that's not a complete and abject demonization of the axis powers is basically the devil to some folks. That a nazi is working with the protagonists and isn't the nazi equivalent of an old-school racist caricature of a jew is a negative thing, to some. Gotta' have dem jackboots like the antisemites need those hooked noses, or somethin' along those lines.

[Neonivek]

old-school racist caricature of a jew

and THANK GOODNESS that has stopped!

Ohh wait

Yeah Frumple the world just doesn't make sense. Why is it that the stupid Bonekicker's speech about how the Germans have to basically apologize for WW2 becomes more poignant to me everyday? When it is just supposed to be an irrational rant about the character seeing prejudice where there honestly wasn't any?

One of the major reasons I kind of like Hetalia is that under everything it's core message, to me, is that the world is a great place. No one is a villain in that show because to the lifespan of a country, even the World Wars were just a short period of time.

I dunno, I'll take a series where everyone is good at heart and eat it happily. One of the reasons it is so hard for me to get into "Adult Shows" is because they are drenched with so much pessimism and "Black and Grey Morality" that they are just flat out depressing... Plus their pacing is usually terrible.

[Reelya]

Mm... well, do remember we had that discussion in relation to kancolle a little bit back that noted that anything that's not a complete and abject demonization of the axis powers is basically the devil to some folks. That a nazi is working with the protagonists and isn't the nazi equivalent of an old-school racist caricature of a jew is a negative thing, to some. Gotta' have dem jackboots like the antisemites need those hooked noses, or somethin' along those lines.

The number of people (mostly men) who served in the Wehrmacht was over 20 million people out of a country with population of about 67 million when Hitler rose to power. 20 million would have effectively been the bulk of the male population aged 15-64, and they definitely did not all volunteer to serve, nor did they all sign up after Hitler came to power (especially true of officers). They used massive conscription to create the Wehrmacht. I've heard people on this forum before say that the average German soldier was probably an evil person. This is just not credible given the scale of the numbers, it's basically saying "Germans were all evil".

The Nazi volunteers were mostly used to create the SS, not the Wehrmacht, because Hitler wanted an new army specially loyal to himself and the party. It does actually make a huge difference whether you're portraying a Wehrmacht officer or an SS officer as a good person, since the SS oversaw almost all of the holocaust stuff.

[Spehss _]

This thread seems the best place to ask. Tips on learning Japanese? Specifically free online resources like websites or something? As an unemployed college student living on savings, I don't have money to blow on something like Rosetta Stone or some official brand "learn a language" product with a price tag.

I figured if I'm gonna be listening to japanese music like vocaloids I may as well learn the language so I can fully appreciate the music and not just think of the vocals as another melodic instrument. Would also be useful for anime since I wouldn't need to constantly be reading the subs and missing frames of the animation.

_{^{Also obligatory Godwin's law mention in response to the nazi discussion.}}

[Reelya]

I'm using this site called textfugu. It's got an introductory section that was really helpful.

Following their advice I worked on learning the hiragana and katakana first, before learning any vocab. You can actually infer how to write much of the vocab that you know from anime already with these symbols, enough to be understood by a Japanese reader, even though you don't know the kanji.

What I started with, was learning 5 hiragana per day from textfugu's hiragana chart.

It's systematized into rows based on vowel sound patterns:

a i e u o
ka ki ke ku ko
sa shi se su so
ta chi tsu te to

etc etc. There are a few irregular bits that you just need to memorize, like Japanese having a shi sound but no si sound, etc.

Basically, I memorized one row of 5 hiragana per day by writing each one dozens of times. Then, I'd review rows from previous days, but just write each symbol once. If I got stuck on remembering any symbol, I'd write a page of that one (really only a scrap of paper, maybe repeat it 3 dozen times).

With this, I was able to memorize all the hiragana in under 2 weeks and then do the same for katakana. Once you have this down, you get into that magic place where you can sound out much of the text you see on screen for animes, and even get those aha moments when you know the word.

[Hawkfrost]

I have the fear that if I learned Japanese, I would no longer be able to enjoy most of the Japanese songs I know due to me witnessing how terrible most of the lyrics probably are.

I already run into this problem to some degree when it comes to German music.

[Frumple]

Echo that. Not knowing what the zog they're saying often significantly improves the experience of listening to vocals. There are many people with wonderful voices singing absolutely awful songs.

[Spehss _]

I have the fear that if I learned Japanese, I would no longer be able to enjoy most of the Japanese songs I know due to me witnessing how terrible most of the lyrics probably are.

I already run into this problem to some degree when it comes to German music.

Yeah, I could see this happening.

Most of what you're referring to as far as Japanese music goes is probably due to said songs being "denpa songs" where the lyrics focus less on meaning and more on maintaining rhythm, rhyme, melody, and basically sounding musically good rather than making sense. There was actually a discussion on this earlier in the wtf thread that restarted my interest in the japanese music stuff and trying to learn japanese.

But on the other hand, it'd be cool to know another language, and I could actually be able to try and do vocaloid stuff. Actual in japanese vocaloid stuff rather than english vocaloids, which may or may not sound as good as the japanese at the moment.

On the other other hand, given how well I learned german in high school with a class focused on learning said language, I don't know how well I could learn a language, especially a language as different from English as an asian language like Japanese, as a hobby where I only have myself to keep myself motivated. I can't speak german, to prove my point.

[majikero]

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

I'd use this if I can actually motivate myself to learn. Actually, I'm having problems motivating myself to do productive things because I feel useless.

[ToonyMan]

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

I'd use this if I can actually motivate myself to learn. Actually, I'm having problems motivating myself to do productive things because I feel useless.

Is that the grammar guide I've been reading lately? Yes it is.

Everybody should at least read Chapters 3 and 4 of Kim Tae's grammar guide, as they focus on the basic grammar as well as the bare essential grammar, and it really clears up a couple things that confused me for awhile. You shouldn't read the guide if Chapter 1 and 2 are not a complete cake-walk, however.


In terms of practice, I've been reading PC visual novels in their original language for the last few months now, let me explain (because I have nothing else meaningful to say):

1. Get ATLAS V14, this is optional, but the machine translation can sometimes point you in the right direction, never read the machine translation first. Also, don't use Google Translate, it's terrible.
2. Get Chiitrans Lite, this tool grabs the lines for you and separates words by alternating colors, if you highlight a word it will give you a definition. Extremely useful. Sometimes screws up, but you must have this software if you want any chance of even reading lines (if your kanji skills suck).
3. Find a visual novel that isn't terrible, and preferably not in English. Here is a list. I do not recommend the left-hand side of the list, even if the writing is easier.

Spoiler: example (click to show/hide)

4. Become a Nihongonese sensei.

[Flying Dice]

Mm... well, do remember we had that discussion in relation to kancolle a little bit back that noted that anything that's not a complete and abject demonization of the axis powers is basically the devil to some folks. That a nazi is working with the protagonists and isn't the nazi equivalent of an old-school racist caricature of a jew is a negative thing, to some. Gotta' have dem jackboots like the antisemites need those hooked noses, or somethin' along those lines.

The number of people (mostly men) who served in the Wehrmacht was over 20 million people out of a country with population of about 67 million when Hitler rose to power. 20 million would have effectively been the bulk of the male population aged 15-64, and they definitely did not all volunteer to serve, nor did they all sign up after Hitler came to power (especially true of officers). They used massive conscription to create the Wehrmacht. I've heard people on this forum before say that the average German soldier was probably an evil person. This is just not credible given the scale of the numbers, it's basically saying "Germans were all evil".

The Nazi volunteers were mostly used to create the SS, not the Wehrmacht, because Hitler wanted an new army specially loyal to himself and the party. It does actually make a huge difference whether you're portraying a Wehrmacht officer or an SS officer as a good person, since the SS oversaw almost all of the holocaust stuff.

This is misleading to outright false. Unless you only count 'holocaust stuff' as working in the death camps, which were only responsible for a middling-sized portion of the total number of people murdered by the Third Reich (and even then most of the deaths in the death camps weren't until the tail end of the war, when the Nazis realized that they were losing and collectively started chanting 'shitshitshit'. It wasn't SS troops guarding the hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs who were left to die of starvation and exposure in open fields. The middle-aged men drafted to carry out executions because they weren't fit for the front lines weren't fresh-faced SS volunteers. The SS didn't send battalions of men marching all over Eastern Europe and Russia to commit every single rape that occurred during the war in that theatre.

There's been a fairly elegant whitewashing of the Wehrmacht in the post-war period, which is where we get this idea of them as loyal men who were just doing their duty to their country. They committed their fair of atrocities (and, incidentally, are the source of a lot of the really horrific documentation in letters and photographs that we have of the same). That's not to say that they were exceptional in that regard -- Soviet troops mirrored German behavior in the push towards Berlin, or to quote LeMay by way of McNamara, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." [in reference to the campaign of firebombing Japanese cities]

The SS were just the nasty bastards who willingly signed up to murder people in cold blood because they wanted to, rather than doing it to fit in or in the heat of the moment or as part of a strategy to cripple enemy resolve or industry.

[Professor Lemur]

Jesus, this is harsh.
And nothing to do with anime so I'm going to steer it back on course.
So...

What's your opinion of the One-Punch Man OP spoof made by the creator? And thus, would you guys like to see an anime adaptation of the manga?

[Flying Dice]

Okay, have some light and cheerful anime shenanigans with neo-Nazis.

PS: Fansubbers, this is true quality. Emulate it.