[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka It's hard everywhere, I think. Even 20 years ago there was a joke in Russia that went like this:

"A man came to a doctor for advice on how to be healthier, and the doctor replied "I will give you three NOs of medicine that will help you. There are NO doctors to heal you, NO medicine to heal you with, and NO money to pay for anything even if there were, so you either stay healthy or else."

Maybe it does not translate all that well. 😅 But it is interesting how it is still applicable today, if not more so...

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka Oh, by the way, speaking of Japan, before Shogun I watched another minishow (only 4 episodes) and I thought that you might like it. It's from 2022 and called ONI: Thunder God's Tale:

It may be a bit challenging because it is a puppet stop-motion animation (with CGI bits), so it only has subtitles and no proper lip sync, and the animation itself is deliberately clunky. But it is still very cute and inspired by Japanese folktales and overall I enjoyed it, so I wanted to mention it to you.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch Ah yeah, best not to get sick at all, no matter what times we live in. 😅

The trailer is very cute. Shame it's a Netflix eclusive. When the animations are very generic, it doesn't bother me that there's no lip sync. It's when there are actual lip movements, but not matching the captions, that I get bothered.

This reminds me, a lot of people don't even notice lip sync. I blew my spouse's mind when I commented that I could "hear" the characters with sound off in recent World of Warcraft cinematic, because the lips were synced with the captions.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka Ah, well, sometimes you just can't help it...

Yeah, Netflix exclusive. And I hear they may raise the subscription prices this year again, too, in addition to the increase you mentioned before. But hopefully, it is just a rumour. Still, it may be good to note this one down for when you do get Netflix again, if ever, as it is a nice animation to watch then.

I am not sure if it is even possible to make accurate lip sync for doll-based stop-animation. I guess it may be possible, but dolls would need to be very elaborate for that, usually they are not. And often caricatured for a visual effect. Corpse Bride comes to mind:

I do not really remember any stop-animations with actual lip movements elaborate enough to be mismatched with captions. But when it happens in traditional animation or in dubbed films, that bothers me as well. Just this weekend I was watching Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and in one of the episodes there was a half-second mismatch between visuals/sound and subtitles, and even something relatively little like this bothered me.

That is interesting, when you "hear" characters like that, do you have an idea about what sort of voice they have? Sometimes there can be a bit of a mismatch between what you think the character may sound like based on their looks, and their actual voice.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka A bit of an update about Shogun: it is getting a second and third season, it seems. This is unexpected because before the showrunner Justin Marks said it was unlikely without the source material roadmap. But now, after it was so successful, they want to make more.

This is understandable, I guess, but I remain cautious: We have all seen what happens when the series runs out of source material to base on (looking at you Game of Thrones and Happy!) And the source material book is from 1975, that is almost 50 years. Once can hope Shogun will not step on the same rake with this.