Pure TokyoScope PODCAST 93: The Trouble With AI Manga Translation!
Patrick Macias and Matt Alt bring you pop culture from Japan!
In this episode of the PURE TOKYOSCOPE Podcast, authors Matt Alt (Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World) and Patrick Macias (Mondo Tokyo: Dispatches from a Secret Japan) imbibe at a brewpub in Akihabara, Tokyo and dig into the meaty topic of the use of AI in manga translation and localization!
SHOW NOTES!
AI manga translation start-up Orange gets $20 million in funding
“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the translators” (article by Matt Alt)
New Tokyo restaurant charges higher prices to foreign tourists than Japanese locals
Akihabara Casino Bunny’s Guild
CHOGOKIN 50th Anniversary Exhibition at Tamashii Nations
What is the PURE TOKYOSCOPE Podcast? Well… Author and fellow Substack writer Matt Alt and I have been recording together for over a year now.
Our show is a mix of Japanese pop culture news and features and some of our best episodes to date have been:
If you like PURE TOKYOSCOPE, please consider subscribing on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Thank you!
I wish I was there guys. I could add soooo much. So Matt is right. Bandai America used FAO as their test market. I saw Go Lion, Combattler and all the other first wave at the Chicago FAO in Feb. 1982. They were all basically their Japanese Yen price converted to Dollars, so a 7000 Yen chogokin was running $70. Now do the math of 250 Yen to the Dollar and see the profit margin Bandai was hoping for. Remember, these were sold directly to FAO, so no multiple resellers as in Japan.
I firmly believe ‘Godaikin’ was a suggestion of Shingi Uchino (I might have misspelled his name) of Pony Toy go round/ Uchino international. Pony Toy was the ‘gray market mule’ for Bandai as they stumbled to make America work for them post-Shogun Warriors. And yes I believe that Bandai used Mattel as their mule to test the waters, then they launched their utterly misguided Battle of the Planets line…featuring Gatchaman II gokin.
I lost all of my Godaikin after my…well, mistake. Had to sell them and I got Pennies on the Dollar. Matt, never give up your Tetsujin. Never. You will have sellers remorse to the end of your days.
Chogokin 50th. I laugh at how they feature so prominently a Macross Valkyrie. They passed on Macross so Takatoku made (and then soon lost) a fortune on it.