No, you didn’t miss a review of Air Master Volume 1. Anime Castle was out of that volume when I was there to pick it up. Since I already know the story, I just took it from Vol. 2, and there we are.

To start, I reviewed this series way back on November 17, 2003 (it’s still running and yes, I am still reading) and the anime on February 26, 2004. If you want to know what the story is about and why we care – read those reviews.

Now, here is my review of the Geneon release of Air Master on DVD:

Geneon Entertainment Customer Service
c/o The Right Stuf International
PO Box 71309
Des Moines, IA 50325

Dear Sir or Madam;

My name is Erica Friedman, the President of Yuricon. The over 1200 members of Yuricon greatly enjoy many Geneon anime series, so we take it rather seriously when we feel that the quality of a DVD is exceptionally low. I am therefore writing to address two issues on behalf of my organization.

(I have snipped a portion here that is not relevant)

But far worse is the DVD of Air Master. The subtitles are incredibly small and hard to read – and they appear to actually be a close-caption track, rather than subtitles. It is incredibly annoying to pay good money for such a shoddy product. I and many of the members of Yuricon are perfectly aware that Toei anime seems to tend towards sub-par quality, but we do believe that the translation – which *is* yours – is poor enough that, at times it seems as if we are watching a bootlegged translation from Hong Kong, rather than the legally licensed version for America. It seems utterly strange to us that your translator was not familiar with shumai, a common Japanese dumpling (translated as siu-may) or Lucha (translated as Roo-cha) Master being named after the luchadores, Mexican masked wrestlers. Neither of these are particularly obscure terms…

We at Yuricon look forward to the day when Geneon licenses Maria-sama ga Miteru for the American audience, and we very much hope that your company strives to improve the quality of your translation and subtitling by then. And we do expect to see a revision in future volumes of Air Master. The current subtitling is simply inexcusably bad.

(Another small, irrelevant snip)

On behalf of the members of the Yuricon community, we thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Erica Friedman

***

You will notice that I left in the address for Geneon. Please feel free to write them and politely express your disapproval of this product. It’s the only way they will know what we think.