Your Anime In Their Hands
The show was about a dorky boy who lives with half a dozen gorgeous women - an idea of such stunning originality that the marketing people decided to have a launch party for it. Just in case the chance to see Geek Gets Girls wasn't attractive enough, they laid on some alcohol as well. It had the desired effect, particularly on the boozy journalist who cornered a besuited Japanese producer, and was quizzing him about his culture.
"I LOVE YOU JAPANESE GUYS!" he bellowed. "I LOVE THAT THING YOU DO, WITH THE… WITH THE…"
He paused to belch loudly, and his victim smiled in pained politeness.
"THAT THING YOU DO, YOU KNOW?" continued the drunken hack. "WHERE YOU HIT EACH OTHER WITH STICKS."
Maybe, I wondered, it was time for me to come to the rescue. Except someone else needed my help more urgently. The potted plant behind me was trying to start up a conversation.
"My boy!" it hissed with a Londo Mollari accent. "You have to help me!"
Crouching behind the rubber plant was Vlad, a video distributor of indeterminate European origin. I had recently signed up to translate a number of titles for him, but this was the first time we had met socially. I should have taken it as a hint.
"Hide me," he whispered. "That girl over there… I left her in a hotel room in Cannes. I went out to get more champagne, and I never came back."
"And?" I asked, wondering why this was that big a problem.
"That girl she's talking to?" he said. "She's the girl I left with."
"Okay," I said. "I'll distract them, and you go for the door."
"No! No, my boy!" he said. "I can't! The girl at the door from the marketing peoples! She is the one I went with!"
I would soon discover that such relationship shrapnel was a common feature of Vlad's life. It was the way he did business. If he couldn't flirt with someone, he felt he wasn't doing his job properly. Everything was always done at the very last-minute, and had to involve a girl somewhere.
Not that I ever had direct proof. I never got to slink around Cannes like a louche lounge lizard, eyeing up the locals and haggling over anime rights at the film-buyers' fair. Oh no, the closest I came to Vlad's international jetset lifestyle was at two o'clock in the morning, when he insisted on driving out to a freezing cold airport. This was anime glamor at its most miserable.
"You stick with me, my boy, and life it will be great!" he chuckled as his BMW burned rubber towards the freight terminal. He was picking up a copy of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, his latest anime acquisition. It was arriving on a late-night flight from Lufthansa, and we needed to meet it at the airport, for reasons Vlad never properly explained.
The two sleepy-eyed girls at the courier counter were surprised to see anyone at all. Vlad took it as a come-on.
"Hello babies!" he yelled enthusiastically. "I'm here for the film, yes? It has arrived?"
They blinked, perhaps hoping that he would disappear.
"I am," he said suavely, leaning across the counter, "a film producer, you see. A film producer, honey! How about that?"
"That's nice," said one of the girls after a while.
"You like the jacket?" said Vlad, modelling his anorak for them. "You see it has the Japanese writing? This is my company name, yes. If you like it, you can have one. What are you, an XXL?"
The girls busied themselves looking for his package, thereby hoping to get rid of him.
"Here's my card," he added, slapping down three on the counter. "One for each of you, and one for a friend, okay babies?"
By now, I was lurking as far away from Vlad as humanly possible, but we were the only other people there. It was so obvious that I was With Him.
One girl plonked the Schoolgirl Milky Crisis master-tape on the counter in front of him with a scowl, proffering a docket for him to sign.
"Thanks babies," he said, grabbing the tape and heading for the door. "And the mobile number's on the back."
Back in his BMW, he threw the tape at me, and drove us out of there with a squeal of tires.
"They want me," he said. "It's the whole Hollywood thing. You'll see."
At that moment, Hollywood had never felt further away.
"Okay my boy," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. "You got eight hours to translate that puppy, and we subtitle it tonight. Oh, and can you try not to write a script that uses the letter 'Y'. It's fallen off my keyboard."
I opened my mouth to protest, but his mobile began to ring. It was the girls from the freight terminal, seeing if he was for real.
"Hell-oo, babies!" he yelled excitedly into his phone. "I knew you couldn't resist a movie mogul like me!"
He turned to me with a happy grin.
"I love my job!" he whispered.
-Jonathan Clements
And Viz using "Word Fit" to speed up/slow down dialog to fit is pretty shitty over all. 
