“Love Hina” Receiving New Subtitles From FUNimation?

On FUNimation’s forums (now defunct, as are all of the links to the old FUNimation forums–links left in for archival purposes only), Lucky Seven brought it to my attention that there’s a new trailer for Love Hina’s forthcoming release. At the end of said trailer, it mentions that there will be new subtitles. I grabbed a screen capture for you to see.

Those who know me are well aware of my preference to have honorifics retained in the subtitles. Further, I hate it when subtitles receive domestication — removing Japanese jokes for American ones, removing Japanese references for American ones, etc. That kind of stuff is OK for a dub audience who won’t care much (if at all) about Japanese references and jokes, but if I’m watching this in Japanese, I want the Japanese perspective all the way around.

With this in mind, when I learned years ago that FUNimation’s licenses all contained subtitles which not only retained the “core” honorifics (-sama, -dono, -san, -chan, -kun, -sensei, -senpai), but some titles went further, using more honorifics or even terms like “youkai” (Yu Yu Hakusho) or “ninpou” (Basilisk), I became a fan of FUNimation’s work. That’s why when FUNimation license rescued Slayers but did not give the series new FUNimation-quality subtitles at the very least, I was highly disappointed.

Now, if the above screen-shot is accurate AND the new subtitles have my honorifics and don’t have the domestication stuff that Bandai put in there, FUNimation will for sure have made at least one double-dip sale from me (as soon as I land a new job that is). I dare say they will score more than a few new double-dip sales from people like me who are into the honorifics.

On a related topic, watch the trailer and then tell me here or in the Love Hina thread on FUNimation’s Forums what you think about the marketing scheme being used. Make mention on whether you’ve seen Love Hina or not.

Update: (February 20, 2009) I just received my FUNimation DVD release of the TV series. No honorifics are in the subtitles that I saw through spot checking of the first four episodes. So I pulled my Bandai DVD’s off the shelf and checked the first four episodes on my computer against the FUNimation release. The scripts are identical. I’ll try to find out what happened but no promises.

Update: (28-Dec-2019) I never did update this years ago, but at the time, the then new person in charge of Love Hina for FUNimation expressed surprise that they were promising this. This person wouldn’t tell me why, but from what I could gather from talking to folks within FUNimation at the time, there were cost issues. Why pay for a proper subtitle adaptation when the existing one would suffice?