Dialogue Changes

• Noin, while talking to Zechs: "My soldiers aren't ever going to be killed in battle."--The last part of this became "...are never going to be destroyed..." Ah, a typical change.

• Noin, still talking to Zechs: "I pity the soldiers who get killed off."--Once again, "kill" became "destroy" That's two in a row for Noin ^_^

• Noin, to Wufei: "Damn you!"--This became "Blast you." My, Noin's just getting all the stock dialogue changes, isn't she?

• Wufei, to Noin: "I don't kill bleeding hearts or women."--"Kill" became "fight." Either way, I'm just happy this line is there at all. Wufei is a bit sexist, and I was afraid they were going to change lines like this so no one would be "offended" by him. I take this as a good sign for the dub...if all dubbers would just stop worrying about offending people, then American dubs would be just fine translation wise...I hope they keep up this pattern of risking offending people in order to keep the translation intact (I think the biggest test of this will be episode 14, when Treize says that God is just an imaginary creation of humans...we'll see what happens).

• Noin: "Dammit! *frustrated yell* Ah, damn!"--"Damn" became "blast" in both cases in this one quote. One comment I have about this scene is that I don't think it was done as effectively as the original. What I'm talking about is that scream. In the dub, the voice actor (Saffron Henderson, is that you?) gives just a mildly frustrated yell. In the original, she lets out a very frustrated, almost childish sounding scream. It sounds like she's having a temper tantrum. I just felt I had to mention this because I have such a vivid memory of how the scene sounded in the original, and it just didn't quite come through this time. But hey, usually the dub gets it right, so little things like this don't bother me. (If they don't bother me, why do I mention them? Uhh...'cause I can? ^_^;;)

• Relena, talking to...uh, the sky?: "Heeeeero! I am right over here, so come and kill me!"--"Kill" became "get." *This portion has been edited for your sanitation to remove encouragement of Relena disemboweling*

• Zechs, to Noin: "I've been through hell with that Gundam as well."--"Hell" turned into "it." Ooh, the first time "hell" is used in the dub. Wow, hearing Brian Drummond swear just sends chills up my spine ^_^ I wish he'd been able to say things like that when he was playing Vegeta...but noooOOOooo, poor Brian was stuck with saying that "other dimension" crap...*sigh* Oh well, I can still use my imagination ^_^ (And this is getting off-topic...)

Voices

• Lucrezia Noin: This took me awhile to figure out for some reason. Actually, I didn't realize who it was until after the episode ended and I was just reviewing how she sounded in my mind. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Noin is played by Saffron Henderson (Gohan in the first two seasons of Dragonball Z). One thing I have to say about her voice is that, when combined with Zechs' voice, any conversations between the two of them just sound...kind of suggestive. I mean, they're both speaking in kind of low voices, so they always just sound like they're suggesting something more than what they're talking about in the dub. At the end of the episode when Zechs was pulling Noin out of the Aries, she was speaking in a tired voice which sounded even more suggestive. Speaking of suggestive, I have a question I've been wondering about ever since the first time I saw this episode (Waaay back in mid 1998 ^_^): Does anyone know what Noin was doing when she was tapping her sword against Zechs' sword while he was talking on the phone? Was there any significance to that, or am I just looking into it too much? I just can't figure out what it means.

• Rasheed: This one I recognized right away. As soon as Rasheed opened his mouth, I thought "Piccolo!" which meant Scott McNeil. Heh heh, I love this guy's deep voice! Piccolo-san, Daaaaisuki! Um, OK, I'll shut up now ^_^;;

In General

• Well, I'm still trying to figure out what editing standards are being used for GW. I now know of one other thing they don't have a problem with: hits to the face. That's a relief! I was afraid that since they're editing out blood like they did in DBZ that they might also cut out hits to the face, or add in those oh-so-lovely looking "pow! stars." But thankfully, that's not going to happen; the scene with Noin slapping one of her students was left completely intact. Yay ^_^

• Another thing I have to mention is something that was a problem in Dragonball Z, but I don't think is going to be here. I'm talking about totally irrelevant references to pop culture. In DBZ, they had characters such as aliens making references to things that they would have no way of knowing about, like soccer and busses and such. In this episode, Duo makes a reference that doesn't really make sense: "He's antisocial, thinks he's Evel Knievel and hardly speaks!" One reason it doesn't make sense is that Gundam Wing is supposed to be set in the future, so they probably wouldn't know about Evel Knievel. But like I said, I don't think this will be a problem in Gundam Wing. This quote itself isn't even really a problem; I suppose it's possible that they would have heard of Evel Knievel. And besides, it's Duo. He says stupid things even in the original, so it's not really a big deal for him to say something like that. Once again, I'm just mentioning things that don't really matter, but I feel the need to talk about them anyway (this is what's known as being a bitch ^_^)

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