People knows about fansubs even in Japan. Industry people. I recall once such instance when the ROD TV core creative team was fielding questions @ Anime Central 2004. I believe was Hideyuki Kurata-san who asked the panel audience “how do you know about ROD the TV? It’s not in the US yet.” The answer was not awkard, and IIRC someone in the audience gave a very good, short, snappy summary of the nature of fansubbing. We all nodded to concede its impropriety yet its necessity, even our creators.
The reason I thought about that was watching Gonzo’s Welcome to the NHK, I realized the OP used 3D text that dropped shadows and ran on chroma key for overlaying and underlaying. In the scene where various women walked past the screen it was pretty obvious what was the trick–the uniform colored background probably made it easier. That was the key. “Why the uniform background? Was the text applied after animation”? And as a rule of thumb, it was–that’s how we can get “clean” OP and EDs. “Wow, that’s like something you can pull off in aegisub if you spend enough time doing it.” Click. Wasn’t this something we saw in Shinsen’s Speed Grapher subs? How they managed to string the song lyrics into the slideshow ED with a uniform background color?
Could the two be possibly related? They are both Gonzo shows… I mean, it is probably more likely that whoever was doing the credits just went to town and did a great job “adding” to the opening animation. More importantly it was probably coordinated, as the flat BG was kind of necessary for post-processing. Or it just could be someone trying to “fix up” a poor production? I don’t know.
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