And so, Global Shinkai Day has come to an end. I literally stayed up overnight until Saturday morning at six for the first session, slept for the second then stayed for the others. The number of attendees started off pretty well. It mostly floated between the 10 to 15 people mark for the day but peaked to just over 21 while Promised Days was being watched for the first time.

So who appeared? Out of my blog readers here and the other forums that I usually visit, I only recognised Maltos. Then of course, we had the organiser Laz making his opening comments to give the event a very well delivered formal introduction and, a few of the attendees helping with the countdown so that we were playing the movies at the same time. Zitch came along and, I'm sure everyone who was there would agree, unintentionally did an excellent job of a "commentary track" on the Ventrillo voice chat that he hosted. It could probably have fit in perfectly with the movie releases so far! It was also nice to see Daike, who helped promote the event, drop by to say hello too.

CrunchyRoll had some technical problems presumably due to the surge in demand with over 22,000 hits if I remember correctly. They had all three movies streaming for the 24 hours including an official unreleased new dub of the 5 Centimetres per Second movie by Bang Zoom Entertainment. It was very well done and was very faithful to the original script except for the following.

Note the times are approximate and the original text is in italics.

16:00

• とにかく、アカリの待つ駅に向かうしかなかった。
  It doesn't matter. I can only go on to the station where Akari is waiting.
• It doesn't matter. I'll make it to the station where Akari's waiting  - sooner or later.

The change is good here I think because it shows Takaki more determined to reach Akari than in the original.

31:35

• 澄田はなんかいつも真剣だよね。ものすごく。
  You're always so serious about everything.
  
• You're so serious about everything - even picking a drink.

Good again since it should help the viewer wonder why she takes so long and if you've read the novel summary, she wanted to pick something that would make her look cute in front of Takaki but, he would always leave before she could.

55:32

• そうやって　いつかまた一緒に桜を見ることができると　私も彼もなんの迷いもなく　そう思ってた
  And so we thought, we'd be able to see the cherry blossoms together again someday. He and I without a doubt... That's what we thought.
  
• And we thought that we'd go see the cherry blossoms again together someday. He and I without a doubt... That's what we thought.

There's a slight subtle difference here. The original makes it sound like they had been expecting a chance that they'll see the blossoms together again while in the new dub, they sound like the were looking forward to it. I guess either works just before the movie ends with the "music video" and crossing scene although with that surprised look on Takaki's face, maybe the original would have been better.

Anyway, there's no news about whether this dub will be released commercially yet but, I'm sure it will considering ADV has ceased distribution of their version of the DVD release.

My thanks goes to Laz for organising the event and allowing all the Shinkai fans to gather. It was interesting hearing people speaking out their thoughts and discussing them as we went through each of the movies because there was a fair bit of new insight such as Zitch mentioning all the real world military related material used in Promised Days.

There were quite a few jokes cracked towards the last session of the day but, I think the funniest moment was the unintentional one. While I was watching the dubbed version of 5cm and was at the part where Akari was saying, "And we thought..." Zitch's voice (yes, again!) suddenly boomed over the mic saying, "Bye Fred!" That made us burst out laughing. Of course, he was just saying bye to one of the attendees. Didn't mute voice chat at the time because I was just comparing the scripts.

In the end, I think Laz and everyone else who helped promote the event has helped raise the number of fans because I've been getting a burst of hits over the weekend with people looking up Makoto Shinkai or trying to find out more about 5 Centimetres per Second. I think I might design a separate page for 5cm instead of using Wordpress for it because I like the movie so much!

Well, lets hope the online event will be even greater and that even more people will join the voice chat the second time round!