Q & A With TV-Nihon's King Ranger
Posted by Jeffrey Couto

( This interview was carried out through e-mail with TV-Nihon's KingRanger )

On TV Nihon's Origins

JH - Who is/are the founding forces behind TV-Nihon?

KingRanger - Metaldave and myself are the founders of TV-Nihon.

JH - What drove the founder/s of the channel to create this IRC channel?

KingRanger - A lot of garbage was going on in a channel a lot of us were in. We would rather not go into that. But mainly we wanted a good place to serve stuff we encoded. With some structure.

JH - When did the channel open its doors for the first time?

KingRanger - It was late 2002. Can't remember the exact date.

The Beginnings and the evolution of TV Nihon

JH - In the beginning what did TV-Nihon especialize in, if anything?

KingRanger - We were pretty much just serving encodes of our own stuff. I would buy stuff and encode. Coxville would, Shurikenger etc.

JH - How did you begin getting word of the channel out to fans?

KingRanger - We put up a web site. We let people know via IRC, and word of mouth.

JH - Where there any problems in the beginning that took you by surprise?

KingRanger - Yes, certain people decided to lie to others about us. They started their own channel and then proceeded to attack TV-Nihon users. It was really pathetic, but we just ignored them.

JH - When did the idea for subtitling come about and how did you pursue it?

KingRanger - Metaldave and Shadowhunter had done other stuff in an old channel. And it continued to the new one. Faiz started that way. Other stuff was spur of the moment. Then we moved into anime. Drax and Take do a wonderful job with MRR and Astroboy. All our projects are done because the people doing them like the shows being done.

The Staff

JH - Who makes up the current staff of TV Nihon and what are their roles?

KingRanger - We think of ourselves as more of a team rather than a staff. All the ops and hops take part in getting content for the channel, helping with our T-N Projects and other varied channel goings on.

JH - Anything interesting that you can tell us about some of your team members?

KingRanger - A few are in college and work hard there, then they take time to help us they are very dedicated in helping. Some are very young but they take great responsibility in helping make the channel run great. Our team has people from all over the world France, Canada, America ,England I think this is very cool. We get to talk about other things.

JH - What are some other projects your staff members are involved in outside of TV Nihon if any?

KingRanger - Some things I can not talk about. But currently one of our team members is working on a French Sub for Faiz. I think this will be very nice.

Subtitling and Encoding

JH - How long does it takes on average to translate an episode of a show you want to subtitle?

KingRanger - For us there really is no average. The people that work on our projects are perfectionists. They try to make sure things are all worked on and looking good. Then we go over stuff again just to make sure :) It could take a week it could take a month. We just want to put out the best we can.

JH - Once you have a script, what is the process that you follow in order to successfully embed the subtitles?

KingRanger - Using different programs like SSA,Vdub etc. A lot of spell checking and what not goes into each project as well.

JH - Overall how much work would you say your staff has put into subtitling Japanese tokuastsu/anime programs?

KingRanger - A lot. Drax, Metaldave, Shadowhunter, Shurikenger, Takenoko, Slackin, Geki all of them put so much work into what they do. I have great respect for all of them. Without these guys you would not be watching Faiz subbed or Machine Robo Rescue or Astrboy or any of the other projects we are doing. People that do this work do it out of the kindness of their hearts. Translators don't need to translate they know what is going on already. They do it for us and should be respected and thanked for doing it all. The people that time,encode and do the rest work so hard to make the best over all product they can. Drax and Metaldave work very hard to make the encodes and scripts look as amazing as they do. For those of you that give them the thanks they deserve I thank you. Those that complain don't bother coming to our channel.

JH - What's been your favorite project this far?

KingRanger - Faiz and MRR are my two favorites. Then drax showed me Astroby and I freaked. That show is amazing.

The Future

JH - Where do you see TV Nihon in a year?

KingRanger - Hard to say. We are doing all of Faiz. And have some other things going on. I would hope we are still doing our thing :)

JH - Do you hope to eventually move into other areas of fandom?

KingRanger - Not really. Anime and Toku is what we all love. But who knows. Never say never.

JH - Do you see yourself to some degree or the other involved with professional productions trying to bring tokusatsu to the mainstream?

KingRanger - That isn't our goal. Our goal is to let fans see these shows and understand them and enjoy what they normaly couldn't. If in the process we help to get tokusatsu into the mainsteam, so much the better.

JH - Any future project we should be looking forward to?

KingRanger - Gaoranger the movie,and Ryuki ep final we are ripping the HK dvd's, and then going over them to fix up the engrish and make each look really nice. We also have a secret anime project going.

JH - Anyone you would like to acknowledge for your success as a fan organization ?

KingRanger - The people that help. T-N team members, servers, people that enjoy what we do.

The Users

JH - What has fan reaction been to your channel?

KingRanger - 99% of the people that come love what we do. They take part in the conversation,they talk about our projects and encodes. The other 1% doesn't last long as we do not tolorate people whining. When some one comes in and says "GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE" they are not welcome. We also have rules and guidelines for the channel, all we ask is that you follow them.

JH - On a typical day how many people would say visit TV Nihon?

KingRanger - We average 107 people a day. And growing every week.

JH - Anything you would like to say to fans of the channel or people who might not be familiar with it?

KingRanger - We at TV-Nihon hope you enjoy your time with us. And we hope you enjoy what we release.

Thanks to everyone at TV-Nihon and King Ranger for all their work and taking the time to answer some of our question for this piece! --Jeff