Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini

[Lenaxia]

Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini


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Groups Subbing:
ANBU
BSS
Awesome
Yuurisan-Subs
Darksoul-Subs (Troll Group)

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If you have not seen Season 1 of Darker than Black I would HIGHLY recommended that you do so, at least alongside DtB2! While you won't be totally lost jumping straight into DtB2, you will miss out on a lot of the back story and significance of events happening!


If you have not seen Season 1, DO NOT READ THIS SPOILER, go watch the actual thing, it's worth it!
Synopsis of S1 Ending - REAL SPOILERS CONTAINED

The Syndicate was trying to get rid of all contractors around the world by some reaction that the old crazy scientist came up with. Amber knew about this because of her time travelling ability. Her overall goal was to stop this from happening and save everyone, especially Hei since she loved him. Their final assault was basically a full on rush by a bunch of contractors on the facility but most of them were killed despite having meteor fragments given to them.

Amber, using the last of her powers before vanishing from overuse of her own powers showed Hei that his little sister who he'd been searching for was inside him all along, after all she was the source of his powers. With a final kiss from Amber, she and everyone else who had perished fighting with or against him said their farewells. He took it upon himself then to destroy the anti-Contractor weapon and vanish from there.

Misaki had discovered her boss worked for the Syndicate and obtained damning evidence against him, and also realized that BK201 was Li-san, aka Hei. She tries tracking him down and fails.

Due to the evidence that Misaki reveals, the existence of contractors and the syndicate becomes common knowledge.

Story ends. Gemini starts.

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Well, here starts S2. From the looks of it, those of you who missed the first season will want to go watch it. While they do explain some things in this episode, you miss out on a significant portion of the background of the characters.

On with the episode!:

It looked okay,

The tone is probably pretty similar to the first. While it started out pretty fluffy fluffy it turned to its normal darkness pretty quickly. What isn't the same though is probably the focus of this show. Shion and Suou are twins and with the title being Gemini of the Meteor, definitely going to be focused on those two, or at least they will play a significant role.

On the other hand, we have the return of MI6's April, Hei and surprisingly what looks like Mao. I must be honest, I am hoping that it wasn't Mao's body that April blew out of the sky, she does (did) look the same as before with July supporting her.

Conversely Hei looks like he's gone through hell: long ragged hair, blood shot eyes. We do see his bullet proof jacket again, hopefully that will last a bit longer into the show than it did originally.

Anyway, in terms of story, I'm kind of surprised to find us now making our way through Siberia (the name Tanya gives it away as well as a few other references). Despite being in the deep tundra, did anyone else notice the flying car that showed up for a split second about half way through the episode? Right when it was discussion something about change? I wonder if Misaki ditched her porsche for one of those :P

Story aside, the animation looks as good as it did the first time around but I suspect that they will be using the same/similar formula for making Gemini, hopefully it doesn't get boring. Especially at this point I don't know how much mystery they can use on us again, perhaps this will be a more action based season? Doubtful though.

Definitely will follow

Ah, will also mention this:

I watched the BSS version. Most of the sub looked good except a couple places where they should've broken the line into to lines stacked but left it as one line that litterally scrolled across the screen from edge to edge. I kinda expected better considering past subs they've done...


Addendum - BSS vs Awesome Comparison

So a comparison between Awesome and BSS.

As mentioned above, BSS had some problems with line length, Awesome had the same issues. Awesome also took some liberties with translation, including in some places in which they shouldn't have. In Suou's bath scene keiyaksha ni kokoro wa nai (romanji is probably wrong on that) which is literally "Contractors do not have a heart", BSS translated this correctly. It can be transliterated as "Contractors are heartless" which is how Awesome translated it. Not wrong, but the first one is more correct.

Slightly before that scene, Shion responds to Suou's statement that they should visit their mother with "ima" meaning "now". In whole BSS translates the line "Mama is a human who is unnecessary to me right now" where as Awesome translates it as "I don't need mom anymore". For what was said, Awesome's translation is totally wrong.

Much later when Tanya is rebuking Nika, the conversation is as follows:
BSS
Tanya: I realized it was pointless.
Nika: Pointless?

Awesome
Tanya: I realized that it's pointless.
Nika: What is?

In the scene, Nika actually responds "muda?" which is "pointless?" BSS wins again.

In the end, translations wise, BSS wins. I would suggest going with them over Awesome.

[Additional Addendum - Fansub recommendations from Zakiel]

Originally Posted by Zakiel

Yuurisan from the series that they've done are a rather subpar group, and I recommend avoiding them.

Darksoul isn't a sub group. They are a troll group. They take other people's scripts, change them around a little, and then make the encode worse.

[Korath]

I enjoyed the 1st episode

Wow Hei's a bit messed up and to be honest I'm glad he killed April (never liked her aynway). As Lenaxia said it starts all fuffly and quickly goes dark which im happy about. I'm curious tho if Hei is going to be 'the bad guy' for long (by holding back telling us the overall evil plan of the evil people) or is it going to be explained soon.

One thing is certain, I enjoyed the show because I was annoyed when it suddently ended "WTF?! OVER ALREADY?!?! GIVE ME MORE!!" kind of thing :)

[Warlucith]

SO GOOD. I was kinda expecting to be dissappointed but that was good right away.

I really liked how it started with the falling stars. I think this season will be very interesting.


SO GOOD!

[Nocturnalgloria]

I'm a bit disappointed that this sequel is only 12 episodes long. My memory of the events from the first season is a bit fuzzy. For example:

The blonde guy with long hair that tips off April in the very beginning, is he a new character? I've been trying to remember with little or no success.

I was rooting for a prequel myself, basically because

I miss November 11 and they can't exactly bring him back from the dead.

[Adam]

Hey look, I found something to watch this season.

[Lenaxia]

Awesome (new group?) just released 480 and 720.

Will do a comparison between 720's tonight.

[Lenaxia]

Originally Posted by Nocturnalgloria

I'm a bit disappointed that this sequel is only 12 episodes long. My memory of the events from the first season is a bit fuzzy. For example:

The blonde guy with long hair that tips off April in the very beginning, is he a new character? I've been trying to remember with little or no success.

I was rooting for a prequel myself, basically because

I miss November 11 and they can't exactly bring him back from the dead.

Blond guy? The Magician? His hair's actually white. He's a new character. Or are you talking about Goran, the hamburger eating guy? He's also new.

From the looks of things, this looks like the list of returning characters that showed up in ep 1 (OP and ED don't give us anything)

Hei
Yin
Mao (hopefully that mao replica in ep 1 was just that, a replica)
April
July
Misaki and said posse

Also forgot to mention. Abandon School Boys is back in the ED, I'm guessing from the CVs we'll have a female sung OP.

[WillMunny]

The first ep is so good! Too bad there will only be 12 eps, but I hope it'll be popular enough to return for a third season. The new characters are shaping up nicely, although Tanya's power is a little underwhelming. April returns for dramatic effect. The action is so kick-ass. And I'm really happy to see Hei back in the first episode -- I thought they were going to bring him in towards the middle of the season, so this is a very nice surprise!

[PhoenixRider]

Yeah, I myself was expecting less of the second season. But it started off great.

This episode reminded me of what I love about Darker than Black. New characters with new abilities, great fights and a nice story. April getting killed off first was a great idea. Never really liked her to begin with, her ability wasn't very appealing without November 11 to take advantage with his Freezing ability.

On a side note, I hope Yin is in the new season and Hei cuts his hair.

[Elminster]

I wish my memory of s1 wasn't so fuzzy, because it would be a lot easier to tell what's going on. Oh well, really great animation to say the least. Looking forward to this one!