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Miyuki, Complete (with Spoilers)

December 24, 2014, 11:03 am
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'Twas the night before Christmas...

FroZen(-Evil) has released the 37th and final episode of Miyuki. It's taken close to two years to do 37 episodes, or roughly an episode every three weeks. The team has stayed remarkably constant from start to finish:
  • Translation: laalg
  • Translation check: Tsubasa (1-30), kokujin-kun (30-37)
  • Timing: Juggen (mostly), limpakos, Skr
  • Karaokes: Juggen
  • Editing: Collectr
  • Typesetting: kokujin-kun
  • QC: CP (all), Saji, sangofe, getfresh, limpakos, konnakude
  • RC: Juggen
  • Encoding: Skr
  • Raw provider: CP (R2J DVDs)
Special thanks to getfresh for providing the original Miyuki no Tamari fansub scripts as a starting point for episodes 1-8, and to laalg for translating all 37 episodes in less than two months in the winter of 2013. The name change from FroZen-EviL to FroZen was due to some unimportant "dorama" in the team; Live-Evil staffers participated throughout. I've already discussed why Miyuki proceeded more slowly than Yawara! Given that the show aired in 1983, I don't think the delay matters all that much.

Perhaps of greater concern to viewers is that the series simply stops, with everything up in the air. The protagonist, Wakamatsu Masato, is still torn between the two Miyukis, although there's a hint about his ultimate direction. His sister is still being pursued by a host of inappropriate suitors. At least Kashima Miyuki is no longer slapping him every episode.

It's not surprising that Miyuki seemed to peter out. The anime didn't have a linear story line and adapted chapters from the manga sort of randomly. By the end of its third season, the TV series had plundered the first nine volumes more or less completely and run out of material. Rather than tack on an "anime-original" ending, the TV series just stopped. Perhaps the creators hoped to do a fourth season when the manga completed its run. It didn't happen.

So as a public service, I hereby present some Official Miyuki Spoilers! Yes, dear viewer, you don't have to be left in suspense any longer. In volume 11, an old friend of Masato, a talented soccer player named Sawada Yuuichi, returns to Japan and ends up staying in the Wakamatsu household. He falls in love with Wakamatsu Miyuki and proposes to her. She agrees to marry him, and her brother gives his consent. However, at the wedding ceremony, Kashima Miyuki learns that the Wakamatsu siblings are not related by blood and goes to Hokkaido to sort out her feelings. Then Masato breaks down and confesses his love for his stepsister. They run off together, eventually getting married in the Philippines, where his father is living. In Hokkaido, Kashima Miyuki encounters Sawada Yuuichi. The implication is that Kashima and Sawada will eventually pair up. And everyone lives happily ever after, I guess. Your mileage may vary.

In a previous blog entry, I was rather hard on the show, because I was suffering from "Adachi Mitsuri overload" as well as frustration about how long both Miyuki and Hiatari Ryoukou were taking to get done. In retrospect, Miyuki turns out to be a fun slice-of-life comedy, typical of the more innocent era in which it aired. The characters are engaging, the comedy is broad and straightforward, and the Serious Development is confined to the very last episode. There are are certainly elements I find questionable - such as the various adult men who lust after Wakamatsu Miyuki - but I can chalk that up to the times and to Japanese culture. I'm glad that Miyuki is available to an English-speaking audience at last.

FroZen-EviL isn't done (we're not quite dead yet). We're slowly gearing up for the Yawara! BluRays. We'll keep the joint venture name, even though Frostii is moribund, and the boundaries between Saizen, Orphan, Live-eviL, Soldado, and several other "back catalog" groups are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Whatever their official homes, this team is a great crew to work with, and I hope we can keep our winning streak going.
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2014 in Review

December 30, 2014, 2:47 pm
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This is not a summary of my views on 2014's anime; why should you care? I didn't watch many shows. Instead, I was mostly working on editing projects, with a sideline of typesetting. Highlights included:

Orphan Fansubs

Without laalg, the team's prolific translator, the pace of work slowed. The group did more resubbing projects and fewer original translations. Still, Orphan completed twelve projects this year.
  • Rain Boy, Lunn Flies into the Wind, Yamataro Comes Back, Adachigahara, Akuemon. Thanks to outstanding translation help from convexity and Moho Kareshi, we finished off Tezuka Osamu's Lion Book series. The shows range from sentimental fables (Rain Boy) to horror (Adachigahara) and illustrate the range of Tezuka Osamu's interests and talents. Along the way, I learned the basics of motion-capture typesetting, so the typesetting for the last four is better than for the first two, although it's still amateurish.
  • Maze TV special. The notorious fanservice episode, subtitled in English for the first time as a public service to Maze devotees and anime connoisseurs alike.
  • Yamato 2520. The notorious (for a different reason) incomplete sequel to the Yamato franchise, abandoned after three episodes. This was the first fully translated version in English.
  • Sei Michaela Gakuen Hyouruuki. The token h-anime for the year (under the Orphan label, at least), distinguished by its mild content and wildly improbable and convoluted plot.
  • The Adventures of Horus, Prince of the Sun. A resub project using neo1024's excellent subtitles and tipota's BluRay encode. A highly enjoyable family film, in the old-school tradition.
  • Maroko. The baffling summary movie of the equally baffling OVA series, Gosenzosama Banbanzai! A resub project using Frostii/Ureshii subtitles and a sterling new encode by Skr.
  • Amatsuki. A resub project using Ureshii subtitles and DVD encodes.
  • Ranma 1/2 Live Action. Intended as a follow up to the very successful Usagi Drop live action project, it served to illustrate how variable the quality of Japanese live-action films can be - in this case, how bad the quality can be.
Orphan also established a formal h-anime sub-brand, Okizari, to allow for clearer labeling of h-anime releases; and at least one of the releases (Kunoichi Bakamatsu Kitan) was actually worth the effort.

The team has expanded a bit. It now includes three translators or translation checkers (convexity,  Moho Kareshi, and kokujin-kun), three timers (archdeco, ninjacloud, and Eternal_Blizzard), two typesetters (Juggen and me), four QCs (CP, Saji, konnakude, and Calyrica), and one editor (me). MrMew times the h-anime releases. macros74 pitches in on projects as well. Everyone has other commitments, but it's a fun group to work with.

Work for Other Groups
  • Kiteseekers finished the first English translation of Limeiro Ryuukitan X, as well as the BluRay version of Hanaukyo Maid Tai, which turned out very well in my estimation.
  • C1. My very first group has come back from beyond the grave, and I'm editing Kakyuusei 1999 for them. It's going slowly, as most back catalog projects do, but it got a pleasant boost when doll_licca was able to provide a DVD source for the series.
  • FFF. I continue to work on TV resubs and BDs. TV shows included the utterly forgettable Golden Time and Seikoku no Dragonar and the far better Hoozuki no Reitetsu and Akatsuki no Yona. BDs included Hyakka Samurai Bride and Walkure Romanze, both guilty pleasures.
  • WhyNot? I finished editing several incomplete series for the group, but they have not yet been released.
  • FroZen-EviL finished Miyuki (and there was much rejoicing). Yawara! Blurays are next.
  • Saizen roped me into Laughing Salesman and Psycho-Armor Govarian. On some of these shows, it's hard to tell the boundaries between Saizen, Live-EviL, Soldado, C1, and Orphan; the staffs overlap almost completely.
  • m74. I edited a few shows for macros74 as he explored the back catalog through European releases and translations.
  • ray=out. I finished editing Hiatari Ryoukou, but the show continues to roll out very slowly.
  • Magai. I helped polish up Morellet's version of the charming The Rose and Joe.
I'm almost always willing to help out teams that need a hand... but I've become more particular about the kind of material I'll work on. Extremes of violence and moe are out of scope now, but sci-fi, slice of life, and cats never get old.

Looking Ahead

Next year's, Orphan will finish up D4 Princess and Tokimeki Tonight.  Beyond that, projects will be based on the team's interests and on the availability of raw materials. We'd all like to do more Tezuka Osamu, if raws are available. I'm working with LaserDisc encoders to see if we can get raws for series or OVAs that never made it to DVD or are only available as low-quality Internet raws. And I really want to do BluRay versions of Shirokuma Cafe and the Cosprayers trilogy; a different team is already working on Nodame Cantabile.

I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and a joyous 2015. Thanks for reading, or watching, or both.

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D4 Princess (Take Four)

January 1, 2015, 6:48 am
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Starting off 2015 with a bang, Orphan Fansubs presents D4 Princess. This short-episode series has a long and checkered history. It was subbed back in the VHS days, but numerous attempts to do a DVD version came to grief. Anime SkyScraper (the aptly named ASS) did six episodes and stopped. DmonHiro did six episodes and stopped. Animeyoshi started a project but gave up before releasing anything. tipota encoded all 24 episodes and put together softsubs from the original VHS fansubs, but the subs were inaccurate, lacked previews, and had no typesetting to speak of.

Most of these projects got underway because CP, QC extraordinaire, owned the R2J DVDs and offered them to any serious-sounding team, with little luck. Accordingly, Orphan decided in early 2013 to sub the show. Our highly prolific translator, laalg, ripped through all 24 episodes in a matter of weeks, translation-checking DmonHiro's version of the first six episodes and translating the last eighteen from scratch. Skr encoded the first six episodes, and by the summer of 2013, those episodes were in relatively good shape. And then, the curse of D4 Princess struck, and everything just stopped.

There were a couple of problems. First, laalg had worked from the VHS encode, which lacked previews, so there were no previews for episodes 7-24. Second, tipota released his version, which took a lot of the urgency out of the project. Third, the series required  general translation checking as well as translation of additional signs and the previews, and no one had the bandwidth. And most importantly, the series proved to be a typesetting nightmare, far beyond my capabilities at the time. As a result, the project stalled out for eighteen months.

Then, in early November, 2014, the stars suddenly aligned. tipota's encode included the previews. convexity translated all the previews and missing signs, and then translation checked the last eighteen episodes, in a matter of weeks. ninjacloud joined the group and timed all the episodes in rapid succession. Through practice on the Lion Books series and Hanaukyo Maid Tai, I had acquired just enough understanding of motion capture typesetting to handle the signs; I edited the scripts as well. Juggen supplied a suitably bouncy karaoke for the bouncy ending song. CP, Calyrica, and konnakude QCd the episodes in rapid succession. In less than two months, all 24 episodes were finished, in time for a New Year's release.

So what ofthe show itself? Well, like many Orphan projects, it's no masterpiece. (Collectr's Law of Orphaned Anime: If a show has been abandoned by multiple subbing groups, it's probably for a good reason.) Ruridou Doris is a spoiled 13-year-old, the third Princess of the Rasen Empire. She's also a panzer, a person who can transform a household appliance or tool into a personal mecha. She's about to start attending Teito Toho Academy, a prestigious private school for the ultra-wealthy (the dorm rooms are bigger than most apartments, and it has a private subway), where she will be able to practice her panzer skills freely. Unfortunately, Doris is unaware that real life doesn't come with butlers and maids and that her panzer form, which includes a drill on her head and a mahou-shoujo outfit, is rather lame.

The series starts out as a fish-out-of-water comedy about a spoiled rich girl but transforms pretty rapidly into a girl-battles-girl mecha combat show. Doris's older sister, Doria, a famous panzer, shows up to train Doris for combat. Doris, called "The Drill Princess" because her panzer weapon is a drill, fights set-piece battles against Takaeda Hasami, aka "The Longhorn Beetle" (scissors based), Kurina Nozuru, aka "The Tornado Motor" (vacuum cleaner based), and Gaou Nejiru, aka "The Bloody Drill" (also drill based). The usual Serious Development sets in at episode 21 and is resolved by the end of the show.

D4 Princess suffers from a variety of problems. The animation is not great, with lots of chibis, still-frames, repeat sequences, and even some stick figures to stretch the budget. The tone varies wildly between slapstick comedy, mecha combat, and of course the dreaded Serious Development. The ending song is an earworm, particularly after 24 (or more) repetitions.

However, I see two more serious defects. First, the viewer is invited, rather too often, to ogle Doris's 13-year-old form (and those of her friends) in states of undress. Further, as Doris perfects her panzer skills, each stage of advancement endows her with bigger oppai and more revealing décolletage. I realize that the show was made 15 years ago, and that the Japanese have (or had) a different attitude about sexualizing young girls in anime, but I find it distasteful. Perhaps I've reached the same stage as the Danny Glover character in Lethal Weapon: I'm too old for this shit.

Second, the Serious Development is handled with a superficiality that is breathtaking. Doris undergoes a serious psychological trauma and is then magically cured by a single letter. I know 13-year-olds are resilient, but that is just ridiculous.

Well, as one team member remarked, if it wasn't the best show, at least it was short.

A couple of translation notes.
  • The title, D4 Princess, references that Doris has the fourth Kaiser Drill in her family. The anime completely ignores the other three.
  • Takaeda Hasami's panzer name is literally "The Longicorn Beetle." It has been rendered here as the more familiar "Longhorn Beetle."
  • The interjection "mou" is rendered as "gee" rather than the more usual "geez" or "jeez," because that's how laalg preferred it - totally G-rated.
So here, at last, is an accurate, complete (and typeset) D4 Princess. In the end, CP didn't get to use his R2J DVDs for the project, unless his ISOs found their way to tipota, but he says he's satisfied with the result. More seriously, this release depletes the very last of the reservoir of scripts from laalg, whose extraordinary productivity fueled many of our projects for the past two years. Now we are truly Orphans.

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The One(s) That Got Away

January 23, 2015, 2:59 pm
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All cultural media suffer from artifact loss, as a result of time or changes in taste. Time causes books to decay, photographs to fade, movies to disintegrate, etc. Changes in taste relegate yesterday's popular art to the status of curiosities or embarrassments, best forgotten.

Another source of loss, though, is technology change and the costs it imposes. As media change over time, some works get left on the wrong side of the technology divide and become increasingly difficult to find or, if found, to play. For example, quite a few obscure folk music records or cassettes never made it to CD, because the economic justification for remastering was lacking. One of the goals of my retirement is to digitize my remaining LP and cassette collections, while I still have equipment to play them.

The world of anime is filled with examples of works that were stranded on VHS or at best Laserdisc and never made it to DVD or streaming digital format. Indeed, several of Orphan's projects have been directed at marooned shows. For example, the Maze special never made it beyond VHS; Sei Michela Gakuen Hyouryuuki and Yamato 2520 never made it beyond Laserdisc. Of course, there's a temporal component to this too. Orphan subbed Blazing Transfer Student off a Laserdisc rip, because that was the only version available, and then a BluRay version was released. FroZen-EviL subbed the two Yawara! specials off VHS and Laserdisc (obtained at considerable expense, I might add), only to see both included in the final Yawara! BluRay box set. Even Gosenzosama Banbanzai has been released on DVD. As long as masters exist, there's reason to hope.

Still, some shows seem doomed to be Left Behind. When Maze was released on DVD, its ecchiness was toned down considerably. The special doesn't fit with the current DVD release. Yamato 2520 is probably irretrievably tangled in legal difficulties about ownership and copyrights. Bakumatsu no Spasibo, a 1997 feature length film originally recommended by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, may have been a casualty of deteriorating relations between Russia and Japan. Other shows suffer from lack of demand. Is anyone really waiting for DVD versions of Hi-Speed Jecy or Hashire Melos or An Adventure in the Otaku Galaxy or AWOL, to name just a few shows available only on VHS or Laserdisc?

However, there are some items whose fate is mysterious: they simply never showed up on any medium. One example is the Maze movie. It certainly existed and played in theaters, but it has never been released on any consumer medium: not VHS, not LaserDisc, not DVD. Another is the long version of the Elfen Lied opening, Lilium. A full-length version must have existed, because excerpts from beyond the opening are quoted in other places in the series, but it was never released. And in both cases, no one seems to know why. Damaged masters? Rights conflicts? The mystery remains unsolved.

What anime shows are on your list of "the ones that got away"?

[Updated 24-Apr-2015]
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Miyuki - Forever Selection

February 14, 2015, 11:33 am
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Blame BakaBT for this.

When I offered the Miyuki batch on BakaBT, Al_Sleeper asked about including the AMV (animated music video) special called Forever Selection, which offers nine songs in complete form set to excerpts and stills from the series. The FroZen-EviL team hadn't considered the special important and hadn't encoded or scripted it. I didn't want to include a random Internet raw in the batch, and BakaBT didn't want to accept the torrent without it. So a compromise of sorts was reached: the batch went up with just the 37 TV episodes, and Saiei's version of the AMV went up separately.

Even though it's a music video, Forever Selection includes a small amount of dialog. I decided to make a script for the dialog. While I was at it, I included the signs that had been typeset as well. The result was never formally offered, although I posted a patch file to add the script.

However, I was quite dissatisfied with the result. The Saiei raw suffers from a lot of jitter, because it hadn't been put through image stabilization during the encode process. It doesn't "fit" with the rest of the series, video-wise. Accordingly, I badgered Skr, the series' encoder, to do Forever Selection. He graciously agreed. I adapted my script to the new raw, which required redoing all the typesetting because of the much-reduced amount of jitter, and now the special is released.

Forever Selection does not include song translations. All of the songs in the TV episodes are excerpts from longer pieces, and the full-length versions were never translated. Still, even as just an AMV with a bit of dialog and some signs, it's a nice reminder of the show and its soundtrack. I hope you enjoy it.

This version has been added into the batch on BakaBT and the separate AMV has been deleted.

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Yawara-chan Returns!

March 5, 2015, 8:02 am
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Yes, the FroZen-EviL gang has reunited to put on another show, in this case, the Blu-Ray version of Yawara! The first two episodes have been released, and despite a mixup about fonts, it's now possible to see Yawara-chan in her HD and color-restored glory.

The process for this project will be a little different than before. For the first 40 episodes, the team is going to use the AnimEigo R1 subs as a base. For episodes 41-58, the team is using the Froth-Bite/Live-eviL subs, which will require OCRing the original episodes (the scripts were lost in one of several FTP catastrophes). From episode 59 onward, we'll use the FroZen-EviL scripts. All episodes will be scrutinized carefully to get consistent styling and terminology, and episodes 1-58 will receive a full translation check. Complete typesetting, instead of the simpler {\an8}Sign: style of the original show, will be done. Karaokes will be styled (simply) instead of just line-timed.

Editorial changes should be relatively few. The award that Jigoro wants Yawara to win is properly called the People's Honor Award, not the National Merit Award. All of the terms in the judo ring will be left untranslated, not just "Hajime" and "Matte." Judo terms will be given consistent spelling and capitalization.

Now, I must confess that I never watched the first 58 episodes of Yawara! In was easy enough to pick up the show in media res, and real-life time constraints made devoting 20 hours to catching up impractical. Now that I'm retired, I could watch the whole series, but I'm enjoying the week-by-week unrolling of the first few episodes. The main characters don't change much from beginning to end, of course. Still, it will be fun watching them run their courses over several years.

To me, the Blu-Rays (like the "Special DVD Edition" of episode 1) look gorgeous. Colors are vibrant, edge-burn is gone, interlacing and blended frame issues much less prominent. The first OP and ED - Miracle Girl and Stand by Me - are excellent. Miracle Girl is a J-pop earworm, albeit quite a good one, but Stand by Me is a soulful ballad that stands repeated listening. Be sure to get the second versions to avoid font problems with the OP karaoke.

So welcome back, Yawara-chan! I look forward to following your progress in the coming months and years.
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I Say, "-uusei"

March 7, 2015, 8:50 am
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So here is Kakyuusei (1995), a four episode h-anime OVA. It should not be confused with Elf Ban Kakyuusei (1998), a four episode non-h OVA, or Kakyuusei (1999), a fourteen episode non-h TV series, all of which, like Doukyuusei and Doukyuusei 2, stem from Japanese "visual novels" or erotic games with high school settings. The Kakyuusei shows focus on relationships between a male upperclassman and multiple female students, typically first-years.

Kakyuusei (1995) has the dubious distinction of being the only one of all the "-uusei" shows never released on DVD. It also has a strange English (sub)title: My Petty Class Student. At first, I thought this was a misprint for "pretty," because "petty" usually means "trivial" or "unimportant." However, Zalis believes it to be an overly literal translation, using the second definition of "petty" as "of secondary or lower importance, rank, or scale; e.g., a petty officer."

The show is technically an orphan. The first two episodes were released in the US on VHS and ripped by Anime-Hentai. The last two episodes never appeared in English. For this release, Zalis translation-checked the first two episodes and both translated and timed the last two. convexity did additional translation checking and translated the extensive signs. I edited and typeset, as usual, and CP and konnakude checked the results. Because the series was never released on DVD, the only available raws are terrible LaserDisc rips, at 384p resolution.They're filled with deinterlacing problems and blended frames, but they're the only game in town.

Kakyuusei (1995) follows the usual format for the"-uusei" shows. The protagonist, Nanahoshi Kakeru, is high-school senior hoping to "make happy memories" (i.e., get lucky) in his last year in school. He meets and beds a virginal young woman, Urara, to whom he declares his undying love. However, when she is conveniently sent abroad, he pursues and beds a different first-year girl in each of the succeeding episodes, only returning to Urara when she even more conveniently returns at the end of the series. The cast is fleshed out (so to speak) with the usual tropes, including Kakeru's younger sister, Mika, his hapless best friend, Minamino Takeshi, and the sneering, wealth playboy, Douda Shuichiro. The h-scenes are mild by modern standards, but there is a tiny bit of censoring in one spot. In addition, there's a dream sequence involving a St. Bernard that makes the horny mutt in Kennel Tokorozawa look like a model of deportment.

Of all the "-uusei" h-animes, only Tenkousei (1997) remains unsubbed; in the PG category, Kakyuusei (1999) is still unfinished (C1 is slowly working its way through that series). Viewed as a collection, they seem remarkably repetitious, and yet the same basic plot continues to be used in visual novels and anime series to this day. I guess harem shows never go out of favor.

I'm hoping that better raws for Kakyuusei (1995) will surface someday, but with LaserDiscs the only digital source at the moment, I'm not holding my breath. If a reader does find a better set of raws, let me know, and Orphan will redo the subs. In the meantime, this is the best that can be done for this otherwise forgotten series.

P.S. A big shout-out to Zalis for taking on the translation. I don't think this would have gotten done without him.


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Akatsuki no Yona: A Retrospective

March 24, 2015, 6:13 pm
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I haven’t done much fansubbing of current shows for the last few years. Most contemporary series have been junk, and the few standouts have been claimed by teams I don’t work with.  Akatsuki no Yona proved an exception, on both counts. Preparing the scripts for the batch release of the show has only strengthened my admiration for the series.

I’m not sure what drew me to Yona. The Fall Preview in Random Curiosity pigeon-holed it as a shoujo harem in the mold of Fushigi Yuugi, an otome series that I don’t particularly like. Guardian Enzo of Lost in Anime saw signs of promise but only enough for it to “sit near the top of my second tier.” Yet from the outset, I wanted to work on the show, even though I was sure no one else would be interested. I more-or-less cursed, cajoled, or convinced a few people in FFF to work on it with me, as repayment for the crap light novel adaptations I’ve edited for the group. My judgment about the show was confirmed within two episodes, as was my hunch that no other team would pick it up.  That allowed for a more leisurely pace, with releases two to six days after the show aired.

Yona is a shoujo series, because its protagonist is a teenage girl, but it is more a historical fantasy in the mold of Seiunkoku Monogatari than a romance like Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii. The core subject is not love but power politics. The show is set in a semi-disguised feudal Korea. Yona is the pampered daughter of the non-violent and perhaps indolent King Il. She starts out with nothing more serious on her mind than her red hair, which she doesn’t particularly like; her imminent sixteenth birthday celebration; and her romance, so far unfulfilled, with her first cousin, Su-won, the heir-apparent to the throne.

Her life is rudely shattered on the night of her birthday when Su-won assassinates her father, claims the kingship, and orders her executed. Su-won says he is doing this as revenge for King Il’s murder of Su-won’s father, Yu-hon, but that remains in doubt. At the last second, Yona’s monstrously strong bodyguard, Hak, known as the Thunder Beast, rescues her, and together they flee into the countryside with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

The opening episodes aren’t very promising. Yona is helpless and, worse yet, vapid. The show seems headed for a standard damsel-in-distress-rescued-by-her-hero trope. Yet at the end of the second episode, to set the stage for what’s to come, the show flashes forward to show Yona as the determined leader of a small band of warriors, fighting off an invasion of her homeland. The core of Akatsuki no Yona is showing how that transformation came about; how a helpless and cloistered girl became a leader and a fearsome fighter.

Yona and Hak first encounter an exiled priest, Ik-su, and his clever, handsome, but not physically strong attendant, Yun. Ik-su tells Yona about the myth of the four dragons, companions of Kouka’s founding red-haired king, Hiryuu. According to legend, their descendants are still waiting for a new red-headed king to summon them.  Accompanied by Yun and Hak, Yona sets out to find the dragons in the hope that red-headed Yona is the king the dragons have been waiting for.

Over the rest of the season, Yona encounters and eventually wins over the four dragons, but she also sees with her own eyes the true situation of Kouka and its inhabitants. Her father’s lackadaisical policies have allowed foreign powers and local lords to oppress the populace unmercifully, and the land is filled with bitter, poverty-stricken people who are barely surviving. Inspired by her desire to set things right, and her need to gain strength if she is to survive, Yona embarks systematically on training herself for combat and for leadership. While the dragons, Hak, and Yun all feel protective of her and see her as "frail" young girl, they grow to appreciate her drive, her insights, and her leadership. By the end of the show, she is the undisputed captain of her small company.

While the quest plot dominates, the theme of love is not lost completely. Yona’s feelings of love for Su-won have not disappeared, although they are now mixed with a desire for revenge. Her feelings toward Hak remain at the “childhood friend” level, but his feelings are increasingly colored by love and desire. All the dragons worship her in some way or another and struggle about whether this is because of their heritage or their true feelings. Even Yun, the self-described “handsome genius” and loner, is torn between his wish to remain aloof and his growing attraction to Yona.

Still, it’s power politics that dominate the show, and those politics are far from clear-cut. The initial setup seems to make Su-won an out-and-out villain, but later episodes show that he is a thoughtful, subtle, and skilled leader, determined to rectify the problems that arose under King Il. He puts on the mask of a buffoon in order to probe the state of his kingdom and convey needed but perhaps otherwise unwelcome advice to its powerful warlords. Further, he still has feelings for Yona, although he is determined to forget them lest they undermine his mission. At some point in the future, they will meet on the battlefield, but whether as allies or enemies can’t be determined yet.

Speaking of power politics, two things in the initial setup bother me. The first is King Il’s adamant opposition to Su-won marrying Yona. As the surviving male in the royal family, Su-won is not only an acceptable choice to be Yona’s husband but also the obvious one. The second is Su-won’s apparent decision to have Yona killed during his coup. In feudal times, a usurping lord didn’t kill the old king’s female relatives; he married one of them, to strengthen his claim to the throne. (Think of Henry VII marrying Elizabeth of York, Richard III’s surviving sister, following the Battle of Bosworth.) Yona would have no choice but to submit; in that era, women were chattel.

So there are all these unresolved questions. Why would King Il say that Yona marrying Su-won was “out of the question”? Marriage between first cousins was perfectly acceptable. Why would Su-won apparently agree by deciding to have Yona executed? And why did King Il have Su-won’s father, Yu-hon, murdered?

I have a theory, based on no evidence whatsoever, to reconcile these facts. Suppose Su-won was not Yona’s cousin but her half-brother? Marriage between cousins is one thing, but marriage between siblings is quite another. In more detail, suppose Yu-hon cuckolded King Il and fathered Yona. We know from the flashbacks that Yona’s mother died when Yona was young (six or less), and that shortly thereafter, Yu-hon died (or was executed). If Yona’s mother confessed or her deathbed, it would explain (a) why King Il murdered Yu-hon, (b) why King Il says that Yona can never marry Su-won, and (c) why Su-won would have agreed, albeit reluctantly.

Of course, this is likely to be complete balderdash, and Su-won’s decision to execute Yona rather than marry her may well be just a plot contrivance to set Yona on her journey. We’ll never know – or at least nothing’s been clarified in the 72 manga chapters that have been scanlated so far.

For the batch scripts, I’ve gone back through and tried to make all the naming consistent. Crunchyroll changed the spelling of every character’s name, except Hak and Yona, at some point in the series: Su-won was initially Soo-won, Mun-deok was initially Mondok, Ki-ja became Gija, etc. Male names are typically hyphenated, but female names (like Yona) are not. I’ve tried to listen to the phonetics of the names, but some decisions are just arbitrary. Is the Yellow Dragon Zeno or Jeno? I like Zeno better; so there.

Yona isn’t quite done. An OAD has been announced, and I have faint hopes for an eventual second season. There’s plenty of manga material for another 24 episodes, and with a lapse of six months or a year, there will be even more. But shoujo isn’t as popular as it used to be. Saiunkoku Monogatari got two seasons of 39 episodes each, but that was six years ago. Can an anime market dominated by crappy light novel adaptations pandering to otaku sustain a quality show like Yona? I certainly hope so!

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It Never Rains...

April 8, 2015, 11:46 am
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Normally, Orphan Fansubs had a fairly short backlist of projects, due to lack of scripts, lack of raws, or both. However, the heavens have suddenly opened, and we're overwhelmed with interesting raws and scripts. That means the team is overwhelmed as well. Orphan is in serious need of QCs in particular, and then the usual litany of positions: translators or checkers, encoders, timers, typesetters, and so on.

What's parked in the idle queue, you ask?
  • Hi-Speed Jecy. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (12 episodes). Scripts are available for all 12 as well.
  • Bite Me! Chameleon. Workable raws are in hand for all six episodes. Scripts are available for all the episodes too.
  • Cosprayers. DVD ISOs are in hand for the entire series. Zalis116 has the subs. Encoding in progress.
  • MapleStory. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series. Needs a translator or someone to transcribe the Linguistic hardsubs for episodes 16-25, as OCR did not work well.
  • Code:Breaker OVAs. Both encodes and ISOs are in hand for all three episodes. Needs a translator for episodes 2 and 3.
  • Kyoukujitsu no Kantai. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (15 episodes). Needs a translator.
  • Lady Georgie. Both encodes and ISOs are in hand for the entire series (45 episodes). Needs a translator and an encoder for episodes 21-45. (The existing encodes are fairly ancient.)
  • Shin Megami Tensei Devil Children. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (50 episodes!). Needs a translator with a lot of persistence and interest. This is probably too long for Orphan.
  • Oz. A two episode OVA, encoded by Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions.
  • Lensman. A movie from LaserDisc, also from Erik.
I'm still looking for 480p encodes (or ISOs) of Yume Tsukai and Hidamari no Ki, of course. A 396p DVD encode of Yumi Tsukai is available, and it does look better than the TV encodes, but I'm holding out for the Real Thing.

So if any of the projects listed above rings a bell for you, and you know what you're doing as a fansubber, send me a PM on IRC or post a reply to this blog. There are lots of interesting unsubbed shows in the back catalog. Let's bring a few (more) to light.




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Tokimeki Tonight

April 12, 2015, 2:40 pm
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Tokimeki Tonight has been on my list of orphan series for a long time, but I didn't think there was much chance to do anything about it. Then, in fairly short order, I found raws, a translator, and best of all, a member of the original Saitei team who had access to the scripts, karas, styles, etc. konnakude made it possible to revive this show, and Orphan is proud to present the next episode. It's an Orphan-Saitei joint project and has the approval of the Saitei group leader, who had to give up fansubbing due to real life issues.

Tokimeki Tonight is a harmless early 80s comedy series about a high school girl, Ranze Eto, who happens to be the daughter of a vampire and a werewolf. She really just wants to be just a normal girl, pursue her high-school crush, Makabe-kun, and fend off her rival, Kamiya, who's from a Yakuza family, but she has these powers - which are sometimes great to have and sometimes not so great. There's not much plot continuity, so each episode can be taken on its own, once you understand the basic premise. Because of that, we'll be releasing each episode as it's ready, rather than waiting for all eight.

The Orphan releases will preserve continuity of phrasing, appearance, and styling with the Saitei releases. That means, frankly, that the fonts are too small. However, the vertical and horizontal margins have been increased for readability. Because these final episodes are softsubs, you can change the fonts and the styles if you so desire. In addition, these episodes are fully typeset; the jittery nature of the video makes motion tracking essential.

This is the first Orphan project for which I have not been the project leader and the editor. konnakude is fulfilling both roles admirably. Moho Kareshi translated the scripts, and kokujin-kun graciously agreed to check them. Ephemere timed the first episode, ninjacloud the rest. I've done the typesetting and shared QC with CP, pheon18, and Eternal_Blizzard. The raws were found on the Web and are of unknown provenance.

So let this article stand as an overall release note for the final eight episodes as they roll (slowly) off the production line. Sit back, relax, and don't let the vampires bite.



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Tomoe ga Yuku! (Tomoe's Run!)

May 4, 2015, 8:31 am
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Orphan has done a number of OVAs from the 80s and 90s, including Dallos, the Lion Book series, Blazing Transfer Student, Sonic Soldier Borgman: New Century 2058, and the Maze fanservice special. While many of these had languished in well-deserved obscurity, I find the OVAs from that period to be more interesting and varied than the cookie-cutter OVAs of today, which mostly serve as uninteresting pendants or inter-season connectors for popular series. (The Anime Mirai series is a terrific exception, of course.) So here's another one.

Tomoe ga Yuku! (Tomoe's Run!) dates from 1991. Itis fairly typical of its time, with a hyped-up tone and melodramatic plot, but it's great fun. The characters are engaging, the artwork is distinctive, and the action moves along smartly. Above all, it doesn't look like anything on the air today, and that's a good thing. There's not a moe-blob, tsundere, or harem lead in sight.

The plot, of course, won't withstand scrutiny. Our heroine, Tomoe Oujima, is a seventeen-year-old roller-skating j.d. She liked to play peek-a-boo and tag with speeding cars on Tokyo's crowded highways, until her best friend was run over and killed during an outing. On the rebound, Tomoe joins a training school for stuntmen called Green Day. There she launches a torrid love affair with Kazusa Himuro, one of the "managers". Little Does She Know, however, that Green Day is actually the Tojo yakuza group's assassin training school, and Kazusa is the group's chief enforcer. Informed of the truth by an undercover policewoman whom Kazusa ruthlessly executes, Tomoe makes her escape on skates and flees to the arms of Iori Tojo, the alienated son of Tojo's leader. Together, they fight to foil Kazusa's nefarious plots, take down Green Day, and restore Iori to his rightful position as heir to the group. Tomoe and Iori fall in love, but they realize that Their Love Is Not To Be.

Along the way, many parallels are drawn between Tomoe Oujima and Tomoe Gozen, the legendary twelfth century female samurai. Tomoe Gozen fought in the Genpei War at the side of her liege lord and lover Minamoto no Yoshinaka (identified in the anime by his original clan name, Kiso Yoshinaka), surviving both the war and him. Tomoe ga Yuku! hypothesizes that Yoshinaka did not marry Tomoe because their difference in rank was too great. Iori cannot marry Tomoe Oujima for the same reason. At the end, They Must Part for their different destinies, he to rule a prominent Japanese corporation/yakuza group, she to roam the roads on her roller skates...

As I said, the plot doesn't hold water. Tomoe is a young superwoman, able to jump tall fences and outrun speeding vehicles and machines-gun fusillades on roller skates - good old-fashioned four-wheel skates at that, not those newfangled roller blades. Iori is impossibly noble for a soon-to-be yakuza overlord. Even Kazusa has a samurai's honor, challenging Iori to a fight to the death with swords in the burning ruins of Green Day as Tomoe skates through blazing buildings to reach the side of her former and future lover. But even if the plot follows well-worn tracks, it's a hoot. Tomoe is a spunky heroine who makes her own decisions in life and love; for example, it's clear that her relationship with Kazusa is an adult's love affair, both emotionally and physically. The supporting characters are interesting and not just the usual wingmen (and women). And the ending is bittersweet.

Moho Kareshi did the original translation. convexity translation checked the dialog and translated the songs. ninjacloud timed the scripts, and Juggen supplied nice karaokes for the two ending songs. I edited and typeset, and Calyrica, konnakude, and Saji did the QC. The raws are from Piyo Piyo Productions and are excellent, ripped directly from pristine LaserDiscs. Tomoe ga Yuku! was never released on DVD.

So here, at last, is an English translation of Tomoe ga Yuku! Enjoy - and if you have the original soundtrack, let me know; I'd like to get a copy.

Update: the first released version had frame rate problems that caused all the sign timing to be off. V2's have been released. Patches for changing v1 files to v2 are available here. I apologize for the inconvenience.

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Shirokuma Cafe

July 2, 2015, 7:52 am
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I 've always been puzzled by the cool reception fansubbing groups gave to Shirokuma Cafe (Polar Bear Cafe). No one resubbed the original Crunchyroll streams; no one bothered with the BluRays. In doing so, they overlooked one of the best series of 2012-2013.

I've heard various reasons put forth for this lack of interest: it's a kid's show; it's full of puns that are impossible to localize; it's got talking animals; yada yada. There's an element of truth in all of those assertions. It is an "all ages" anime, interesting to children and entertaining for adults. It is full of puns that can't be localized. And it certainly has talking animals. So what? Shirokuma Cafe is charming, heart-warming, and above all funny. It has great characters whose interplay is the foundation of the show. Yes, it's not "about" much of anything. Neither was Seinfeld.

So I'm proud that Orphan Fansubs is releasing a BluRay version of Shirokuma Cafe. We'll release it by "seasons" - 13, 13, 12, and 12 episodes - with a final batch at the end. The subtitles are from Crunchyroll via HorribleSubs. The song translations are either crowd-sourced and checked or done from scratch by deltakei and Moho Kareshi. I edited and did the typesetting. ninjacloud did the timing. Calyrica did QC. The raws are from Ruell (Ruell-Next version).

Shirokuma Cafe has proven to be a difficult series to subtitle, but not because of the puns. I like the way Crunchyroll handled the puns - providing the English translation as well as the Japanese word, so that the sound similarities were obvious. No, the stumbling block, for me at least, is the signs, ranging from a few to dozens per episodes. Many of them are beyond the scope of automated motion tracking and have to be set frame-by-frame manually. I've learned a lot trying to set the signs, and I want to acknowledge the help I received from my colleagues in FFF, Eien and KmE, particularly with font matching. However, the many mistakes in the signs are totally my own.

I decided to stay with the original subtitles in omitting honorifics. I think this goes hand-in-hand with translating the animal characters' names into English. I can see using "Shirokuma-kun," but "Polar Bear-kun"? Seriously? And the character names need to be in English, because only some of the animals, like Panda, Penguin, Llama, and Grizzly, are named with English loan words. It's not reasonable to expect an English-speaking audience to put up with a dozen Japanese animal terms. Nonetheless, omitting honorifics does lose some of the nuances of the dialogue. For example, Polar Bear always refers to Penguin as "Penguin-san" - Mr. Penguin - but Penguin calls Polar Bear "Shirokuma-kun." This is odd. Normally, the owner of a cafe or bar is addressed respectfully as "Master" rather than with a diminutive for younger males. This aspect is lost without honorifics.

The music of Shirokuma Cafe is a delight, and I spent more hours than I should have assembling a complete collection of the soundtracks and OP/ED songs. The opening songs tend to be upbeat J-pop songs and earworms, but the endings are all "character" songs, sung in character by the voice actors. The endings range from the ditzy "Bamboo Scramble," an ode to bamboo sung by the ever-hungry Panda, to the soulful folk rocker "My Dear," sung by Polar Bear as the last ending for the series. In between, every major character, and a few minor ones, get to strut their stuff. Particular favorites include Penguin's ode to his lady-love, "Zokkon! Penko-san" and Llama's memorable "Llama-san no Llama Mambo." The songs have hardsubbed kanji in a fixed location for the first 22 episodes. After that, things get more interesting. Each "season" will include the appropriate non-credit opening and endings.

The animation is nothing to write home about. There's little action; most of the animation is at 8 frames per second, with just mouth parts or appendages moving. Lots of still frames are used with zooms or pans to give the impression of movement. The animators' need to make things look dynamic while not spending money caused endless grief with the typesetting. Signs often pan in one direction while characters walk in another, requiring frame-by-frame clipping or clip merging by hand.

So what of the show itself? There's no need to provide a detailed synopsis; Guardian Enzo has already done a week-by-week breakdown of the show. Suffice it to say that it emphasizes character-driven humor, with the main trio of arch-troll Polar Bear, narcissistic youngster Panda, and put-upon adult Penguin providing the stable center of the cast. However, the large supporting cast supplies many pleasures, including Polar Bear's lifelong friend, the self-proclaimed "wild bear," Grizzly; the cafe's oblivious but ever-helpful waitress, Miss Sasako; the shy zookeeper, Mr. Handa; the preternaturally calm herbivore, Llama; the Panda-stalking florist, Rin Rin; and Koala and Tortoise and Sloth and Tree Kangaroo and Red Panda and Mama Panda and Mr. Full-time Panda and Mei Mei Panda and the trio of "wild beasts," Tiger, Lion, and Wolf... The list goes on and on. And let's not forget the porcupine idol group, Yama Arashi. The show is endlessly inventive, but it always comes back to Polar Bear trolling Penguin, Penguin being exasperated with Panda, and Panda being entranced with Panda. It's laugh-out-loud funny.

Enjoy the first season of Shirokuma Cafe! More to come. However, we could use some additional resources: the team needs help with QC in particular.


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Shirokuma Cafe, Part 2

July 18, 2015, 3:53 pm
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Here's the second set of episodes for Shirokuma Cafe. Once again, the original subtitles are from Crunchyroll via HorribleSubs, retimed by ninjacloud, edited and typeset by me, and QC'd by Calyrica. The raws are from Ruell-Next. I'd like to highlight the amusing karaoke for ED06 (Zokkon! Penko-san), which was designed by Juggen.

This batch of episodes is much like the first, but some of the secondary characters are fleshed out at greater length, notably the gruff-but-lovable Mr. Grizzly, the tranquil Mr. Llama, the hopeless schlub Mr. Handa, and the oblivious object of his inarticulate affections, Miss Sasako. Rin Rin and Panda Mama get attention too. The relationship (and affection) between Grizzly and Polar Bear is spelled out in the hilarous "Mr. Grizzly Goes on an Adventure" and the touching "Their Childhood Days," while Mr. Handa's unrequited infatuation is highlighted in "Summer Festival" and "Mr. Handa's Discussion."

Of course, the principal trio of characters (Polar Bear, Penguin, and Panda) get plenty of time to shine as well. Polar Bear's trolling is on full display in "Enthusiastic Polar Bear," which shows that anyone with the right attitude can be a panda, at least at the show's local zoo. Penguin's disastrous ways with female penguins are showcased in "Mr. Penguin's Romance" and "Mr. Penguin's Picnic." Panda gets to show off his complete devotion to idiocy in "Panda Runs Away from Home" and "The Ideal Single Living." The trio bounce off each other in "Let's Go to the Beach" and "Let's Go Camping," not to mention "There Are Many Kinds of Penguins." These are just highlights, of course. There's hardly a dud in the entire batch.

The endings in this group continue to be character songs that are, well, in character. The first thirteen episodes featured:
  • ED01 (Bamboo Scramble), an ode by the ever-hungry Panda to his favorite activity, eating bamboo and bamboo grass.
  • ED02 (G-Rock), a hard-driving rocker by Grizzly.
  • ED03 (Mizuiro), a simple ballad by Miss Sasako highlighting her love of bicycling and nature.
This group of episodes includes:
  • ED04 (ZOOtto, ne), Mr. Full-time Panda's paean of praise for the local zoo where he works.
  • ED05 (Michinoku Shiiku Blues), a soulful song of sadness by Mr. Handa, in which he laments his lack of success with women (as opposed to pandas).
  • ED06 (Zokkon! Penko-san), Mr. Penguin's love song to Miss Penko, now revealed to be rather more than she seems.
Signs are as extensive as ever, and I've cut back on typesetting background signs that don't contribute to the story or a joke. Still, every sign needs to be looked at; the final sign in "Mr. Penguin's Romance," which wasn't translated originally, is the punchline to the entire episode.

The next batch of episodes will probably be delayed for a while. While all the episodes are typeset, none of the remaining episodes are timed. If you're interested in helping out with timing (or QC or typesetting), please let me know.

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Typesetting Shirokuma Cafe

July 20, 2015, 6:51 pm
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That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
                                Friedrich Nietzsche

If Nietzsche is to be believed, I'm a stronger typesetter than I used to be, but it was a near-run thing. It's taken about three months to typeset the whole show, and there were many times I was ready to throw in the towel and go back to Yawara!-style {\an8} signage.

Shirokuma Café is a very sign-heavy show. I think this is a direct consequence of its low budget. Stationary characters talking against static backgrounds don't give the eye much to do. (That's why the show works so well as a radio drama, once you’ve internalized the characters' images.) Adding signs is an inexpensive way to make the backgrounds more interesting. In addition, signs provide a way to add some humor for the adults watching the show, as I'll describe later. Accordingly, the signs are a vital part of the show's visual style; at least, some of them are.

Which Signs Matter?

In a show that's using signs as enrichment for backgrounds, not all signs are going to be important. In fact, most of them won't be.  The problem, of course, is how to know which ones do matter. The only real option is to translate them all and then decide.

The original translators for Crunchyroll provided the first clues. They translated about half the signs, and the ones that they translated are generally significant, usually for underlining a joke. (The endless puns are often reinforced with signs.) Unfortunately, the untranslated half can also matter.

When I started, I had to take a screenshot of every untranslated sign and then pester a translator to tell me what it meant. (Many thanks to convexity, deltakei, and Moho for putting up with this.) However, as I went along, I realized that the vast majority of the signs were in hiragana or katakana rather than kanji, so that the target audience of children could read them. Decoding the secondary alphabets is not a slam dunk, but it's much easier to deal with 40-odd characters than 4000. With the help of online sites like Nihongodict, I became more proficient at decoding hiragana and katakana and translated some signs myself.

The vast majority of the untranslated signs don't matter, and after a while, I started to omit signs with no relevance. For example, in episode 13, I typeset every menu item in the yakitori bar, complete with movement. In later episodes, I ignored those sorts of restaurant placards. In episode 20, I did as many of the festival booth signs as I could. Later, I didn't bother with most street signs.

But despite all the irrelevancies, every now and then an untranslated sign turned out to be significant. In episode 15, the "Dodo Bird" store sign is the punch line for the second half skit, and the joke simply isn't as good without it.

Insert or Overwrite?

When a sign is typeset, there's a fundamental choice to be made: insert the English into the scene, leaving the Japanese intact, or mask out the Japanese and overwrite it with the English. I ended up doing both, with very little consistency. Usually, though, I prefer to insert the English. My main reason is that the backgrounds for signs are rarely flat. They're often textured or shaded. Overwriting with a fixed color mask can produce a fake-looking result. However, if the background is uniform, the sign doesn't fade in or out, and there's no space for the English otherwise, I will overwrite the Japanese. The yakitori bar menu signs in episode 13 are all masked and overwritten.

Font Matching for Fun and Profit

If English in inserted into a sign, it really helps if the English font resembles the Japanese lettering. Thus, font matching is one of basic first steps in setting a sign. Shirokuma Café's signs are mostly done with a single font family. When I discovered this and realized that I had all the fonts, I sort of went overboard. Every sign was scrupulously matched for character shape, character weight, and so on. As a result, I ended up using more than 130 fonts.

Experienced typesetters don't do that. They realize that the subtle differences among Japanese fonts are rarely carried over into distinguishable differences in the English letters. Accordingly, they tend to typeset with a small repertory of fonts able to represent entire font families: gothics, minchos, etc. By the end of the series, I was able to see font families, but I still fell into the trap of trying to match fonts exactly.

One side effect of this is that each episode may contain eight or ten massive CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) fonts, bloating the episode’s footprint and even breaking certain players.  Accordingly, I started compressing the CJK fonts, either by stripping OTF subfonts to create a "small" OTF, or by converting just the ISO-Latin characters into a really small TTF. Converting to TTF is more reliable, but it can have the undesirable side effect of changing character sizes. Accordingly, remember to compress fonts before use, not afterwards.

Compression had another undesirable side effect: elimination of special characters used in signs. As a result, many of the key fonts had to be compressed a second time, retaining specific special characters, and the episodes that used them redone. This is why episodes 1-13 and NCED01 will get v2s.

Color Matching

In addition to font matching, inserted English needs to match the color of the Japanese sign. Aegisub makes this easy with its color picker, but there are subtleties. As my wife the quilter points out, colors are not absolute; their appearance is changed by what surrounds them. I was constantly frustrated about this. An exact color match would appear faded if I added blur (and \blur1 is almost mandatory), or it would appear brighter if I added a dark border. I found I was often overriding the “exact” match for something that pleased my eye better. And that's a slippery slope, because my color sense is poor, at best. The yellow in OP1 doesn't really match well, for example. I made it too pale, and I still can't find a value of yellow that I like.

Movement

While some signs are static, many appear to move. Computer-based animation tools make it trivial to pan, zoom, or rotate a scene or sign to add some dynamism to a static background. If a sign moves, the English must move too (and if the sign is overwritten, the mask as well).

In the Dark Ages, the typesetter had to approximate movement with subtitle tags like \move, which assumed that motion was linear. This rarely looked good. Nowadays, motion capture software allows object movement to be tracked precisely, and Aegisub macros can translate the capture data into frame-by-frame typesetting. This bloats scripts enormously but provides very satisfying pans and scaling. (Motion capture is described in great detail in unanimated’s tutorial on typesetting.)

The motion capture software does have its limits, however. It's not terribly good at capturing rotation, particularly if that's combined with other forms of movement. In the first opening to Shirokuma Café, the circular show logo rotates and then begins to tilt down, eventually becoming a roadway. I had to fade the show title out a few frames into this sequence because tracking was lost as the circle began to deform. In episode 36, Grizzly’s door sign rotates on a pivot. The tracking software gradually lost the angle of the sign, and the sequence was ultimately set by hand.

Another limitation is that the motion-tracking software can't deal with true hand-drawn animation or deformations. Irregular changes between frames, particularly in object shapes, cause the software to goes off the rails. This was most evident in the Tanabata wish sequence in episode 13, where the paper tags containing the Tanabata wishes blow, twist, and curl in the wind. Every position in that sequence had to be set by hand. Fortunately, the animators were pressed for budget, and there are only 16 distinct configurations of the most critical sign, Panda's wish. However, the sequence also zooms in, so when a configuration repeated, the English had to be scaled and repositioned. That sequence took a week to do, mostly because I'd start to tear my hair out every few frames.

I’m fairly dissatisfied with the Tanabata signs. The English doesn’t appear to move correctly. This is because hand-drawn animation is not accurate. Angles and character sizes change from frame to frame, often incorrectly, but the eye forgives because it has no other reference point. However, when English is introduced, the discordance is obvious. The Japanese is moving "consistently," and so is the English, but they are not moving consistently with respect to each other.

Stock Signs

One interesting aspect of typesetting a long series with a low budget is getting to see how much animation (and signage) is reused.  Shirokuma Café uses stock shots, like the front of the zoo, the front of the café, and the front of Panda’s house, as a cheap way of indicating scene changes. If these stock shots contain signs, then the typesetting can be reused, with minor changes for coloration or zoom. I ended up compiling a "stock shot" index for the series, so that I could simply cut and paste the base typesetting for any stock sign.

The show also has standardized sets. Two of the most frequently used are the interior of the zoo office and the street in front of Rin Rin's florist shop. The zoo office has a whiteboard with the monthly schedule, always labeled "Schedule for the Month." Rin Rin’s shop has standard signs and is adjacent to a bookstore (just Books) and a gallery (Gallery Morita). Across the street is an antiques shop (just Antiques Shop). All of those signs were reused frequently.

Animation Errors

Another aspect of typesetting a long series in getting to see how often there are animation errors. Scenes are farmed out to different teams of animators, and sometimes details are inconsistent. For example, in the drive-thru restaurant sequence in episode 4, the microphone for ordering disappears and is replaced by a piece of horizontal trim as Polar Bear's car passes through. In various hand-animated sequences of Grizzly’s door sign in episode 36, the margins around the Japanese word vary wildly from frame to frame. BluRay editions often correct animation errors found in TV releases, but not in Shirokuma Café.

Summary

I'm still not a proficient typesetter. I stand in awe of how easy some of my colleagues make it look. However, I think Shirokuma Café looks better with typesetting, even if it's far from perfect. I hope you’ll agree. And if there are any highly experienced typesetters out there who are interested in the show… there are still some signs I have no idea how to do.

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Parol no Miraijima

August 11, 2015, 2:55 pm
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Here's a little charmer from the 2014 Anime Mirai set of OVAs: Parol no Miraijima (Parol's Island of the Future). This is the last of the four OVAs to be available in English. macros74 translated the French subtitles into English. Moho checked the translation against the original Japanese, and convexity checked the song. macros74 timed the script and typeset it, I edited, and we both QC'd with help from Eternal_Blizzard. The raw is from Sunsub, a Czech fansub group. The result is an Orphan-M74 coproduction, joining such classics as Submarine 707.

The story in Parol no Miraijima is simple. A group of fur-covered humanoid creatures (with protruding bellybuttons) live in innocent isolation on an island far from civilization. A girl on the island named Rikotto becomes intrigued with a picture of the human world that washes up on the shore. She persuades her two best friends, Parol and Zuzu, to set off with her in a rickety boat to find the world corresponding to the photograph. They reach human civilization during a festival, so their fur-covered skin is mistaken for costumes. They are befriended, betrayed, and captured. They barely escape with their hides intact, having witnessed at first hand the wonders and terrors of civilization as we humans know it.

The animation is gorgeous, with smooth action shots, vibrant colors, and a great sense of slapstick timing. Just watch the opening sequence where Rikotto and Parol set off to visit Zuzu, swimming through a stream, body surfing through rapids, and ultimately taking a suspended cable car across a vertiginous landscape to reach the island's shore. It has an exuberance and originality that puts most contemporary anime to shame. The director, Imai Kazuaki, and animation director, Kameda Yoshimichi, are veteran animators, but this is one of their first assignments at the top level.

So here's the "orphan" of Anime Mirai 2014. Enjoy!

Update: thanks to the generosity of Commie Subs, we were able to encode a 1080p version directly from the Blu-Ray source. Many thanks to bananadoyouwanna for the encode and herkz for the original source material.
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Shirokuma Cafe, Part 3

August 28, 2015, 5:16 am
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With this batch of twelve Shirokuma Cafe episodes, we pass the halfway mark and start heading for home. The third quarter brings a number of subtle changes and a clear rise in the general level of absurdity.

First, there's a new OP, Rough & Laugh, and it marks the emergence, both literally and figuratively, of Miss Sasako into greater prominence. She's the central figure of the new OP, with her daily bicycle ride through town to get to her job at the cafe providing an opportunity to observe many of the other characters in their "natural" habitats - Rin Rin chasing Panda, Panda running away, Anteater trying to intimidate, Baby Emperor Penguin and Baby King Penguin playing choo-choo train, Grizzly riding his hog, Panda Mama obsessing over Yama Arashi, Mei Mei obsessing over Prince Han(da), and so on. At the end, Miss Sasako joins the lead trio as part of the caffe mocha art - quite a promotion from the first half of the show - and in a wide shot of the cafe that reflects the changes from summer to winter as the shows progress. Miss Sasako also (eventually) gets her own paper cutout in the previews, instead of being just a disembodied voice.

Miss Sasako gets more air time in the episodes too, and she's allowed to show the feistier side of her personality, instead of being a background yamato nadeshiko. In particular, she becomes more of a foil for Penguin and a frequent deflater of his endless quest for ego-reinforcement. This exchange from episode 36 is pretty typical:
Mr. Penguin (flapping his wings): When I flap like this, or when I flap like this... Which is cuter?
Miss Sasako: Could I treat this as a take-home quiz?
Even Polar Bear is driven to remark, "You've started butting into conversations, Miss Sasako," before tempering this seeming rebuke by adding, "You've grown quite a bit this past year."

Was Miss Sasako's role expanded because the series lacked role models for girls? Panda Mama and Ms. King Penguin are stay-at-home moms - and are played by men in any case. Did the series work better with the four cafe regulars bantering, instead of just three? Whatever the reason, it's nice to see.

The new opening song itself marks a change from the hard driving rhythms of Boku no Invitation to the gentle whimsy of a children's genki song. Personally, I think it's a letdown. The first OP made no concessions to the unreality of the premise. The second OP admits it's a "colorful parallel" world and a bit of a miracle. It includes the usual exhortations to Japanese children to be part of the collective and not stand out ("let's form a great big ring"). All I can say in its defense is that the animation behind it is wonderful, and that the third OP is even more saccharine.

On the other hand, the three new ending songs continue to entertain:
  • ED7: Panda Mama sings Kimama ni Panda Mama, a self-deprecating ode to her ordinary life as an ordinary housewife.
  • ED8: Llama struts his stuff in Llama-san no Llama Mambo, a catchy dance number that belies his placid exterior as a herbivore.
  • ED9: Sloth soothes in Largo, a peaceful, not to say lethargic, ballad about life in the slow lane.
Largo plays over a live-action clip of adorable Japanese children dressed up in costumes as Panda, Polar Bear, Penguin, and Sloth.

The episodes combine absurdity, snark, and sincerity in a nicely balanced blend. For absurdity, it's hard to top "Panda's New Part-Time Job," in which he rises from an internship at a car dealership to CEO of his own company through no fault or effort of his own. Another laugh-out-loud episode is "The Cafe Yard," in which Polar Bear discloses that the cafe property includes, among other things, a vegetable garden and an herb garden staffed by kangaroos and a prairie dog, respectively; an artisan cheese factory run by lemurs, who make genuine buffalo mozzarella from genuine water buffaloes; a basketball court, a driving range, and a fishing pond; and areas best left unvisited for safety.

Then there's "Sales Penguin's Sales," in which the desperate penguin-card sales penguins convince Mr. Handa to let them put on a Penguin action hero show, Penguinger. This drains visitors from the Panda Corner, so Panda and his friends collaborate on the "Panda Corner Project," a live-action "family drama" that features the entire Panda family, Polar Bear as their long-lost brother (sister) Stojkovich, and Penguin as a new baby in the family.

"Panda Corner Project" also contains one of the few cases where I changed the original subtitles for more than minor editing nits. Stojkovich/Polar Bear has returned home to resume the family business as a Heoi Bikuni - a maid in Heian period homes whose job was to take the blame if a woman of the family farted. The original translation was "flatus patsy," which was a bit too obscure. I've gone with "flatulence fall-guy," because it's clearer, and it fits in better with Mei Mei's retort, "It's not a job for a guy." Of course, Stojkovich is actually a girl, but let's not sweat the small stuff.

Mr. Penguin's love life continues to lurch from bad to worse. The seven Miss Penko's force a showdown in "Mr. Penguin's Dilemma," which ends in the worst possible way (for him). But Mr. Penguin never learns, and in "Mr. Penguin's New Love," he's off mooning over another pretty girl penguin, even if this means quaffing endless caffe mocha's made with too much chocolate syrup at a different cafe. Mr Penguin's obsession with "traditional comedic storytelling" (rakugo) emerges at the end of episode 32 and proves to be a running gag for the rest of the series. His "slightly idiotic tales" bore all the other regulars to tears. Polar Bear never tires of cutting him off in mid-flow, or Panda of writing off the whole idea as unbearably dull. It's not until Christmas Eve, when he tries his hand in front of the mellowed denizens of Grizzly's Bar, that he succeeds in completing a story. Fortunately, perhaps, we don't have to sit through it.

Continuing the theme of hopeless love, Mr. Handa's unexpressed longing for Miss Sasako continues to make no progress in "Mr. Handa's Present," although at least they do discover a mutual interest in potatoes. Polar Bear's endless trolling of Grizzly is on full display in a series of skits about Grizzly's attempt to hibernate for the winter, and Polar Bear's non-stop efforts to disturb him and get him to come out and play. Finally, this set of episodes cuts across a number of holidays, including Halloween, Christmas, and New Years, and each gets its due. New Years Eve start out with just the core characters, until one by one everyone else, except the seven Miss Penkos, comes by to celebrate with what is, in fact, their family and to take an end of year bow.

Enjoy another dozen visits with Polar Bear and the gang!

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Shirokuma Cafe, Part 4

September 8, 2015, 8:54 am
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And now we're done with the main series. For the last time, we've seen Polar Bear devastate a conversation with his puns, Panda reflect contentedly on his cuteness, Penguin quaff his body-weight in caffe mochas, Miss Sasako deal patiently with all comers, Mr. Handa flounder helplessly in her presence, Mei Mei go bananas (go bamboo?) in his presence, Grizzly get awakened from hibernation, Llama get overlooked by all and sundry, Sloth aspire to a more accelerated way of life, the penguin-card sales penguins be Penguin Power Rangers, Rin Rin moon over pandas in general and Panda in particular, and so on and so forth. Hail and farewell, Shirokuma-san.

Shirokuma Cafe has been the largest project in the history of Orphan Fansubs, and it was done with one of the smallest teams: ninjacloud for timing, Calyrica for QC, and me for editing and typesetting. convexity, deltakei, and Moho Kareshi all contributed to translating the fifteen songs and innumerable signs. The original subtitles are from HorribleSubs, the encodes from Ruell-Next. The project took about six months, a pace of two episodes per week, or double the pace at which it originally aired.

This batch of episodes is not materially different from any of the prior sets, with episodes devoted to the major and minor characters, holidays, and just ordinary life. Perhaps these episodes go more for heart and less for sarcasm than previous ones, but that's just an impression. Shirokuma Cafe has always known how to be sincere; a fine early example is the B-part of episode 13, "Panda's Wish." And Panda is at the center of a lot of the appeals to the heart, including the two parts of episode 44, which are probably the most serious of the entire series. We get to see that Panda is a good kid, but first and last a kid. When real life impinges on his daily routine of laying about, lazing about, and eating bamboo, the results are pretty shattering.

Penguin continues to lead an erratic and questing life, veering off from rakugo into ventriloquism, much to the consternation of his fellow cafe regulars. Although Penguin is regularly the butt of jokes from Polar Bear and blissfully tactless remarks by Panda, he shows his devotion to his friends in "The Zoo in the Rain," and theirs is on display in "Cherry Blossom Viewing in Spring." Polar Bear remains an arch-troll, but he too has his moments of sincerity.

The secondary characters are not ignored either. Miss Sasako's and Llama's idle conversation about their hometown in "The Cafe in the Afternoon" leads into "Llama's Time Capsule" and an actual return to that town and its local wonders, such as the bakery and the park. Grizzly is woken up by Polar Bear numerous times before Grizzly's mother (who calls him "Gri-chan") shows up to get him out of bed permanently in "Grizzly's Reunion." Mr. Handa, having received obligation chocolates on Valentine's Day, goes through agonies of indecision about what to give Miss Sasako for White Day and receives the usual useless advice from the regulars. Sloth has one last attempt at life in the fast(er) lane in "Sloth's Journey," but only makes it to a local bathhouse instead of a distant hot springs. Few of the various threads in the series, such as Mr. Handa's inarticulate longing for Miss Sasako, are resolved, but at least Masaki finally finishes his apprenticeship with Mr. Tree Kangaroo and is invited to roast some coffee officially.

There are some amusing minor revelations. Almost all the characters, except Panda (who's too young), enjoy having a drink. Polar Bear is partial to scotch, Wolf and Grizzly to bourbon, Tiger to martinis, Otter to gimlets (gin-and-lime), Miss Sasako to White Russians (Kahlua-and-milk), and Crocodile to tequila. Grandpa Panda and Chinstrap Penguin like sake. Penguin, Full-Time Panda, and Llama all drink beer, although Penguin also likes Shandygaffs and just about anything else. Some of the characters behave like Japanese salarymen and drink too much after work. When they do, their behavior changes. Full-time Panda becomes maudlin, Llama becomes brave, Anteater eats anything, and Sloth talks at normal speed. This aspect of Japanese life, which would lead to endless finger-wagging in the US, is just accepted as normal.

On the other hand, we never do learn how Penguin gets onto a bar stool, or what's in the parts of the Cafe yard that are better left unvisited.

The music for this concluding segment doesn't seem to me as inventive as in preceding segments, but perhaps I'm saturated. The third OP, You & Me, is unbearably upbeat and collectivist. It seems to talk down to the audience, and the animation behind it is uninspired. The last three EDs run the gamut from mediocre to terrific:
  • ED10, Bamboo Rendezvous, is a relentless bouncy love note from Mei Mei to her Prince Han.
  • ED11, Pandaholic!!, is a relentless bouncy love note from Rin Rin to his Panda.
  • ED12, My Dear, is a soulful ballad in which Polar Bear expresses his affection for his cafe and its customers.
The last ED is by far the best of the three, although the live-action story behind Pandaholic!! is amusing, illustrating how Rin Rin's obsession with pandas undermines his relationships with human women. 

Speaking of Rin Rin, he's a problematic character for US audiences. His constant pursuit of Panda makes him seem like a dangerous stalker, particularly because Panda is clearly a child. However, perhaps we're reading too much into the show. Rin Rin just loves pandas. In episode 9's "Rin Rin Deeply Moved! Panda's House," he ends up playing hide-and-seek with Mei Mei, getting accidentally pounded into unconsciousness by Grandpa Panda, and getting gnawed and clawed by the infant panda twins. Panda Mama isn't perturbed in the least. Her only comment is, "Mr. Rin Rin is quite tough." And he helps Panda out of a predicament in "Panda Mama's Gardening," asking nothing in return other than to be of assistance.

When Shirokuma Cafe ended in the spring of 2013, the cast closed with the words "See you again!" Most of us fans interpreted that as a promise of future episodes or OVAs, perhaps after a break. But there's been nothing since, except for a few drama CDs and web radio broadcasts, and even those have ceased. The voice actors have all gone on to other shows. Will we ever get to visit Polar Bear's Cafe again? Each passing season makes it less likely. Perhaps these fifty episodes are all we'll get. If so, it's enough.

The project team has a bit more to do. There's a storyboard version of episode 26 to sub, corrections to a few episodes, and a final batch. Then the team can rest from its labors, kick back, and enjoy a fresh caffe mocha, without too much chocolate syrup. Until then, as Miss Sasako says, enjoy!





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In Memoriam: CP

September 9, 2015, 1:25 pm
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Internet fansubbing is a funny thing. You rarely meet the people you work with in person, and yet you get to know them and even be friends with them anyway. And when they leave, it hurts.

I learned this week that my colleague CP (ConsiderPhlebas) died after a prolonged battle with cancer. CP worked primarily on quality control, for Orphan and many other groups, but his contributions to his teams was far out of proportion to his nominal role. He was a sparkplug, a cheerleader, and a steadying force. He started fansub projects for overlooked series like Queen Millennia and D4 Princess. He bought raw materials (DVDs and Blu-Rays) so that projects had decent sources to work from. He studied Japanese so that his QC reports could check translation as well as grammar, timing, and styling. And his reports were models of organization and accuracy. Any QC point he raised needed to taken seriously.

CP loved anime, and he loved working on unsubbed shows. The content almost didn't matter. Whatever the project, he approach it with dedication and professionalism. He was the most dependable of colleagues, until mortal illness placed its cold hands upon him. To the very end, he wanted to help in any way he could. He will be missed.

RIP, CP. Your tribulations are over. Your contributions live on.
 
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Shirokuma Cafe Batch

September 11, 2015, 4:22 am
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Here's my "last word" on Shirokuma Cafe. The batch includes the fifty episodes, the three non-credit OPs, the twelve non-credit EDs, the "picture drama" special, and three archives of scans from the original Ruell-Next torrent. Episodes 1-13, 26, 32, and NCED01 received v2's, for font problems (1-13, NCED01) and typos (26, 32). All episodes can be patched; the patch file can be downloaded from here.The entire series can be burned to four DVDs, with room left over for the two soundtrack albums.

The picture drama is just a storyboard version of episode 26; there is no new content. However, its two skits are among the best. "The New Panda" follows the chaos that ensues when Mr. Temp Panda is hired to supplement the regulars at the zoo's Panda Corner, and the zoo runs a popularity contest to select the "central" panda. "Reunion at the Grizzly Bar" introduces us to the "fierce beasts" - Lion and Tiger and Wolf (oh my!) - and muses lightly on what happens as we grow older and settle into our lives. "Reunion" features a guest appearance by the mysterious rapper MC 469MA, who is none other than Polar Bear in shades. 469MA is a pun, of course. In Japanese, four is "shi", six is "roku", and nine is "ma", so 469MA is shirokuma (polar bear). Who knew?

So it's time to say goodbye to the gang. Here they all, all together under the blossoming cherry trees in episode 50 (even Mr. Shoebill and Ms. Donkey)



while the core quartet does what it does best - work together to make their friends happy.


I want to thank ninjacloud and Calyrica for timing and QCing the entire series; convexity, deltakei, and Moho for translating the songs and untranslated signs; and Juggen for the ending karaoke in episodes 23-26. I also want to thank the other team members in Orphan Fansubs, who have waited patiently while their projects got slow-tracked behind Shirokuma Cafe. And of course I want to thank the original subbers (HorribleSubs from the online streaming release) and encoder (Ruell-Next).

Thanks for watching Shirokuma Cafe.



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Kakyuusei (1995), Take 2

September 17, 2015, 3:58 pm
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When Orphan first released Kakyuusei (1995) back in March, I wrote that if a better source turned up, Orphan would redo the show. Well, it did, and we have. Orphan now presents take 2 of Kakyuusei (1995), based on rips done directly from LaserDisc, at "full" 480p resolution.

Orphan is benefiting significantly from the help of several Laserdisc collectors. Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions started the ball rolling. Now ics- from Lamonae has joined the team, and his collection is the source for this version of Kakyuusei (1995). ics- has several other unique titles that I'd like to do, such as Dokushin Apartment Dokudami, but it needs a translator.

Working with LaserDiscs has proved interesting and frustrating. Ripping requires a high-quality LaserDisc player, and they are becoming increasingly scarce. Then the video output has to be captured for encoding. After much experimentation, various encoders have concluded that the best method is to capture the uncompressed RGB or S-video and do fixups and filtering in software, before compression. But that's not always possible. A modern lossless capture unit costs a fair amount of money, and the inexpensive no-compression ATI All-in-Wonder TV card is no longer made, requires a PCI system, and only works with XP.

As a result, capture is usually done with a DV recorder set to its highest quality level, but it does compression on the fly. That's what happened with Kakyuusei. It took several different encoders, and lots of experiments, to get reasonable raws. Erik eventually modified his filter chain, developed for lossless captures, and that did the trick.

I didn't provide credits in the original blog post, so here they are.
  • Subs and timing: Anime-Hentai (episodes 1, 2) and Zalis (episodes 3, 4)
  • Translation checking: Zalis and convexity
  • Editing and typesetting: Collectr
  • QC: CP, konnakude, and Eternal_Blizzard
  • Encoding: Piyo Piyo Productions
  • Raws: ics-
Revisiting Kakyuusei (1995) has not improved my opinion of the show. It's still a standard eroge adaptation, predictable and devoid of novelty. (Or mostly so: as Zalis pointed out, the nude sketching scene is episode 3 precedes Titanic by two years and is "gender-reciprocal.") This second pass has allowed for further QC, which found errors in various places. The main benefit, though, is 56% more pixels and correspondingly less eyestrain viewing the eye candy.

Orphan has raws for yet another show in this series, Tenkousei (1997), in which the protagonist presumably scores with transfer students rather than classmates (Doukyuusei) or first-years (Kakyuusei), but you probably understand how these shows work by now.


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