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Cat-Eyed Boy (Youkaiden Nekome Kozou) 01
Just in time for Halloween, Orphan presents the first episode of Umezz Kazuo's 1976 horror series Youkaiden Nekome Kozou (Spirit Legend Cat-Eyed Boy, here just Cat-Eyed Boy). Because of Makoto-chan, I...
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Shin Takarajima
It's no secret that practically every staff member in Orphan is mad for Tezuka Osamu. The team has done more shows by the God of Manga that by any other anime auteur: two Animerama movies, eight Love...
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Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (HD)
The third movie of the Sangokushi trilogy is Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (Sangokushi: The Distant Land). With this release, Orphan completes its work on the HD version of the three...
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The Girl That Got Away
Orphan-raws is releasing its encode of Kakutou Bijin Wulong (Fighting Beauty Wulong), done from R2J DVDS. Therein lies a story: a project that never really got off the ground and is now officially...
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Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve
Here's another project whose antecedents are lost in the mists of time: an English subtitled version of the 1993 sci-fi movie Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve (Mother: Eve, the Last Girl). The movie had...
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Alice in Cyberland, the Sequel
In my blog post on the original Alice in Cyberland, more than three years ago, I commented on the mystery of the missing second episode. The laserdisc release included a preview for a second episode....
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Bakumatsu no Spasibo
Yet another project that began in the deep, dark past. Bakumatsu no Spasibo (Gratitude in the Bakumatsu) is a 1997 movie about Russian admiral Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin's second voyage to Japan in...
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Yuki
Forty years ago, the famed "social realism" film director Imai Tadashi released his one and only anime movie, Yuki. It was based on a 1976 novel by Saitou Ryuusuke that is unavailable in English and...
View ArticleYuki (BD 720p)
This one's for you, DmonHiro.To prepare for encoding the 1080p version of Yuki, M74 made a "test" encode at 720p for review. It looked fine to me, so he encoded the big version, and it was released a...
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Sensou Douwa: Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu
Sensou Douwa (War Tales or War Fables) was a series of TV specials by Shin-Ei Animation that ran annually from 2002 to 2009. In chronological order:2002 Umigame to Shounen (The Boy and The Sea...
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Chameleon 4
What's this? Two episodes of Chameleon in the same calendar year? Is Satan gliding around his domain on ice skates?In the blog post for episode 3, I opined hopefully that the series would be stalled...
View Article2021 in Review
The world continues to go to hell in a handbasket. The pandemic continues to rage. The world supply chain is borked. Inflation is rampant. Windows 11 is out. In spite of all these disasters, Orphan...
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Practice Makes Perfect (A-Girl v3)
You were probably not expecting (or needing) this: a fourth version of the 1993 shoujo OVA A-Girl. Well, practice makes perfect.In 1992, Madhouse and Margaret Comics collaborated on an OVA of the...
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Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, Ep10-12
In my blog poston the third set of episodes, I piously hoped that there wouldn't be a year gap again, as there had been between the second and third sets. In fact, it's been more than 18 months. The...
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Salvaging an Investment (Cherry no Manma)
Many, many years ago, members of the team were interested in translating Umi no Yami, Tsuki no Kage, a three-part horror OVA from 1989. The raws available at the time weren't great, so the team...
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Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament Ep 13-15
Here is volume 5 of Tezuka Osamu's Tales of the Old Testament: In the Beginning, which continues the Exodus story through the giving of the Ten Commandments.Episode 13 ("Moses and Pharaoh") retells the...
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Baby Love
Baby Love is such a familiar shoujo romance that it seemed like a refugee from the Margaret Video Series, but it was actually made somewhat later. Dating from 1997, it retells the first nine chapters...
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Choujikuu Romanesque Samy: MISSING 99
Choujikuu Romanesque Samy: MISSING 99 (Superdimensional Romanesque Samy: MISSING 99) is a 1986 sci-fi fantasy that makes no sense along most of its dimensions: its title, its plot, or even why it...
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Toei's Kitten
Several major themes run through Orphan's releases: rescuing shows stranded on the wrong side of the Digital Divide; rescuing shows abandoned by other groups (orphans); and the works of Tezuka Osamu....
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Tezuka Osamu: The Secret of Creation
Another first for Orphan: a live-action documentary about (who else?) Tezuka Osamu. A raw for this showed up recently on the anime community's favorite torrent site, and one of the team members...
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