Sunday, December 22, 2013

2013 in Review

No, I'm not going to burden you with my Deep Thoughts on anime in 2013. I watched some shows, but mostly I was busy with editing work. The highlights of this year include:

Orphan Fansubs

Thanks to the return of a long-lost translator, and despite her much-lamented departure back to Real Life, this was a banner year for Orphan Fansubs. The team released fifteen projects, more than in its entire prior history.
In addition, the team reissued Space Neko Theatre with improved translation and sign.

The burst of activity was made possible by a very small team: laalg mostly, and also convexity and macros74, for translation; archdeco for timing; me for editing and typesetting; and CP and Saji for QC. Thanks, everyone, for working so hard on such an eclectic set of forgotten or mistreated shows!

Work for Other Groups

I've continued to edit and QC for other groups, as time permits. Sometimes I'm trading favors; other times, I'm genuinely interested.
  • Kiteseekers. Another group that pursues completing orphan series, when they aren't subbing loli shows. Lime-iro Ryuukitan X made substantial progress, although it's not yet finished; and Hanaukyo Maid Tai got started from BluRay encodes. Lime-iro is not as good as the original series, but Hanaukyo has the innocent ecchi charm of most of the half-length M.O.E. (Masters of Entertainment) shows.
  • FroZen-Evil. The three-way collaboration polished off Yawara! with two movie-length extras: Go Get 'em, Wimpy Kids! and the Atlanta Special. What a special team that was! Miyuki is continuing, but it's very slow going.
  • ray=out. Hiatari Ryoukou continues to move along, although episodes are not being released. I also edited a couple of ganime OVAs for them.
  • WhyNot? I edited the Yondemasu Azazel-san Z series: good, dirty fun, and a favorite of 2013.
  • Anime-Koi. I edited the last seven episodes of Genshiken Nidaime, another series I liked.
  • Dgz. I edited the ultimate episode of Hellsing Ultimate. I didn't care for it; too many Nazis.
  • Saizen. I edited the most recent Prince of Tennis movie, and I really wish I hadn't.
  • m74. I worked with macros74 on a few of his projects for subbing forgotten 80s and 90s OVAs.
  • FFF. I started by helping them with QC, to get some of the lagging OVAs out the door (Nekogami, Tasogare, Ika Musume). Then archdeco asked me to work on some of his favorites, so I QC'd the BluRays of Senran Kagura and the TV release of Sekai de Ichiban (see a theme?). I volunteered to do Golden Time, which has not been as good as I had hoped, but it's still reasonably enjoyable. As I've written before, my philosophy on simulcast shows is editorial minimalism, except for glaring mistakes.
I won't be taking on any new shows this winter, because of travel plans.

Finally, I did a fair amount of "anonymous" editing, on shows that I didn't want to be associated with publicly. Most of them were clean-ups of subs for personal use, although I've done a few projects that should probably be classified as trolling.

Looking Ahead

I don't expect to be as busy in 2014. Without a full-time translator, Orphan will revert to its prior leisurely pace. I hope to clean up my backlog of scripts during the holidays and enter the New Year with a clean slate.

I'd like to wish my readers (all four of them) a happy holiday break and a joyous New Year. On with the shows!

4 comments:

  1. I'd be more than happy to help translate more Tezuka anime. :) Please shoot me an email if you have anything in mind. I'd like to tackle the Phoenix anime and Bagi, The Monster of Mighty Nature too.

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  2. Yeah, Tezuka anime always deserves more lovin'. :)

    Anyway, I too wouldn't mind helping out your group with translating and/or translation checking, if there's something that perks my interest. I'm always up to listening to good/appealing propositions. ;)

    -tenkenX6 (Live-eviL)

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  3. tenken has too much to do already, mattaku, but should be able to help fix a few of our old goodies :-P

    Happy New Year!

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  4. It's not something I'm not used to, though. There have been at least several different times in the past with L-E that I was doing quite a bit at the same time, due to the shortage of active translators. ;)

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