Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Parol no Miraijima

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.

2 comments:

  1. Hello, I'm not 100% certain, but i suspect that you are affiliated with Orphan Fansubs (it seems fairly obvious, haha)

    There's a lot of interest building over the 2001 Cyborg 009 TV series, which as of yet has never had proper subtitles (or a proper, easy to acquire release for English speaking fans at all), only a dubtitled first half in mediocre quality (due to only having the first 8 episodes sold on DVD in Region 1),and a Hong Kong hardsubbed or dub only second half, both in terrible quality, and neither particularly common.

    I'm sure you are busy, and I don't know what level of interest you have in the series but there are a fairly large number of fans who wish to see this series treated right, as it is the most faithful animated adaptation of the source material. There are, as mentioned, some form of subtles for every episode, although they all need some cleanup, and there are RAWs for the entire show (large ones, straight from region 2 DVDs).
    You might be able to help.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. After Shirokuma Cafe, I doubt I'll tackle a very long series any time soon.

      The first half is readily available in dual audio, with English subtitles, from Anime Anarchy: https://bakabt.me/torrent/153908/cyborg-009-season-1-2001-aa.

      Delete