Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Tokimeki Tonight, Take 2

Eight months ago, I wrote:
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.
Well, I was premature in thinking that Tokimeki Tonight would be finished quickly. It has taken far longer than I expected to complete the series. The tragic death of our colleague CP blew an irreparable hole in the QC team; Tokimeki is the last Orphan series he worked on. Then the project leader, konnakude, was out for several months between family vacation and real-life issues. Finally, the availability of new raws from the Animax rebroadcast led us to delay further work until September.

The new raws are a significant improvement on the Internet raws we had been using. They have more vibrant colors, better detail definition, and improved image stability. (Perhaps they presage a future remastered DVD or even Blu-Ray release? That certainly proved true for Yawara!) That in turn has led to some changes in the scripts. Eternal_Blizzard redid the karaokes for improved legibility and more accurate timing. The typesetting has been redone to match the colors and stability of the new raws. And of course, the additional time has allowed for further QC. The styling remains unchanged, to match the Saitei releases, although vertical and horizontal margins have been increased.

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.

This is the first Orphan project for which I was not the project leader and the editor. konnakude fulfilled both roles admirably. Moho Kareshi translated the scripts, and kokujin-kun graciously agreed to check them. Ephemere timed the first episode, ninjacloud the other seven. I did the typesetting and shared QC with CP, pheon18, and Eternal_Blizzard. Eternal_Blizzard redid the karaokes; Juggen timed the additional ending verses in episode 34. bananadoyouwanna encoded the raws from the Animax transport streams.

So at last Tokimeki Tonight is no longer an orphan series and can be appreciated in its complete and unadulterated silliness. Sit back, relax, and don't let the vampires bite.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for finishing off this series. It's great to see another older series completed.

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  2. Thank you for completing this series despite all the setbacks you all had.

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  3. Super thrilled to see this series finally. Been very interested in it for awhile. Both the long shows Orphan have picked for this year were titles I personally had really wanted to see for ages. Thanks so much for all you do!!

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