Magma Taishi! (Ep 5-7)

After looking at the arc breaks, I decided it made more sense to release Magma Taishi (Ambassador Magma) in four batches of four, three, three, and three episodes, respectively. So this release include episodes five to seven. And in this set, the complications pile up thick and fast. The Murakamis gain some new allies: Umemura Sayaka, an inquisitive and martial-arts proficient female reporter; 

and Gam, a "rocket man" created by Earth-the-spirit in Mamoru's image. 

The Murakamis will need all the help they can get, because Goa and his minions have been running a sophisticated infiltration campaign that started before his reawakening. (Who orchestrated it, exactly, if Goa wasn't around? Never specified.) Aliens disguised as humans (pseudo-humans) made contact with Japanese Intelligence and provided technology that facilitated the Japanese economic miracle. 

This gives them credibility with the government. They now use that credibility to launch a disinformation campaign against Magma, blaming the golden giant for a tsunami that floods Tokyo.

Meanwhile, a minion of Goa's, the "oni" (ogre)  Udo, is slowly regaining strength by kidnapping and eating residents in a rural area. 

He's protected (natch) by a classified facility that the government leased to the aliens in return for the advanced technology. Atsushi is trying to trace Goa's footsteps by finding a small shrine, whose picture was hidden in a locket left by the now-deceased Asuka family. And both the aliens and the Intelligence agency are after Mamoru and his memories, hoping to find a path to Earth-the-spirit, who remains enigmatically offstage, only appearing long enough to entrust Mamoru with a device (called a flute) that summons Magma when needed.

The show does a very good job depicting the bafflement and frustration of the Murakamis and their allies, who always seem one step behind Goa and his machinations. At the same time, the diverging plot threads give this set of episodes a somewhat unfocused feel. Are the forces of good making progress, or are they just running around in ever-widening circles?

The already large voice cast adds additional characters in these episodes:

• Matsui Naoko (Umemura Sayaka played Caterina, in Tottoi, Efera in Gude Crest, Wato-san in Mitsume ga Tooru and Tezuka Osamu ga Kieta?!, and Lady Dola in Ai to Ken no Camelot, and she appeared in Hi-Speed Jecy and Every Day Is Sunday, all Orphan releases. She played the title role in Compiler, Uru Chie in High School! Kimengumi, Katsumi Liqueur in Silent Mobius, Run Run in Mahoujin Guru Guru, Roux Louka in Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, Suzuki Sonoko in the Detective Conan franchise, Juushimatsu in Osomatsu-kun (1988), Wendy in Peter Pan no Bouken, Marian in Robin Hood no Daibouken, and Matsu in Nobunaga no Shinobi.
• Inoue Kikuko (Kitafuji, a sympathetic female doctor at National Intelligence) played Kasumi in Ranma 1/2, Chigusa in Kekko Kamen, Mizuho in Onegai Teacher and Onegai Twins, Yayoi in the Happy Lesson properties, Momozono Mei in Mouse, Maria in Gungrave, Emeraldas in Space Symphony Maetel, Belldandy in the Ah My Goddess franchise, Lust in Full Metal Alchemist, Goei in Ikkitousen, and the mother in the Uchouten Kazoku series. She also played the Queen of Antiphon in Hameln no Violin Hiki, Satomi in Nemure Omoigo, Chamberlain, Guilford's executive officer, in Nana Toshi Monogatari, Stasia in Megami Paradise, Shouta in The Girl from Phantasia, Narusawa in Doukyuusei 2, Doria in D4 Princess, and Mai in Hand Maid May, all Orphan releases. 
• Aizawa Masaki (Inoue, Kuwabara's sidekick) played Date Eiji in the Haijime no Ippo franchise, Todou Heikichi in Inazuma Eleven GO, and Norman in Red Baron. He  appeared in Chobits, Fire Force S3, Moonrise, Okane na gai!, Wolf Guy.
• Arakawa Tarou (Dr. Tsukioka, a scientist in National Intelligence) appeared in Blue Sonnet, Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou, and Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, all Orphan releases.

The staff changed only slightly. Yume translated. ImAWasteOfHair timed. I edited and typeset. Paul Geromini (taking over from ImAWasteOfHair) and Uchuu QCed. The encoder was an anonymous friend. As before, this is a dual-audio release, with a signs-only subtitle track to go with the English dub.

Magma Taishi is now past the halfway point, and the endgame is murky. The forces of good will be victorious, of course, but exactly how is not all clear. You can get this set of episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net

Usagi-chan de Cue

Usagi-chan de Cue!! (The Rabbit Is Cu(t)e!!) is a 2001 boob-and-pantsu sci-fi OVA. I've always had a soft spot for the show, because it was the very first orphan I tried to rescue. C1 had subbed the first two episodes, but the content was too extreme for the group's leaders.  They preferred G-rated (or at most, PG-rated) shows; Usagi-chan was dropped. In order to get the last episode subbed, I slogged through 41 episodes of Peter Pan no Bouken, doing both editing and QC. In exchange, C1 subbed the third episode. That release became the version the English-speaking world knows, either directly or through various softsubbed remakes.

Still, I was a bit dissatisfied with the result. I always had concerns about the translation. This was confirmed when I found official lyrics for the opening song, which were quite different from the "by ear" translation. C1's typesetting was approximate, due to the primitiveness of the tools back then, and the remakes had no typesetting at all. Recently, I found some willing (or willing to be coerced) collaborators and decided to do a new version. After all, it was my first orphan. You never forget your first.

The story opens at Banzai High School, with a fight on the roof between a buxom school delinquent, Inaba Mikami, and rival gang leader Chou of Benten's most fearsome fighter, Dekao. 

Matogi Haru, keeper of the school's rabbits, fears the fight will destroy their hutches and hurt his favorite rabbit, Mimika. His fears are realized when Mikami and Dekao crash through the roof's fence and hurtle toward the ground, taking Mimika with them. Mikami instinctively cradles Mimika, but instead of dying in the fall, they mysteriously fuse,

into a human-rabbit hybrid, Inaba Mimika, with Mikami's outrageous figure and Mimika's rabbit ears and fluffy tail. This process is never fully explained, but apparently it has happened repeatedly. For example, Chou of Benten is a dog-human hybrid.

Haru takes Mimika home (she is a rabbit, after all). 

As can be imagined, human Mimika is very affectionate toward her keeper Haru, 

much to the consternation of his childhood friend and wannabe girlfriend, Miku. 

Meanwhile, the mysterious and sinister Council of the Public Welfare Bureau is determined to contain and stamp out this fusion phenomenon. They control Chou of Benten; they also deploy a cat-human hybrid named Koshka (Russian for cat). 

But Mimika has an ability that other hybrids lack. Under stress, she can revert to her form as the delinquent fighter Inaba Mikami. This is useful not only to thwart Chou of Ben and Koshka but also Dekao, who is resurrected as a cyborg, with increasingly menacing armaments. 

Through all this, Haru is trying to make sense of what has happened. He realizes that Inaba Mikami is hiding inside Mimika, and he's determined to lure her out, separating the rabbit and the human again. The villains, on the other hand, want Banzai High School and its surroundings to be kept free of fused specimens, because... well, because they want to. The alleged reason is that fused specimens give off signals that can trigger further fusions among people who are lonely and deeply unhappy. (Both Inaba and Koshka have backstories of childhood neglect and abuse.) It doesn't make all that much sense, but the endless eye candy and frequent action sequences are the point, not the plot.

Some notes:

• When Mimika is trying on bras, Miku reacts in consternation, "A G-cup?" That's DDD in US sizes. Mimika's (and Mikami's) figure defies the laws of physics; well, non-anime physics.
• This release included the non-credit OP and ED, as well as a promotional video that has not been translated.
• The translator, Perevodildo, made extensive revisions, particularly in the third episode. The original version makes no sense whatsoever; now, it at least makes some. Also in the third episode (only), when Koshka is under stress, she ends her sentences with "nyaa" (meow). After all, she's a cat. These have been rendered by punning or twisting words in an approximately feline way. 
• Ever since C1's pioneering release, Chou of Benten's headband, which changes to reflect his mood or the action, has been done as a simple top-of-screen note. This release continues the practice, because tracking or typesetting those hand-drawn signs as Chou moves his head would have been a PITA. Some people find them distracting, but they often convey jokes or a punch line, so I've left them in. 

The voice cast includes:

• Suzumura Kenichi (Haru) played Lavi in D.grayman, Kyouchi in Boys Be..., Kamui in the later X properties, Nenji in Nanaka 6/17, Hideo in Hand Maid Mai OVA, Eiji in Gravion, Junpei in Ichigo 100%, Kazuto in UFO Princess Valkyrie, Toki in Code: Breaker, Hajime in Danna ga Nani..., Shingo in Prison School, Masato in the Uta no Prince-sama franchise, Iyami in the Osomatsu-san franchise, and Hinawa in Enen no Shoubitai. He also played Ginshu in Amatsuki, an Orphan release.
• Morota Kaoru (Mimika, Mikami) played the title role in Medaka no Gakkou, Rasha in Lime-iro Senkitan, Yuu in the Comic Party franchise, and Chiaki in Demonbane.
• Kawasumi Ayako (Miku) starred as Mogi in the Initial D franchise, Sakuraba in Ai Yori Aoshi, Fuu in Samurai Champloo, Sara in Gallery Fake, Lafiel in the Crest of the Stars franchise, Henrietta in the Zero no Tsukaima franchise, Saber in the Fate/Stay Night franchise, Ohno in the Genshiken series, Mahoro in the Mahoromatic franchise, and my personal favorite, Nodame in the Nodame Cantabile franchise. She played the title role in Sensou Douwa: Kiku-chan to Ookami, an Orphan release.
• Nakao Ryuusei (Chou of Benten) played the lead in Igano Kabamaru, King Falke in ACCA, Hephaestion in Alexander's Decision, and Freeza/Cooler in Dragon Ball. He also played Roger Rogers in Plastic Little, Akio in Chameleon, Peat Cullen in AWOL Compression Remix, and Puu in Captain Bal, all Orphan releases.
• Neya Michiko (Koshka) played the title character in Shin Cutey Honey, Emilia in Macross 7: Ginga ga Ore o Yonde Iru!, Rally in Gunsmith Cats, Barnett in Vandread, Mako in the Initial D franchise, and Nancy in R.O.D. She also played Mesa, Eve's mother in Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve, Aya in Hidamari no Ki, and Lena in Fire Emblem, and she appeared in School Ghosts, volume 1, all Orphan releases.
• Sawaki Ikuyo (head of the Bureau) played Gooley in the Dirty Pair franchise. He also played Ushiro Kentaro, Ichitaro's father in Ushiro no Hyakutaro, Samuel Hunter in Wolf Guy, Masayoshi Hotta in Hidamari no Ki, Barry in Joker: Marginal City, Alan in Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve, Itakura Shirouemon in Sanada 10, the Kaiser in Apfelland Monogatari, and Gonbei the cat in Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro, as well as bit parts in Dallos, Heart Cocktail, and Chameleon, all Orphan releases.
• Senda Mitsuo (Shadow, masked man in the Bureau) played Sai Taku in Kingdom, Smiley in Sherlock Hound, and Grandpa Niko in The Adventures of Tyrano Boy.
• Kusunoki Taiten (cyborg Dekao) played Coach Miura in Baby Steps, Ibuki in Beastars, Bach in Classicaloid, Drakken Joe in Edens Zero, Leonard Burns in Fire Force, Mou Bu in Kingdom, Kai in Mononogatari, Rock Bison in Tiger & Bunny, and Thorgill in Vinland Saga.

Fukuyama Jun appears in a bit part. The director, Yoshida Tooru, was also a mecha designer. His directorial projects included Variable Geo and Gattai Robot Atranger.

At my request, an anonymous friend found the ISOs of the Japanese DVDs, and another anonymous friend encoded them. I had the C1 script archive and shifted the subs onto the new raws. Perevodildo translation checked. ImAWasteOfHair fine-timed. I edited and typeset; the signs required way too many hand-drawn clips. MartyMcflies of LonelyChaser Subs and yet another anonymous QCed. The release also includes the non-credit OP and ED, as well as a promo for the song CD, a "maxi-single" that is hard (or expensive) to find.

As a special treat, here are the encoder's notes:

"There was a bit more testing required than I had initially anticipated. The footage was 95% NTSC film, meaning it could be cleanly IVTC'd as normal, but also contained a few instances of video zooms/fades that needed to be deinterlaced separately to preserve smooth motion, hence the VFR. Also apart from mild dehaloing and derainbowing, there was some pretty annoying dot-crawl present that required a number of fixes to alleviate."

I'm very grateful for his expertise, not one word of which I understand.

Usagi-chan de Cue!! is very ecchi and totally NSFW. One of the QCs made several GIFs, and this is the only one I dare put in the blog.

The third volume, in which Miku imagines what Haru and Mimika do together, even requires a bit of censoring. Still, it is mostly silly and good-natured, and it ends happily, if inconclusively. You can get this release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

The First Line

Here's another SIP™ (Skr Instant Project): The First Line. Skr saw this short, translated, timed, and typeset it, and then asked for help releasing it. Perevodildo translation checked, Nemeis and I QCed, and here it is - about 48 hours after Skr first saw it. It's so new that it doesn't appear in most anime databases.

The First Line is part of an anthology called Gemnibus, from Toho Animation's Gemstone label. It's intended to showcase the work of promising young directors. The first volume has four episodes; only The First Line is animated. The segment is directed by a 29-year-old wunderkind who goes by the handle China (チナ).  He started off as an animator, mostly doing key animation, before taking on storyboarding and episode direction. This is one of his first directing credits.

The protagonist of the story is a young animator named Mito.

He works in an old-line animation studio. To me, it looks a lot like Studio Ghibli, as shown in various "Making Of" documentaries, but perhaps all older animation studios are like that.

The staff is struggling to finish key animation and storyboards for the old director's latest show. The director is bald, wears pince-nez glasses, and has the bright red nose of the chronic drinker, so he's not a direct caricature of Miyazaki.

Everyone is exhausted; the animator who was supposed to storyboard the last scene has passed out. The director gives the assignment to  Mito, much to the consternation of more senior staff. Mito struggles, changing his drawings based on the suggestions of his senpais.

Ultimately, the director rejects Mito's work, saying it reflects the tricks of his coworkers, rather than his own ideas. Mito is determined to try again but falls into a fugue state or dream about the old director.

Remotivated, he picks up his pencil to draw his first truly personal line.

The voice cast includes:

• Mutsumi Tamura played Kobayashi in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Alice in The Ancient Magus' Bride, Fuguri in Apocalypse Hotel, Lutz in Ascendance of a Bookworm, Gaa-chan in Baja no Studio, Kio in Asobi ni Iku yo!, Koushirou in the Digimon Adventure tri franchise, Natasku in Enen no Shouboutai, Akira in Hello WeGo!, Jonah in Jorgmugand, Tae in Kaijuu No. 8, Beelzebub in Sand Land, Sayaka in Seitokai Yakuindomo, and Bal in Captain Bal, an Orphan release.
• Shirou Saitou played Kiyotaka in KADO: The Right Answer, Hyou Ko in Kingdom, Gansaku in Megalo Box, Ryogen in Musashi, and Jabi in Sabikui Bisco.

The music is by Hayato Sumino, a well-known Japanese pianist. His (almost) solo performance of Ravel's Bolero, on two pianos (!), must be seen to be believed.

This is a terrific short OVA. The artwork and camerawork are innovative and showcase China's talents. The screencaps make it look like the anime is letterboxed, but that's deceiving; the frame is used very flexibly.

You can get The First Line from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Gakkou no Yuurei (School Ghosts), Batch

So here's the batch torrent for Gakkou no Yuurei (School Ghosts), containing all six volumes. There have been no changes. This is strictly for convenience of downloading.

The translator, Perevodildo, really liked the show and wrote a highly favorable review on MyAnimeList. In my view, the series started out okay but gradually declined in quality. A few of the live-action segments were very affecting, and the acting in them was okay, but the special effects were cheesy, to say the least: underlighting an actor with red or green is not enough to make a convincing ghost. The stories also became repetitious, as there are only so many variations on the ghosts-in-the-school (or ghosts-on-the-field-trip) theme that can be played.

Or perhaps the readers didn't have all that varied an imagination. Anyway, YMMV.

The staff was very small and stayed the same throughout the series:

• Translation and timing: Perevodildo
• Fine timing: ninjacloud
• Editing and typesetting: Collectr
• QC: Nemesis, Topper3000
• RC: Perevodildo, Collectr 
• Encoder: an anonymous caffeine fiend 

The project was ninjacloud's idea. He also recruited the coffee-infatuated encoder.

The sequel show, titled Shin Gakkou no Yuurei (New School Ghosts), is underway, but it's release schedule is unpredictable.

You can get Gakkou no Yuurei from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. Thanks for watching.

Gakkou no Yuurei (School Ghosts), Volume 6

Here's the last volume of Gakkou no Yuurei (School Ghosts), completing the series Orphan started last November. What, you say? Aren't there seven volumes of School Ghosts? There are, but technically, the seventh volume is a sequel series, titled Shin Gakkou no Yuurei (New School Ghosts). Orphan will get to it, sooner or later. Meanwhile, this volume, which is subtitled "Final Chapter," consists of six stories, both animated and live action.

The segments in this volume are:

1. "Picking Up on a Rainy Day" (animated). A mother and daughter are going home from school on a rainy day. The mother sees another girl waiting to be picked up, but it's a girl who has been dead for eight years.
   
   
   
   
   
2. "School Trip Stone" (live action). A schoolgirl brings a pretty stone home from a field trip, but the stone was placed where it was for a reason.
   
   
   
   
   
3. "Abandoned Temple" (animated). Two schoolboys explore a ruined temple, thinking it is uninhabited. But something is still there.
   
   
   
   
   
4. "School Lunch Lady" (live action). Two schoolboys really like the hamburger steak lunch made by the amiable Auntie Katayama. She disappears, but the boys get to taste her hamburger steak one last time.
   
   
   
   
   
5. "Road to School" (animated). A schoolgirl is friends with a local dog, John, who continues to look out for her, no matter what it takes.
   
   
   
   
   
6. "The Horror at 4:44" (live action). Never, ever go to the Art Room at exactly 4:44 PM.
   

None of the stories is particularly original, but the last is by far the weakest.

The voice actors in the animated segments include:

• Ogata Megumi played Sailor Uranus in the Sailor Moon franchise, Kurama in Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Akito in Kodomo no Omocha,Shini in Evangelion, Yuugi in the first Yuugi-ou series, Kyuu in Detective Academy Q, Valkyrie in the UFO Pricess Valkyrie series, Itona in the Assassination Classroom series, and Makoto in Danganronpa. She also played Charlie in Alice in Cyberland 2 and Julianna in Megami Paradise, both Orphan releases. 
• Kingetsu Mami played Miharu in Gasaraki, Roze in Generation of Chaos, Nagisa in If I See You in My Dreams, Carrie in Labyrinth of Flames, Misao in Peach Girl, and Shiori in Tokimeki Memorial.
• Hino Yurika had featured roles in Baki the Grappler, Ghost Hound, Kai Doh Maru, Submarine 707R, X-men, and Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, an Orphan release.
• Soumi Youko played Olivier Armstrong in Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Natasha in Gunsmith Cats, Lyserg in Shaman King and its remake, Calessa in Vandread, Mother in Tobira o Akete, and Otsune in Hidamari no Ki, an Orphan release.
• Takano Urara played Marler in the Aa! Megami-sama franchise, Maria in the Sakura Wars franchise, Cocktail in Knights of Ramume, Gloria in PriPara, Sushi Neko in Let's Nupu Nupu, and Ken in Next Senki Ehrgeiz. The last two are Orphan releases.
• Yukino Satsuki played Kagome in the Inuyasha franchise, Miho in the Free franchise, Kaname in the Full Metal Panic! franchise, Saki in the Genshiken franchise, Tae Shimura in the Bleach franchise, Mion in the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni franchise, Hiragii in the Natsume Yuujinchou franchise, Ana Gram in the Phi Brain franchise, Vanessa in 009-1, Tina in Ai Yori Aoshi, Magisa in the Battle Spirits properties, Zhou in Cooking Master Boy, and Tamaok in Rin-ne.
• Itou Miki played Asuka Miki in Magma Taishi, Annie in Adachigahara, young Yamataro in Yamataro Comes Back, Rie in Chameleon, Colon in Cool Cool Bye, Yuumi in Every Day Is Sunday, and an Innocent in Greed, all Orphan releases. She also played Fujimura Taiga in the Fate franchise, Eiko "A-ko" Magami in the Project A-ko franchise, and appeared in most of the Happy Science movies.

The director, Koizumi Kenzou, also directed volume 5.

The staff is the same as before. Perevodildo translated and did initial timing. ninjacloud fine-timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Topper3000 QCed. Our caffeinated encoder went under the pseudonym of "Wiener Melange" this time. And what, exactly, is a Wiener Melange, you ask? It's like a cappuccino, but with brewed coffee instead of espresso. Or at least, that's what Wikipedia says.

So here's the last volume of Gakkou no Yuurei. We'll release a batch in a few days, but there won't be any changes to previous volumes, and, I sincerely hope, none to this one either. You can get this release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news in irc.rizon.net.

 

Heart Cocktail Colorful Batch

So here is the batch torrent for Heart Cocktail Colorful. There are no changes from the individual "season" releases; this is strictly for convenience of downloading.

This release marks the end of the DarkWispers, LonelyChaser, and Orphan collaboration on the animated works of Watase Seizou. We've done six series, spanning almost 40 years of his career.

• 1986-88: Heart Cocktail
• 1987: Boku no Oldies wa All-Color (My All-Color Oldies)
  
• 1988: Chalk-iro no People (Chalk-Colored People)
  
• 1992: Two on the Road
• 2003: Heart Cocktail Again
• 2023: Heart Cocktail Colorful 

We thinks that's enough, at least for a while. 

The team for Heart Cocktail Colorful has been the same throughout:

• Translation and Timing: Darkonius
• Translation check: Yume
• Editing and Typesetting: Collectr
• QC: Nemesis, Uchuu
• Encoding: anonymous
• Project coordination: Darkonius, Collectr, MartyMcflies

I want to thank all the contributors for their help. The project was smooth sailing.

I've enjoyed the world of Watase Seizou, the Heart Cocktail stories particularly, but it's time to bid it farewell. And where better to say goodbye than Jessy's Bar, the setting of so many of the stories, with a drink in hand and classic jazz on the sound system or, even better, Jessy himself tinkling the ivories with "As Time Goes By"?

 

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh...

Thanks for watching. 

Heart Cocktail Colorful: Winter Stories

DarkOrphanChaser is back with its final set of Watase Seizou's Heart Cocktail Colorful episodes. These five are set in Winter (actually, Fall and Winter); hence, "Winter Stories". Despite the season, these stories are a bit more optimistic, a bit more hopeful.

1. "Mr. Frog." Takuto Yoshimura has fallen in love with his co-worker, Mei Shimamoto, but she wants to focus on her career. As Takuto is folding an origami frog for children in foster care and brooding over his misfired romance, he remembers an older man making an origami frog for him to "jump over his shadow." At Jessy's Bar, Takuto recovers his determination and makes his own origami frog jump.
   
   
   
   
   
2. "Button." When he was younger, Souta Misumi shared a house with a would-be poet, Ito, and an older woman, Kanna, an accomplished seamstress he had a crush on. When a button she sewed on for him pops off, Souta reaches out to Kanna for the first time in years. At a poetry reading, he discovers that she is married, with children, and now she sews for them.
   
   
   
   
   
3. "Nandina." A divorced man has not seen his daughter, Yuri, for a decade, to avoid disrupting her relationship with her stepfather. One day, she tracks him down and invites him to her wedding. Despite misgivings, he attends, bringing a branch of the Nandina he had planted to commemorate her birth.
   
   
   
   
   
4. "A Town Where Snow Falls." Whenever he visits a strange town, Kunikata Shirakawa always visits a hostess bar and asks for "Midori," the work name his single mother used to earn money when raising him. On a snowy night in a strange town, he finds a "Midori" who is also a singe mother, and he vows, to himself, that he will return to see her again.
   
   
   
   
   
5. "A Christmas Miracle." A long time ago, an older man donated blood that saved the life of a young girl. In the present, he is facing a lonely Christmas when they meet again. Although they are complete strangers to one another, there is an instant connection: a Christmas miracle. 

I liked all the stories in this set, particularly "Nandina," with its possibility of reunion and reconciliation, and "A Town Where Snow Falls," where romance surfaces in the most unlikely of circumstances. "A Christmas Miracle" is completely far-fetched, but the Japanese do believe in blood-type astrology.

One translation note: Nandina or sacred bamboo is not a bamboo but an erect evergreen shrub that grows up to two meters tall. 

As in the other Heart Cocktail series, the animation is minimal, but the shots aren't completely static, as they are in Chalk-iro no People or the other "animated manga". But this lack of movement, and the much larger full HD canvas, created a problem: the scenes look empty and are visually boring. So this series adapts a trick out of the statically animated shows: it puts some (but not all) of the dialog into signs. There's no point in having the same English line as both dialog and sign, so the dialog signs are not typeset. Rest assured, real signs (there's only a few in these episodes) are typeset.

The voice cast is unchanged, as is the fansub staff. Darkonius translated and timed. Yume translation-checked. I edited and typeset; the biggest typesetting challenge was the rainbow in the title. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. Skr snarfed the raws off Japanese TV, and an anonymous friend encoded. MartyMcflies provided support and coordination. Like previous Watase Seizou projects, this is a joint DarkWispers, Orphan, and LonelyChaser release. 

You can get this final mini-batch of "Winter Stories" from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news. Final batch soon.