Hidamari no Ki (Batch)

So here's Orphan's last word on Hidamari no Ki - the batch torrent. There are minor fixes in eleven episodes, for nomenclature inconsistencies and typos. If you don't want to download the v2 files or can't apply the patches, you won't be missing anything.

Hidamari no Ki is brilliant TV anime. If I hesitate to use the word "masterpiece," it's only because I'm aware of the gap between an excellent TV anime and the works of auteurs like Miyazaki and Takahata. Tezuka Osamu was a popular entertainer, and Hidamari no Ki is among the finest examples of his work. I think it will stand comparison with the TV series viewers have loved the most.

That begs two questions, of course:

1. Why do I think it's so good?
2. If it is so good, why was it never fansubbed or licensed before this?

Now, I must admit to certain biases that work in favor of Hidamari no Ki. It's a seinen show, about and for adults. As a (fairly senior) adult, I like series that show people I might recognize, rather than the endlessly popular high-school students. It's a historical show, set against real events. As a historian by training, and a lover of historical fiction, it definitely hits my sweet spot. The artwork is distinctive and interesting. Tezuka Osamu's characters have real features and rarely resemble anime archetypes. And it's complex. The characters have multiple facets and are rarely black-and-white. Good things and bad things happen, and happy endings are rare - just as in real life.

So if Hidamari no Ki is so good, why has it remained untranslated (or more properly, an orphan) for so many years? First, it aired just before the flowering of fansubbing. By the time the first group looked at it, it had been off the air for four years. Most shows released from DVDs used R1 subs. Second, it's rather technical. There's a lot of medical lingo and historical Japanese terms. The translator needs a thorough grounding in medicine, Japanese history, and old terminology, or the show will prove impenetrable.

That leads me to an appreciation of the improbable series of events that made it possible for Orphan to do Hidamari no Ki. Sunachan, the translator, simply showed up one day. She's a professional interpreter with a background in medical translation. It would be hard to imagine a better fit to the task. Then, after years of futile quests for decent raws, Skr found a reasonable set of streaming raws in Japan. That permitted the translation and timing work to get underway. And finally, an anonymous benefactor wrote to ask if he could help purchase any rare materials for Orphan's work. That allowed us to buy the Japanese DVDs and to create definitive encodes. Everything followed from those three events.

In closing, I'll recapitulate the staff credits for the show:

• Translation - Sunachan
• Timing - Eternal_Blizzard and Yogicat
• Editing and Typesetting - Collectr
• Karaokes - Juggen
• QC - bananadoyouwanna, Nemesis, VigorousJammer
• Workraws - Skr
• Encoding - M74
• DVD provider - anonymous

It's been almost a year's work, but I think everyone on the staff would agree that it's been worth it.

Could there be a high-definition release someday? Eternal_Blizzard points out that Madhouse (the animators) were among the last holdouts for cel-based drawing and didn't move to digital animation until 2002, after Hidamari no Ki was released, so it's possible. Could there be an R1 release someday? Smaller DVD outfits have been reviving items from the back catalog, so it's possible. So this "last word" may not be the "final word." I certainly hope so.

In closing, I'll repeat what I've said in every release post: this show is a masterwork. Please, put aside all the trope-y junk that makes up most of modern anime and give Hidamari no Ki a chance to cast its spell. You won't regret it. Meanwhile, you can get the batch from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. A direct download link for the patch and for the DVD booklets is included in the batch torrent release.