Singles

The Margaret video series was a set of six shoujo OVAs released at monthly intervals in 1993. They were based on manga published in Margaret magazine and animated by Madhouse. In chronological order, they were:

• Oshare Kozou wa Hanamaru (April)
• Singles (May)
• POPS (June)
• Oedo wa Nemurenai! (July)
• Kiss wa Me ni Shite (August)
• A-Girl (September)

Orphan has released A-Girl, Kisa wa Me ni Shite, and POPS. Now, our October shoujo spree comes to a temporary end with Singles.

Singles varies the Margaret OVA template a little, by moving the setting from high school to college, but the structure is pretty much the same. Graduating senior Sakisaka Saki is secretly in love with her older sister Noriko's boyfriend, Kazame Kaname, unaware that Noriko and Kaname have broken up. Saki hopes to escape her dilemma when she goes to college, but she ends up attending the same college as Kaname. During orientation, she is recruited to Kaname's video club. He wants to film her, but so does another boy, Tachibana Daichi, who is secretly in love with her. Can the knots be untangled and true love find its true course? Well, duh...

The voice cast includes several familiar seiyuu.

• Minaguchi Yuko (Saki) is best known for Yawara!, her breakout and defining role. She debuted as Kii in Greed, an Orphan release, and appeared in numerous other shows, including Dragon Ball Z and GT, Sailor Moon, and One Piece. She played Roxanne in Alexander (Reign: The Conqueror) and Felicia in Oz (another Orphan release).
• Matsumoto Yasunori (Kaname) starred as Johnny in Starship Troopers and Tooru in Every Day Is Sunday, both Orphan releases. He was in numerous OVAs in the 1990s, including Seikimatsu: Humane Society and Al Caral no Isan, both Orphan releases. Among his notable roles were Wataru Akiyama in Initial D, Jean Havoc in Fullmetal Alchemist, Gourry Gabriev in Slayers, Ryou in Sonic Soldier Borgman, and a personal favorite, Dick Saucer in Dragon Half. He is still active, appearing in Violet Evergarden in 2018.
• Kusao Takeshi (Daichi) played the lead roles in Junk Boy and Fujilog, the title role in Babel II, Trunks in the Dragon Ball Z franchise, the teenaged Tezuka Osamu in Tezuka Osamu Monogatari, and the icy director Kurume Kenjirou in Smash Hit!; the last two are Orphan releases. He is still active, appearing in the recently concluded Major 2nd.
• Amano Yuri (Noriko) played the title role in The Legend of Snow White, Julia in Daddy Long Legs, Kiyone in the Tenchi Muyo franchise, and Moemi in Video Girl Ai. She appeared as Kuzunoha in Akuemon, Angie in Condition Green, Elthena in Eien no Filena, Kitagawa in Nozomi Witches, and Yuko in St. Michaela Gakuen Hyouryuuki, all Orphan releases.

The director, Abe Tsukasa, is better known as an animator.

Credits are pretty much the same as the other Margaret OVAs. Sunachan translated, M74 timed, I edited and typeset, bananadoyouwanna styled the songs, and BeeBee and Nemesis QCed. The raw is a VHS tape rip from ARR. It is missing one of the stereo audio tracks; I've remixed the audio to mono. Orphan bought a video tape of our own, but it has problems; if the encoders can extract a usable raw, we'll do another release.

So at the two-thirds point in the Margaret OVAs, we'll pause for a while. Sunachan has moved on to more interesting projects (sports anime!), and the team is a bit shoujo-ed out. Meanwhile, you can get Singles from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Boyfriend

Boyfriend is a 1992 OVA/TV special based on an award-winning shoujo manga. I'd describe it as a fairly routine shoujo romance crossed with a sports anime. Yuuki, a girl with a weak heart, falls for Takatou, a rebellious but talented basketball player. Complicating matters, her childhood friend and quasi-fiancee, Nakatsugawa, is the coach for Takatou's basketball team, and Mami, a player on the girls' basketball team, has a crush on Takatou. A rival from another basketball team, Akira, wants to best Takatou in both basketball and love. As the climactic championship game between Takatou's and Akira's teams approaches, Yuuki must undergo risky heart surgery to save her life. Will she survive her ordeal? Will the lovers be united? Does a bear shit in the woods?

Boyfriend has had a long and winding road to release. Moho Kareshi translated it almost three years ago, before going off on his odyssey to translate all 136 episodes of the Oishinbo TV series. And there it sat. First, I couldn't find a translation checker. Then, when it was checked, I couldn't find lyrics for the opening and ending songs. Finally, after a few small purchases on Yahoo Auctions, it was ready for the back end - editing, typesetting, and QC.

Boyfriend also had a complicated release history. It was released as a 110-minute OVA on two VHS tapes or one laserdisc. It was also released as an abridged, 94-minute TV special, on one VHS tape.

TOVA-1117 - movie version 94 minutes
TOVA-1118 - OVA first half "The Encounter" 59 minutes
TOVA-1119 - OVA second half "The Promise" 51 minutes
TOLA-1131 - OVA first and second half, 110 minutes  (laserdisc)

At the moment, the only raw (by ARR) is for the TV special. Orphan was able to buy the "The Encounter" on VHS tape but just missed buying the laserdisc. We'd like to get the full show, so if you have access to the OVA version, either laserdisc or video tape, please let me know.

The voice cast includes many familiar names:

• Tsujitani Kouji (Takatou) played the title role in the Captain Tylor franchise and the lead role in the 3x3 Eyes OVAs. He also played Guy in Ai no Kusabi, Shou in Condition Green, and Seishirou in Yuukan Club, all Orphan releases. His most recent role was in Kokkoku, which just finished.
• Hidaka Noriko (Yuuki) played Satsuke in My Neighbor Totoro, Akane (the female lead) in Ranma 1/2, Peter in Peter Pan no Bouken, Mrs. Yamada (the mother) in the first two Chi anime series, Near in Death Note, Kikyo in the Inuyasha franchise, and Noriko in Yuukan Club, an Orphan release. She is still active and recently appeared in Little Witch Academia.
• Inoue Kazuhiko (Nakatsugawa) played Yamaoka Shirou in Oishinbo and Yuki Eiri in Gravitation, but I know and love him best as the irascible, sake-swilling Nyanko-sensei in the Natsume Yuujichou properties. He also played Ryousuke in Daishizen no Majuu Bagi, Kitten Smith in Starship Troopers, and Liu Bei Xuande in both Sangokushi OVAs, all Orphan releases.
• Yao Kazuki (Sofue) is best known for his lead role as Dark Schneider in Bastard!! and his recurring role as Franky in One Piece. He also played Date Ikkaku in Akai Hayate, an Orphan release.
• Mizutani Yuuko (Yuuki's friend Aki) has many credits, including Pinoko in all the Black Jack properties, as well as Rika in Sei Michaela Gakuen Hyouryuuki, Lila in Eien no Filena, and Dr. Uematsu Kikue in Yume Kakeru Kougen, all Orphan projects.
• Yamaguchi Kappei (Takatou's teammate Ougi) has played the lead character in the Detective Conan franchise, Ranma in the Ranma 1/2 franchise, Inuyasha in all the Inuyasha properties, Kudou Shinichi in the Conan franchise, Usopp in the One Piece franchise, Sakuma Ryuichi in Gravitation, Arslan in the first OVA series, the title role in Mouse, and Shibuya in Zetsuai 1989 and Bronze: Zetsuai Since 1989 (both Orphan releases), among many others.
• Yokoyama Chisa (Mami) played the title roles in Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, Iron Virgin Jun, and the Sakura Taisen franchise, as well as Sasami/Pretty Sammy in the Tenchi Muyo franchise. She played Hu Si, the were-tiger, in Wolf Guy, an Orphan release.
• Touma Yumi (Hanyuu, the captain of the girls' basketball team) played the title roles in Emma: A Victorian Romance and Baby Felix. She has appeared in numerous shows, including Boyfriend, Condition Green, Fukuyama Gekijou, and Eguchi Hisashi no Nantoko Nareudesho, all Orphan releases. 

The director, Dezaki Satoshi, is an industry veteran. Among his other projects are the Tezuka Osamu specials Marine Express and Time Slip Ichimannen Prime Rose, as well as Yume Kakeru Kougen (all Orphan releases), the Urusei Yatsura OVAs, Tobira wo Akete, Bakumatsu no Spasibo, and many more.

Moho Kareshi translated the dialog and the songs. laalg did translation checking. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset (a painful process because of the raw). VigorousJammer and BeeBee, a new staff member, did QC. bananadoyouwanna styled the songs. The raw is from ARR. It's terrible - marred by tracking losses, audio distortion and wobble, and pitch variation. One of the audio channels has very reduced volume and is badly distorted. (I've remixed the audio to include just the good channel.) Orphan bought a new VHS tape of Boyfriend, but it's only the first half of the OVA version. If anyone has a tape of the second half - or better yet, the laserdisc - we'll do another release. Help, please!

As I said, Boyfriend is a mid-tier show: not outstanding but watchable. It's available from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Bloat

This blog has mostly been descriptive, providing introductions to Orphan's releases. The thought and opinion pieces that peppered the early years of the blog have by and large disappeared. It's time to tick some people off again, so here's a column on encode bloat.

Orphan's offerings have been growing in size lately. Techno Police 21C (BD 1080p) was 6GB in size. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo movie 1 (web 720p) was also 6GB in size. The Usagi Drop live action movie (BD 720p) was almost 8GB in size. This is a far cry from the ~300MB for Orphan's typical 30 minute 480p DVD or laserdisc encode.

However, the size of our encodes pales in comparison to what I see elsewhere. On BakaBT, the first Urusei Yatsura movie (BD 1080p) comes in at 10.5GB. The first two Tenchi Muyo movies (BD 1080p) come in at 14.5GB and 15.7GB. The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (BD 1080p) comes in at 12.4GB. On nyaa, Redline (BD 1080p) came in at 16.2GB. And on and on.

Back in 2011, when Hi10P encoding was just coming in, and encoders were again claiming it would allow for superior quality at reduced file sizes, I predicted that any reductions in file size would be short-lived, and file sizes would continue to rise inexorably. So it has proved. Partly this is driven by the demise of 720p/AAC as an intermediate encoding point. These days, encoders want to do everything at 1080p with FLAC audio, even for TV broadcasts, whether justified or not (it usually isn't). But mostly this is driven by the use of higher bit rates in the name of preserving detail. Every grain must be reproduced, or some other encoder will release an allegedly better (and certainly bigger) encode.

I was baffled by this seven years ago, and I'm baffled by it now. To me, film grain is usually a defect of bad or aging film stock. I'm pretty sure that the original animators didn't have film grain in their cels and drawings, and they certainly don't in today's digital files (with rare exceptions, like the paper effect in this year's Angolmois). So when an encoder tells me that the bit rate must be higher to preserve the grain, I feel they're throwing bits at preserving the grime of time. We restore paintings (and films) for a reason - to remove the grime and let the original shine through.

I recognize that others - including several of the encoders in Orphan - disagree, and as a result, some of Orphan's encodes are rather large. But I have a hard and fast rule - no single Orphan file can be bigger than a DVD9 (7.8GB). That's why there's no 1080p version of the Usagi Drop live action movie. The 720p version is 7.8GB; a 1080p would be around 15GB - not happening.

My rule is as baffling to others as the size of present encodes is to me. Optical media are dead, they say. Just store those mammoth files on hard drives! That's fine for a small number of individual files, but with an anime collection exceeding 16TB (my nick is Collectr for a reason), a file server of requisite capacity is neither cheap nor reliable. Optical discs will last out my lifetime, and they don't require RAID6, system management, software updates, protection from viruses, or power.

I don't expect this diatribe to hold back the rising tide of big encodes. What I would like to see is a return of quality 720p/AAC encodes. I don't watch anime on a big screen TV; I watch it on my computer monitor and listen to it through my computer speakers. 720p is, for me, the sweet spot for comfortable viewing. AAC is just as good as FLAC for the tiny speakers nestled behind my monitor (or the reference monitors in my stereo system, for that matter). A few encoders (Atsui, DmonHiro) still work at 720p. Almost everyone else has moved up. More is better, right? Well, not always.

Of course, the next wave will probably be 4K encodes with 5.1 or 7.1 FLAC audio, at even bigger file sizes. So I'll be down at the shore, railing against the rising tide, for a loooong time.

POPS

The Margaret video series was a set of six shoujo OVAs released at monthly intervals in 1993. They were based on manga published in Margaret magazine and animated by Madhouse. In chronological order, they were:

• Oshare Kozou wa Hanamaru (April)
• Singles (May)
• POPS (June)
• Oedo wa Nemurenai! (July)
• Kiss wa Me ni Shite (August)
• A-Girl (September)

Orphan has released A-Girl and Kisa wa Me ni Shite. Now, our shoujo spree continues with POPS.

As with the others in the series, POPS has a rather standard shoujo plot. Harada Kusuko is a high school girl with a secret crush on the class playboy, Mishima Takeshi.

After breaking up with his most recent girlfriend, Mishima asks Kusuko to be his date for the class trip to Kyoto. She's over the moon, but in fact, Mishima is hung up on Shouko, his middle school teacher. Despite the age gap (and general inappropriateness of the relationship), Mishima still sees Shouko, whose marriage is disintegrating. His friend and loyal wingman, Kotaro, openly disapproves of this connection. As the emotional tensions mount, Mishima becomes involved in fights with other boys, and eventually, he's expelled from school. Feeling like he's been a complete jerk, Mishima breaks up with Kusuko and drops out of her life. Will true love find a way?

If the plot sounds familiar, it should - it has almost the same structure as Kiss wa Me ni Shite: the besotted heroine, the handsome protagonist guarding his secrets, his older love interest, and the other boy, perhaps secretly in love with the heroine. Come to think of it, A-Girl had a similar story. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is... enemy action? rote storytelling? You be the judge.

The seiyuu in POPS are less well known that the ones in Kiss wa Me ni Shite.

• Yuuki Nae (Kusuko) has only one other anime credit besides POPS.
• Miyazaki Issei (Mishima) made his debut as Gen in the Barefoot Gen movies. He had featured roles in Azuki-chan, Bomber Man & Bidaman Bakugaiden, and X the Movie.
• Kobayashi Hidetoshi (Kotaro) only appeared in POPS.
• Takamori Yoshino (Shouko) played the arch oujo-sama Sayaka in Yawara! and
  the twin roles of Juliet Douglas and Sloth in Full Metal Alchemist. She also appeared in the What's Michael? OVAs and Yousei Ou, all Orphan releases.

The director, Asaka Morio, has done many famous shows, including Cardcaptor Sakura and its recent reboot, Galaxy Angel, Gunslinger Girl, Yawara! Atlanta Special, Nana, Chihayafuru and its sequel, and Ore Monogatari.

The staff credits for POPS are the same as for Kiss wa Me ni Shite. Sunachan translated, M74 timed, I edited and typeset, BeeBee and Nemesis QCed, and M74 encoded from a VHS tape rip.

As usual, you can get POPS from the usual torrent site or IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. We have at least one more Margaret OVA in the works, so you're not out of the woods yet.

Kiss wa Me ni Shite

The Margaret video series was a set of six shoujo OVAs released at monthly intervals in 1993. They were based on manga published in Margaret magazine and animated by Madhouse. In chronological order, they were:

• Oshare Kozou wa Hanamaru (April)
• Singles (May)
• POPS (June)
• Oedo wa Nemurenai! (July)
• Kiss wa Me ni Shite (August)
• A-Girl (September)

Orphan released a finished version of A-Girl in December, 2017, after three tries.

As I noted in my blog on A-Girl, the Margaret OVAs were not very successful from a commercial viewpoint, and none of the OVAs were released on laserdisc, let alone in digital form. Nonetheless, after the problems finding a decent raw for A-Girl, the team began trying to collect raws for all the other OVAs. ARR had done some of them, but their encodes were often missing one channel of audio. After establishing a VHS ripping capability in Japan, we were able to obtain used tapes from the series.  We'll be releasing more of the OVAs, starting with Kiss wa Me ni Shite (Kiss Me on My Eye).

Perhaps one reason for the series lack of success is that the OVAs are very standard shoujo fare, even for the time. In Kiss wa Me ni Shite, high school student Morisato Ibuki has a startling dream about kissing a prince on a white horse.

The next day, the prince from her dream, Ebisu Naoto, shows up as a transfer student at her school and a guest at her house. He had indeed kissed her, in an attempt to wake her up in the morning, although he claims that she kissed him. Ibuki is smitten with Naoto, but he seems to have other commitments, to American football and to a mysterious girl called Kawahara Izumi. Meanwhile, Nitta, a shy boy in Ibuki's class, has a crush on her. Will true love eventually find a way?

The voice cast includes some very distinguished seiyuu:

• Hayashibara Megumi (Ibuki) was arguably the most famous seiyuu of the 1990s. She's starred as Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop, Ayanami Rei in Evangelion, Rune Balot in the Mardock Scramble movies, Rebecca in One Piece, Lina in the Slayers franchise, female Ranma in Ranma 1/2, and Miyokichi in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. She also played a number of feline roles, including including the title roles in the All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku and Hello Kitty franchises, as well as "lead cat" Iruinedo in Oruorane the Cat Player, an Orphan release.
• Seki Toshihiko (Naoto) was one of the leading male seiyuu in this period. He played Riki in Ai no Kusabi, the hero Seitarou in Hoshi Neko Full House, the gang leader Hiba in Wild 7, Miroku in Yuukan Club, Chuuta in Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro, the fighter Nagase Jun in Akai Hayate, and the unnamed protagonist of Oruorane the Cat Player, all Orphan releases. He also played Matsuda in the Yawara! properties, Sanzo in the Saiyuuki TV series, and the title roles in Alexander (Reign the Conqueror) and Kaiketsu Zorro.
• Ootani Ikue (Ibuki's friend Sumire) stars as Pikachu in the Japanese, English, Spanish, and German versions of the Pokemon shows. She also plays Mitsuhiko in the Detective Conan franchise and Tony Tony Chopper in the One Piece franchise. She appeared as Ann in Next Senki Ehrgeiz and Misono in Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 2, both Orphan releases.
• Koyasu Takehito (Nitta) is reputed to be the most prolific voice actor currently active, with more than 365 roles under his belt. He played Doujima Gin in Shokugeki no Souma, Thirteen in Grimoire of Zero, Dio in Jojo's Bizarre Adventures, the title role in Master of Mosquitron, and Fool in Elegant Yokai Apartment Life. He starred as Izumi in Zetsuai and Bronze and appeared in Yamato 2520 and Yuukan Club, all Orphan releases.
• Satou Ai (Ibuki's mother) has played many maternal roles, including Light's mother in Death Note, Masami's mother in Wedding Peach, Misaki's mother in Dear Brother, Ban's mother in Getbackers, Shigeru's mother in Noramimi, and the unnamed mothers in Cinderella Express, Ai Monogatari, and Guyver: Out of Control. Other roles include Kristin Adams in Yawara! and the unnamed girlfriend in Lunn Flies into the Wind, an Orphan release.

The two leads also also starred in the 1991 OVA Izumo, an Orphan release. The director, Ookubo Tomihiko, has mostly done storyboarding and key animation. The songs, by a group called The 5 TEARDROPS, are bouncy, idiosyncratic, and fun.

One translation note. The show is sometimes referred to as Kiss wa Hitomi ni Shite, because the kanji 瞳 (eye) in the title is usually rendered as hitomi, and 目 is used for me. However, me is an alternate, somewhat rare reading for 瞳. The manga cover includes the furigana め (me), indicating that Kiss wa Me ni Shite is the correct reading.

Sunachan translated the show as part of a break between more serious assignments. (She noted, "Shoujo is not complicated.") M74 timed and encoded the raw. I edited and typeset, and bananadoyouwanna styled the songs. BeeBee and Nemesis QCed. The VHS tape was purchased second-hand in Japan.

There's nothing groundbreaking about Kiss wa Me ni Shite, even for its day, but it's not a disgrace either. If you like shoujo, you should give it a try. You can find it at the usual torrent site or on IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. And stay tuned for more shoujo releases.

Ultra Nyan 2: Happy Daisakuse

Nyan, Haruka, and the whole human and feline gang return for a second adventure in 1998's Ultra Nyan 2: Happy Daisakuse (Ultra Nyan 2: Great Happy Operation or Happy Battle). Like the first Ultra Nyan, this is technically a movie, because it was shown on a twin-bill with yet another Ultraman movie, Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna Light Star Warriors. And in a somewhat surprising development, this installment is wittier (and better) than the first.

This time around, Nyan, Momo, Anko, Kosuke, and the Professor are challenged for control of their territory by a flock of angry crows, led by boss crow Nobunaga.

The crows have been driven from the countryside by habitat loss and moved to the city, where Nobunaga has become enamored of discarded lunches from Haruka's cram school. However, he becomes more and more irritable and itchy, just as the students at the school start suffering from allergies, eczema, and other ailments. He leads his crows into battle against the cats, and their aerial attacks are difficult to withstand, even though the local cats get help from Ryuuji the wandering minstrel cat, who is the newly returned father of Anko's kittens, and even from some friendly Dobermans.

It turns out that in pursuit of "building brains from the inside," the cram school has been adding more than a hundred "nutrients" (i.e., chemicals) to its lunches, afflicting humans and crows alike with allergic reactions. Fortunately, Haruka decides to emulate Nyan and go on a mostly fish diet; this cures her. With the help of a violence-averse crow named Goemon, Ultra Nyan, Haruka, and friends must find a way to cure the crows of their allergies and prevent the outbreak of an interspecies war. Not surprisingly, it ends well, but it's unusual to see a kodomo anime that mentions both habitat destruction and food adulteration.

The core cast is unchanged, but this episode has at least one distinguished newcomer:

• Ootsuka Akio (Nobunaga) starred as Black Jack in all of the Black Jack properties. He played the title roles in Ambassador Magma, Blade, and Montana Jones, Gozo in the Aika franchise, Batou in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, the villain All for One in Boku no Hero Academia, and Nyanko Big in one memorable episode of Tada Never Falls in Love. He played George in Condition Green and the narrator in Fire Emblem, both Orphan releases. He is currently appearing in both Golden Kamuy and Karakuri Circus.
• The late Naya Rokurou (Ryuuji) had featured roles in Batman: Gotham Knight, Eureka Seven AO, Fake, and Zatch Bell. He played Masato in Neko Neko Fantasia, an Orphan release. He died in 2014.
• Bandou Nyoki (Goemon) has had numerous featured roles, including Captain Tsubasa, Madlax, Monster, and Rescue Wings. His most recent appearance was in the fifth Natsume Yuujinchou series.
• Kouda Naoko (Ramnmaru, Nobunaga's right hand crow) had featured roles in Hidamari no Ki, an Orphan release, Monster, and Shigofumi.

Sunachan translated the show, and ninjacloud timed it. I edited and typeset. BeeBee and Topper3000 QCed. banandoyouwanna encoded from an R2J DVD. (It's a bit big, but I'll rail about the topic of encode sizes some other time.) It's odd that Ultra Nyan 2 was released on DVD but Ultra Nyan, released only a year earlier, was not.

You can get Ultra Nyan 2 from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Ultra Nyan: Hoshizora kara Maiorita Fushigi Neko

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Ultra Nyan! Yes, Orphan Fansubs once again delves into its feline obsession to bring you the first of two OVAs about Ultra Nyan, the interstellar cat come to Earth from planet Felis to spread a message of interspecies peace and harmony. First up is 1997's Ultra Nyan: Hoshizora kara Maiorita Fushigi Neko (Ultra Nyan: The Mysterious Cat that Descended from the Starry Sky, or something like that). It's labeled a movie, even though it's only 30 minutes long, because it was released theatrically, as part of a twin bill with Ultraman Zeas 2 Superman Great War: Light and Shadow.

Ultra Nyan is a kodomo (all ages) tale about a young girl named Haruka and the cats in her neighborhood: the Professor, an elderly gray cat; Momo, a lovely Persian; Anko, a plump calico mama-cat with two kittens, and Kosuke, a greenish Siamese. Haruka doesn't have a cat, because she lives in an apartment complex that forbids them. One day, she finds a stray and names it Nyan (the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow). 

Little does she know that her stray is actually Ultra Nyan, who has come from outer space with mysterious powers to share happiness with Earth... well, with Earth's cats, actually. Together with her friends and the town's cats, Haruka and Ultra Nyan must foil the plans of a couple of dastardly cat-nappers. Everything ends happily, of course, as G-rated cartoons generally do.

The voice cast includes:

• Kamei Yoshiko (Nyan) is probably best known for playing the title role in Rerere no Tensai Bakabon and Gema in the Di Gi Charat franchise. She has had featured roles in Magical Meow Meow Taruto and Tiger and Bunny.
• Oshitani Mei (Haruka) appeared in only a few other shows, including Junkers Come Here.
• The late Kondou Reiko (Kosuke) also had relatively few credits, including Lupin III Part 3 and Ninku. She died in 2007.
• The late Kitamura Koichi (Professor) played Paolon, the intelligent spaceship in Hi-Speed Jecy, and appeared in Hidamari no Ki and Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou; all are Orphan releases. He also died in 2007.
• Sadaoka Sayuri (Anko) appeared in many shows, including Wolf's Rain, Detective Conan, Tiger and Bunny, Kuroshitsuji, and Usagi Drop.
• Hikami Kyoko (Momo) played the title role in Hello Kitty, the female lead in Sakura Diaries, and one of the three leads in Wedding Peach. She also played Cyberdoll Sara in Hand Maid Mai, one of Orphan's first releases.

The director, Tokita Hiroko, has numerous other directing credits, including Hiatari Ryouko, Yawara!, Miracle Girls, Mizuiro Jidai, and Yami no Mitsui.

This project was a bit of a bluebird, triggered by finding second-hand media for both Ultra Nyan movies on Yahoo Auctions. For this first one, though, we're using ARR's release as a base while we wait for a laserdisc of the show to be shipped from Japan. Sunachan checked and corrected ARR's translation, ninjacat (well, ninjacloud) fixed up the timing, I edited and typeset, and VigorousJammer and new staffer Topper3000 did QC. We'll release a second version when Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions receives and encodes the laserdisc.

So here's a lightweight bonbon for all the cat fanciers in Orphan's audience (and on its staff). You can get Ultra Nyan: Hoshizora kara Maiorita Fushigi Neko from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Techno Police 21C (Blu-ray)

There's a saying: "Once in happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action". If that's true, then Something's Going On, because the Blu-ray release of Techno Police 21C is the third time a high-definition source has appeared just after Orphan released a version based on laserdiscs (the other two were the Kindaichi movies).

Of course, I'm actually thrilled when one of our analog projects gets a digital release, whether it's a web stream, a DVD, or a Blu-ray. VHS tapes and laserdiscs both have finite lifetimes. Physically copying a VHS tape, if even possible these days, always results in degradation. Physically copying a laserdisc is impossible. A digital source, on the other hand, can be dispersed and preserved in multiple locations, providing better guarantees of longevity.

In past blogs, I've speculated on why anime properties are allowed to rot on analog media. Tangled intellectual property rights are one reason; loss of film masters is another. But the biggest reason, of course, is that remastering old anime costs money, and there is little prospect for most of the analog projects that Orphan has worked on making money in digital form. When a digital release happens, there's usually a fairly obvious reason. Kindaichi is a beloved detective series; Blazing Transfer Student is considered a classic of its kind; etc.

And that brings me to Techno Police 21C. I'm was a bit baffled that a Japanese company went to the expense of creating a Blu-ray release, complete with Blader action figure:

Techno Police 21C is not exactly well known, and it's certainly not considered a classic. The director's resume is very thin. There doesn't appear to be a compelling reason for a Blu-ray release, but then I saw it was from Bandai, the toy (and media) company. So here's a new one: a Blu-ray release to promote an action figure.

I won't go over the specifics of Techno Police 21C here; see the blog entry about the laserdisc release for details. It's a fun ride, and the Blu-ray certainly looks better than the laserdisc. The script is little changed from the previous version. The timing has been shifted and adjusted, the signs have been tweaked to match the Blu-ray's colors and dimensions, and a few lines have been fixed because of the wider screen. Jarly, a new team member, bought the Blu-ray and did the encode, which is an all-singing, all-dancing 1080p FLAC extravaganza. After I did the initial shifting, ninjacloud did the fine timing. I did all the typesetting and dialog adjustments, as well as the release check, so you can blame me for any errors.

You can get the Blu-ray release of Techno Police 21C from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.