Polishing a POS: Twinkle Nora Rock Me v2

Here is exactly what the world doesn't need at this critical moment, a revised version of the 1985 candidate for Worst Anime of All Time™, Twinkle Nora Rock Me! From the excruciatingly awful animation to the idiotic plot to the moronic music, this is an OVA with no redeeming social importance or qualities. So what is heaven's name possessed Orphan to do this show again? And no, "It seemed like a good idea at the time" won't cut it.

Actually, Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, Greed, and Majo Demo Steady are on a list of Orphan laserdisc releases with source problems. Twinkle and Greed are missing part of the ending credits. Majo is missing an audio channel. By sheer coincidence, all three were offered in a bundle of eleven laserdiscs on Yahoo Auctions Japan. I snapped them up in the hope of releasing better versions. And then, all three proved to have serious bit rot issues. Our Intrepid Media Maven managed to get the digital audio track off Majo, but the video was unusable. Twinkle and Greed had their own issues ("cloud rot" and "green rot"), but Intrepid did manage to extract usable encodes with the Domesday Duplicator. And after he put in all that effort to encode the discs, how could I not support his work by putting the old subtitles on the new raws?

I don't want to rehash my original blog post about this wretched show; the less time I spend thinking about it, the better. However, I should mention the voice actors, whose careers somehow survived this debacle:

• Yamamoto Yuriko (Nora) played Iczer 1 in the Iczer OVAs, Rumy in the Gall Force OVAs, Sally in Mahou Tsukai Sally 2, Sandybell in Hello! Sandybell, Georgie in Lady Georgie, Tomoe in Tomoe's Run!, Rihabi and Sayuri in Stop!! Hibari-kun!, and Telenne in High Speed Jecy. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Nojima Akio (Max) played Aramis in Dogtanion and the Three Muskehounds, Richard Jones in the Emma properties, and Bernard in The Rose of Versailles.
• Nagai Ichirou (Fucherou) starred in numerous shows, playing grandfather Jigoro in Yawara!, the off-the-wall narrator in Gosenzosama Banbanzai!, Professor Hajime in Queen Millennia, and Happosai in the Ranma 1/2 franchise. He appeared in Nora, Hidamari no Ki, Yuukan Club, Manxmouse, and Yamato 2520, all Orphan releases.
• Watabe Takeshi (Touchino) had featured roles in numerous shows, including Condition Green (an Orphan release), Gunparade Orchestra, Maze, Ninku, Oishinbo, Sanctuary (another Orphan release), Wrath of the Ninja, and You're Under Arrest.

Almost all the work involved in this release was squeezing a usable encode out of the rotted source. Our Intrepid Media Maven did yeoman's work on the video, trying out every combination of filters he could think of to deal with the noise. He also had to work through a series of bugs in the Domesday Duplicator software's newly implemented Automatic Gain Control (AGC). Still, it turned out pretty well; as he said, "It's like a well-polished turd." However, the bit rot really distorted the analog audio. I took the audio track from the original release, equalized the volume between original and new audio tracks, and spliced the initial bumper and concluding song into the original track from the new one. Now, Twinkle Nora Rock Me! can be seen and heard in all its glory. As I said about the original release, don't all rush to thank us at once.

Except for the encoding, the staff credits are the same as the original release. In order to spare the staff another immersion in this ordure, I did the retiming and QC myself. There's almost no typesetting; the built-in Engrish signs are more than sufficient:

Of course, it could be a dedicated entrance for Robby the Robot, but... probably not.

So here is Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, complete at last. We're not releasing a revised encode of the accompanying special; the first encode was good enough. You can get this OVA, if you dare, from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.