Chameleon 4

What's this? Two episodes of Chameleon in the same calendar year? Is Satan gliding around his domain on ice skates?

In the blog post for episode 3, I opined hopefully that the series would be stalled indefinitely, because the songs for the last three episodes hadn't been translated and were unlikely to be. However, ninjacloud, the timer, refused to give up. He nudged and pleaded with various translators to get the songs done. Further, VigorousJammer did the detailed work of applying laalg's complex translation checks to Moho's scripts. So now, I'm out of excuses.

Episode 4 ("The Worst One-on-One Hell Ever!!") continues the saga of pint-sized wannabe hood Yazawa Eisaku. Having survived three near-death encounters, first with the Shadow Dance gang, then with psychotic thug Kyuu Akio, and finally with the ultra-violent Matsudo gang and its murderous leader, Matsuoka Eiji, the story continues with further interactions among Yawaza and his gang, Matsuoka and his gang, the ultra-powerful fighter Mishima Jun, and even Kyuu, who had been consigned to Juvenile Detention at the end of episode 2. The episode doesn't break new ground or introduce new characters. It's an extension of the previous episode and ends pretty much like episode 3 did. In short, it's filler.

Episode 3 ended with both Matsuoka and Mishima badly injured and recuperating. Matsuoka baits a trap by offering Yawaza "compensation money" for Mishima's injuries. Yawaza knows it's a trap but, opportunistic lowlife that he is, he's still unable to resist the lure of cash. When Mishima finds out (as Matsuoka intended), he's convinced that Yawaza has betrayed him (as Matsuoka also intended), Mishima comes after our "hero" with murder on his mind. Then Matsuoka comes after both of them. Only Kyuu's last minute intervention saves everyone from a fiery - and permanent - conclusion.

Moho Kareshi did the initial translation; laalg translation checked. convexity translated the songs and thus unjammed the project. kokujin-kun filled in a few blanks. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset; VigorousJammer provided valuable assistance by applying the translation check. Nemesis and Uchuu did QC. The raw is an ancient Internet rip (DivX505!), but there are no signs of original media on the second-hand market in Japan.

I still find Chameleon tedious in every respect - to edit, to typeset, or even to watch. Nonetheless, the team has put in a lot of hard work to get to this point. I owe it to them, and to the series' devoted fans (are there any?), to finish it... next year. Maybe. On the other hand, the next two episodes have many missing lines and NO TRANSLATOR. Mwahahaha...

So I'll refrain from further comments; you could guess what they'd be. You can get Chameleon 4 from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

 

Sensou Douwa: Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu

Sensou Douwa (War Tales or War Fables) was a series of TV specials by Shin-Ei Animation that ran annually from 2002 to 2009. In chronological order:

• 2002    Umigame to Shounen (The Boy and The Sea Turtle)
• 2003    Tako ni Natta Okaasan (The Mother Who Became a Kite)
• 2004    Chiisai Sensuikau ni Koi wo Shita Dekasugira Kojira no Hanashi (The Tale of the Ginormous Whale That Fell in Love with a Little Submarine)
• 2005    Boku no Boukuugou (My Air Raid Shelter)
• 2006    Yakeato no, Okashi no Ki (The Cake Tree in the Ruins)
• 2007    Futatsu no Kurumi (Two Walnuts)
• 2008    Kiku-chan to Ookami  (Kiku-chan and the Wolf)
• 2009    Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu (The Tale of the Blue-Eyed Girl)

Orphan has already released The Boy and the Sea Turtle, The Cake Tree in the Ruins, The Mother Who Became a Kite, The Tale of the Ginormous Whale That Fell in Love with a Little Submarine, My Air Raid Shelter, and Kiku and the Wolf. Today, we're releasing Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu (The Tale of the Blue-Eyed Girl). Saizen has already done Two Walnuts, so the series is completely translated.

Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu is a departure from the most of the Sensou Douwa series, both in source material and in tone. It's not based on a short story by Nosaka Akiyuki. Instead, it's an original screenplay by Fujimoto Nobuyuki, who penned scripts for children's shows such as the original Doraemon and Bosco Adventure, as well as the adaptations of three earlier Sensou Douwa shows. As a result, it's a lighter episode than some of the previous specials, and it has a relatively happy ending.

Like the other episodes, Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu is set in World War II Japan. Although the time-frame isn't specified, the story is set after the firebombing of Yokohama (April, 1945) - the last five months of the war. Kudo Eiko, a grade-school girl, and her mother have fled to the relative safety of the countryside. When Eiko is introduced to her rural classmates, they are all struck by one thing. She has blue eyes, which most of them have never seen. (One asks, "Did she paint them?") They are horrified to discover the reason. Eiko is the daughter of an American man and a Japanese woman. Her father was sent back to the United States at the outbreak of the war. Eiko and her mother remained in Japan.

Most of the school kids have absorbed the lessons of Japanese propaganda - that Americans are savages - and they shun and bully Eiko. But one boy, Kenta, doesn't agree. He befriends Eiko and brings her into his group of friends, Norio, Tarou, and Shunsuke. This goes reasonably well until Norio's dad returns from the war, horribly wounded, with the news that Norio's older brother has been killed. Everyone except Kenta turns against Eiko. Then, Kenta and Eiko are both orphaned in an air raid. Kenta must go live with distant relatives, and Eiko will be interned by the Military Police as an enemy alien, even though she's a Japanese citizen. This terrible prospect brings the boys, and the rest of the class, to their senses. With help from his friends, Kenta hatches a plan to save Eiko and himself from their fates.

The show contrasts the attitude of Kenta, his sympathetic teacher, Miss Akiko, and eventually his friends, with the unthinking xenophobia of most of the children and the (male) teachers at the school. Miss Akiko, in particular, draws a distinction between the wars of adults and the universal friendship of children; that draws a sharp rebuke from her colleagues. In addition, the show contrasts the grim reality of wartime Japan with a (mythical?) island in the South Pacific, where the people are friendly to everyone and war is unknown. With the help of a friendly but drunken fishing boat captain, Kenta hopes to take Eiko to this utopia.

One irrelevant question kept nagging at me: could the daughter of a Japanese woman and an American man have blue eyes? As I was taught in high school genetics, blue eyes are recessive. For Eiko to have blue eyes, her mother would have to have one blue-eye gene. I thought blue eyes were unknown in pre-war Japan, but in fact, they were found in the north and in a few other parts of Japan.

The voice cast includes:

• Kuwashima Houko (Eiko) played the title role in Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Arete-Hime and starred as Sango in Inuyasha, Aoi in Infinite Ryvius, Marlene in Blue Gender, Margaret in Madlax, Kou Shuurei in the Saiunkoku Monogatari series, Yuuko in Dennou Coil, Chizuru in the Hakuoiki properties, and Warp in Kaiba. She appeared in Yume Tsukai, an Orphan release.
• Komatsu Rika (Kenta) appeared in Animation Runner Kumori, Boys Be..., Kuromajyo-san ga Tooru!, Nessa no Ha-ou Gandalla, On-chan, and Shin Hakkenden, among other featured roles.
• Kobayashi Yumiko (Norio) played the title role in Crayon Shin-chan, Poemi in Puni Puni Poemi and Excel Saga, Souchi in ex-Driver, Mamoru in Sister Princess, Shoubu in the Duel Masters franchise, and Shiro the demon dog in the Hoozuki no Reitetsou properties.
  
• Shimamoto Sumi (Miss Akiko) debuted as Clarisse in The Castle of Cagliostro. She starred as Sara in Princess Sara, Nausicaa in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Otonashi Kyouko in Maison Ikkoku, and Dayan in Neko no Dayan. She also played Shokupanman in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise, Tinkerbell in Peter Pan no Bouken, Antoinette in Reporter Blues, Big Mama in Bakuretsu Hunter, Sue in Maris the Choujo, Elice in Fire Emblem, and the mother in Kiku and the Wolf. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Mine Atsuko (Tarou) played Miwa, the artist's wife, in Lunn Flies into the Wind and Maris' mother in Maris the Choujo, both Orphan release, as well as Tohdoh Yuki in Yawara!
• Nagasako Takashi (the principal) played King Enma in the Hoozuki no Reitetsu properties and Bill Atkin in Alice in Cyberland 2, an Orphan release.
• Isobe Masako (Tomie, Kenta's mother) played Tilda Miller in Gozdilla S.P. She appeared in Ear of the Golden Dragon, an Orphan release, Letter Bee, and Koi Sento.
• Nakagi Ryuji (old Captain) played Lot in Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, an Orphan release, and Coach Yuutenji in Yawara!, among other featured roles.
  

The director, Yasumi Tetsuo, wrote the screenplay for Kiku and the Wolf and storyboards for numerous series.

As he's done for all the other Sensou Douwa releases, kokujin-kun translated Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu. Yogicat timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raw is a 1080p webrip from UNEXT, rather bit-starved. (It would be nice to have better raws, but the R2J DVDs are hard to find.) Honorifics have been omitted.

Now that the series is completely translated, I can look back on all the episodes and sum them up simply, using Lorraine Schneider's classic poster:

Three of the shows (The Boy and the Sea Turtle, The Mother Who Became a Kite, The Cake Tree in the Ruins) portray the deaths of children in war in straightforward and devastating ways. As a parent (and now grandparent), I found them extremely upsetting and very difficult to watch. The rest are more indirect in their approach, and I had a sense that the series was pulling its punches in the later episodes. Kiku and the Wolf deviates from Nosaka Akiyuki's story to provide a more upbeat ending. The Tale of the Blue-Eyed Girl is downright optimistic, compared to the rest; Kenta and Eiko's escape from the MPs has a lyrical, almost fairy-tale quality. Nonetheless, the shows collectively demonstrate the cruel mindlessness of war in ways impossible to ignore. Did they have an impact on their intended audience? I simply don't know.

You can get Aoi Hitomi no Onnako no Ohanashu from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. Peace.

 

Yuki (BD 720p)

This one's for you, DmonHiro.

To prepare for encoding the 1080p version of Yuki, M74 made a "test" encode at 720p for review. It looked fine to me, so he encoded the big version, and it was released a few days ago.

Afterwards, I had the 720p encode sitting on my hard drive. I thought to myself, "That's a nice 720p encode you got there; shame if something happened to it." M74 vouched that it was frame-accurate with the larger encode, so I threw the subs into Aegisub, let it do its magic adjustments against the 720p raw, and then muxed the result. Voila! Yuki in glorious 720p with AAC sound, at just about one-third the size of the 1080p release.

Orphan has frequently released the same title at multiple resolutions, but that was usually the result of new (and better) source material turning up. Cleopatra and Senya Ichiya Monogatari went through three iterations over time - DVD, HD web stream, Blu-ray - but that was over eight years. Tezuka Osamu's "Love Will Save the World" specials were released in both 720p and 1080p, but the latter was done by Beatrice-Raws, not by Orphan. The closest timing from Orphan was probably Parol no Miraijima, when our release of a 720p web rip prompted Commie-Subs to provide the far better Blu-ray source, which was encoded and released at 1080p. Usually, though, one size fits all.

Personally, I always liked 720p releases, because they stood a better chance of fitting on the DVDs I used for long-term storage. (Yeah, I'm a technology Luddite, so sue me. And I prefer IRC to Discord, too.) When I bought a Blu-ray burner and started using BD blanks, my objections to large files became less strident, and Orphan began releasing relatively large encodes, like To-Y and Yuki. But there are anime fans with slow computers, or who have to pay for bandwidth by the slice, so I'm glad that DmonHiro (and Commie and Iznjie Biznjie and Soldado and OnDeed) still provide 720p encodes. I download them preferentially. I may have BDs for storage now, but I have a slow Internet link and a bandwidth cap.

This release has only been spot-checked. The subs were good before, and the signs looked right after downsizing to the new raw,. That's good enough for me. You can get this release at the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Yuki (BD 1080p)

Forty years ago, the famed "social realism" film director Imai Tadashi released his one and only anime movie, Yuki. It was based on a 1976 novel by Saitou Ryuusuke that is unavailable in English and out of print in Japan. The movie languished on analog media until recently, when a French Blu-ray was released. Orphan has encoded the Blu-ray and added English subtitles, translated from the Japanese rather than the French, to create the first English-language release.

Yuki starts out as high fantasy, set among the gods in the heavens. Yuki, the thirteen-year-old granddaughter of the snow gods, is charged to go down to earth and improve the fortunes of a suffering peasant village in rural Japan. Once Yuki arrives on earth, the movie becomes something else completely: a chronicle of the peasants' struggle for social justice against cruel oppressive forces: murderous bandits, predatory samurai, a rapacious landowner, and finally, the local demon-god himself.

The film breaks neatly into distinct episodes. In the prologue, Yuki receives her mission from her grandfather. In the first section, she meets an orphaned girl, Hana, and falls in with Hana's troupe of orphaned beggars. 

Yuki is too clean and too pretty to make a decent beggar, but she proves her usefulness by taming an "untameable" horse named Fubuki. In the second section, the bandit Tsumujikaze and his gang are planning to ransack the village and attack the local landowner, Goemon. Guided by an elder (known only as "the old man"), the peasants organize themselves to defeat the bandits. The next section is an interlude, where the grateful peasants and the beggars celebrate a winter festival. In the fourth section, "guardian" samurai bands demand tributes of crops and manpower for war. Once again, the old man organizes the peasantry, this time from multiple villages, to ambush and destroy the samurai. In the fifth section, Goemon, emboldened by the disappearance of both the bandits and the samurai, raises the rent and tribute on his tenant farmers drastically. Once again, the peasants rise up and destroy their adversary. As he is dying, Goemon calls down the wrath of the local deity, Shinjin-sama, on the peasants.

In the action sequences, Yuki has a catalytic but subordinate role. She rides Fubuki to provoke the bandit leader, to stampede the samurai's horses and overrun their fixed positions, and to guide her friends in pursuit of Goemon, but the peasants and beggars are the main focus. Only in the final chapter, the confrontation with Shinjin, does Yuki take the lead. The peasants are too cowed by superstition - what the old man calls "the enemy inside our hearts" - to face Shinjin. Only Yuki, a deity herself, and her brave band of beggars are willing to confront an angry god. An epilogue then brings Yuki's story to a tidy conclusion.

This summary makes the movie sound very schematic, if not dogmatic. The collective action of the "people" - first as individuals, then as a village, then as a collection of villages - is needed to overthrow the oppressors. The beggars are noble - forbidden to steal by their one-legged boss. The old man is wise and a tactical genius. But in fact, the movie is quite entertaining. There are no long political diatribes. The story flows organically, if a bit predictably, from one action sequence to the next. The festival interlude is charming. My main criticism is that Yuki remains a colorless cipher throughout. Even when one of the village boys, Tsukitarou, falls in love with her, she doesn't react. The members of the beggar troupe steal the show. Perhaps that's the point.

For some reason, the movie doesn't include the voice cast, so I have only a partial list of seiyuu:

• Ushihara Chie (Yuki) has no other anime credits.
• Sugiyama Kazuko (Hana) played the title roles in Gu-Gu Ganmo, Alps no Shoujo Heidi, and Laura, A Little Girl on the Prairie. She played Ten-chan in the Urusei Yatsura franchise, Akane Kimidori in the Dr. Slump and Arale-chan franchise, Mimiko in Panda Kopanda, Korosuke in Kiteretsu Daihyakka, as well as Yoriko Kisaragi in Yume Tsukai and Wendy in Manxmouse, both Orphan releases.
• Nagai Ichiro (the "old man") played 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 Blue Sonnet, Manxmouse, Nora, Hidamari no Ki, Yuukan Club, Amon Saga, Botchan, Ipponbouchou Mantaraou, Rain Boy, and Yamato 2520, all Orphan releases.
• Nakanishi Taeko (Yuki's grandmother) played Ryouko in Kuro ga Ita Natsu, Yuri in Kuroi Ame ni Utarete, Helen in A Penguin's Memory, Mrs. Bontempeli in Perrine Monogatari, and Liu Bei's mother in the first two Sangokushi movies, all Orphan releases. She had featured roles in Emma, Glass no Kamen (1984), Little Women, Queen Millennia, Ringing Bell, and Sailor Moon R.
• Kobayashi Akiji (Yuki's grandfather) played Toubei Tachibana in the Kamen Rider franchise and Dionysius II in Hashire Melos!, an Orphan release.
  
• Komatsu Housei (beggar boss) played Pride in Kaitou Pride and Jinba in Prime Rose, an Orphan release.

The director, Imai Tadashi, made many well-regarded films, including Aoi Sanmyaku, Until We Meet Again, Tower of Lilies, And Yet We Live, The Rice People, An Inlet of Muddy Water, and Night Drum.

Some notes, courtesy of Iri and Uchuu:

• The white horse's name, Fubuki, means "blizzard" in Japanese. 
• When the old man teases Hana about not finding flowers, she says she is one and has one and points to her nose. Hana means both flower and nose in Japanese.
  
• The beggars apparently go commando, and one of them is prone to doing handsprings when he's happy.
• At the festival, the beggars consume amazake, a fermented beverage. Despite the similarity in names, amazake is not sake and has much lower alcohol content.
• The volcano near the village is Mount Asahi in Hokkaido, which pinpoints the location of the movie. The volcano erupted in 1739, which may help narrow down the time frame.
  

Iri translated the show. Yogicat timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. M74 bought the French Blu-ray and encoded it. The project started with tribute's HEVC encode of the Blu-ray, but technical difficulties with timing synchronization led the team to do a new encode.

I quite enjoyed Yuki. Other reviewers, expecting a high fantasy, have been less enthusiastic. (Certainly the subtitle on some editions,Yuki: Snow Fairy, and the lilting opening song about "little Yuki" are misleading.) You can get the movie from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Bakumatsu no Spasibo

Yet another project that began in the deep, dark past. Bakumatsu no Spasibo (Gratitude in the Bakumatsu) is a 1997 movie about Russian admiral Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin's second voyage to Japan in 1854-55. During that mission, he negotiated the Treaty of Shimoda, which opened relations between Japan and Russia. From what I can tell, M74 encoded a rip of the VHS tape in the summer of 2017. Moho Kareshi delivered an initial script in 2018. In early 2019, glenn tinkered with the timing and the translation, and then ninjacloud retimed it. And there the project sat until this summer, when our good friends at Inka suggested a joint project to finish up the film. Off we went, and here is the result.

Putyatin's mission was a Russian foreign policy initiative intended to blunt the impact of Commodore Matthew Perry's American expedition to open Japan. Putyatin first reached Japan in 1853. However, the arrival of the Americans and their gunboat diplomacy had thrown the Japanese government (the Shogunate) into an uproar, and Putyatin was unable to conclude a treaty. He returned in 1854, anchoring at Shimoda, to begin serious negotiations.

However, the massive Ansei Tokai earthquake led to a a huge tsunami that sank most of Putyatin's ships. The Diana was spun around 42 times and badly damaged. It sank as it sailed to Heda for repairs, stranding Putyatin and his crew in Japan. Despite the setbacks, Putyatin continued negotiating and brought the talks to a successful conclusion. In addition, his crew worked with Japanese shipwrights to build a ship capable of taking him and his crew home. 

Like other historical films, Bakumatsu no Spasibo is an earnest affair, with lots of scenes of serious men talking in small rooms, interspersed with interactions between the curious Russians and the flabbergasted Japanese populace. The movie has a blizzard of characters on both the Japanese and Russian side; most have only a few lines and then vanish. The exceptions are Admiral Putyatin himself; his Japanese negotiating partner, Kawaji Toshiakira; the master shipbuilder who constructs the replacement ship, Oaki Kakichi; and his son, Oaki Kikusaburou (Kiku), who acts as the audience surrogate for the events surrounding the foreigners' arrival. There is some manufactured tension, but by and large, the movie tries to demonstrate that the relationship between Russia and Japan was harmonious from the get-go. Of course, this viewpoint ignores the fact that Russia and Japan fought four wars during the next hundred years, and that Japan disputes Russia's possession of the Kurile Islands to this day, citing the Treaty of Shimoda.

The script is a treasure-trove of research on events and people; here are a few of the more interesting points:

• Perry allegedly gave the Japanese two white flags so they could surrender. The Historical Science Society of Japan and twenty other historical associations in Japan came to the conclusion that the documentation concerning the flags is questionable and unverified.
• The dimensions of the Diana are described in ken, a traditional unit of Japanese measurement. A ken is a little less than 2 meters.
• Some Russian words are left untranslated: zdravstvuyte (здравствуйте), hello; spasibo (cпасибо), thank you; horosho (хорошо), wonderful. Don't ask me why.
• The song that the Russian sailors sing at 51:31 is a famous "folk" song, Kalinka. The translation (courtesy of Nemesis) is:

Ah, under the pine, the green one

Lay me down to sleep!
Rock-a-bye, baby, rock-a-bye, baby

Lay me down to sleep!
 

Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
In the garden, little raspberry, raspberry, raspberry of mine!
x4
 

Ah, gorgeous, pretty maiden
Please, love me!
Rock-a-bye, baby, rock-a-bye, baby
Please, love me!

Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
In the garden, little raspberry, raspberry, raspberry of mine! 

x4

 

Be warned: the song is an earworm.

The voice cast includes:

• Katou Seizou (Admiral Putyatin) played Ii Naosuke in Hidamari no Ki, Abraham in Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, Norbert in Apfelland Monogatari, Hatsutori Juuzou in Kage, Billy Bones in Shin Takarajima, and Jeigan in Fire Emblem, all Orphan releases. He had many other featured roles in the span of a 50 year career.
• Arikawa Hiroshi (Kawaji Toshiakira) played Grandpa Kaga in Usagi Drop and Cal in Run! White Wolf, an Orphan release. He narrated the Letter Bee series.
• Maruta Mari (Oaki Kikusaburou, or Kiku) played Ishmael as a boy in Tezuka Osamu's Tales of the Old Testament, an Orphan release. She appeared in Beck, Green Legend Ran, Inukami!, Kiku to Lala, Maps, Matchless Raijin-Oh, and Ninku.
• Naka Yousuke (Oaki Kakichi, the master shipbuilder) appeared in 21 Emon, Doraemon, Kentoshi, and Ninku. He played Furune in Izumo, an Orphan release.
• Okano Kousuke (Matsushiro Kumasaburou) played Hanabishi Recca in Flame of Recca, Nakamura Kenta in the Initial D franchise, Oburi in Kite, Son Goku in the Saiyuki OVA, and Aqua in the Jewelpet franchise.
• Ooyama Takao (Ueda Torakichi) played Igor in Don Dracula. He appeared in The Green Cat and Techno Police 21C, both Orphan releases.
• Satou Yuri (Oota Nami) appeared in Porco Rosso, Davide no Hoshi, and Ninku.

The director, Dezaki Satoshii, founded the Magic Bus animation studio. His extensive resume includes Time Slip Ichimannen Prime Rose, Tobira o Akete, Kasei Yakyoku, Yuukan Club, Yume Kakeru Kougan, and Boyfriend, all Orphan releases, as well as the Legend of the Galactic Heroes series and movies, the Urusei Yatsura OVAs, Riki-ou, and many other classics.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the credits for Bakumatsu no Spasibo are quite tangled. As best I can tell, Yume (Inka) did the translation, building on Moho Kareshi's (freelance) original script. glenn (freelance) did the first pass at timing, while ninjacloud (Orphan) did all the subsequent passes. TougeWolf (Inka) translation checked, did an initial edit, and release checked. I did the final edit, typesetting, and a second release check. Nemesis (Orphan), Uchuu (Orphan), and VigorousJammer (both) QCed. M74 (Orphan) encoded from a VHS rip by Intrepid (Orphan). So it's a joint Orphan and Inka release.

The tape itself was protected with Macrovision (curses!), so it couldn't be ripped on Intrepid's non-compressing setup. As a result, there are a lot of blended frames. There has never been a laserdisc or digital release.

So here at last is Bakumatsu no Spasibo, intended as a testament to a Russo-Japanese amity that never existed and still doesn't. You can get the release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Alice in Cyberland, the Sequel

In my blog post on the original Alice in Cyberland, more than three years ago, I commented on the mystery of the missing second episode. The laserdisc release included a preview for a second episode. It even included a release date. But the second episode never appeared on home media. What happened?

In a lengthy comment in early 2019, Jam provided links to several Japanese web sites by Konaka Chiaki, the author of the Alice in Cyberland game scripts. Konaka said that both episodes aired on TV, but the second episode looked so bad that it wasn't released on home media. Then in late 2021, jta5768 pointed out that the TV broadcast had been captured and posted on YouTube. He added, "It would be cool to see the second episode subbed!" That's all it took.

Alice in Cyberland episode 2 picks up where episode 1 ended. High school students Alice (the pink-haired one), Julie (the orange-haired one), and Rena (the green-haired one) are still "diving in" to Cyberland to ward off bad guys and play hooky from school. On one of these visits, Julie encounters a young boy named Charlie and is sort of smitten; she wants to know more about him. (On the Internet, no one knows you're a shota.) Meanwhile, Alice puzzles over a powerful piece of software that appears as a sword; she tries to trace its creator. Rena just hangs around, not doing much of anything.

Alice finds that the sword was created by an ingenious but lazy programmer, Bill Atkin, who wants nothing more than to relax in his own virtual world as a sea turtle. Atkin has created a generalized anti-malware weapon that can wipe out any self-replicating program. This becomes relevant when the gang traces Charlies origin to the Hellgate Inc, the all-powerful software company. The CEO, Henri Hellgate, created Charlie, a self-replicating AI. If Charlie reaches maturity, he will clone himself indefinitely and destroy Cyberland. This poses a dilemma for the girls, particularly Julie, who wants to save Cyberland but also wants to save Charlie.

As you can see, the plot is slight. In addition, the second episode is marred by poor animation: in many sequences, the mouths don't even move. It's not surprising this episode didn't make it to home media. Further, many of the signs are in Engrish: Charlie appears as Charie on Julie's wrist display; he announces his presence with the mail message "I has arrived"; and Julie, for that matter, appears as Juri in the eyecatch. Still, those sorts of problems didn't stop the creators of Twinkle Nora Rock Me, now, did it?

Through its game roots, Alice in Cyberland shares some DNA (same author) with the far more famous Serial Experiments Lain. In one place in episode 2, Hellgate explains that Charlie can metaphorize completely. The term is used in Serial Experiments Lain, with the same meaning: to project a digital incarnation of oneself into cyberspace (or as it is known in Lain, the Wired).

The principal seiyuu in this episode are:

• Asada Yoko (Alice) has an extensive resume in both regular and hentai anime. She played the title role in two of the Angelique series and one of the leads in Refrain Blue. She also appeared in Doukyuusei 2 Special: Sotsugyousei and D4 Princess, both Orphan releases.
• Araki Kae (Rena) played lead roles in all the Sailor Moon properties, Yuki Miaka in the Fushigi Yuugi franchise, and Ann, the female lead, in Juliet. She also played Marceau, Yawara's unexpected challenger, in Yawara! The Atlanta Special.
• Miyamura Yuuko (Julie) played the title roles in NieA Under 7 and Akane's High Kick. She also had lead roles in Starship Girl Yamamato Yohko and Those Who Hunt Elves, and she has an ongoing role in the Detective Conan franchise.
• Ogata Megumi (Charlie) 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 Julianna in Megami Paradise, an Orphan release.
• Ishii Kouji (Henri Hellgate) played Fujisawa in the El Hazard franchise, Taiga in the GaoGaiGar franchise, Mitsukake in the Fushigi Yuugi franchise, John Blade in Sin: The Movie, Tanaka in Kachou Ouji: Hard Rock Save the Space, and Garterbelt in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. He also appeared as Hyman in Fire Emblem, an Orphan release.
• Nagasako Takashi (Bill Atkin) played King Enma in the Hoozuki no Reitetsu properties.

The director, Yokota Kazuyohoshi, directed several long series for children, as well as the Maetel Legend OVAs.

Moho Kareshi translated the episode. convexity translation checked. Yogicat timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. Skr captured the web stream, and Eternal_Blizzard edited out episode 1 to create a "virtual" episode 2, as it might have appeared on a home video release - OP, episode, ED. I didn't see the point of redoing episode 1 on an inferior source.

So here is Alice in Cyberland's "lost" second episode. It's mediocre, but so was the first episode: neither compelling nor a candidate for WAOOT (Worst Anime Of All Time). You can get the release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Late breaking news: I chose the wrong "cut point" for the start of episode 2, and about a minute of material from episode 1 is included. (This is what I get for not being willing to watch episode 1 again.) You can get a patch to fix that from here; it uses ordered chapters to remove the redundant material, the sponsor screens, and the eyecatch, none of which would have been included in a home video release.

Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve

Here's another project whose antecedents are lost in the mists of time: an English subtitled version of the 1993 sci-fi movie Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve (Mother: Eve, the Last Girl). The movie had only been available in an English dub version, titled E.Y.E.S. of Mars. From archival evidence, M74 started the subtitling project in 2018, after finding a Japanese VHS tape of the movie. He commissioned a script from Moho Kareshi and timed it to his own encode. In 2019, he did another encode, and glenn retimed the script to the new raw. In 2020, Intrepid reripped the tape on his non-compressing capture setup and made yet another encode. Still, the project languished: no one was willing to translation check the script.

Recently, I dusted off the script, retimed it to the latest raw, and set about editing. I thought it looked okay, except for a few missing lines, so I asked convex for help. He not only filled in the missing lines, he also made significant corrections to critical scenes. We were in business.

Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve is another take on an origin story for humankind. In the movie, humans originated on the fifth planet of the solar system, the now vanished Atlas. Technological arrogance and environmental devastation destroyed Atlas, and the surviving humans migrated to Mars. Now, the settlement on Mars - Atlan City - is falling victim to the same forces, and humanity appears doomed.

The leaders on Mars undertake two separate and diametrically opposite projects to save humankind. The first is AIS (the "EYES" of the dub), an institute attempting to isolate psychically-gifted youngsters in an artificial forest paradise. AIS hopes that the youngsters can live without technology and prosper in a "natural" world free of pollution. The second is a government security service attempting to build a rocket for escaping to Earth, where humanity will start over yet again. Opposing them both is a rebel faction that hopes to restore Mars to viability.

The protagonist is a young girl named Eve. She has been brought to AIS, where her memories have been erased, but she is troubled by nightmares about the destruction of the world. Then, a young rebel named Dew contacts Eve and promises to bring her to her parents, whom she has forgotten. His real agenda is to use Eve to contact the legendary Messenger - the original settlers of Mars - in the hope that the Messenger can tell the rebels how to save their planet. Meanwhile, Sara, who is working undercover at AIS as an agent for the security service, tries to stop Eve from going to Atlan City and contacting the Messenger. However, Eve's psychic outreach succeeds, and that sets off the final conflagration.

As sci-fi, Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve doesn't break any new ground. Eve is a standard, rather colorless shoujo heroine with extraordinary powers, Sara a tormented antagonist, Dew a plucky young fighter. Much of the running time is devoted to pastoral scenes in the AIS forest and to infodumps on the complex backstory; both bring the movie to a standstill. Still, the opening and concluding action sequences are pretty good, and the denouement is not straightforward.

The voice cast includes:

• Mitsuishi Kotono (Eve) played the title roles in Excel Saga, Birdy the Mighty, and the Maze TV and OVAs, Mink in Dragon Half, Katsuragi Misato in the Evangelion properties, Rosalia in the Angelique franchise, Kagura in the original Fruits Basket, Eri in Love Get Chu, and of course, Sailor Moon in the Sailor Moon franchise. She played the lead in Oshare Kozou wa Hanamaru and Oshina in Hidamari no Ki, as well as appearing in Blazing Transfer Student, Nagasarete Airantou, and Yamato 2520, all Orphan releases.
• Tsuru Hiromi (Sara) debuted as Perrine in Perrine Monogatari. She went on to play Kashima Miyuki in Miyuki, Madoka in Kimagure Orange Road, and Mikami Reiko in Ghost Sweeper Mikami. She also played Sonnet Barge in Blue Sonnet, Fengji in the third Sangokushi movie, Keiko in Hiatari Ryoukou, Nozomi in Nozomi Witches, Jill in A Penguin's Memories, UFO-chan in Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou, Milk in Karuizawa Syndrome, and big sister Shizuka in Tomoe's Run!, all Orphan releases.
• Kashiwakura Tsutomu (Dew) played Cal in Ai no Kusabi, Genbu in Akai Hayate, Ranmaru in Chameleon, and Japheth in Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, all Orphan releases. He played the lead in Boku no Sexual Harassment and appeared in several other h-animes. He is also a sound director.
• Neya Michiko (Mesa, Eve's mother) 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 Aya in Hidamari no Ki and Lena in Fire Emblem, both Orphan releases.
• Sawaki Ikuya (Alan, Eve's father) played Gooley in the Dirty Pair franchise. He also played Masayoshi Hotta in Hidamari no Ki, Barry in Joker: Marginal City, and the Kaiser in Apfelland Monogatari, as well as bit parts in Dallos and Chameleon, all Orphan releases.
• Yoshio Kawai (Sheldon, head of the government faction) appeared in Sei Michaela Gakuen Hyouryuuki, Sanctuary, Starship Troopers, Yamato 2520, and Zetsuai 1989, all Orphan releases.

The director, Suzuki Iku, also directed the Maze TV and OVA series, the Lime-iro Senkaitan TV and OVA series, Happy Lesson and Happy Lesson Advance, Moonlight Mile, The Gargoyle of the Yoshinagas, and other shows.

Moho Kareshi did the initial translation. convexity translation checked. M74 timed the first raw, and glenn the second one. I timed the third raw, edited, and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. Intrepid encoded from an uncompressed capture of a Japanese VHS tape. The English dub seems to follow the Japanese script in broad outlines, but it has a different running length, and slightly different playback speed, so it isn't possible to produce a dual-audio version. Two untranslated extras - a promotional video and a live-action omake - are included in the release.

So here's the first version of Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve with Japanese audio and English subtitles. You can get the film from the usual torrent site or download it from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

The Girl That Got Away

Orphan-raws is releasing its encode of Kakutou Bijin Wulong (Fighting Beauty Wulong), done from R2J DVDS. Therein lies a story: a project that never really got off the ground and is now officially over.

Fighting Beauty Wulong is one of those shows that was started and abandoned by multiple groups. LIME did nine episodes and gave up. m.3.3.w did five episodes and gave up. Getbackers did episodes 10-15 and gave up. The rest of the series is only available with HKDVD subtitles. Calling them dreadful is being generous.

Collectr's Law of Orphaned Anime states that when a show has been abandoned by multiple groups, it's probably for a good reason, and Fighting Beauty Wulong is no exception. It's sort of a ripoff of Yawara!, with mystic martial arts taking the place of judo. It has a beautiful and exceptionally talented girl protagonist, Mao Ren, the beauty of the title; her irate jii-san, Mao Hun, goading her on; and a befuddled newspaper reporter, Kabugari, who doesn't know if he wants the story or the girl more. Unlike Yawara, Ren embraces her fighting prowess and signs up to be part of an ongoing all-women martial arts competition, Prime Mat, which is produced by the Mao family's arch-rivals, the Cao family. Lots of mayhem, scanty outfits, and pantsu shots ensue.

Fighting Beauty Wulong was on my list of prospective orphaned series to finish from the get-go, but finding resources to do a long (and, truth be told, not outstanding) series seemed unlikely. Then, I caught a break. A BakaBT member said that he had professional scripts for the series, from an R1 licensor that had gone broke, and he'd be happy to share them. He sent them over, and we were in business. Except... they turned out to be dubbing scripts rather than subbing scripts.

This might not seem like the end of the world, but dubtitles (subtitles made from dub scripts) have serious issues. One is that they are typically incomplete. The licensor has control of the audio track, and if background lines can simply be omitted, they don't have to be dubbed. That doesn't work with the original audio track; unsubbed lines are pretty obvious. Another is that they are typically inaccurate. A dub script is made to fit mouth motions, not to translate the actual Japanese line. This became apparent in comparing the dub script against the fansubs, as checked by the team translators. The dub scripts weren't useless; they simply weren't enough for subtitling. Fighting Beauty Wulong would need a translation checker willing to do 25 episodes. None was available. The project ground to a halt with all episodes encoded, seven timed, a few edited and typeset, and all needing translation checking. After two years with no progress, it's time to throw in the towel.

M74 encoded the series. ninjacloud timed the episodes; I edited and typeset. In addition to the raws, Orphan is releasing its script archive "as is," in case any other team wants to pick up the project. Please note that the original scripts are Word documents in a strange format; getting them over to Aegisub is rather tricky.

Is it Mao Ren's fate never to have her words properly translated? I sincerely hope not. Meanwhile, you can get the raws from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. The script archive is available as a direct download; see the torrent description for a link.

Orphan also has R2J DVDs for the sequel, Kakutou Bijin Wulong Rebirth (Fighting Beauty Wulong Rebirth), but they've never been encoded. What would be the point?

Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (HD)

The third movie of the Sangokushi trilogy is Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (Sangokushi: The Distant Land). With this release, Orphan completes its work on the HD version of the three Sangokushi movies.

The third movie covers the longest time span, from Liu Bei's expedition to Shu in 211 CE to the death of Kongming in 234 CE. It is also the most melancholy and despairing. All of the main characters die, and the ultimate winner of the battle to reunite China is None of the Above - not Liu Bei or his descendants, not Cao Cao or his descendents, not Sun Quan or his descendants. Eventually, sheer exhaustion of all opponents allows a descendant of the Cao Wei general Sima Yi to reunite the country and create a new dynasty... for a while. True unity would not be achieved for centuries.

In my view, The Distant Land seriously undermines Sangokushi's glorification of Liu Bei's nobility and Kongming's strategic genius. Liu Bei ultimately achieves no more than the other competing warlords. Kongming's "Land Divided in Three Stratagem" fails spectacularly, producing not a peaceful balance of power but a perpetual war for supremacy among the three states, like the three superstates in 1984. (To quote Frank Herbert's dictum from Dune, "In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures.") The results were disastrous: the population of China was cut more than in half between the outbreak of the Yellow Turban revolt in 184 CE and the establishment of the Jin dynasty in 280 CE. The movie tries to claim a retrospective victory for Liu Bei's ideals, but the state of modern China belies that. It's closing scene gives a truer perspective, showing Fengji, bereft of everyone she has loved, riding back across a deserted landscape to her village to become a teacher, as the melancholy ending song plays.

Because it has so much time to cover, The Distant Land moves at a breakneck pace from conflict to violent incident to battle and back again. With the exception of Guan Yu's foster daughter Fengji (played by the wonderful Tsuru Hiromi), characters are introduced, act out their part in history, and vanish in minutes. There is little time for character development or domestic concerns, just for plotting, ambition, betrayals, and executions. It all feels rather depressing - or perhaps I'm just tired of the Three Kingdoms era after so many hours working on the TV specials and the movies. The Distant Land had a ton of signs to set, and because of image jitter, almost all of them needed to be motion tracked.

Despite the massive size of the undertaking, Orphan's work on the Sangokushi movies and their HD counterparts was done by a small and remarkably dedicated crew. Iri translated all three movies, diligently researching names, translating signs, and labeling the numerous map locations. Yogicat timed, I edited and typeset, BeeBee and Topper3000 QCed the original versions, and TougeWolf RCed the HD versions. M74 encoded the original DVDs, and an anonymous contributor encoded the HD version from a 1080p webrip to correct the frame rate. They have my heartfelt thanks for sticking with the project until it was completed. You can get Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net,

Is this the end of Orphan's involvement with Sangokushi? Well, it's the end of mine. If real Blu-rays surface, some other team can put these subs onto new raws. (Good luck with the typesetting.) There are other fish to fry.

Shin Takarajima

It's no secret that practically every staff member in Orphan is mad for Tezuka Osamu. The team has done more shows by the God of Manga that by any other anime auteur: two Animerama movies, eight Love Will Save the World TV specials, six Lion Book OVAs, the Hidamari no Ki TV series, and so on. Accordingly, it's a special pleasure to release the first English language version of Tezuka Osamu's early TV special, Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island). So, Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1965, and let's dive in.

Back then, I had just started college, and Tezuka's Mushi Productions was still in its early days. Its shows were in black-and-white. Tetsuwan Atom, started in 1963, had proved to be a tremendous hit, and the studio was trying to break new ground. Shin Takarajima was intended as the first of a series of anime specials entitled Mushi Pro Land, but the series never materialized. It was the only episode to be aired, the first 60-minute anime broadcast on Japanese TV.

Shin Takarajima doesn't really follow the story line of Tezuka Osamu's 1947 manga of the same name. Instead, it hews more closely to the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel, Treasure Island, but with animal characters. The good guys are mostly herbivores: Jim Hawkins is a rabbit, Dr. Livesey a deer, Squire Trelawney a pig, Captain Smollet a bear. The pirates are all carnivores: John Silver is a wolf, Bill Bones a mountain dog, Pew a wildcat, Ben Gunn a lion, and so on.

The plot of Treasure Island is so well known as to need no summary from me. As is the case in many adaptations of the novel, Silver is the most interesting character: charming, agreeable, apparently a bit indolent, but utterly ruthless when he needs to be. The other characters are straight out of the novel. Livesey is noble and upright, Smollett is decisive in action, Trelawney is a ditherer and a bit of a buffoon, and Jim is plucky and resourceful. One interesting conceit is that if a character gets too enamored of treasure, he loses his humanity and becomes an animal again, walking on all-fours and, if he's a carnivore, with claws out. That certainly makes life difficult and scary for a tasty morsel like Jim.

The show embodies a lot of Tezuka's trademarks: good action sequences, great slapstick gags, and the occasional anachronism. For example, when Jim find himself in the pirates' longboat, heading for shore, he looks so grim that Silver compares his face to "George Chakiris." This reference may be incomprehensible to a modern anime audience; Chakiris had won an Oscar in 1961 for his intense, unsmiling portrayal of the gang-leader Bernardo in West Side Story. On the other hand, the continuity of the animation is hit-or-miss. In some scenes, mouth movements aren't even animated.

The voice actors are from an earlier era:

• Tagame Kazue (Jim) played Atom in the original Tetsuwan Atom and Kum Kum in Manga Wanpaku Oomukashi Kum Kum.
• Fujioka Takuya (Squire Trelawney) played Mujaki in the second Urusei Yatsura movie, Beautiful Dreamer.
• Kato Takeshi (John Silver) appeared in Odin: Starlight Mutiny and Tamala 2010.
• Kitahara Takashi (Dr. Livesey, a deer) has no other voice credits.
• Katou Seizou (Billy Bones, a mountain dog) played Ii Naosuke in Hidamari no Ki, Abraham in Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, Norbert in Apfelland Monogatari, Hatsutori Juuzou in Kage, Admiral Putyatin in Bakumatsu no Spasibo, and Jeigan in Fire Emblem, all Orphan release. He had many featured roles in the span of a 50 year career.
• Kumakura Kazuo (Pew, a wildcat) appeared in both the 1963 and 1980 versions of Astro Boy. He played Papa Panda in Panda Gopanda, Oz in The Wizard of Oz movie, Thomas R. Manx Cat in Manxmouse, Sima Hui in Sangokushi, and Inspector Unmei in Akuma Tou no Prince: Mitsume ga Tooru. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Wakayama Genzou (Captain Smollett, a bear) played Long John Silver in the Treasure Island TV series. He appeared in Don Quijote, Pro Golfer Saru, and Wanpaku Tanteidan.

The show was directed by the master himself, Tezuka Osamu. The animation director was Sugii Gisaburou. Neither needs further introduction.

Iri translated the show, and kokujin-kun kindly filled in a few lines that were difficult to hear. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raw is from R-Raws and is a webstream. Nemesis pointed out that a black-and-white anime should not have subtitles with colored outlines, so Orphan's usual color scheme for overlapping and song lines has been changed to gray-scale. Uchuu supplied some interesting notes:

• "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest..." Billy Bones' song is straight out of Stevenson's book. Stevenson only included the chorus; later authors filled out the rest of it.
• "You may lay to that." This is Silver's catchphrase in the book. It uses a secondary meaning of "lay", meaning "bet" or "wager".
• At 15:30, when the mice are loading the ship for departure, they carry aboard a case labeled "RAM" instead of "RUM". For all the PCs on board, I guess.
  
• "Hard to larboard!" The book uses "larboard" instead of "port" for the left side of a ship (as you face forward).

I really liked Shin Takarajima. Admittedly, I'm a fan of all things Tezuka Osamu, but I liked how the show played it fairly straight with Stevenson's plot (until the ending), while allowing Tezuka his distinctive touches and laugh-out-loud gags. This is the earliest anime Orphan has ever subbed, and its first black-and-white release. You can get the show from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Cat-Eyed Boy (Youkaiden Nekome Kozou) 01

Just in time for Halloween, Orphan presents the first episode of Umezz Kazuo's 1976 horror series Youkaiden Nekome Kozou (Spirit Legend Cat-Eyed Boy, here just Cat-Eyed Boy). Because of Makoto-chan, I always thought of Umezz Kazuo as a comedy writer, but in fact, he is best known for his horror manga and is sometimes called "the Stephen King of Japan." He wrote The Drifting Classroom, a horror masterpiece, as well as the Kowai Hon (Scary Book) series. On Baka-Updates, more than 50 of his titles are listed as horror.

Cat-Eyed Boy is a spooky tale of demons, spirits, and monsters based on Umezz' manga Nekome Kozou (Cat-Eyed Boy), which is available in English. According to Baka-Updates, Cat-Eyed Boy acts like a Trickster figure, saving the innocent and helping the wicked receive the punishment that fate metes out. The stories are mostly tales of revenge and retribution for the evil acts people do. The TV series adds a quest plot, as Cat-Eyed Boy searches for his long-lost real mother.

The first episode sets out background of the story. Cat-Eyed Boy is the son of Nekomata, a cat demon, and a human mother. Half-demon, half-human, he is shunned by both worlds. He is raised by a foster mother, Miya, who has to beg for food, and he becomes a mischievous nuisance to the village he lives in. When a demon called Nadare-Maneki (the Landslide Summoner) attacks, Cat-Eyed Boy must try to save himself and his foster mother from its relentless attacks.

Cat-Eyed Boy is unusual in several respects. First, it is not really animated. Instead, it is done in "gekimation" (graphic novel plus animation), in which special effects are added to full-length paper cutouts. This gives the show a unique and rather static look. Second, it is Orphan's first one-and-done. That is, we're not going on with the series. (Orphan has created an orphan series; wah...) The underlying reason is lack of raws. Three episodes were included as specials in the live-action Cat-Eyed Boy box set; a few more are on YouTube; and that's it.

With only one episode to work with, I don't have much information on the voice actors:

• Hori Junko (Cat-Eyed Boy) is best known as the voice of the protagonists in three Fujiko Fujio works, Obake no Q-tarou, Ninja Hattori-kun, and Chinpui. She also appeared in Wan Wan Chuushingura, Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken, Rain Boy, Time Slip Ichimannen Prime Rose, and Makoto-chan, all Orphan releases), as well as Moomin, Akage no Anne, Cinderella Boy, and Unico.
• Masuoka Hiroshi (traveling priest) is best known for playing Fugata Masuo in Sazae-san (for more than 20 years) and Jam Ojii-san in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise. He appeared in Hidamari no Ki, the Hiatari Ryouko movie, King Fang, Nine, Perrine Monogatari, and Tezuka Osamu Monogatari: I am Son Gokuu, all Orphan releases.
• Yada Kouji (Nadare-Maneki, the Landslide Summoner) played Dr. Gero in the Dragon Ball franchise. He appeared in all the GeGeGe no Kitarou iterations through 2007, Haguregumo, Nine, and the Sangokushi movies. The last two are Orphan releases.

The director, Tsuchiya Keinosuke, helmed Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair and Wandering Girl Nell, which have been fansubbed by OldCastle and South Wind Subs.

Cat-Eyed Boy is a labor of love by Skr, who is a fan of all things Umezz Kazuo. He translated, timed, edited, and encoded the show. His friend sotoo did a translation check. Uchuu and I did QC. The encode is very large, because the underlying film stock is not in great shape; Skr needed a very high bit rate to capture all the defects. 😉

So buckle up, boys and girls, for classic Japanese horror from 45 (!) years ago. You can find Cat-Eyed Boy on the usual torrent site or download it from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

To-Y Blu-ray

To-Y is a 1987 OVA about a Japanese indie rock band and its lead singer. It is based on a ten-volume manga by Kamijou Atsuji. To-Y was stranded on the wrong side of the Digital Divide for years, until the eponymously named To-Y Restoration Committee subbed a laserdisc rip of the show in 2007. It quickly found a niche among devotees of indie rock and Japanese visual kei. Earlier this year, it was restored and released on Blu-ray. Orphan is now releasing a high-definition version featuring a new encode and a revised script.

To-Y tells the story of the indie rock-and-roll band GASP, which has a fervent following among Tokyo's rebellious youth. GASP is on the verge of a breakthrough, with a pending concert at an outdoor venue, Hibiya Yaon. However, the band's lead singer, To-Y (pronounced Too-i), seems indifferent to the possibilities of success. He's more interested in living his life, fighting when he feels like it, and balancing the attentions of his eccentric girlfriend, Niya, who seems to be part cat, and his beautiful cousin, Hiderou Koishikawa, who performs as a successful idol under the name Sonoko Morigaoka.

As the show opens, GASP is playing a gig at a seedy nightclub. For no particular reason, To-Y punches out the lights of a successful male idol, Aikawa Youji, who has come to see the band play. This arouses the interest of Youji's scheming manager, Katou Koshiko. She approaches To-Y and offers to make him an star - without his band, of course. When To-Y rebuffs her, she sets out to show him who really holds the power in the music business. She gets GASP's forthcoming concert at Hibiya Yaon canceled, throwing the band into a tailspin. But inspired by Niya, To-Y refuses to buckle, and he finds a way forward for the band and for himself without giving in to Katou's demands.

To-Y is as much a music video as it is a drama. It includes eight different songs in its 55-minute runtime, all performed by indie bands of the era, including Psy S, the Barbee Boys, the Street Sliders, Zelda, AMOR, and Qujila. The dialog is sparse, less than 300 lines, and very terse. Despite the brevity of the script, To-Y tells a coherent, complete story and fleshes out its characters in a few deft strokes.

The voice cast contains both veteran seiyuu and successful practitioners from other fields:

• Shiozawa Kaneto (To-Y) played Shin in Hiatari Ryoukou, Iason in Ai no Kusabi, Rock Holmes in Fumoon, Shiina in Chameleon, Sanzou in I am Son Goku, Kouhei in Karuizawa Syndrome, and Kurahashi Eiji in Nine, all Orphan releases. He also played Joe in Tokimeki Tonight, Yoshio in Miyuki, Takeshi in Touch, D in Vampire Hunter D, Narsus in the Arslan Senki OVA, Rosario in Dragon Half, and Abriel senior in Crest of the Stars.
• Nokko (Niya) is a singer-songwriter. To-Y was her only anime role.
• Uchida Naoya (Aikawa Youji, the rival singer) played the title role in the Cobra franchise, Yagami's father in Death Note, Daigo in the recent version of Dororo, Oda Nobunaga in Drifters, and Askeladd in Vinland Saga.
• Yayoi Mitsuki (Hiderou Koishikawa, aka Sonoko Morigaoka, the successful female singer and To-Y's cousin) played Maria Winter in Condition Green and Maron in Girl from Phantasia, both Orphan releases.
• Sogabe Kazuyuki (Nakahara Kimihiko, aka Kaei, the mysterious goth character) played Oda Nobunaga in Black Lion, Rei Ginsei in Vampire Hunter D, and Meyer in Hi-Speed Jecy, an Orphan release.
• Hitotsuyanagi Miru (Katou Koshiko, Youji's scheming manager) has only a few credits, appearing recently in Eizouken.
• Gendou Tesshou (Momo, the drummer) played Colonel Muto in Joker Game, Moloch in Yondemasu Azazel-san, Rei in the Urusei Yatsura franchise, Moguro Fukuzou in New Laughing Salesman,  and "Oyaji" in Mitsuboshi Colors. He also played Jin Kiryu in Blue Sonnet, Zigong in Eiyuu Banka Koushi-den, Paul Rusch in Yume Kakeru Kougen, Jim Hyatt in AWOL Compression Remix, the loyal lieutenant Galbreath in Next Senki Ehrgeiz, the dragonman Baguda in Greed, the narrator in Akai Hayate and Meisou-ou Border, Dog McCoy in Dallos, Hebopi in Wild 7, rebel leader Oosukune in Izumo, and Rikiishi's trainer Kuroki and Kirishima in Eguchi Hisashi no Kotobuki Gorou Show, all Orphan releases.
• Seki Toshihiko (Shouji, the guitar player) played the title role in Izumo, 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, Hayata in Call Me Tonight, Ootsuki in Milky Passion: Dougenzaka - Ai no Shiro, Junichiro in Kasei Yakyoku, 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, Mousse in Ranma 1/2, and the title roles in Alexander (Reign the Conqueror) and Kaiketsu Zorro.
• Yamada Tatsuo (Isami, the bass player) is an animator. To-Y was his only voice-acting role.

The director, Hamatsu Mamoru, also helmed B.B Fish (an Orphan release), Yoroiden Samurai Troopers, the Arslan Senki OVAs, B'tx, and the 2005 remake of Glass no Kamen.

This version started with the To-Y RC script. Iri did a thorough translation check. (One example of the changes: the originals script had the venue as Yaon Hibiya, as though it were a Japanese name that needed to be reversed for Western order. In fact, Hibiya Yaon is an acronym, short for Hibiya Yagai Ongakudou - Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall - not a name.) ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset; the typesetting is much more extensive than in previous versions. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. bananadoyouwanna encoded from a Japanese Blu-ray. The file is 9GB for a show of less than an hour, driven by the visual effects, the film grain, and the FLAC soundtrack.

I guess Orphan is in the big (file) leagues now.

I quite liked To-Y. It is recognizably an 80s one-and-done OVA teaser for a long manga series, like Sanctuary, but it tells a complete story and can be watched without knowledge of the manga. It even has the usual 80s soupcon of gratuitous nudity, which I'm sure will discourage exactly none of our potential viewers. You can get To-Y from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.