Yamatarou Comes Back v2

One of Orphan's earliest Tezuka Osamu projects was the set of six OVAs known as the Lion Books:

1	The Green Cat	1983
2	Rain Boy	1983
3	Lunn Flies into the Wind	1985
4	Yamatarou Comes Back	1986
5	Adachigahara	1991
6	Akuemon	1993

The project took 18 months, from the middle of 2013 to the end of 2014. Except for Adachigahara and Akuemon, Orphan used existing raws from other teams. I've always been less than happy about the quality of those raws. Last month, I was able to purchase a complete set of the Lion Books R2J DVDs, and Orphan will be redoing the OVAs with new encodes. This is the fourth episode, Yamatarou Comes Back (Yamatarou Kaeru).

Yamatarou is a sentimental and slightly strange take on friendship, in this case between a brown bear cub and a class C62 steam locomotive. Yamatarou and his mother become stranded on floating ice when the ice pack they are on breaks up. The crew of a passing fishing vessel rescues them, but the mother bear does not survive. Yamatarou is sold to the owner of a rural sundries store, who chains him up and uses him to sell his "food" (fish) to the locals. Yamatarou is growing fat and despondent, his only companion a snarky local cat, when he is befriended by a passing steam engine. The engine, which Yamatarou calls C6, teaches the cub how to be strong and break free from his chain and then returns the cub to the wild. They have another, fateful encounter when Yamatarou has become an adult.

Moho Kareshi translated, and convexity did translation checking. Eternal_Blizzard timed the original; Yogicat timed this version. I edited and typeset both versions. CP, Calyrica, and konnakude QCed the original; Nemesis and Uchuu QCed this version. Skr encoded from an R2J DVD. The encode includes an English dub audio track. In this release, I've changed one of Moho's translation quirks (rendering short and long Japanese vowels the same way), so Yamataro in the original is Yamatarou in this version. That aligns the title with standard sources like AniDB.

The voice cast is small, although three different seiyuu were used for Yamatarou, as a baby, a cub, and an adult:

• Yamada Eiko (Yamatarou) played the title roles in Anne of Green Gables, Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, Aramis no Bouken, and Legend of Lemnear, as well as Jo in Little Women, Misaki in Captain Tsubasa, and Gozu in Hoozuki no Reitetsu. She played the cross-dressing sister Shiina Yu in Chameleon, Vee in Al Caral no Isan, and appeared in Nora, the Sangokushi specials,  and the What's Michael? OVAs, all Orphan releases
• Takemura Hiroshi (Yamatarou as an adult) played the title role in Crusher Joe and Barts in Gina Hyouryuu Vifam,
• Itou Miki (Yamatarou as a baby) played Eiko in Project A-Ko, Reimi in Burn-Up, Sachiko in Maria-sama ga Miteru, Lind in Ah! My Goddess, Touko (Natsume's foster mother) in Natsume Yuujinchou, Taiga in the Fate franchise, Colon in Cool Cool Bye, and Anny in Adachigahara. The last two are Orphan releases.
  
• Takagi Hitoshi (C6) played Totoro in My Neighbor Totoro, and he narrated Galaxy Express 999.
• Ogata Kenichi (Kuro the cat) played the put-upon father in Gosenzosama Banbanzai and Maroko, Smee in Peter Pan no Bouken, and, most recently, Gran Torino in Boku no Hero Academia. He played the grandfather in Ohoshi-sama no Rail, Suzuki in Kigyou Senshi Yamazaki: Long Distance call, the crooked casino boss in Okane ga Nai!, the poster expert in Lunn Flies into the Wind, and the Hong Kong chef in Yuukan Club, all Orphan releases. He's also the voice of Ranma 1/2's Sataome Gemna, whose alter ego - the grumpy panda - is my avatar on most anime forums. 
• Asou Miyoko (store owner) played Pinako Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist (both series), Machiko's aunt in Miss Machiko, Cologne in Ranma 1/2, and Fune Isono in Sazae-san through 2015.

Yamatarou Comes Back was the last of the Lion Books to be directed by Tezuka Osamu. 

This release concludes the project to redo the four Lion Books originally done with encodes from other teams. Skr may want to redo the last two, because he is now using AI to improve the image quality on cel-based sources. (He trained the AI on Crayon Shin-chan!) Meanwhile, you can get Yamatarou Comes Back from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net