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.