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.