Heart Cocktail Vol 4

Heart Cocktail, based on a manga series by Watase Seizou, is a joint project between DarkWispers (Darkonius), Lonely Chaser (MartyMcflies), and Orphan. Here is volume 4.

This volume is basically just like the other three: a series of vignettes, three minutes or less, each telling a short story of love found or lost, or sometimes both. The protagonists are mostly unnamed. The animation is simple, with many still frames. There's a lot of music, most of it upbeat and jazzy, this time by Shima Ken. Each vignette is followed by some live-action footage that comments on the settings or the props of the previous story. The live-action sequences have sound but no music, so they act as breaks between stories. Several of the stories in this volume are set in southern islands - or at least an island with palm trees - and there's one or two extended stories, like "The Seagulls Brought a Girlfriend."

Volume 4 includes a new voice actor for the female lead:

• Asagami Youko played Saeko Nogami in the City Hunter franchise and its spin-off, Angel Heart, Selene in Queen Millennia, Mrs. Hudson in Sherlock Hound, Mori Yuki in the original Yamato franchise, and Amesis in Yamato 2520, an Orphan release.
  

In addition, several seiyuu who became much better known played extras in this volume.

• Namikawa Daisuke was only 11 when he appeared in Heart Cocktail. He also played Jack in 15 Shounen Hyouryuuki, an Orphan release, that same year. He later starred as the title role in Tottoi: Secret of the Seals, Elc in Arc the Lad, Yang Guo in Condor Hero, Iks in The Third, Rock in Black Lagoon, Chuuei in Ikkitousen, and Italia in the Hetalia franchise.
• Ikeda Shuichi played Char in Mobile Suit Gundam, Gilbert Durandal in Gundam Seed, Ulrich Kessler in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Alex in Dallos, and Azuma in Starship Troopers. The last two are Orphan releases.
• Mitsuya Yuuji played Tatsuya in Touch, Pen Pen in Mr. Penpen, Kouji in Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Irabu in Kuuchuu Buranko, Yuusaku in Hiatari Ryouko, Jecy in Hi-Speed Jecy, Seki in Majo demo Steady, and Daisuke in Stop!! Hibari-kun. The last four are Orphan releases.
  

A tip of the hat to 6/10 for pointing out the famous voice actors playing bit parts.

Staff credits are unchanged from volume 3. Darkonius translated the show and did initial timing. Yume translation checked. ninjacloud fine timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Rezo QCed. MartyMcflies provided overall coordination of the front-end work; I coordinated the back end.

Heart Cocktail continues to entertain. You can get this volume from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

The Laughing Salesman Specials

With the release of the 23rd and last Laughing Salesman special, Evil-Saizen has completed its work on the series: 103 TV episodes, the pilot, and 23 specials. The project started near the end of 2013 and finished up more than a decade later. Now it's time to say goodbye to Moguro Fukuzo.

The specials have a strange broadcast history and, based on complaints I've received, a non-obvious numbering. Fortunately, a Wikipedia article on the show clarifies how the numbering came about:

• The pilot episode was broadcast the week before the main series started. It is numbered as episode 0.
  
• Special 1 (Pitfalls of Blackmail) was broadcast between episodes 12 and 13.
• Special 2 (Out of Bounds Spouses) consisted of two parts, 2a and 2b. It was broadcast between episodes 20 and 21.
• Special 3 (Laughing Salesman Encyclopedia) was broadcast between episodes 35 and 36. It was not included in the HD webcasts and has not been translated.
• Special 4 does not exist.

Starting with Special 5, the numbering agrees with other published sources. The last 14 specials (specials 10 to 23) were broadcast as two-hour anthologies on three separate days.

Of course, it could be argued that specials 2a and 2b should be specials 2 and 3, and that special 3 should be special 4. The team followed Wikipedia. Special 3 doesn't have an HD source, and special 4 doesn't exist. So there.

I've already written about Laughing Salesman, so I don't see any reason to repeat my previous analyses. The specials are simply more of the same. Some are longer than TV episodes, some are the standard ten minutes. In all of them, Moguro Fukuzo offers his enticingly free services to unhappy salarymen, unmarried women, and even morose teenagers. They all accept, with usuallyl disastrous consequences. By the end, the writers seem to have exhausted their ideas for stories. Several of the last episodes seem like reprises of earlier shows; for example, Special 23 (Invitation to the Opposite Train) is very similar to episode 91 (Night Train). Still, it's not the details of the plots that matter, but how the customers will bring themselves to catastrophe, and what the Moguro will do to them.

There are actually a few bits of Laughing Salesman material left. When specials 10 to 23 were broadcast on TV, each episode was prefaced by a short animated introduction; two had epilogues. The TV episodes had OPs and EDs, which were left out of the high-definition webcasts. This additional material was included in the DVD box set. (I don't know if Laughing Salesman Encyclopedia, a recap episode, was included.) If someone wanted to encode those extras, perhaps they could be translated and presented in SD. However, don't bet on it. A decade with this show is enough.

The team for the specials was:

• Translation - kokujin-kun, valerio
  
• Timing - ninjacloud, sangofe
• Editing and Typesetting - Collectr
• QC - Nemesis, Uchuu
• RC - Ayanami-
  
• Encoding - BakaProxy
• Muxing - Mamo-chan

A good crew to work with. However, we're all glad to see the back of Moguro Fukuzo.

You can get the batch for the specials (and the TV site) from the usual torrent site or from the Live-EviL and Saizen IRC bots on irc.rizon.net. Thanks for watching.

Heart Cocktail Vol 3

It would be difficult to riff changes on my previous blog posts about Heart Cocktail, so I'll focus on a different aspect of the series: the music. While the show usually features a light, jazzy background, it frequently interpolates western music. For example, volume 1 included instrumental covers of three classic rock/pop songs: California Dreamin', Donna the Prima Donna, and Let It Be. Volume 2 includes excerpts from a couple of classical pieces: Chopin's Prelude in G Minor and Schubert's Heidenröslein. But volume 3 amps this up to another level, with vocal covers and pastiches from the best 60s bands:

• The chapter "Mr. Moonlight, the Prankster" starts with a cover of the opening of John Lennon's Mr. Moonlight.
• The chapter "The Day the Carousel Horse Sang" features a pastiche of the Beatles She Loves You, sung, of course, by the eponymous carousel horse.
• The ending song is a complete cover of the Beach Boys' Surfer Girl. The harmonies are uncanny, and only the usual issues in pronouncing English show that it's a cover.
  

This volume also features music by Tony's Show and an original insert Garasu ni Yubiwa (グラスに指輪) in "Cinderella Express 4," sung by Wise, a group consisting of Takumi Yamamoto and Shingo Kanno. Tony's Show was a collection of notable jazz musicians who only used that name to record the Heart Cocktail volume 3 soundtrack, with Yamamoto, Kanno and Masashi Hirashita handling composing and arranging.

The use of these classic songs raises the question, of course, as to whether the anime's creators obtained the rights to use these songs. Probably not. In the 70s and early 80s, anime shows were fairly cavalier about using copyrighted or trademarked intellectual property. Heart Cocktail is filled with renderings of the actual Coca Cola and Coors logos. That changed fairly suddenly in the mid 80s, probably when studio lawyers realized the problems IP infringement might cause. After that, brand names were spelled with one letter changed or just used generically.

In addition to the music, this volume is notable for introducing multi-segment stories. "Cinderella Express," about a relationship maintained through long-distance railroad commuting, covers four segments. Otherwise, the stories are pretty much the same as before: short vignettes about relationships: started, stopped, resumed, or broken forever. Only a few of the stories have live-action segments afterward; and two of those segments have narration instead of just sound effects. In keeping with Surfer Girl, many of the segments appear to have been filmed in California.

The principal voice actors changed in this volume:

• Okuda Tamiyoshi (man) is primarily a narrator. He also appeared in the recent reboot of the series, Heart Cocktail: Colorful.
• Shimamoto Sumi 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, Miss Akiko in The Girl with Blue Eyes, Suzuko and Suzu in Fire Tripper, and the mother in Kiku and the Wolf. The last five are Orphan releases.

Once again, Darkonius of DarkWispers translated and did initial timing. Yume translation checked. ninjacloud did the fine timing. I edited and typeset. In a change, Nemesis and Rezo did QC. The encoding is by an anonymous friend, based on laserdiscs purchased in Japan over many months. MartyMcflies of LonelyChaser Fansubs coordinated the complicated, multi-continent effort. I'd like to acknowledge the help of 6/10 with initial translation as well.

I should warn the viewer that Surfer Girl is an EAOT (Earworm of All Time), and if you listen to the ending more than once, as I have, you will never get it out of your head. If you're willing to risk that, you can get this volume from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Sanada 10 Batch

So here's Orphan's final word on Shinshaku Sengoku Eiyuu Densetsu Sanada Juu Yuushi (Legend of the Warring States Heroes: The Ten Warriors of Sanada) aka Sanada 10: the batch torrent. It includes a revised version of the special and revised versions of five of the first six episodes, for consistency in spelling and terminology. Patches are available here. It also includes an untranslated live-action extra. Finally, the file names have been corrected. In episode 7-9, it should be (DVD) instead of [DVD]. In episodes 10-12, there's a space missing before the episode number.

Sanada 10 did not turn out to be what I expected. (That's what I get for only watching one episode, a decade ago, before starting the project.) While it's not a bad series, it's not a great one either. It's average, or what my colleagues in Inka would call "the essence of mid." The main problem is that it's incomplete; the planned second season was never made. Because the creators expected to have 24 episodes, the pacing is slack, and the plot rambles. Historical minutia. like Tokugawa Ieyasu's alleged Genji ancestry, are examined in great depth while the story stalls out. The show turns out to be about assembling the Sanada 10, rather than what they did.

This season could easily have been condensed to six episodes. For example, the Battle of Sekigahara and its aftermath really only needed two episodes, rather than four. The subplots with the pirates and with Princess Kiyo could have been omitted entirely, saving an episode and a half. And despite the leisurely pace, major plot points, such as Sasuke's extraterrestrial origins, are left undeveloped.

Sanada 10 does have its good points. As a historian by training and a battle geek, I enjoyed the episodes on Sekigahara, despite their length and over-reliance on maps (and the horrifically complicated typesetting). The camaraderie between the principal braves - Sasuke, Seizo, and Seikai - is lively and enjoyable. Sasuke's shy (but consummated) romance with Kaede is nicely done. The Sanadas, father and son, are well characterized, the elder sly, the younger righteous. Tokugawa Ieyasu is shown as a complex, ambitious, and cautious man, shaped by his era and his upbringing, rather than as just a cardboard villain; he's the most interesting character in the show. And the TV OP is a knockout.

Because this project started in DigitalPanic, continued in AonE, and finished in Orphan, the staff credits are complex. For Orphan's version:

• Translation - DigitalPanic (1-6, special), AonE (7-9), purpleparrotkin (10-12)
• Timing - ninjacloud, Collectr
• Editing and typesetting - Collectr
• QC - Nemesis and Uchuu
• Encoding - anonymous (friend on BakaBT)
  

The encodes were made from R2J DVDs that I purchased second-hand in Japan.

So in sum: Orphan completed an orphaned series, and yet the series remains an orphan, because it will be forever incomplete. (And it show the validity of Collectr's Rule: if a series is dropped by multiple groups, it's probably for a reason.) You can get the complete series, the special, and the untranslated extra from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. Thanks for watching.

Maken Liner 0011 Henshin Seyo!

Maken Liner 0011 Henshin Seyo! (Wonderdog Liner 0011 Transform!) is a 1972 Toei sci-fi anime movie. It seems like a descendant of 1970's Kaitei 3-man Mile (30,000 Miles Under the Sea): same director, very similar character designs, bare-bones sci-fi plot. Maken Liner is even shorter, though, and rather clumsier in its execution.

Earth is being invaded by insect-descended aliens from Planet Devil. They plan to destroy the Earth and plunder its resources, or maybe the other way round. (All this is told by voice-over exposition.) Only Professor Hayashi recognizes that an invasion is in progress. However, his warnings are ignored, except by his loyal young son Tsutomu. When the evil aliens kill Tsutomu's dog Queen and her pups Ace, Jack, and Joker, Hayashi resurrects them as transforming cyberdogs. The dogs can transform and unite to form key parts of space attack ship Liner. 

However, Hayashi is killed, and Tsutomu must fight the invading Devilians on his own. The villains plan to use the Moon as a gigantic bomb to destroy the Earth (yet more voice-over). Will Tsutomu succeed in thwarting the aliens' evil designs? Well, we're all still here, so I guess the answer is clear.

As you might suspect, I don't think Maken Liner is one of Toei's stronger offerings. The clumsy exposition, the lack of character development, and the rushed plot and resolution, make the movie seem like a by-the-numbers alien invasion movie. The dogs are cute, but in cyborg form, they conveniently possess exactly the skills needed to defeat the particular villain or villains they face. Tsutomu shows no lasting grief over his father's demise. The songs are pedestrian. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

The voice actors include:

• Satomi Kiyoko (Tsutomu) played the title role in Rainbow Sentai Robin and Rune in Jungle Taitei Susume Leo.
• Kitahama Hiroku (Queen) played Ichimatsu and Todomatsu in the original Osomatsu-kun, Oman in Itoshi no Betty Monogatari, Baron Ashura in Mazinger Z, Panther Zora in the original Cutie Honey, and Rafflesia in Space Pirate Captain Harlock.
• Nozawa Masako (Ace) is a legend. She played the title roles in The Adventures of Gamba, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry no Bouken, Billy Inu nan demo Shoukai, and Hey! Bumboo. She was Enma-kun in the original Dororon Enma-kun, Son Goku in the original Dragonball, Taira no Tokuko in Genji Pt 1, and Kitarou in the 1968 and 1971 versions of GeGeGe no Kitarou, as well as Hakaba Kitarou. Even though her first role was in 1965, she was active in the early 21st century, appearing as Obaba in Ping Pong the Animation, Madame Curie in Marie & Gali, and of course, Medama Oyaji in the most recent version of GeGeGe no Kitarou. She played the title roles in Manxmouse and The Green Cat, Isamu in Kaitei 3-Man Mile, Lek in Cool Cool Bye, the wolf in Kiku-chan to Ookami, and Costar in 15 Shounen Hyouruuki, all Orphan releases. She won a lifetime achievement award in 1997.
• Matsushima Minori (Jack) had a storied career, starting with early Tezuka Osamu series. She played Dororo in the 1969 version of Dororo to Hyakkimaru, Jim in Animal Treasure Island, the title roles in Akane-chan, Candy Candy, and Lucy of the Southern Rainbow, Shun's mother in Dallos, Misako in Junkers Come Here: Memories of You, and Peach (Pinoko) in Fumoon. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Soga Machiko (Joker) played the title role in Obake no Q-taro and 007 in the Cyborg 009 franchise.
• Yamanouchi Masato (Professor Hayashi) appeared in Casshan, Future Boy Conan, Racoon Rascal, and Shounen Santa no Daibouken. He played the prophet Samuel in Tezuka Osamu's Tales of the Old Testament, an Orphan release.
• Kobayashi Osamu (narrator) played the title role in Ogon Bat. He played the villain Hugo Stronburg in Ziggy Sore Yuke! R&R Band, an Orphan release. He had featured roles in Be Forever Yamato, Crusher Joe: the Movie, Zillion, Roots Search, Future War Year 198X, and many other shows.

The director, Tamiya Takeshi, moved into planning and production after 1975.

Maken Liner was one of Iri's BlueFixer releases. He wanted to release it again in order to correct some errors in the original script. ninjacloud retimed the release. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raw is a 1080p webrip from Ioroid.

The English title is one of the key changes. Iri originally rendered "maken" as "Hellhound", because "ma" can mean devil or demon. But it can also mean "magic," so "maken" is now "Wonderdog." This is a better fit. The pups are not hell-hounds; they're the good guys.

So here's a revised, full HD version of Maken Liner 0011 Henshin Seyo! It's both a critter-feature and a creature-feature, so it kills two aliens with one stone. You can get this new version from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net

Sanada 10 - The End of the Beginning... Actually, Just "The End" (Ep10-12)

The final episodes of Sanada 10 bring the series to a close... sort of. In fact, there are so many loose ends that it's clear the creators were planning a second season. But it never happened, so the show just stops in media res. Perhaps that's why the show was never completely fansubbed: it was very dense, requiring a lot of research and effort, and it ended with kind of a damp squib.

This set of episode includes the required Trough of Despair™ for the protagonists. Tokugawa Ieyasu is named First Genji and then Shogun, achieving the pinnacle of power. Further, he marries his granddaughter to the Toyotomi heir, apparently co-opting the only remaining serious opposition. Yukimura is disheartened and stops plotting. Instead, he takes Princess Kiyo as his concubine. (He's 37, she's 16.) Only a timely visit from Kakei Juzo, bringing rumors of the long-lost treasure of the Takeda clan, resuscitates his resolve. (Sasuke speculates that bedding Kiyo was actually the decisive factor.) He sends Sasuke, Saizo, and Seikai out chasing clues to the treasure, starting with the former Sanada homeland around Ueda. After further adventures, and a last ninja battle, the series ends, but not before the tenth and last member of the Sanada 10 surfaces in the last 30 seconds.

The whole show only covers four years, starting with the Battle of Sekigahara. Would the second season have covered the next twelve, culminating in Yukimura's heroic death at the Siege of Osaka? Or would the show have focused on the treasure quest, allowing our heroes plenty of adventures without ending in tragedy? Japan Wikipedia says that the second season was to be called "Osaka Chapter." That's the only clue.

There aren't many new characters in these three episodes:

• Sugo Takayuki (Ideura Morikiyo, leader of the Sanada ninja under Sanada Nobuyuki) played Nagakura Shinpachi in Golden Kamuy, Wanyuudou in the Hell Girl franchise, Tohru's father in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Sweyn in Vinland Saga, and Okita Juzou in the recent Yamato series.
• Ootsuka Houchu (Yuri Kamanovski, the tenth Sanada brave) played Lt. Tsurumi in Golden Kamuy, Abuto in Gintama, Murai in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes reboot, Yazan in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Talhand in Mushuko Tenshi, and the excitable announcer in Yawara!. He also appeared in Dallos, an Orphan release.

The casting of a well-known voice actor in a role that has two lines in the last thirty seconds of the show points again to the never-made second season. The concluding title is, "The legend of the Sanada Ten begins here." And it ends there too.

These three episodes were made possible by the efforts of a new translator, purpleparrotkin. He did a lot of research to elucidate the esoteric historical details that dot the episodes. Some translation notes:

• Shugendo is an important Kami-Buddha combinatory sect that blends pre-Buddhist mountain worship, Kannabi Shinko (the idea that mountains are the home of the dead and of agricultural spirits), shamanistic beliefs, animism, ascetic practices, Chinese Yin-Yang mysticism and Taoist magic, and the rituals and spells of Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism in the hope of achieving magical skills, medical powers, and long life.
• Hakusan Gongen is the syncretic Shinto-Buddhist deity of Mount Haru, once a great Shugendo center. Hakusan Gongen is an avatar of the Eleven-Headed Kannon, and also a representation of the Shinto creator god Izanami.
• Ushiwakamaru is another name for Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the leader of the Genji in the Genpei War.
  

ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raws were encoded from R2J ISOs by an anonymous friend on BakaBT. The complicated genealogy chart is episode 10 is not typeset; no one was willing to translate all the names. There's no point, really. The exercise purported to show that Tokugawa Ieyasu was a descendant of the Genji clan, but as Ieyasu himself commented, lineage didn't really matter; accomplishments did. Further, Ieyasu claimed that connection many years earlier, in 1567, and it was acknowledged by an Imperial order. I guess it was intended to reinforce Ieyasu's methodical and thorough approach to gaining power, but it just wastes running time.

There will be a batch torrent in a few days, to correct some issues in the early episodes. Meanwhile, you can get the concluding episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Heart Cocktail Vol 2

Heart Cocktail, based on a manga series by Watase Seizou, is a joint project between DarkWispers (Darkonius), Lonely Chaser (MartyMcflies), and Orphan. Here is volume 2.

This volume is basically just like the first: a series of vignettes, three minutes or less, each telling a short story of love found or lost, or sometimes both. The protagonists are mostly unnamed or have common names like Takeshi and Takeru, or Misako and Reiko. (On the other hand, subordinate characters, such as cafe owners, are usually named.) The animation is simple, with many still frames. There's a lot of music, most of it upbeat and jazzy. Each vignette is followed by some live-action footage that comments on the settings or the props of the previous story. The live-action sequences have sound but no music, so they act as breaks between stories. If this volume seems to have a few more stories about love lost to tragic death, that's only an impression.

Staff credits are unchanged from volume 1. Marty got the ball rolling by finding the manga raws and getting them scanned. Darkonius translated the show, using the manga as a reference, as well as prior partial scripts. Marty arranged for Yume to translation check the script. I then put the script through Orphan's normal back-end process: fine timing (ninjacloud), editing and typesetting (me), and QC (Rezo and Moelancholy).  6/10 provided initial or partial translations to the project. VigorousJammer scanned the manga volumes that provided the underlying references for the translation. Marty and I both underwrote the project financially, including media acquisition and other services. This is very much a team effort, rooted in the Discord community.

One note for this volume. Rengatei, in the vignette "Warmth That Lasts for Only One Generation," is the named for one of the first Western restaurants in Tokyo. The real one opened in 1895 and is still operating. It originated several now-classic Japanese dishes, including tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet), omurice (omelet rice), and yes, hayashi rice. There's more information here and here.

Heart Cocktail is a mood, an atmosphere, a lingering aftertaste. I really like it, and I hope you will too. You can get this volume from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.