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.