2024 in Review

A year of retreads and repeats, none of them good: War in Ukraine. War in the Middle East. Famine in Sudan. Famine in Gaza. Covid and flu and RSV, oh my. Donald Trump, the once-and-future president. It's all downhill now.

Orphan Fansubs

Orphan's output maintained its strong pace, primarily thanks to new translator Perevodildo and "veteran" team member Skr (he's decades younger than I am). An orphan series, Kingdom of Chaos: Born to Kill, was redone and completed, and another, Gakkou no Yuurei, set in motion.

1. Fruit Brains. This set of shorts, about Orange attempting to complete various missions while Pineapple pesters him with pointless questions, is just plain hilarious.
   
2. Mellow. A philandering layabout poses as his sister, a teacher, to escape retribution. His "lessons" continuously land him in hot water.
   
3. One Pound Gospel. Takahashi Rumiko at her finest. A failing fighter with too large an appetite is taken in hand by a novice nun and put on the road to success.
   
4. DAYS OAD (2017). A set of omake for the series, set at a summer training camp. Joint with Saizen.
5. Asatte Dance. A young man awakens in bed with a nubile naked girl. He has no memory of who she is or how she got there. Is she after his body, his inheritance, or both?
   
6. Nayuta. A young girl takes in a refugee with a strange artifact and finds herself on the front line of liberating humankind from aliens. Life, The Universe, and Everything explain in less than 90 minutes.
   
7. Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro v2. A lighthearted mystery set in Nagasaki, featuring a truant girl, her perceptive cat, and several mysterious and/or tragic strangers..
8. Heart Cocktail Again. More Watase Saizou shorts about romance found, lost, and regained. Joint with DarkWispers and LonelyChaster. 
9. Science Saru x MBS Original Short Anime Daisakusen. More shorts, mostly funny, one enigmatic.
   
10. Boku no Oldies wa All-Color. A Watase Saizou "manga with music," first of three. Joint with DarkWispers and LonelyChaser.
11. Bakuen Campus Guardress. One of the first OVAs ever subbed, and a wicked parody of the "schoolkids save the world" genre.. 
12. Captain Bal. This Anime Tamago OVA is a warmhearted looked at an inept band of impoverished children trying to be pirates.
    
13. Chalk-iro no People. Another Watase Saizou "manga with music," mostly set in the "chalk-colored" apartment house of the title. Joint with DarkWispers and LonelyChaser. 
14. Bride of Deimos. A gothic tale of orchids, incest, and murder. 
15. Chuck Shimezou. Another charming Anime Tamago OVA, about a young "zipper youkai" trying to accomplish his first "closing."
16. Ore no Sora. The scion of the richest family in Japan decides to become a policeman and puts his fortune to work collaring fiendish criminals. Not one frame is believable. 
    
17. Koiko no Mainichi. A charming slice of life romance, but the life being sliced is that of a young Yakuza enforcer and his curvaceous bride.
    
18. Dragon Slayer Eiyuu Densetsu: Ouji no Tabidachi. Swords and sorcery and not much else.
19. Houkago no Tinker Bell. A "high school mystery," in which a bickering pair of friends try to solve the disappearance of a classmate..
20. Garden of Remembrance. An explosion of color and imagination, set to a melancholy song.
21. Michite Kuru Toki no Mukou ni. A sweeping reincarnation romance, spanning millennia. Two lovers in ancient Mongolia are separated by fate, but their shared red deer talismans strive to bring them together across time.
    
22. Princess Army. Yawara Lite. A young judoka becomes an object of romantic contention between her adoring coterie and an arrogant stranger.
    
23. Nijuushi no Hitomi. A look back at pre-war Japan, as seen through the eyes of a pacifistic teacher. She tries to remain true to her beliefs as war encroaches..
24. Nemurenu Yoru no Chiisana Ohanashi. Soothing short stories about a cat (named Cat) and his friends. They have simple adventures or just hang out and enjoy life.
    
25. Ryokunohara Labyrinth. A shounen-ai sci-fi tale, innocuous and baffling. 
26. Tottoi. A young boy returns home to Sardinia with his family. There, he discovers that a supposedly extinct seal species may not have vanished as completely as everyone thinks.
    
27. Ushiro no Hyakutaro. Three parts supernatural thriller, one part spiritualist claptrap. 
28. Two on the Road. The last of Watase Saizou's "manga with music." This one tells a complete story about two lovers who split up but eventually come back together. Joint with DarkWispers and LonelyChaser.
29. Kingdom of Chaos: Born to Kill. An amnesiac young man joins forces with two other outcasts to overthrow a bloodthirsty tyrant. But why is he the tyrant's spitting image?
    
30. Cat-Eyed Boy episodes 4 to 6. Three new episodes, now using laserdiscs rather than DVDs. The roughness of the source suits the material.
31. Aoki Honoo v2. The story of a heel (or psychopath) and his steady ascension by using (and discarding) the women in his life. 
32. Gakkou no Yuurei volume 1. Ghost stories set at schools. 
33. Gakkou no Yuurei volume 2. More ghost stories set at schools, including some live-action segments. 
34. Naki no Ryuu - Hiryuu no Shou (1991). An enigmatic Mahjong gambler, known only as The Calling Dragon, is caught up in a Yakuza war.
35. OL Kaizou Kouza. A ripe piece of Japanese misogyny, purporting to show through comic skits the superiority of male workers to "office ladies."
36. Cat-Eyed Boy episodes 7 and 8. More adventures of our half-cat-youkai hero.
37. Ichigatsu ni wa Christmas. A Christmas shoujo that is neither a typical Christmas story nor a typical shoujo, but rather a character study of two deeply flawed individuals.
38. Natsufuku no Shoujo-tachi. An anime and live-action documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima, focusing on three teenage schoolgirls who perished in the blast.
39. Plastic Little. Urushihara Satoshi's character designs on unfettered display. What else do you need to know?
    

My personal favorites included One Pound Gospel, Captain Bal and Chuck Shimezou, Nemurenu Yoru no Chiisana Ohanashi, Nijuushi no Hitomi, and Michite Kuru Toki no Mukou ni. Plastic Little was the group's guilty pleasure for the year. The two ultra-shorts, Fruit Brains and Science Saru x MBS Original Short Anime DaisakusenI, tickled my funny bone.

A big "thank you" to all the team members, including translators (and timers) Perevodildo and Skr, timer ninjacloud, QCs Nemesis, Uchuu, Rezo, Topper3000, VigorousJammer, and ImAWasteOfHair, and encoders anonymous1, anonymous2, "coffee," Rezo, and WOWmd. I must also thank the Arutha foundation, which hosts all of Orphan's releases on IRC and reseeded all of our past releases. Finally, I'd like to thank our joint-project collaborators: Inka, DarkWispers, and LonelyChaser. But whether mentioned or not, every staff member has contributed to the work this year.

The Audio Side

Orphan released one additional soundtrack this year, Boku no Oldies wa All-Color, as well as the OP/ED EP from OL Kaizou Kouza.

 
Work for Other Groups

Some old, some new.

• Frozen-EviL. I continued to edit the slow-moving Blu-Ray version of Yawara! Maybe next year.
  
• Perevodildo. I edited and typeset a new version of Guskou Budori. I started editing and typesetting Ningen Kakumei (The Human Revolution), a long series about a Japanese religious movement. Because of Orphan's backlog, I'll only be doing typesetting after episode 1.
  
• Darkonius. I started editing and typesetting a new version of Damekko Doubutsu (Useless Animals). This is one of my favorite short series.
• WasteofBlindness. I continued typesetting Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko.
  

Favorites of 2024

I'm not an anime critic, so I don't try to compile a "best of" list for the anime year. Instead, I'm listing my favorites of the year and why they kept me interested all the way through. As usual, shows with lots of "action" (i.e., violence) mostly don't make the cut.

In alphabetical order:

• Boku no Kokoro no Yabai season 2. This exploration of two mismatched junior high students stumbling toward friendship and even romance is one of the best romcoms ever. Season 2 showed the relationship progressing toward a key milestone.
  
• Dandadan. Balls out (literally) batshit craziness from start to finish. Exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, and wonderfully animated by Science Saru. More to come.
  
• Dungeon Meshi. Comedy, fantasy, and food combined with a crazy cast of goofballs. More to come.
  
• Karasu wa Aruji wo Erabanai. If you like high fantasy, it doesn't come much better than this. A fascinating premise and deep plot mechanics work smoothly with a boy's coming of age drama.
  
• Kusuriya no Hitorigoto. I'm very partial to historical shoujo (such as Saiunkoku Monogatari and Akatsuko no Yona), so this should be no surprise. A quirky heroine, an apparently hopeless love interest, a complex plot with many subplots; what's not to like? Starts again in early 2025.
• Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san. A real sleeper, with a farcical sci-fi plot (panda-loving alien general fights directionally-challenged red ranger, except on their days off) cloaking a wistful and melancholy slice-of-life about the importance of stopping to smell the roses.
  
• Make Heroine ga Oosugiro! This show played with the tropes of the harem light novel, with the self-aware hero more an observer and facilitator than protagonist.
  
• Natsume Yuujinchou season 7. I love this show. Its moodiness and melancholy, as well as its fundamental decency, never pall. Long may Nyanko-sensei thrive.
• Ramen Aka Neko. Cats! Ramen! Cats making ramen! This slice-of-life comedy went far beyond its basic gag. More to come.
  
• Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid season 3. A wonderful fantasy romcom that received a complete, albeit cheap, adaptation. The story is heartwarming, the ending, deserved.
  

Quirky personal favorites:

• Dungeon no Nako no Hito. This very low-key comedy answered a burning question: how do all those damned fantasy dungeons actually work? The heroine's deadpan reactions to one ridiculous revelation after another never palled.
• Jiisan Baasan Wakagaeru. This show will be on no-one else's "favorites of 2024" list, except mine. Very soothing, and excellent proof of the maxim, "Youth is wasted on the young."
  

Ooi! Tonbo also made me rethink my aversion to golf - almost. I'm enjoying the Ranma 1/2 reboot, rather more than original. Dosanko Gal wa Namara Menkoi was a good romcom but a bit generic. Re: Monster was a guilty pleasure, the one isekai I didn't toss right away. Sousei no Frieren fell off the list, because the second half's "exam" arc wasn't nearly as compelling as the first half.

 

Personal Milestones

I've been fansubbing for a long time. Since I started, I've kept track of all the projects I've worked on and all the scripts I've touched, mostly as an editor, but sometimes as a QC, a typesetter, or even (under duress) a timer. This year, I reached some significant milestones:

• I've worked on more than 750 projects
• I've worked on more than 3000 scripts
  
• I've edited more than 2800 scripts
• I've typeset more than than 1000 scripts

Now the caveats: a few of the projects are v2s, so scripts that have been edited may have been edited a second time. Most of the projects I've typeset I've also edited or QCed. On the other hand, I don't count the release checks I do on all Orphan releases. No matter how I count, it's a lot. Fingers crossed for even more.

 

Looking Ahead

Orphan ends 2024 with a significant backlog of projects. Additional translators, editors, typesetters, and QCs are always welcome.

Meanwhile, thanks, everyone, both team members and fans. Have a happy and safe 2025.