Chocchan Monogatari

Orphan is really pleased to present another full-length anime movie set before and during World War II: 1996's Chocchan Monogatari (Chocchan's Story). Based on an autobiographical story for children by Kuronayagi Cho, mother of the famous actress Kuronoyagi Tetsuko, it tells about Cho's life as a wife and a young mother before and during the war. It's another fine addition to Orphan's releases about this terrible period. And like Hoshizora no Violin, a violin has a prominent role.

Cho is a musically-inclined teenager, born in Hokkaido. (We meet her singing the chorus of the Habenera aria in Carmen.) She is attending the Tokyo Conservatory, when she meets and falls in love with a violinist in an orchestra, Kuronoyagi Moritsuna. 

When her parents refuse to countenance a marriage, she and Moritsuna elope to Tokyo, where he ekes out a living as concertmaster of the New Symphony Orchestra. Despite their poverty, they start a family and find happiness. After some difficulties, Cho finds a progressive school suitable for Tetsuko's ebullient temperament. 

But the war soon casts a long shadow over their lives. One of the children dies of septicemia, and then Moritsune is drafted. 

Cho is left to fend for herself and her three surviving children, as the war brings the horrors of aerial bombardment and starvation closer and closer, including the firebombing of their home in Tokyo in March, 1945. 

We know from the outset that the family will make it through, but it's a close-run thing.

As might be expected, the movie includes a lot of period songs. Fragments are heard as insert songs:

• 5:40 "Sun is setting..." From Yuyake Kokaye. 
• 17:54 "Father, you were strong..."  父よあなたは強かった, a Japanese patriotic military song.
• 41:58 A folksong, Yasubigushi; its lyrics differ from performer to performer. 

The voice cast includes:

• Shimamoto Sumi (Kuroyanagi Cho "Chocchan") 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 Nayotake no Kaguya-hime in Utsu no Miko the movie, Shokupanman in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise, Tinkerbell in Peter Pan no Bouken, Antoinette in Reporter Blues, and Big Mama in Bakuretsu Hunter. She also played Sue in Maris the Choujo, Elice in Fire Emblem, Miss Akiko in The Girl with Blue Eyes, Suzuko and Suzu in Fire Tripper, the female lead in volume 3 of the original Heart Cocktail, the unnamed female lead in Heart Cocktail Again, and the mother in Kiku and the Wolf, all Orphan releases.
• Tanaka Hideyuki (Kuroyanagi Moritsuna) played Terryman in the Kinnikuman franchise and Rayearth in Magic Knight Rayearth. He also played Kusuri in Tenjou Hen: Utsu no Miko, Max in Dallos, Unno Rokurou in Sanada 10, Harmer in Al Caral no Isan, Sammy in Bavi Stock, Sawamura in Nozomi Witches, Ronron in Greed, Aoto in Oedo ga Nemurenai!, Katze in Ai no Kusabi, Minowa Takanari in Karuizawa Syndrome, Kazuhiko, Chiko's father in Ohoshi-sama no Rail, Ma Su, Fengji's lover, in Sangokushi movie 3, and an extra in Heart Cocktail, volume 5, all Orphan releases.
• Tamagawa Sakiko (Kuroyanagi Tetsuko, oldest daughter) played Natsumi Rumi in Call Me Tonight, Shiori in Akai Hayate, Lar Lipp in Greed, Shuko in Genji, Part 1 (all Orphan releases), Athena in Appleseed XIII, Tachikoma in GITS SAC, Kanoko in Shouwa Monogatari, Dotta in Sorcerer Hunters, Rouge in Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko, Masaki in the Tenchi Muyo franchise, Natsumi in the You're Under Arrest franchise, and Princess Suurya in Kamasutra.
• Kanai Mika (Kuroyanagi Noriaki, first son) played the title role in the Licca-chan franchise, Normad in the Galaxy Angel franchise, Histoire in the Hyperdimension Neptunia franchise, Melonpanda in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise, Misato in Nana, Lotte in Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko, Kanna in Gakkou no Yuurei volume 1, Tanaka Kumi in Tanjou: Debut, and Hime in Bakuen Campus Guardress. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Takayama Minami (Kuroyanagi Meiji, second son) starred as the title roles in Kiki's Delivery Service and Space Girl Yamamoto Yohko, and, most famously, played Conan Edogawa in the more than 1000 episodes, OVAs, movies, and specials of the Detective Conan franchise. She played Yuu in Cosmic Fantasy and Emi in Genji, Part 1, both Orphan releases.
• Ito Hiroshi (Kadoyama Shuutsuu) played Kousaku in Barakamon, Souchirou in F, Hugues in Lord Marksman and Vanadis, and the Aquironian commander in Nana Toshi Monogatari, an Orphan release.
• Niki Terumi (Kadoyama Miyoshi) played Simone in Etoile de la Seine and Miyoko in the Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! movies
• Nakajima Toshihiko (Kobayashi Sousaku) played Sakon in Moeyo Ken, Masami in Paranoia Agent, Da Ruma in Tenchi Muyo! GXP, Doc Gaward in Angel Links,  and small parts in Next Senki Ehrgeiz and Nozomi Witches, both Orphan releases.

The director, Tokito Hiroko, helmed many famous series, including Touch, Hiatari Ryouko, Yawara!, Miracle Girls, Yami no Matsuei, and Kaikan Phrase. After 2002, she turned her talents to screenwriting.

The R2J ISO for this show has been knocking around for a while. Because the DVD for this show is badly mastered, particularly the audio, the team debated working on it but finally decided to proceed. Perevodildo translated and rough-timed. Eternal_Blizzard fine-timed. I edited and typeset. Eternal_Blizzard, Paul Geromini, and bananadoyouwanna QCed. The encoder was an anonymous friend, who tried valiantly to deal with the audio and video issues:

As you mentioned, the footage was quite atrocious. Despite ostensibly being progressive, it looks almost like they took a telecined source and hard deinterlaced it to the disc (which would explain the "progressive" 29.97 frame rate and innumerable frame blends). I can hardly believe it was sold to the public in such a state.

Trying to manually freeze/replace each blend would be unfeasible, but fortunately I was able to detect and eliminate about 85-90% of the blended frames automatically and then preserve the correct film frame rate of 23.976 fps. It's not quite perfect but should yield an appreciably cleaner and smoother playback. The footage also displayed some gnarly aliasing which I applied some light AA to help correct to extent possible without harming fine detail, even if it appears like I hadn't. Stronger AA filtering passes could be applied to fully resolve it, but in testing I found the required amount oversoftened the image to the point that small details like a character's beard whiskers would get blurred out, so I decided against it. Even so, if you think the overall presentation still appears too jagged, let me know and I can go back and apply stronger AA for a v2 and you can see which is option is less objectionable. [Ultimately, we used the "stronger" AA version; easier on the eyes.]

Other than the above and some light dehaloing, the source was slightly bitrate starved in dark scenes, with noticeable smoothing/macroblocking. Instead of applying DNR, I inserted a bit of adaptive grain matching to dither it out.

With respect to the audio, sheesh, you weren't kidding.  :-/ We've had sources from the 80s (on Laserdisc!) that sounded more comprehensible in places. I'm not sure if it was the result of poor mixing, where dialogue just was given lower priority than the classical BGM and prominent violin accompaniments, or what. Audio restoration is not really my forté, but I decided to try a few rudimentary steps to clean up the DVD audio track imported into Audacity. I losslessly exported the result and compressed it to FLAC and included it above, which I think did improve the audio clarity for the treble/midrange for speaking, particularly in quieter aside-remarks/inner-monologues such as around ~25 minutes in... [We used the edited audio as well.]

Just as with Aoi Kioku, this show really needs a remastered release from film source. And just as with Aoi Kioku, it's unlikely to get one. Cho's antiwar views are clear, and the film's sympathies are equally clear. This movie would not be popular with today's Japanese government.

Despite the video and audio flaws, Chocchan Monogatari is really good. I recommend it highly, as does the rest of the team. (Perevodildo awards it his highest accolade, "kino.") You can get the release from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.