Falcom Gakuen S2

Here's an unusual (for Orphan) foray into near-contemporary anime: Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen SC (or more simply, season 2 of Falcom Gakuen), which aired less than a year ago. This is also the team's first foray into the ultra-short episode format: each episode is just under two minutes.

I liked the first season of Falcom Gakuen, which was subbed by Migoto, for its sheer absurdity. Even though I knew nothing about the underlying games, it was clear that the characters had been morphed beyond recognition for comic effect. However, season 2 came and went without subtitles. When raws became available, I decided to sub the show. Because all twelve episodes had less dialog than one standard anime episode, it didn't seem like heavy lifting. Nonetheless, I decided to invite RTM, the leader of Migoto, to join the team, creating an Orphan-Migoto joint project... and I'm very glad I did.

Falcom Gakuen SC proved much harder that I thought it would be. Despite the short episode length, there were more signs in 90 seconds than in most standard anime episodes. The breakneck dialog included a great many puns and references that most of us missed entirely. Fortunately, RTM knew the Falcom ouvre very well. His thorough checks and astute suggestions ensured than the subs incorporated as much of the Falcom lore as possible.

Moho Kareshi translated the episodes, and convexity checked the translation. ninjacloud timed, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica and konnakude did QC. RTM both checked the scripts and encoded the raws. The typesetting, including the "opening song," draws heavily on Migoto's subs of the first season.

There's not much I can say about Falcom Gakuen SC as a series. The jokes fly fast and furious. Some of them hit; some of them don't. I suspect more would hit if I knew the underlying games, but even so, there's enough breakneck humor to keep me smiling. I hope that will be true for you as well. A few notes:

• In episode 5, one of the characters says that Rapp and Angelica sound alike, which they deny. Both are played by the same voice actress, Shindo Naomi.
• In episode 6, Dark collapses on hearing the name of Legendary Assassin Yin, because he mishears it as Gin (silver), his weakness.

In the meantime, quoting the show's two-word motto (and opening song): Go Fight!

Next Senki Ehrgeiz

Here's another from Erik's Pile of Laserdisc Goodness: Next Senki Ehrgeiz, also known as just plain Ehrgeiz, probably to maximize confusion with the fighting game of the same name and year. This 1997 series was one of the first mecha shows on late night anime. It was licensed in the US by AnimeVillage (the predecessor of Bandai USA) and released with subtitles on six VHS tapes. After that, it slipped through the cracks. The show was released in Japan on Laserdisc, and a DVD version was promised, but nothing happened. If people know the show at all, they know it from the mrips encode of the US VHS tapes.

Next Senki Ehrgeiz draws its plot straight from the Gundam cookbook, with the Earth government embroiled in a war against the Next space colonies, using mechas called Metal Vehicles or MVs. Complicating matters are a party of Earth revolutionaries, known as Terra, who want to create peace by waging war against the Earth government; and a band of outlaws living in an abandoned space colony, Next 7. All are catalyzed into action (although the Earth government disappears from the story early in the show) by the appearance, or reappearance, of a super-mecha with a mind of its own, the System with Absolute Consciousness, called SAC, or S for short. For a more elaborate exegesis of the plot, I refer you to this review.

I don't usually like mecha anime or work on it; the last one I remember before this was Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and that was only because of Youko. Nonetheless, I found Next Senki Ehrgeiz a pretty good ride, despite its lack of originality. Each faction has compelling characters to capture the viewers attention. For Next, it's the ambitious Captain Akane Aoi and the mysterious cyborg Mr. Arnold; for Terra, their psychic leader Hal and his loyal lieutenant Galbraith; for the outlaws, the energetic free spirit Jay and the veteran warrior Balzak. The show spins the parallel stories of the Next military, the Terra revolutionaries, and the outlaws together to provide narrative momentum. The central mystery of the nature and intentions of S remains unknown until almost the end of the show. And there are LOTS of explosions. What else do you need?

Well, one thing I don't need quite so much of is the Next 7 orphans, Ken and Ann. They're used too often as plot crutches. For example, an early episode revolves around getting critical medicine for Ann, while a later one is about getting critical medicine for Ken. They're fine in small doses, but they're nowhere near as interesting as the Next 7 adults (sorry, kids).

This release uses the R1 subtitles from the VHS release. They seem pretty good (aside from a few obvious clunkers that have been fixed). macros74 transcribed and timed the subtitles; OCR didn't work on the sickly green VHS subtitles. deltakei translated the signs in the specials. I edited and typeset; Juggen did the karaokes; Calyrica and konnakude did QC; and Erik encoded from his own Japanese Laserdiscs. The result is notably better video and more readable subtitles than in the VHS version.

Speaking of karaokes, the opening song, Dream Jack, is a knockout, a hard rocker by Humming Bird that's perfect for a mecha show. The ending song, One Voice for Ehrgeiz by Mariko Fukui, is a soothing slow number for decompressing after the action. The background music is serviceable and appropriate. The original soundtrack hasn't turned up on the Interwebs yet.

The lead seiyuu were all veterans. While Iwata Mitsuo (voice of Jay) had lead roles in Akira and Onegai Teacher, Sasaki Nozomu (voice of Hal) and Ichijo Miyuki (voice of Aoi) mostly had featured roles; for example, Miyuki provided the voice of Jody Rockwell, the Canadian heavyweight judo player in Yawara! The voice cast is uniformly good.

This release also includes the six specials that were included with the even-numbered episodes. These specials use footage from the main episodes; there's nothing new. The first special, in episode 2, acts as a teaser and combines scenes from many different episodes. Later specials are basically just recaps. The episodes are chaptered, so it's easy to get to (or skip over) the specials.

So here's Next Senki Ehrgeiz in as nice a version as we're going to get unless some Immense Power (as S is referred to) decided to rescue it from oblivion and make a remastered DVD release. Hope you like it!

Checking a Release

Orphan's a small group, and the task of assembling a release and readying it for distribution usually falls to me. Over time, my release flow has become more and more elaborate, but every step plays a part in assuring a decent (though hardly flawless) result.

1. Create a backup copy of the script for later comparisons.
2. Apply any remaining quality control (QC) reports.
3. Create chapters. (I use the chapter editor in mkvmerge.)
4. In Aegisub, check the signs, the OP, and the ED. These are areas where subtle mistakes may have occurred and been overlooked during QC. In particular, check that signs are timed correctly, and (in a multi-episode series) that the first and last lines of the OP and ED haven't been clipped off by a cut-and-paste error.
5. In Aegisub, collect the fonts for muxing. Pay attention to errors about missing glyphs. While CCCP on Windows makes reasonable choices about substituting other fonts, VLC or non-Windows systems may not. You may have to substitute "invisible characters" for \h.
   
6. Mux the release with mkvmerge, and save the mkvmerge settings in case you need to revisit the result. I tend to label tracks as well as language-code them (except the video), and I fill in the "global" segment field with the file name, because VLC displays it.
7. Check the muxed file with "mkvmerge -i file.mkv". This will show whether all parts are present, including the chapter file, and whether all fonts have the right MIME type (x-truetype-font).
8. Play the release and verify the track names. I use the Properties window of MPC-HC, which invokes Mediainfo.
   
9. Verify the chapter navigation points.
10. Watch the release from end to end. This is the only way to catch any missed lines, encoding glitches, and other faults that can be overlooked in Aegisub. Apply corrections as needed.
11. Using Aegisub, export the revised subs, without tags, as a plain text file. Use a text editor to join lines that were split and remove \N, multiple spaces, signs, songs, etc.
12. Open the exported, fixed subs in Word and run the grammar checker. This also acts as a final spelling check. Apply corrections to the script in Aegisub as needed. The Word grammar checker isn't perfect, but it will help find homonym errors (your/you're, there/their).
13. Check the differences between the final script and the initial script with a graphical difference checker, like WinDiff. This is to make sure that all corrections were applied properly and not fat-fingered.
14. Remux the release with the final script, using the saved settings.
15. Spot check by verifying that key differences highlighted by the difference checker are in the final file.
16. Calculate a CRC32 for the final file. (I use RapidSFV.)
17. Rename the multiplexed file to [group] series - nn [CRC32].mkv (or your favorite convention).
18. Create a patch file that will patch the raw to the final release. This allows team members with the raw to create the final release for seeding. (I use a tool called PatchCreator.)
19. Create a torrent for the released file. (I use qBitTorrent.)
20. Create a SFV (CRC32 checking file) for the released file. (I use RapidCRC again.)
21. Upload the torrent to your favorite tracker.
22. Announce the torrent on your favorite sites.
23. Profit!

I know it seems like a lot of work - it is a lot of work, in fact - but I've added all these steps over time to address problems that got through simpler flows.

 

[Updated 07-Feb-2024]

2015 in Review

Time to look back on 2015. At a personal level, there were quite a few changes: I retired after 50 years in the computer industry and also welcomed a third grandchild. And then there was anime...

Orphan Fansubs

This has been a year of staff changes as well. Orphan lost a wonderful colleague, CP, to illness; other staffers retired due to personal priorities. But the team also welcomed new members, including two Laserdisc collectors, ics- and Erik, who have provided pristine sources for rare OVAs; an encoder, bananadoyouwanna, who has created original encodes when source material is available; and a jack-of-all-trades, Skr, who has been my colleague in several groups.

Projects completed this year:

• D4 Princess. This short-episode comedy series was no world-beater, but it deserved better than being abandoned three times.
• Kakyuusei (1995). This soft-core hentai never made it to DVD, and only the first two episodes were ever subtitled in English. Later in the year, we were able to get better raws, ripped directly by ics- from his own laserdisc, and released a second version.
• Tomoe ga Yuko. The first release based on Erik's collection. This early 90s OVA is a terrific example of the genre and a good watch.
• Polar Bear Cafe. Orphan's "great white whale," a 50-episode Blu-Ray resub that required extensive typesetting. It remains as funny and sly as it was on first viewing in 2012.
• Parol no Miraijima. This "orphan" of the Anime Mirai 2014 class is a charming and colorful OVA about innocent creatures confronted with human civilization in all its complexity. In addition to the 720p release based on an Internet raw, bananadoyouwanna encoded a 1080p release from a BDMV. A joint project with M74.
• Sei Michaela Gakuen Hyouryuuki, version 2. This release was also based on Erik's laserdisc collection.
• Oz. Yet another release based on Erik's collection. This unjustly neglected sci-fi OVA from the early 90s was one of the best shows I worked on this  year.
• Hi-Speed Jecy. This orphan rescue featured new encodes directly from Erik's laserdiscs. It's a sci-fi OVA series set in a dark and violent universe and is another good watch.
• Bavi Stock I and II. Orphan's luck with 80s and 90s OVAs ran out with this pair from the mid 80s. The less said by me, the better.
• Tokimeki Tonight. The completion of this orphaned 80s comedy series took rather longer than expected, primarily in order to get better raws, but it's good, clean fun.
• Sanctuary. This 1996 extremely noir OVA was also based on a new encode from Erik's laserdisc collection. It is a "must watch" for any fan of the genre.

So that's eleven projects finished - twelve if you count both versions of Kakyuusei. Not bad!

Work for Other Groups

•  FFF. I edited Akatsuki no Yona (and its OAD), Juuou Mujin no Fafnir, Shokugeki no Souma, Ore Monogatari, the Hoozuki OADs, Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru, and Noragami Aragato. I QCd the Blu-Ray releases of Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai and Petit Gargantia.
• FroZen-Evil. I timed and typeset the Miyuki music video. I continued to edit Laughing Salesman and the Yawara! Blu-Rays and to QC Psycho Armor Govarian. I also did some fill-in typesetting. All these projects are on slow-roll.
• Kiteseekers. I did some fill-in typesetting on Milky Holmes S4 and Eriko.
• M74. I collaborated with M74 on Parol no Miraijima and High School Agent.
• Magai. I QC'd several short films for Morellet's group.
• Kaitou. I edited Young Black Jack.
• C1. I continued to edit Kakyuusei (1999), which is moving slowly.
• OddJob. I edited an as-yet-unreleased OVA series.

Akatsuki no Yona was, hands down, the best current series I worked on all year (although I like Noragami quite a lot). I hope for a second season, but I'm not holding my breath. In general, I find current anime uninteresting, but you know that already. Still, I'm usually willing to help other teams out - particularly if I can get some help in return.

Looking Ahead

There's no shortage of raws for unsubbed shows; I think I have more than 30 stashed away at the moment. Translation and translation checking are the greatest bottleneck, as it is for most groups, and then QC. So we'll continue to do a mixture of original translations and resubs, focusing on the obscure, the incomplete, and the neglected.

If you'd like to help, give me a shout. Please note, however, that experience is required.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary is as close to the quintessential 90s OVA as you can get. It has yakuza, corrupt politicians, nudity, sex, and violence. It moves along at a breakneck pace for an hour, with nary a dull moment. That makes its fate inexplicable. The OVAs were abandoned after one episode, and the one that was released never made it to DVD.

Sanctuary is based on a ten-volume manga of the same name by Ichigami Ryouichi and Fumimura Sho. It chronicles the parallel stories of two Japanese school friends, Hojo Akira and Asami Chiaki, who as youngsters survived the killing fields of Cambodia. The two are determined to create a safe haven for themselves - the "sanctuary" of the title - in the treacherous terrain of late 20th century Japan. Based on a game of rock-paper-scissors, Hojo takes the "dark path" and becomes a yakuza, while Chiaki takes the "light path" and goes into politics. They covertly support each other as each attempts to rise to the top of his chosen field.

The OVA is unsparingly bleak in its portrait of Japanese society. Politicians are shown as thoroughly corrupt: reptilian old men only interested in money and much younger women. The yakuza don't fare any better: they're portrayed as greedy, cowardly, and backstabbing. Hojo and Chiaki are ruthless in their pursuit of their aims, manipulating others and themselves to acquire power. Only the Deputy Chief of Police, Ishihara Kyoko, seems to stand above the fray, but that changes in later volumes of the manga. The sex is explicit for a non-hentai anime, and the violence is quite graphic. This OVA is NSFW and most definitely not family-friendly.

The voice acting is very good. The leads are played by Hayami Sho (Hojo Akira) and Nakata Kazuhiro (Asami Chiaki), who are still active in the industry twenty years later. Tsuru Hiromi (Ishihara Kyoko) has had recurring roles in the Ranma and Dragon Ball franchises. The background music is a jazzy score well-suited to such a noir OVA. The ending song, A Baby's Born, is sung by American jazz vocalist Chris Connor. It suits the mood perfectly. The soundtrack is very rare; if anyone has it in digital form, please let me know.

Orphan's version of Sanctuary is technically a resub. The script is based on the original US VHS subtitle. It has been completely translation checked, because the original subs were a bit loose in places, retimed, and fully typeset. In addition, the Laserdisc contains an extra and a few minutes of promotional material not present on the VHS version. The extra is an illustration gallery of Ichigami Ryouichi's color drawings and demonstrates the subtlety and vitality of his work on Sanctuary.

M74 transcribed the original subtitles from HansDampf's VHS rip and then timed them. kokujin-kun translation checked the whole show and translated the signs and promotional material. convexity translated the manga captions in the Image Gallery. I edited and typeset. Calyrica, Juggen, and Skr did QC. Erik encoded from his own Japanese Laserdisc. 
 
Is Sanctuary an example of a show discontinued because it was too critical of the Japanese establishment? It is unsparing in its portrait of Japanese politics and its criticism of the ruling LDP (lightly disguised as the DLP in the original Japanese). In this century, Japanese anime has tended to be much more indirect in its criticism or satire of Japanese society; the kind of direct critique featured in Sanctuary no longer happens. (Japan's press has been muzzled by restrictive laws in the last few years; Japan now ranks 61st on a world-wide index of press freedom.) While American cartoons have gained a biting edge with shows like The Simpsons and South Park, Japanese anime has lost its sting. The satiric intent may still be there, in shows like Un-Go and One-Punch Man, but it's disguised. It makes me nostalgic for shows like Sanctuary.

High School Agent

Continuing our exploration of 1980s OVAs "left behind" on old media, here is M74's High School Agent. This cheerfully loopy action show features Kanamori Kosuke as a high school student who is dragooned by the UN into being a secret agent. Kosuke apparently made the mistake of hacking into the UN's network and accessing secret files, so they offered him a choice: be an agent or be killed. Now Kosuke spends his weekends taking orders from Ms. Ishii and pursuing criminals and terrorists world-wide, instead of going on a date to Tokyo Disneyland with his crush, Satonaka.

High School Agent never made it past VHS, and that's sort of understandable. The premise and plot are completely bonkers. In the first episode, Kosuke confronts an evil colonel who stole an ancient gypsy stone that possesses amazing properties (Temple of Doom, anyone?). The second is even more over-the-top, involving a dastardly plot by neo-Nazis in South America to seize power again. Nonetheless, the show is a hoot. The action moves along swiftly, there are satirical salutes to other shows, and Kosuke remains true to his adolescent self, constantly whining that he wants to be somewhere else even as he battles the bad guys and saves the day.

The voice cast includes:

• Yao Kazuki (Kosuke) is best known for his lead role as Dark Schneider in Bastard!! and his recurring role as Franky in One Piece. He also played Sofue in Boyfriend and Date Ikkaku in Akai Hayate, both Orphan releases.
• Koyama Mami (Ms. Ishii) played the female leads in two Tezuka specials, Bander Book and I Am Son Gokuu. She also played Arale in the Doctor Slump & Arale-chan franchise, the mature version of the title character in Millenium Actress, and the title role in the Minky Momo franchise
• Toda Keiko (Nina, the duplicitous assistant in episode two) starred as Kitarou in the 1980's versions of GeGeGe no Kitarou, as Anpanman in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise, and as Hitomi, one of the leads, in Cats Eye. She also appeared in Hi-Speed Jecy, Oz, Bavi Stock, and Hoshi Neko Full House (all Orphan releases). 

The translation was done by an anonymous contributor. M74 timed and QC'd, while I edited and typeset. The raws are from ARR and are about as good as a VHS source is likely to be.

Enjoy another forgotten OVA from the 1980s! High School Agent is available from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Tokimeki Tonight, Take 2

Eight months ago, I wrote:

Tokimeki Tonight has been on my list of orphan series for a long time, but I didn't think there was much chance to do anything about it. Then, in fairly short order, I found raws, a translator, and best of all, a member of the original Saitei team who had access to the scripts, karas, styles, etc. konnakude made it possible to revive this show, and Orphan is proud to present the next episode. It's an Orphan-Saitei joint project and has the approval of the Saitei group leader, who had to give up fansubbing due to real life issues.

Well, I was premature in thinking that Tokimeki Tonight would be finished quickly. It has taken far longer than I expected to complete the series. The tragic death of our colleague CP blew an irreparable hole in the QC team; Tokimeki is the last Orphan series he worked on. Then the project leader, konnakude, was out for several months between family vacation and real-life issues. Finally, the availability of new raws from the Animax rebroadcast led us to delay further work until September.

The new raws are a significant improvement on the Internet raws we had been using. They have more vibrant colors, better detail definition, and improved image stability. (Perhaps they presage a future remastered DVD or even Blu-Ray release? That certainly proved true for Yawara!) That in turn has led to some changes in the scripts. Eternal_Blizzard redid the karaokes for improved legibility and more accurate timing. The typesetting has been redone to match the colors and stability of the new raws. And of course, the additional time has allowed for further QC. The styling remains unchanged, to match the Saitei releases, although vertical and horizontal margins have been increased.

Tokimeki Tonight is a harmless early 80s comedy series about a high school girl, Ranze Eto, who happens to be the daughter of a vampire and a werewolf. She really just wants to be just a normal girl, pursue her high-school crush, Makabe-kun, and fend off her rival, Kamiya, who's from a yakuza family, but she has these powers - which are sometimes great to have and sometimes not so great. There's not much plot continuity, so each episode can be taken on its own, once you understand the basic premise.

This is the first Orphan project for which I was not the project leader and the editor. konnakude fulfilled both roles admirably. Moho Kareshi translated the scripts, and kokujin-kun graciously agreed to check them. Ephemere timed the first episode, ninjacloud the other seven. I did the typesetting and shared QC with CP, pheon18, and Eternal_Blizzard. Eternal_Blizzard redid the karaokes; Juggen timed the additional ending verses in episode 34. bananadoyouwanna encoded the raws from the Animax transport streams.

So at last Tokimeki Tonight is no longer an orphan series and can be appreciated in its complete and unadulterated silliness. Sit back, relax, and don't let the vampires bite.