Nora

Here's another project with a BakaBT connection, the 1985 sci-fi OVA Nora. I first learned about Nora in the long (and mostly unanswered) thread called "Old Anime for Subbing." It was one of the few shows listed that had a decent and accessible raw, so I downloaded it and eventually persuaded the Orphan translators to work on it. Iri did the bulk of the translation, but both gamnark and skypilot helped out in places. Accordingly, they decided that all three should be listed as translators. ninjacloud timed, I edited and typeset (the signs are minimal), and Redac and I did the QC. Rather late in the game, Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions made a new encode from his own LaserDisc, with much better color fidelity than the original raw, and that's what has been used in this release. 

Nora is very much a creature of its time. It is set on a space station named Frontier Spaceport. In the forgotten depths of its service areas, a disgruntled scientist, Professor Dohati (formerly of MIT, natch), programs an AI called Artifiend, or Artie for short, to think of itself as the demon king. He directs it to conquer the world, which it does by infiltrating every computer system on Earth and in space and threatening to set off a nuclear war.  (Is it a coincidence that Artifiend visually resembles WHOPPR, the AI at the heart of 1983's War Games?) Dohati and Artifiend are opposed by another scientist, Professor Zachariasen, and his chance acquaintance, a teenaged girl named Nora Scholar. As might be expected, high-speed computational ability and pure logic prove no match for a teenaged girl's randomness, and the world is saved after suitably hazardous but completely PG adventures. 

Despite its Doomsday sci-fi plot, Nora is essentially a comedy. Nora sees everything that happens – from the freak accidents caused as Artie seizes control of the space station's computers to the booby-trapped journey to find Dohati's basement lair – as a grand adventure. She assumes that Artie is basically a teenaged boy whom she can wrap around her little finger, as she has already done with Professor Zachariasen. And the threat of nuclear Armageddon doesn't faze her in the least; to her it's just the tantrum of a lonely boy who needs some loving. She fixes everything in a breezy and offhand manner, alternating MacGuyver-like ingenuity with adolescent illogic, and then returns home. It's a fun ride and a ringing endorsement of Grrrl Power in an entirely 80s sexist way. 

Nora was played by the voice actress Yamamoto Yuriko, who also had the title roles in Lady Georgie, Mahoutsukai Sally, and Hello Sandybell. She sang the ending song in Nora as well as other shows. (Orphan fans may know her as the voice of Tomoe in Tomoe ga Yuku! or Telenne in Hi-Speed Jecy.) Professor Dohati was played by the late Nagai Ichigrou, a go-to voice actor for elderly, if slightly off-kilter, authority figures. He dubbed the voice of Dumbledore in the Japanese versions of the Harry Potter movies and Yoda in the Star Wars prequels. In anime, he showed a more manic and comic side as Happousai in Ranma ½ and Inokuma Jigoro in Yawara! Orphan fans may know him as the crazed narrator in Maroko/Gosenzosama Banbanzai! or the voice of Shima Togo in Yamato 2520. Professor Zachariasen was played by the late Utsumi Kenji, who also had a highly varied career. He dubbed Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies and Gimli the Dwarf in Lord of the Rings. In anime, he voiced the title role in Don Dracula, Alex Louis Armstrong in Fullmetal Alchemist, and Norimaki Senbei in the Dr. Slump & Arale-chan franchise, as well as many other roles. He appeared in Bavi Stock as well, but I don't know as which character.)

Romanization of the "Engrish" names caused endless problems. Dohati should be Dougherty, but it's spelled out in a sign. Zachariasen is listed in the ANN credits as Zakariasen, and Artifiend as Artifind. Only Nora's name is without controversy. And when Nora calls Artie a "memekurage," it's a fictional jellyfish due to an editor's misreading of xxクラゲ (xx kurage, or random jellyfish) as メメクラゲ (memekurage). 

So enjoy this early OVA, now finally subbed in English. We'll do the sequel, Twinkle Twinkle Nora Rock Me, if the translators feel like taking another dip in the pool.

Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro

Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro (The Murder Ticket Is Heart-Colored) is a 1990 standalone OVA based on a series of young adult novels for women by Yamaura Hiroyasu. Iri translated the show and did the initial timing. Yogicat did the detailed timing, I edited and typeset, and Redac and Xenath3297 did QC. The raw is an anonymous Internet rip from a Laserdisc and is pretty good, with excellent image stability and relatively little frame-blending. 

Satsujin Kippu tells the story of Nagare Seiko, a teenaged girl who has been temporarily suspended from her private high school in Tokyo for defending a friend from bullies. She decides to take advantage of this involuntary vacation by taking a trip to Nagasaki with her black-and-white cat, Gonbei. On the train down, she meets a handsome young man, a guitarist name Takano Kyouichirou, only to learn that he had apparently been murdered days earlier. She also encounters Misora Chuuta, a brash youngster who is clearly interested in her – an interest she doesn't reciprocate – and an older man, unnamed, who helps her when she's in trouble. Seiko repeatedly crosses paths with Chuuta as she tours Nagasaki, despite repeated attempts to give him the brush off. Eventually, Seiko gets involved in a murder mystery concerning a prominent local family, the Totsugawas. Reluctantly accepting Chuuta's help, she works to unravel the twin mysteries of the ghostly guitarist and the Totsugawa family. 

Satsujin Kippu is not a particularly deep mystery, and the solution comes out of left field, but it observes the rules of classical mystery fiction. (This allows the viewer to guess who the criminal is long before the main characters do.) Seiko makes a spunky heroine, never falling into tropes such as the maiden in distress or the tsundere. Chuuta is sufficiently eccentric to make him both interesting and suspicious. There's a lot more comedy and ghostly doings than clues and gore, so the result is a pleasant diversion for all ages (one brief nude scene aside). And besides, it has Gonbei, a cat that's rather talented: at one point, he gives Chuuta the traditional Japanese raspberry, the akanbe (pulling down one's lower eyelid and sticking out one's tongue).

The director, Sugiyama Taku, started at Tezuka Osamu's Mushi Productions, where he was Art Director for Sen'ya Ichiya Monogatari. He directed a number of other movies and TV series, including Hi no Tori 2772 and Bosco Daibouken. Toshihiko Seki, who played Misora Chuuta, has an extensive voice acting and stage resume, including Alexander in Reign: The Conquerer and Matsuda Kousaku in the Yawara properties. Matsuoka Miyuki, who played Nagare Seiko, has a more modest resume, including Fa Yuiry in the Gundam franchise.

Some translation notes:

• 3-kyu in Aikido. Aikido has two basic skill levels, kyu and dan. Within each level are grades, expressed by numbers. Kyu and dan are sometimes referred to as white belt and black belt, but other colors are used as well.
• Urakami Cathedral (St. Mary's Cathedral in Urakami) was built in 1895, when the long-standing ban against Christianity in Japan was lifted. It was completely destroyed in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and rebuilt in 1959 on its original site.
• The Nagasaki Peace Park abuts Urakami Cathedral. It contains a 10-meter tall sculpture, pictured in the anime, by local sculptor Seito Kitamura.
• The Dutch Slope (oranda-zaka) is a hillside residential area of Nagasaki where Dutch merchants settled in the second half of the 19^th century.
• Hinoki cypress bath. Hinoki cypress is a slow-growing Japanese tree. Its high quality wood is lemon-scented, light pinkish-brown, with a rich, straight grain, and is highly rot-resistant.
• Sannomaru means "third enclosure."

Enjoy this vintage mystery OVA.

Hashire Melos (1992)

Hashire Melos (Run, Melos) is a Japanese short story published by Osamu Dazai in 1940. It is a tale of friendship tested and proven. It appeals strongly to the Japanese and has been made into an anime on multiple occasions:

• 1979, episode 20 of Nihon Meisaku Douwa Series: Akai Tori no Kokoro.
• 1981, as a TV special.
• 1992, as movie (this release).
• 2009, as episodes 9-10 of Aoi Bungaku.

Hashire Melos is based on a ballad by Frederick Schiller and draws on the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias. It tells the story of Melos, a shepherd who crosses (either deliberately or inadvertently) the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius the Younger (called Dionysius II in the movie), and is condemned to death. He requests time to return home and settle his affairs, but the king refuses, believing that Melos will run off and never return. Melos' friend Selinuntius volunteers to take Melos' place. The king agrees but warns Melos that Selinuntius will be executed if Melos fails to return in three days. After numerous trials, Melos returns in the nick of time. The king is so astonished by this display of true friendship that he releases both men.

This was supposed to be a straightforward project – a soft-subbed version of a Laserdisc source using the R1 VHS subtitles from the ACR (Anime Classics Review) release. Encode, transcribe, time, edit, QC, release – easy, right? Somehow, it didn't turn out that way. It has taken more than a year from receipt of the initial LaserDisc rip to release for, well… reasons.

Let's start with the encode. To quote the current US presidential campaign, it's YUUUUUUGE: 2.3GB for a 106 minute movie that's not even full 480p resolution. Further, it's in two parts, with a totally arbitrary dividing line at the 52 minute mark. Why, you ask? First, the two parts of the source have different resolutions, or, more accurately, different sized black borders. The first part is 682 x 370, the second, 696 x 370. The encoder refused to put them together and have vertical bars in the first part or excess cropping in the second part. Second, the source is from film stock, and rather than risk losing or distoring details with filters and compression, the encoder ultimately just threw bits at the encode: 2200 kbps in the first part, 3000 kbps in the second. 

While transcription, timing, and editing went quickly, it took a long time to get the R1 subs translation-checked, and they really needed them. For example, many of the names in the R1 script were incorrect (the queen's name is Phryne, not Flooney, for example). Then QC stalled as well. Both TLC and QC required new resources; I've documented Orphan's translation and QC woes in other posts. But we're finally done.

Was it worth it? I find this version of Hashire Melos overstretched. There isn't enough content in the original short story to justify 100+ minutes of screen time. The first 24 minutes of the movie are an "anime original" prologue that shows Melos as a country bumpkin visiting the big city and meeting Selinuntius for the first time. There's a lot of other padding too: the sequence of events that ensnare Melos in an accusation of treason, the nefarious plot to stop Melos from returning in time, the backstory about Selinuntius and his father, and so on. The garrulous old fart Calippus and the young prostitute Raisa aren't in the original story either. Finally, the movie draws a direct link between the story of Melos and Selinuntius and the fall of Dionysius the Younger. In the short story, Melos' determination helps the king overcome his paranoia and become a better ruler. 

On the positive side, I really like the "look" of the movie and its character designs. The main characters have distinctive faces and body types, with real noses and realistic eyes. Melos looks like an overgrown lunk of a shepherd, Dionysius has the "lean and hungry" demeanor of a habitual schemer, and Selinuntius has a balanced appearance befitting a classical sculptor. The animation is fluid, set against very detailed backdrops of the city of Syracuse and the Sicilian countryside. The voice actors are good too. Yamadera Kouichi, who plays Melos, has had a distinguished voice-acting career, including Spike in Cowboy Bebop, Togusa in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, and Ryoga in Ranma ½. The other seiyuu have mostly been in featured roles. Osami Misaki directed and also did the storyboards and the screenplay. Hashire Melos was one of his last projects. Kazumasa Oda composed all the music, including the excellent ending ballad. The background music is subtle and used sparingly. 

M74 transcribed the ACR subtitles and did the initial timing; ninjacloud did timing cleanup. Iri translation checked, I edited and typeset, Juggen created the ending karaoke, and Calyrica, konnakude, and new staff member Xenath3297 did QC. bananadoyouwanna encoded the LD source, and the experience proved so traumatic that he has sworn never to touch a non-progressive source again. The LD rip itself is from an anonymous source.

Please enjoy this new release of Hashire Melos.

Stir and Repeat: Tenkousei

So here is Tenkousei, a four episode softcore h-anime from 1997. Tenkousei has almost exactly the same plot and stock characters as Doukyuusei and Kakyuusei, except that the girls in the hero's harem are mostly transfer students rather than classmates or first-years. The hero is an "ordinary student," Tsukui Shinichi, now in his senior year. A long-lost childhood friend, Ayase Aoi, moves in next-door and transfers into his school. Shinichi can't quite remember Aoi, which upsets her quite a bit. Her good looks attract the attention of Shinichi's comic sidekick, Yamashita Satoshi, and the school playboy, Kanzaki Kotoro. While Shinichi and Aoi spar over a potential relationship, Shinichi crosses paths with and then beds other students, including a clumsy genki girl, Fujiro Mami; an aggressive vamp, Ebina Mika; and the president of the Flower Arrangement Club, Hayama Reiko, before finally ending up in the arms of his destined True Love. Only Ayase Aoi and Ebina Mika are actually transfer students, although Hayama Reiko transfers out at the end of her episode, conveniently clearing the decks for the next girl. It would have strained even the elastic framework of an eroge to have four transfer students show up more or less at once.

Tenkousei really has nothing much to recommend it. The sex scenes at the end of each episode are tasteful and tame; the show isn't hentai in any real sense of the word. The animation is crude, mostly 8fps, and the male character designs tend to the comic. (Shinichi's ears remind me of Mighty Mouse.) The music is functional, and the ending song doesn't really stand out. Perhaps the franchise was petering out from creative fatigue.

 

The actor who played Shinichi, Ueda Yuji, has had quite a long career in anime, playing the lead role in Love, Hina, as well as a recurring role in all the Pokemon properties. Sango Minako, who played Aoi, has a shorter resume, including featured role in Futakoi and (non-h) Kakyuusei, as well as other h-anime including Koihime and Welcome to Pia Carrot. The other voice credits have not made it into the standard databases.

The translation is by an anonymous contributor. convexity translated the ending song, Yogicat timed, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica did QC. (As you can see, Orphan is  short-staffed, particularly on QC these days.) The raws are from pornolab.

With the release of Tenkousei, the only unsubbed series in the franchise is the non-h version of Kakyuusei, from 1999. C1 hasn't released an episode in more than six months. Perhaps the show is now an orphan?

Kuroi Ame ni Utarete

Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Lashed by the Black Rain) is a bitterly angry 1984 movie about the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The scriptwriter, Nakazawa Keiji, was himself a bombing survivor and lost most of his family in the disaster or its immediate aftermath. He found an outlet for his feelings first in manga and later in anime, with Kuroi Ame and the more famous Barefoot Gen I and II. 

Kuroi Ame focuses its fury on two targets, the United States for dropping the bomb, but also the Japanese people for their callous discrimination against the hibakusha, as bomb survivors are collectively known. The film’s anti-Americanism is pervasive and corrosive. The American characters are immature cartoon bullies or uncaring disaster-porn tourists. There are no shades of gray, and certainly no room for any consideration of the military situation at the time of the bombing. However, the film’s condemnation of the Japanese people for their treatment of the hibakusha is equally strong. The ordinary populace is portrayed as both indifferent and ignorant, treating the hibakusha with scared contempt, as though exposure to radiation was some sort of contagious disease.

The story focuses on a handful of hibakusha trying to live their lives in the rebuilt city of Hiroshima. Takeshi, owner of a bar called Akauma, lost his entire family in the bombing. Despite his apparent strength, he is deeply scarred and angry, feelings which he can only express by barring Americans from his establishment. Eiko is the daughter of a bomb victim. She moved away to Tokyo, met a young man, and conceived a baby with him. She has now returned and must decide whether to carry the baby to term or abort it from fear about birth defects. Tomoko is a young woman who was horribly burned in the bombing and now works as a prostitute. She is in love with Takeshi.  Her younger brother, Junji, works the margins of society for money. He is in love with Eiko. Kondou Yuri is another  bomb victim working as a prostitute. She is dying of syphilis and is using her last days to pass the disease on to as many people as possible, particularly Americans. Her son, Shin’ichi, is blind, and she hopes that donating her eyes after her death will allow him to see. The lives intertwine around seemingly ordinary events, but the trajectory is inexorably downward towards ultimate tragedy.

The film is filled with medical ignorance, some of it quite willful. A family elder advises Eiko to abort her child because of the risks of hereditary birth defects, even though (quoting Wikipedia) “no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects/congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of the nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Yuri treats her disease as a death sentence for her and her unsuspecting customers, as though antibiotics hadn’t been invented. But that’s really beside the point. All the hibakusha feel trapped by their past and deprived of their futures, leaving them in a perpetual state of spiritual despair about their lives and purpose.

As with Chuumon no Ooi Ryuritan, Kuroi Ame is the result of a new translator joining Orphan. Iri brought the translated script with him, as well as access to a DVD ISO. Iri and Eternal_Blizzard timed, I edited and typeset, Calyrica, Eternal_Blizzard, and konnakude did QC, and bananadoyouwanna encoded the source. Because the movie is entirely hand-animated, and the DVD is rather jittery, many of the signs are irregular and difficult to do, like Takeshi’s nametag in the opening scene. As a result, some signs are done “Yawara style”: simple notes at the top of the screen. The Russian dialog at 1:12:00 is transcribed but not translated, because there were no subtitles to guide the original Japanese audience. The translation is roughly, “All right, comrades, it's decided. We will also respond to them with a nuclear blow.” 

Kuroi Ame is a difficult film to watch, both for its unremitting anger and for its multiple tragedies. As with The Diary of Anne Frank, I had to work on it in segments, to avoid being overwhelmed by the despair that pervades it. Nonetheless, despite its emotional manipulation and biases, it’s an important reminder about a major historical tragedy, and it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. As President Obama prepares to visit Hiroshima – a first for an American President – we all need to think about the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Otaku no Seiza

In a post a while back about anime shows that apparently never made it to DVD, I asked, "Is anyone really waiting for DVD versions of Hi-Speed Jecy or Hashire Melos or An Adventure in the Otaku Galaxy or AWOL, to name just a few shows available only on VHS or Laserdisc?" Well, we now have an answer to part of that with OnDeed's release of 1994's Otaku no Seiza (An Adventure in the Otaku Galaxy), encoded from DVDs.

OnDeed and Orphan are both groups that like to explore anime's back catalog, and occasionally we've shared more than just having the same initial letter in the group names. OnDeed generously provided their script of Dream Hunter Rem's first episode (non-hentai version), which allowed Orphan to sub the hentai version. Now I've had the opportunity to return the favor by QCing the scripts for Otaku no Seiza. I hope the two groups will have further opportunities for collaboration.

Otaku no Seiza is a parody that, as OnDeed says, is "fraught with gratuitous fanservice fillers." The plot, if you can call it that, centers on the quest of The Man With No Name to save the universe from the blight of Otaku Disease, spread by the mysterious idol group the Aurora Girls. They in turn work for the demon Indra, who wants to Conquer The Universe. (Seriously, what else would a demon want to do, anyway?) Aided only by Nekketsu, who's an idiot and a parody of the typical student council president, and Jonjon, who's a cross-dresser and a parody of the typical trap, The Man must first conquer each of the Aurora Girls (romantically and/or sexually), rescue his long-lost love Maya, and then confront Indra's Final Challenge. Along the way, there show features lots of gratuitous fanservice, endless complaints about the stupidity of the scriptwriters, and general mayhem with the conventions of anime. It ends up with an implied six-way featuring The Man and the women he has encountered. Love Conquers All, I guess.

The voice actors do a fine job with this material and eventually went on to bigger roles.
Yamadera Kouchi (The Man) voiced Spike in Cowboy Bebop, Ryoga in Ranma 1/2, and Togusa in the Ghost in the Shell properties. More recently, he has played Inspector Zenigata in Lupin III. Kikuchi Masami (JonJon) went on to play the male leads in the Tenchi Muyo and Aa! Megami-sama! series. Chiba Shigeru (Nekketsu) had ongoing roles in several long-running series, including Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, and Yu Yu Hakusho.

So here's another "lost" 90s OVA for your perusal, courtesy of OnDeed. I could write a fairly serious essay on how Otaku no Seiza exemplifies the contemptuous treatment of LGBT characters in Japanese anime, but it's too silly for that. Enjoy your Adventure in the Otaku Galaxy.