Maze TV Special ("The Fanservice Episode")

So here's another legendary creature from the ocean of untranslated anime brought safely into port: the special episode of the Maze TV series, aka, The Fanservice Episode. This episode has no relationship to any part of the storyline. It exists, as one of the characters says, as "an awesome treat for Maze fans looking for extra fanservice." It's really an excuse to show all  the female characters topless and to let the cast indulge in some yuri antics. Every character makes a cameo appearance, many in short sketches unrelated to the main story in the episode.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a trip to a cursed hot spring that causes everyone who bathes in it to suffer from personality reversal. (Does this sound familiar? Even one of the characters think so.) This occurs three or four times, so that the characters can undergo transformations into different sexual tropes and then try out "infinite diversity in infinite combinations." The male characters are mostly bystanders, and male Maze doesn't make an appearance until the very end, which is of course inconclusive.

The episode reached its exalted status as "the one that got away" simply because it was omitted from all DVD editions of Maze and thus never appeared with English subtitles or dubbing. The primary raw floating around the Internet originated from a VHS tape and is truly terrible. Nonetheless, the intrepid team at Orphan Fansubs was not deterred and vowed to bring this lost "classic" to light. Well, actually, the completeness fanatics on the team, like me, simply wanted to see Maze translated in full.

The initial translation is from an anonymous source. convexity checked and corrected the script, freekie from KiteSeekers timed it (thank you!), I edited and typeset it, and Juggen styled the OP and ED, which are taken from the R1 DVD rips. Some points to note:

• At the start, Princess Mill panics and worries that the episode will spill all the "secrets" of Maze, namely, that she's intersexual (a hermaphrodite), Golude's a lesbian, and Ranchiki is gay. All of these reflect the manga; the TV series glossed over these points.
• Transformed into a shy and demure girl, Princess Mill reacts to seeing bare skin by saying "I've lost my innocence." Literally, it's "I can't get married now."
• The female half of the Creator cracks a joke, saying that the result of setting fire to a toilet is "yakekuso," translated as "desperate burning crap." This is a Japanese pun: "yake" means burned, "kuso" means shit, and "yakekuso" is desperation. Not the most inspired localization, but the best I could come up with.

Just as the project was finishing up, a better raw surfaced, possibly a LaserDisc rip. While not ideal, it's not the blurred mess that the VHS raw is. Accordingly, we are able to present the Maze TV special with more of the important, ah, details clearly visible. Enjoy!

Lime-iro Ryuukitan X Cross

So at long last, Lime-iro Ryuukitan X Cross is complete.

This sequel to Lime-iro Senkitan has had a checkered history, to say the least. Released in 2005, it was started, and dropped, by no less than three fansub groups. Despite the availability of decent DVD raws, it remained untranslated and unloved until KiteSeekers added it to the backlog about three years ago. I joined KiteSeekers specifically to finish this orphan series.

Even with my constant nagging, progress was slow. Although the episodes had been translated, the translations were a bit suspect. Fortunately, Zalis116, who in the guise of ReDone Subs created the excellent DVD version of Lime-Iro Senkitan, agreed to translation check the scripts. It still took a year to finish the series, as higher priority was usually given to the Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream and Tantei Opera Milky Holmes franchises. Lolis trump historical mecha, I guess.

As a sequel, a drop in quality would not be unexpected, but it’s the shift in tone that’s more bothersome, at least to me. Lime-iro Senkitan was a guilty pleasure, gleefully mixing action, comedy, harem, and mecha with a healthy dose of eye candy to utterly subvert the tropes of the genres. The hero, Shintaro, far from being the usual ineffective harem lead, scores with almost every female who’s both of legal age and human. He never really takes the lead in the fighting; his role is coaching, mentoring, and sexual healing. It’s good, dumb, ecchi fun.

Lime-iro Ryuukitan, on the other hand, plays by all the rules of the shounen and harem genres. The lead is clueless about women, tongue-tied and embarrassed about emotions, and generally only good at charging head-first at the enemy. The girls are all in love with him, but none of them makes an impression on his heart of iron. Instead, he teaches them life lessons about believing in themselves as well as about wrestling wild animals and patching up scrapes and bruises. In the end, he is the HERO who defeats the enemy, and the girls are supporters. As a result, the show plays as a series of cliches, with only occasional flashes of humor to lighten the endless tropes. The villains, named Chiffon, Linen, and Cashmere (what are they, an 80s girl group?), have no personality to start with and don’t develop any along the way. It’s a big come down from the original.

I’m glad it’s finally subbed, and the Lime-iro series can be viewed in its entirety. Nonetheless, Lime-iro Ryuukitan serves to point up an important lesson about orphan series: when a show’s been dropped by lots of groups, it’s probably for a good reason.

Ranma 1/2 Live Action

If the Usagi Drop live action movie embodies everything that can go right in a Japanese live action remake of an anime, then Ranma 1/2 shows almost everything that can go wrong. I have a soft spot for the original Ranma anime franchise because of its unremitting silliness, even though it wore out its welcome long before the 161 episodes, 12 OVAs, and 2 movies were over and done with. The live action TV special has all  the stupidity of the original and none of the charm. It's sexist, homophobic, and, worst of all, not very funny.

The core problem, I think, is that cardboard characters and repeated tropes are tolerable (barely) in a cartoon but are off-putting in a film with real actors. Thus, the best live action shows are adaptations of slice-of-life or romantic comedy series, such as Usagi Drop, Nodame Cantabile, and Honey and Clover. The anime characters in those series are semi-believable, and that gives real actors room to work. In contrast, a slapstick comedy like Ranma requires actors to behave like cartoons, complete with cartoon-like special effects. In my view, that's only been successful once, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It's not successful here.

So you might ask, quite reasonably, why I worked on this. As has happened before, I got dragged in by the simple awfulness of the original subtitles. I couldn't bear to archive that mess.(For example, the first ten lines include, "I'll be more gental next time!" and "He's finially coming!") So I started editing, and then found I had to retime, and then found I need translation checking on a bunch of lines... it went on and on. It's been more than a year from when I downloaded the original version to the release of this one. I've had to watch the movie through three times, and I never want to watch it again. I will be more forbearing in the future. The world is filled with awful subtitles, and I don't have time to deal with them.

The raw is by Rabite-Asses. The original subtitles are by LuffyNoTomo, with additional work by zdzdz. I re-timed, re-edited, and did some additional typesetting. CP did QC, and convexity translated the lines that were missing or so clearly wrong that even I could hear it. If you have the raw, you can patch to this version. A link to the patch is in the torrent.

Anyway, I can't recommend this live action special. But if you do want to watch it, I think this version is an improvement over what was currently before. That may sound like faint praise, but it's all it deserves.

2013 in Review

No, I'm not going to burden you with my Deep Thoughts on anime in 2013. I watched some shows, but mostly I was busy with editing work. The highlights of this year include:

Orphan Fansubs

Thanks to the return of a long-lost translator, and despite her much-lamented departure back to Real Life, this was a banner year for Orphan Fansubs. The team released fifteen projects, more than in its entire prior history.

• Nagasarete Airantou. The longest series in the group's history.
• Midori no Neko. Tezuka Osamu's first Lion Book OVA.
• Tezuka Osamu Monogatari. Continuing our quest to sub all things Tezuka Osamu.
• Haruka Naru Toki no Naka de "Hachiyoushou" special chapter. A project that was left on the shelf when the translator departed.
• Haruka Naru Toki no Naka de "Hachiyoushou" ~Where the Heart Belongs. The other unsubbed special from the TV series.
• Haruka Naru Toki no Naka de 2. A joint project with macros74, using aF raws.
• Blazing Transfer Student. A true orphan, and deservedly so.
• Sonic Soldier Borgman 2058: New Century. Another unloved OVA.
• Usagi Drop Live Action. A labor of love, and my favorite live-action movie ever.
• Dallos. Possibly the first OVA ever, and not a good precedent for the rest.
• Anne Frank. A joint project with Licca Fansubs.
• Urusei Yatsura - The Obstacle Course Swim Meet. A complete "tune-up" on the most recent Urusei Yatsura OVA.
• Doukyousei 2. Our first venture this year into soft-core hentai.
• Sotsugyusei. The non-h sequel to Doukyousei 2.
• Doukyousei Climax. Our other venture this year into the h-anime genre.

In addition, the team reissued Space Neko Theatre with improved translation and sign.

The burst of activity was made possible by a very small team: laalg mostly, and also convexity and macros74, for translation; archdeco for timing; me for editing and typesetting; and CP and Saji for QC. Thanks, everyone, for working so hard on such an eclectic set of forgotten or mistreated shows!

Work for Other Groups

I've continued to edit and QC for other groups, as time permits. Sometimes I'm trading favors; other times, I'm genuinely interested.

• Kiteseekers. Another group that pursues completing orphan series, when they aren't subbing loli shows. Lime-iro Ryuukitan X made substantial progress, although it's not yet finished; and Hanaukyo Maid Tai got started from BluRay encodes. Lime-iro is not as good as the original series, but Hanaukyo has the innocent ecchi charm of most of the half-length M.O.E. (Masters of Entertainment) shows.
• FroZen-Evil. The three-way collaboration polished off Yawara! with two movie-length extras: Go Get 'em, Wimpy Kids! and the Atlanta Special. What a special team that was! Miyuki is continuing, but it's very slow going.
• ray=out. Hiatari Ryoukou continues to move along, although episodes are not being released. I also edited a couple of ganime OVAs for them.
• WhyNot? I edited the Yondemasu Azazel-san Z series: good, dirty fun, and a favorite of 2013.
• Anime-Koi. I edited the last seven episodes of Genshiken Nidaime, another series I liked.
• Dgz. I edited the ultimate episode of Hellsing Ultimate. I didn't care for it; too many Nazis.
• Saizen. I edited the most recent Prince of Tennis movie, and I really wish I hadn't.
• m74. I worked with macros74 on a few of his projects for subbing forgotten 80s and 90s OVAs.
• FFF. I started by helping them with QC, to get some of the lagging OVAs out the door (Nekogami, Tasogare, Ika Musume). Then archdeco asked me to work on some of his favorites, so I QC'd the BluRays of Senran Kagura and the TV release of Sekai de Ichiban (see a theme?). I volunteered to do Golden Time, which has not been as good as I had hoped, but it's still reasonably enjoyable. As I've written before, my philosophy on simulcast shows is editorial minimalism, except for glaring mistakes.

I won't be taking on any new shows this winter, because of travel plans.

Finally, I did a fair amount of "anonymous" editing, on shows that I didn't want to be associated with publicly. Most of them were clean-ups of subs for personal use, although I've done a few projects that should probably be classified as trolling.

Looking Ahead

I don't expect to be as busy in 2014. Without a full-time translator, Orphan will revert to its prior leisurely pace. I hope to clean up my backlog of scripts during the holidays and enter the New Year with a clean slate.

I'd like to wish my readers (all four of them) a happy holiday break and a joyous New Year. On with the shows!

Love, Actually (Usagi Drop Live Action)

Now here's an Orphan project I can recommend wholeheartedly: Usagi Drop, the live action movie. As readers of this blog know, I loved the anime and was fervently glad it stopped when it did. (Yes, that's a manga spoiler.) Then it was made into a live action movie and given an initial translation by zdzdz. I wasn't satisfied with that version, both because of the small video size (SD at 2:35:1 doesn't provide a lot of viewing area) and the usual suspects - translation, timing, and editing. So Orphan Fansubs has done a new, HD version, starting with the original translation. As usual, translation checking by laalg, with help from convexity; timing by archdeco; editing by Collectr; QC by CP. The song translations are crowd-sourced from the Internet. A big shout out of thanks to RHExcellion at Commie Fansubs, who graciously encoded the BDMV into a usable 720p raw. Commie declined the offer of joint credit, although I think "Orphan Commie" would have been a great addition to the collection of joint fansub group names. [He also made a 1080p raw, if someone with a lot of disk space wants to mux these subs into an even bigger version.]

Usagi Drop is a deceptively simple family story. The Kaga clan gathers at the funeral of their grandfather, only to find out that the old gent had secretly fathered (at age 73!) an illegitimate daughter, Rin, who is now six. Most of the family reacts in horror to this news and can only think of placing the girl in an orphanage or institution. This disgusts the bachelor grandson, Kawachi Daikichi, and he impulsively volunteers to take care of Rin. Only when he gets home and realizes how hopelessly unprepared he is to be a single parent does the enormity of his undertaking sink in.

Usagi Drop is not a dramatic story; indeed, it's more a comedy than anything else, albeit a gentle one. It's filled with the small events that by and large comprise parenthood: coping with the enormous drains on one's time; arranging for childcare; juggling parenting and work; dealing with bedwetting or illness; helping children adjust, make friends, and grow. There's nary a villain, superhero, mahou shoujo, loli, or teenager in sight. Even the initially cold reaction of the Kaga family warms over time, as they come to terms with Daikichi's decision and learn to support him.

The acting is good, and the child-actress playing Rin (Ashida Mana) is outstanding. Some viewers complain that Rin is preternaturally mature as well as overwhelmingly cute, but I think it's plausible that a child raised by a reclusive, elderly parent (more a grandparent, really) would be unusually reserved and self-reliant. The actor playing Daikichi (Matsuyama Kenichi) is conventionally good-looking but rather opaque; the script doesn't provide much insight into his thinking. (In fairness, the manga and anime didn't either.) Most of the other characters are merely sketched, but Rin's friend Kouki (Satou Roiki) and his mother (Nitani Yukari) both excel.

The film includes two musical numbers. The first is a fantasy interlude set to the hard-driving rhythms of "Die Konkurrenz" by the German rock group Wir Sind Helden. It doesn't seem very relevant to the film, except to prefigure Daikichi's eventual meeting with Kouki's mother, but it's a great song. The second is the ending credits, which use the full version of the Usagi Drop anime opening song, "Sweet Drops" by the Japanese duo Puffy. Be warned: it's an earworm, as so many J-pop songs are.

The film is not without flaws. According to Wikipedia, Max Schilling, the critic for The Japan Times, thought it relied too much on tear-jerking cliches. He's certainly right about the climactic scene, where Kouki and Rin run away from daycare to visit the grave of Kouki's father. This results in scenes of frantic searching through the streets, an encounter with an enigmatic young man on a bicycle, and other tension-heightening devices that are completely at variance with the tone of the film. Although it leads to an appropriate emotional catharsis, the payoff would, in fact, have been more impactful without the forced melodrama.

Still, that's a minor quibble. Usagi Drop is a live action film that doesn't look or play like a comic book or cartoon. It takes a positive but not Pollyana view of parents, children, and human nature. The ending is inconclusive, as it should be. Parenting doesn't stop with some conveniently climactic event. The story goes onward because, as the film concludes, "There are mothers and fathers everywhere. Actually, love is all around us."

One Last "Hachiyoushou"

This has been in the back projects pile since March: the "special chapter" of the TV series Haruka Naru Toki no Nake de "Hachiyoushou". Back then, Orphan's translator, laalg, was on a roll and always looking for more episodes. I wanted to do this special as a way of putting C1's fansub version, which had been one of my earliest projects, on a modern encode. I found the R1 subs rather unsatisfactory, because they changed a lot of the names, titles, and mythology, but redoing all 26 episodes was, well, too much effort for an otome show. Subbing this special seemed like a happy compromise.

Alas, it didn't quite turn out that way. laalg's translation check showed that the original fansubs had issues, including consistency, phrasing, and in places, accuracy. I was able to use the C1 scripts as guides, but as often as not, I had to change the actual lines. This wasn't a case of what topf so pointedly called "editor's remorse": I didn't edit the original scripts, and I only got involved as a QC for the final third of the series. Rather, it's more a case of applying my current level of experience to older scripts. What passed muster in 2006 doesn't these days.

The "special chapter" is a recap of the first half of the TV series. It focuses on the heroine's (Akane's) first encounters with her eight guardians, the Hachiyou (i.e., the bishies). The original subs and karaokes are by C1. laalg checked the translation and translated any new dialog. I timed and edited, and CP did the QC. The encode is by ZaZa raws. As an added bonus, the torrent includes the no-credits OP. The DVD rip did not have a no-credits ED.

If you've watched the TV series, there's no need to watch this. Conversely, if you have some passing interest in the TV series, watching this will let you know if the series if for you, in 30 minutes instead of six hours.

This is my last gasp on Haruka Naru Toki no Nake de "Hachiyoushou". I had thought of redoing the remaining specials ("Ten" OVA, the eight alternative endings) in order to have a consistent set at DVD resolution, but the existing versions by Kuruizaki are good enough. The DVD rip has a number of other specials, including live-action cast interviews and a highlights reel for each Hachiyou, but no one is sufficiently interested (including me) to translate them.

A Season without Fansubs

The fall 2013 anime season has seen the culmination of a trend that's been building for several years: every new, full-length show not intended for children is simulcast. The only exception is Yozakura Quartet (Kyousogiga showed up on CrunchyRoll's schedule four weeks into the season). Further, the quality of CrunchyRoll's video encoding and subtitle presentations continue to improve: more signs, improved styling, good-looking video. Indeed, some groups are using CrunchyRoll's video streams in preference to transport streams captured off Japanese TV, because the quality is better.

In the past, there have been complaints about the quality of simulcast translation and editing, but I think those are unfounded. Spot checks of Sekai no Ichiban, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and Golden Time by experienced translators show no significant errors.The editing is fluent and well-localized. If I have a few quibbles, they wouldn't be enough to make me re-edit an episode for my own enjoyment. Some shows, like Golden Time, are even preserving honorifics. All that's missing are the songs (Funimation even includes them).

A few groups are taking advantage of delayed simulcasts to rush out original translations. Other groups continue to do full translation checks on simulcast scripts. But by and large, fansub groups are repackagers of simulcasts, with songs, better styling and typesetting, and minor tweaks. Fansubbing of current shows, as I used to know it, is dead.

Personally, I don't mind. As I've noted before, most current anime is throwaway stuff (dreck, in fact), and the less effort put into it, the better. I help out some of the repackagers by looking over simulcast scripts and tweaking minor errors. Most of this falls into the category of personal preferences - fewer ellipses, cleaner punctuation, less of use of passive voice and impersonals. It takes less than an hour for a script, half of it spent watching the show. There's no research to do, no stylistic decisions, no deep pondering over ambiguous phrases, no interactions with the translator. It's really more QC than editing, and gross errors in simulcast scripts are few and far between.

So whither fansubbing now, given that it is withering away? Some groups are focusing more on BluRays, because of the increased use of censoring in original broadcasts as a gimmick to get otakus to buy discs. (If there's any point to watching Sekai no Ichiban, about which I have my doubts, that point won't be reached until the BluRays are out.) Some have embraced the repackaging ethic, with an emphasis on the parts that are too labor-intensive for simulcasts (for example, the elaborate signs in NouKome, Arpeggio, or Monogatari). Many have simply cut back on their activities or disappeared entirely.

If fansubbing has a future, I believe it lies in the past - in the back catalog. Although Japanese anime companies show a healthy interest in remastering old, classic shows for BluRay, they're not typically investing in English subtitles for the older titles. In addition, many worthwhile series and OVAs were never translated. With the release of new box sets, whether on BluRay or DVD, the opportunity is there to bring these shows to an English-speaking audience. LaserDisc collections are also interesting sources of older, never-before-seen shows.

Of course, fansubbing the back catalog requires effort, particularly compared to repackaging simulcasts or releasing BluRays. To start, a back catalog project needs a Japanese-English translator. They're becoming harder to find, and many of the younger ones depend on closed-captions, which are not usually available for older shows. Further, the project needs a dedicated team, because many of the interesting older series are very long. Kabocha Wine is 95 episodes plus a movie; Attack No. 1, 104 episodes. Even if a team can maintain a weekly cadence, we're looking at a 2+ year commitment. (The back catalog projects to sub Hiatari Ryouko and Miyuki are both stalled because key team members have effectively dropped out mid-way.) And the project needs raws. Japanese DVDs and BluRays are expensive and usually beyond the personal means of a fansub team or individual team member, and LaserDisc transcription requires specialized equipment and skills.

Nonetheless, I'm encouraged about the number of teams investigating the back catalog. Live-Evil has come roaring back to life recently and is undertaking some very ambitious new projects, as well as reviving older projects that had stalled out. Kiteseekers mixes back catalog projects with contemporary projects. My own Orphan Fansubs has grown from a one-man band to a small collective. The Skaro Hunting Society continues to work on classic black-and-white shows. And other teams focus on older shows that they like, particularly in the giant robot and mecha categories.

A different model is to "modernize" older fansubbed shows to modern video and subtitle standards. With the advent of better technology for extracting hardsubs, this has become a bit easier, but it still requires major work to correct questionable translations and editing, extract and reproduce hardsubbed signs and karaokes, and fix other deficiencies. Jumonji-giri and Redone continue to do great work in this area. Kiteseekers is redoing the original Hanuakyo Maid Tai from BluRays (the fansub translations are very questionable), and I want to redo Ureshii's Amatsuki from DVDs. I'd also like to do a DVD version of Yume Tsukai, but DVDs don't seem to be available online, although they're still sold in Japan. Script archives are becoming more available as fansub groups disband, and that helps quite a lot in resubbing efforts.

Back catalog work doesn't appeal to a lot of fansubbers. For one thing, the audience for older shows is much smaller than for current series. (That's why simulcasters don't do back catalog shows.) But it's the only province - other than h-anime ;) - where fansubbing can still thrive. So, fellow fansubbers, in the immortal words of the Veterans Tapdance Administration and the Firesign Theatre, it's forward - into the past!