Yamato 2520: An Unfinished Tale

Here is the incomplete OVA Yamato 2520. Dating from 1994, Yamato 2520 was Yoshinobu Nishizaki's attempt to create a new sequel to Space Battleship Yamato, but he fell out with Yamato's creator, the legendary Leiji Matsumoto, and the show was abandoned after three episodes. It was never released on DVD and never fully translated into English.

Yamato 2520 has been on my orphans list for years, ever since NT-Anime subbed episode 1 and abandoned the show, and DOMO subbed episodes 1 and 2 and abandoned the show. Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions, a laserdisc collector, had all the Yamato 2520 LDs and was willing to make new, pristine rips. I edited the existing NT-Anime/DOMO subs of episodes 1 and 2, and laalg supplied an original translation for episode 3. convexity translation checked all the episodes, archdeco retimed them to the new raws, and CP and Saji checked the results. As an added bonus, Tofusensei of Live-Evil found an English-language document describing what the missing episodes might have been like (not all script decisions had been made at the time).

Yamato 2520 was certainly ambitious. It featured mechanical designs by the famous futurist Syd Mead and a musical score by David Matthews (the jazz musician, not the pop star). Despite all the famous names, the show turns out to be a typical representative of 90s OVA animation: cheesy plot, cheesy animation, cheesy music, and a battleship-sized cargo of cliches. (As one reviewer said, "In the 1980s, Yoshinobu Nishizaki wanted to sequelize Space Battleship Yamato in the worst way. In 1994, that’s just what he did.") At times I felt I was watching a Stars Wars ripoff, with the evil Emperor Brone substituting for the evil Emperor Palpatine; a Dallos ripoff, with the Gorda ruins on planet Rococo substituting for the Dallos ruins on the Moon; and a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney 1930s movie ripoff, with all the young kids rallying to say, "Let's get together and put on a battleship!" instead of a musical.

The translation posed a number of issues, primarily with transliteration of names. We've mostly followed the transliteration from the English-language treatment, although it's inconsistent in places. So planets Rinbus and Rococo rather than Rinbos and Rokoko; Salene Federation rather than Seiren; Brone rather than Blone; and so on. On the other hand, the heroine is Marcie, not Mercie; the "a" sound is fairly distinct in the sountrack. And the ancient civilization at the heart of the plot is Gorda, rather than Gouda as in the treatment. There's enough cheese already without confusing an ancient alien civilization with a Dutch food product. Between episodes 2 and 3, the unit of measurement switched from grues, whatever those were, to space kilos, whatever those are. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, after all.

The raws are very good, as you'd expect of a direct laserdisc rip. Episode 2 includes a curiosity at the end: an AMV of the "Theme of Amesis," sung by Caroline Reinhart. (She was also the inspiration for Amesis' character design; see the article "The Rise and Fall of Yamato 2520.") The song is in English, so no translation is necessary. The music is by David Matthews, the lyrics by Mattie Matthews.

This is my first exposure to the Yamato franchise. As an historian by training, I find the Japanese worship of battleship Yamato to be fascinating, mysterious, and a bit repellant. Yamato was indeed the largest battleship in the world during World War II, but neither she nor her sister ship Musashi made any useful contribution to the Japanese war effort. After seeing little or no combat, Yamato eventually perished in a futile, one-way suicide mission against the American forces invading Okinawa. I would recommend Russell Spurr's "A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April, 1945," as a useful supplement for putting the Yamato anime franchise in perspective.

Enough seriousness. Bring on the 2-D explosions and the 2-D characters. Enjoy Yamato 2520!

Bored

Things have been slack lately at Orphan Fansubs, ever since our full-time translator was pulled back into real-life. All of our projects are moving slowly, because the staff is both small and fully committed on other projects or in real-life. My work for other groups on two Adachi series, Hiatari Ryoukou and Miyuki, is also stalled for various reasons, so I don't have much to do.

As a result, I've worked on a bunch of recent shows, mostly to trade favors. For example, I "edited" Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai from Crunchyroll scripts, despite its moronic premise (singing idols become pro wrestlers? seriously?), because Orphan's timer is partial to anime eye candy. Little did he (or I) know that the TV broadcast would be heavily censored as well as witless. Perhaps someone will slap the scripts on BluRay encodes, thereby at least fulfilling the original intent of the project.

Another example is the current Seikoku no Dragonar. I'm "editing" that show to get the group lead to finish batching numerous BluRay encodes that are done and have been sitting on the shelf, some for as long as a year. For each BluRay batch released, I'll work on an episode. (He's two behind at the moment.) Otherwise, there's no excuse for this series, which shamelessly rips off both Dragon Crisis and Zero no Tsukaima without originality or added value.

[If I may digress for a moment... Groups that have inconsistent policies on batches really tick me off. I don't mind if a group never batches. I really like groups that batch promptly or provide updates on status, like Vivid. But groups that sometimes batch and sometimes don't, or batch after endless delays, irritate me no end. I want to get series off my hard drives and onto archival media when they're finished. That requires a definitive indication that  a series is in its final form.]

The only recent series I "edited" out of sincere interest was Golden Time, and what a disaster it turned out to be. I'd hoped that a show about college students rather than high school students might provide greater scope for characterization and real-life incidents. Instead, it was a textbook example of what might be called Light Novel Syndrome. Light Novels seem to substitute bizarre premises and arbitrary plot twists for organic development of characters and story. Sometimes, as with the current One Week Friends, the show can overcome these handicaps and provide a genuinely interesting experience. Golden Time did not. The male lead, Tada Banri, was totally generic, and his plight (memory loss and memory reloss) uninvolving and unconvincing. The female lead, Kaga Kouko, had no redeeming characteristics beyond her looks, yet she won out in the end, as foreshadowed in the OP and ED all along. The supporting characters were moved and paired in totally arbitrary ways. And it meandered for 24 episodes, prolonging the agony beyond all reasonable measure.

You will notice that I've put "editing" in quotes, because I don't consider the work I do on simulcast scripts to be real editing. It's more like QC. Partly this is because the shows are already edited, but it's also partly because frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Dark Sage pointed out that the first couple of scripts for Golden Time were only lightly altered. He was correct, because those initial scripts were quite well done and needed only a small amount of touching up. Others have commented that the later scripts contain careless errors. They're right too, because by then the Crunchyroll script quality had deteriorated, but I'd lost all interest in the show. I only continued with it out of a sense of obligation. The same applies to Sekai and Dragonar. It's really difficult to put in a sustained effort on uninteresting scripts. In short, these lousy shows are turning me into a lazy editor. That's not why I got into fansubbing.

So I need help. Orphan Fansubs has a backlog of interesting projects stalled for lack of staff. If you're a translator, a timer, or a QC and would like to work on shows that are different (although not necessarily better) than the current otaku and fujoshi fodder, please give me a shout. Your help will be sincerely appreciated, and you'll be saving an editor from the deadly Sin of Laziness.

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."