Tomoe ga Yuku! (Tomoe's Run!)

Orphan has done a number of OVAs from the 80s and 90s, including Dallos, the Lion Book series, Blazing Transfer Student, Sonic Soldier Borgman: New Century 2058, and the Maze fanservice special. While many of these had languished in well-deserved obscurity, I find the OVAs from that period to be more interesting and varied than the cookie-cutter OVAs of today, which mostly serve as uninteresting pendants or inter-season connectors for popular series. (The Anime Mirai series is a terrific exception, of course.) So here's another one.

Tomoe ga Yuku! (Tomoe's Run!) dates from 1991. It is fairly typical of its time, with a hyped-up tone and melodramatic plot, but it's great fun. The characters are engaging, the artwork is distinctive, and the action moves along smartly. Above all, it doesn't look like anything on the air today, and that's a good thing. There's not a moe-blob, tsundere, or harem lead in sight.

The plot, of course, won't withstand scrutiny. Our heroine, Tomoe Oujima, is a seventeen-year-old roller-skating j.d. She liked to play peek-a-boo and tag with speeding cars on Tokyo's crowded highways, until her best friend was run over and killed during an outing. On the rebound, Tomoe joins a training school for stuntmen called Green Day. There she launches a torrid love affair with Kazusa Himuro, one of the "managers". Little Does She Know, however, that Green Day is actually the Tojo yakuza group's assassin training school, and Kazusa is the group's chief enforcer. Informed of the truth by an undercover policewoman whom Kazusa ruthlessly executes, Tomoe makes her escape on skates and flees to the arms of Iori Tojo, the alienated son of Tojo's leader. Together, they fight to foil Kazusa's nefarious plots, take down Green Day, and restore Iori to his rightful position as heir to the group. Tomoe and Iori fall in love, but they realize that Their Love Is Not To Be.

Along the way, many parallels are drawn between Tomoe Oujima and Tomoe Gozen, the legendary twelfth century female samurai. Tomoe Gozen fought in the Genpei War at the side of her liege lord and lover Minamoto no Yoshinaka (identified in the anime by his original clan name, Kiso Yoshinaka), surviving both the war and him. Tomoe ga Yuku! hypothesizes that Yoshinaka did not marry Tomoe because their difference in rank was too great. Iori cannot marry Tomoe Oujima for the same reason. At the end, They Must Part for their different destinies, he to rule a prominent Japanese corporation/yakuza group, she to roam the roads on her roller skates...

As I said, the plot doesn't hold water. Tomoe is a young superwoman, able to jump tall fences and outrun speeding vehicles and machines-gun fusillades on roller skates - good old-fashioned four-wheel skates at that, not those newfangled roller blades. Iori is impossibly noble for a soon-to-be yakuza overlord. Even Kazusa has a samurai's honor, challenging Iori to a fight to the death with swords in the burning ruins of Green Day as Tomoe skates through blazing buildings to reach the side of her former and future lover. But even if the plot follows well-worn tracks, it's a hoot. Tomoe is a spunky heroine who makes her own decisions in life and love; for example, it's clear that her relationship with Kazusa is an adult's love affair, both emotionally and physically. The supporting characters are interesting and not just the usual wingmen (and women). And the ending is bittersweet.

Moho Kareshi did the original translation. convexity translation checked the dialog and translated the songs. ninjacloud timed the scripts, and Juggen supplied nice karaokes for the two ending songs. I edited and typeset, and Calyrica, konnakude, and Saji did the QC. The raws are from Piyo Piyo Productions and are excellent, ripped directly from pristine LaserDiscs. Tomoe ga Yuku! was never released on DVD.

So here, at last, is an English translation of Tomoe ga Yuku! Enjoy - and if you have the original soundtrack, let me know; I'd like to get a copy.

Update: the first released version had frame rate problems that caused all the sign timing to be off. V2's have been released. Patches for changing v1 files to v2 are available here. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Tokimeki Tonight

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.

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. Because of that, we'll be releasing each episode as it's ready, rather than waiting for all eight.

The Orphan releases will preserve continuity of phrasing, appearance, and styling with the Saitei releases. That means, frankly, that the fonts are too small. However, the vertical and horizontal margins have been increased for readability. Because these final episodes are softsubs, you can change the fonts and the styles if you so desire. In addition, these episodes are fully typeset; the jittery nature of the video makes motion tracking essential.

This is the first Orphan project for which I have not been the project leader and the editor. konnakude is fulfilling both roles admirably. Moho Kareshi translated the scripts, and kokujin-kun graciously agreed to check them. Ephemere timed the first episode, ninjacloud the rest. I've done the typesetting and shared QC with CP, pheon18, and Eternal_Blizzard. The raws were found on the Web and are of unknown provenance.

So let this article stand as an overall release note for the final eight episodes as they roll (slowly) off the production line. Sit back, relax, and don't let the vampires bite.

It Never Rains...

Normally, Orphan Fansubs had a fairly short backlist of projects, due to lack of scripts, lack of raws, or both. However, the heavens have suddenly opened, and we're overwhelmed with interesting raws and scripts. That means the team is overwhelmed as well. Orphan is in serious need of QCs in particular, and then the usual litany of positions: translators or checkers, encoders, timers, typesetters, and so on.

What's parked in the idle queue, you ask?

• Hi-Speed Jecy. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (12 episodes). Scripts are available for all 12 as well.
• Bite Me! Chameleon. Workable raws are in hand for all six episodes. Scripts are available for all the episodes too.
• Cosprayers. DVD ISOs are in hand for the entire series. Zalis116 has the subs. Encoding in progress.
• MapleStory. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series. Needs a translator or someone to transcribe the Linguistic hardsubs for episodes 16-25, as OCR did not work well.
• Code:Breaker OVAs. Both encodes and ISOs are in hand for all three episodes. Needs a translator for episodes 2 and 3.
• Kyoukujitsu no Kantai. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (15 episodes). Needs a translator.
• Lady Georgie. Both encodes and ISOs are in hand for the entire series (45 episodes). Needs a translator and an encoder for episodes 21-45. (The existing encodes are fairly ancient.)
• Shin Megami Tensei Devil Children. Workable raws are in hand for the entire series (50 episodes!). Needs a translator with a lot of persistence and interest. This is probably too long for Orphan.
• Oz. A two episode OVA, encoded by Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions.
• Lensman. A movie from LaserDisc, also from Erik.

I'm still looking for 480p encodes (or ISOs) of Yume Tsukai and Hidamari no Ki, of course. A 396p DVD encode of Yumi Tsukai is available, and it does look better than the TV encodes, but I'm holding out for the Real Thing.

So if any of the projects listed above rings a bell for you, and you know what you're doing as a fansubber, send me a PM on IRC or post a reply to this blog. There are lots of interesting unsubbed shows in the back catalog. Let's bring a few (more) to light.

Akatsuki no Yona: A Retrospective

I haven’t done much fansubbing of current shows for the last few years. Most contemporary series have been junk, and the few standouts have been claimed by teams I don’t work with.  Akatsuki no Yona proved an exception, on both counts. Preparing the scripts for the batch release of the show has only strengthened my admiration for the series.

I’m not sure what drew me to Yona. The Fall Preview in Random Curiosity pigeon-holed it as a shoujo harem in the mold of Fushigi Yuugi, an otome series that I don’t particularly like. Guardian Enzo of Lost in Anime saw signs of promise but only enough for it to “sit near the top of my second tier.” Yet from the outset, I wanted to work on the show, even though I was sure no one else would be interested. I more-or-less cursed, cajoled, or convinced a few people in FFF to work on it with me, as repayment for the crap light novel adaptations I’ve edited for the group. My judgment about the show was confirmed within two episodes, as was my hunch that no other team would pick it up.  That allowed for a more leisurely pace, with releases two to six days after the show aired.

Yona is a shoujo series, because its protagonist is a teenage girl, but it is more a historical fantasy in the mold of Seiunkoku Monogatari than a romance like Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii. The core subject is not love but power politics. The show is set in a semi-disguised feudal Korea. Yona is the pampered daughter of the non-violent and perhaps indolent King Il. She starts out with nothing more serious on her mind than her red hair, which she doesn’t particularly like; her imminent sixteenth birthday celebration; and her romance, so far unfulfilled, with her first cousin, Su-won, the heir-apparent to the throne.

Her life is rudely shattered on the night of her birthday when Su-won assassinates her father, claims the kingship, and orders her executed. Su-won says he is doing this as revenge for King Il’s murder of Su-won’s father, Yu-hon, but that remains in doubt. At the last second, Yona’s monstrously strong bodyguard, Hak, known as the Thunder Beast, rescues her, and together they flee into the countryside with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

The opening episodes aren’t very promising. Yona is helpless and, worse yet, vapid. The show seems headed for a standard damsel-in-distress-rescued-by-her-hero trope. Yet at the end of the second episode, to set the stage for what’s to come, the show flashes forward to show Yona as the determined leader of a small band of warriors, fighting off an invasion of her homeland. The core of Akatsuki no Yona is showing how that transformation came about; how a helpless and cloistered girl became a leader and a fearsome fighter.

Yona and Hak first encounter an exiled priest, Ik-su, and his clever, handsome, but not physically strong attendant, Yun. Ik-su tells Yona about the myth of the four dragons, companions of Kouka’s founding red-haired king, Hiryuu. According to legend, their descendants are still waiting for a new red-headed king to summon them.  Accompanied by Yun and Hak, Yona sets out to find the dragons in the hope that red-headed Yona is the king the dragons have been waiting for.

Over the rest of the season, Yona encounters and eventually wins over the four dragons, but she also sees with her own eyes the true situation of Kouka and its inhabitants. Her father’s lackadaisical policies have allowed foreign powers and local lords to oppress the populace unmercifully, and the land is filled with bitter, poverty-stricken people who are barely surviving. Inspired by her desire to set things right, and her need to gain strength if she is to survive, Yona embarks systematically on training herself for combat and for leadership. While the dragons, Hak, and Yun all feel protective of her and see her as "frail" young girl, they grow to appreciate her drive, her insights, and her leadership. By the end of the show, she is the undisputed captain of her small company.

While the quest plot dominates, the theme of love is not lost completely. Yona’s feelings of love for Su-won have not disappeared, although they are now mixed with a desire for revenge. Her feelings toward Hak remain at the “childhood friend” level, but his feelings are increasingly colored by love and desire. All the dragons worship her in some way or another and struggle about whether this is because of their heritage or their true feelings. Even Yun, the self-described “handsome genius” and loner, is torn between his wish to remain aloof and his growing attraction to Yona.

Still, it’s power politics that dominate the show, and those politics are far from clear-cut. The initial setup seems to make Su-won an out-and-out villain, but later episodes show that he is a thoughtful, subtle, and skilled leader, determined to rectify the problems that arose under King Il. He puts on the mask of a buffoon in order to probe the state of his kingdom and convey needed but perhaps otherwise unwelcome advice to its powerful warlords. Further, he still has feelings for Yona, although he is determined to forget them lest they undermine his mission. At some point in the future, they will meet on the battlefield, but whether as allies or enemies can’t be determined yet.

Speaking of power politics, two things in the initial setup bother me. The first is King Il’s adamant opposition to Su-won marrying Yona. As the surviving male in the royal family, Su-won is not only an acceptable choice to be Yona’s husband but also the obvious one. The second is Su-won’s apparent decision to have Yona killed during his coup. In feudal times, a usurping lord didn’t kill the old king’s female relatives; he married one of them, to strengthen his claim to the throne. (Think of Henry VII marrying Elizabeth of York, Richard III’s surviving sister, following the Battle of Bosworth.) Yona would have no choice but to submit; in that era, women were chattel.

So there are all these unresolved questions. Why would King Il say that Yona marrying Su-won was “out of the question”? Marriage between first cousins was perfectly acceptable. Why would Su-won apparently agree by deciding to have Yona executed? And why did King Il have Su-won’s father, Yu-hon, murdered?

I have a theory, based on no evidence whatsoever, to reconcile these facts. Suppose Su-won was not Yona’s cousin but her half-brother? Marriage between cousins is one thing, but marriage between siblings is quite another. In more detail, suppose Yu-hon cuckolded King Il and fathered Yona. We know from the flashbacks that Yona’s mother died when Yona was young (six or less), and that shortly thereafter, Yu-hon died (or was executed). If Yona’s mother confessed or her deathbed, it would explain (a) why King Il murdered Yu-hon, (b) why King Il says that Yona can never marry Su-won, and (c) why Su-won would have agreed, albeit reluctantly.

Of course, this is likely to be complete balderdash, and Su-won’s decision to execute Yona rather than marry her may well be just a plot contrivance to set Yona on her journey. We’ll never know – or at least nothing’s been clarified in the 72 manga chapters that have been scanlated so far.

For the batch scripts, I’ve gone back through and tried to make all the naming consistent. Crunchyroll changed the spelling of every character’s name, except Hak and Yona, at some point in the series: Su-won was initially Soo-won, Mun-deok was initially Mondok, Ki-ja became Gija, etc. Male names are typically hyphenated, but female names (like Yona) are not. I’ve tried to listen to the phonetics of the names, but some decisions are just arbitrary. Is the Yellow Dragon Zeno or Jeno? I like Zeno better; so there.

Yona isn’t quite done. An OAD has been announced, and I have faint hopes for an eventual second season. There’s plenty of manga material for another 24 episodes, and with a lapse of six months or a year, there will be even more. But shoujo isn’t as popular as it used to be. Saiunkoku Monogatari got two seasons of 39 episodes each, but that was six years ago. Can an anime market dominated by crappy light novel adaptations pandering to otaku sustain a quality show like Yona? I certainly hope so!

I Say, "-uusei"

So here is Kakyuusei (1995), a four episode h-anime OVA. It should not be confused with Elf Ban Kakyuusei (1998), a four episode non-h OVA, or Kakyuusei (1999), a fourteen episode non-h TV series, all of which, like Doukyuusei and Doukyuusei 2, stem from Japanese "visual novels" or erotic games with high school settings. The Kakyuusei shows focus on relationships between a male upperclassman and multiple female students, typically first-years.

Kakyuusei (1995) has the dubious distinction of being the only one of all the "-uusei" shows never released on DVD. It also has a strange English (sub)title: My Petty Class Student. At first, I thought this was a misprint for "pretty," because "petty" usually means "trivial" or "unimportant." However, Zalis believes it to be an overly literal translation, using the second definition of "petty" as "of secondary or lower importance, rank, or scale; e.g., a petty officer."

The show is technically an orphan. The first two episodes were released in the US on VHS and ripped by Anime-Hentai. The last two episodes never appeared in English. For this release, Zalis translation-checked the first two episodes and both translated and timed the last two. convexity did additional translation checking and translated the extensive signs. I edited and typeset, as usual, and CP and konnakude checked the results. Because the series was never released on DVD, the only available raws are terrible LaserDisc rips, at 384p resolution.They're filled with deinterlacing problems and blended frames, but they're the only game in town.

Kakyuusei (1995) follows the usual format for the "-uusei" shows. The protagonist, Nanahoshi Kakeru, is high-school senior hoping to "make happy memories" (i.e., get lucky) in his last year in school. He meets and beds a virginal young woman, Urara, to whom he declares his undying love. However, when she is conveniently sent abroad, he pursues and beds a different first-year girl in each of the succeeding episodes, only returning to Urara when she even more conveniently returns at the end of the series. The cast is fleshed out (so to speak) with the usual tropes, including Kakeru's younger sister, Mika, his hapless best friend, Minamino Takeshi, and the sneering, wealth playboy, Douda Shuichiro. The h-scenes are mild by modern standards, but there is a tiny bit of censoring in one spot. In addition, there's a dream sequence involving a St. Bernard that makes the horny mutt in Kennel Tokorozawa look like a model of deportment.

Of all the "-uusei" h-animes, only Tenkousei (1997) remains unsubbed; in the PG category, Kakyuusei (1999) is still unfinished (C1 is slowly working its way through that series). Viewed as a collection, they seem remarkably repetitious, and yet the same basic plot continues to be used in visual novels and anime series to this day. I guess harem shows never go out of favor.

I'm hoping that better raws for Kakyuusei (1995) will surface someday, but with LaserDiscs the only digital source at the moment, I'm not holding my breath. If a reader does find a better set of raws, let me know, and Orphan will redo the subs. In the meantime, this is the best that can be done for this otherwise forgotten series.

P.S. A big shout-out to Zalis for taking on the translation. I don't think this would have gotten done without him.

Yawara-chan Returns!

Yes, the FroZen-EviL gang has reunited to put on another show, in this case, the Blu-Ray version of Yawara! The first two episodes have been released, and despite a mixup about fonts, it's now possible to see Yawara-chan in her HD and color-restored glory.

The process for this project will be a little different than before. For the first 40 episodes, the team is going to use the AnimEigo R1 subs as a base. For episodes 41-58, the team is using the Froth-Bite/Live-eviL subs, which will require OCRing the original episodes (the scripts were lost in one of several FTP catastrophes). From episode 59 onward, we'll use the FroZen-EviL scripts. All episodes will be scrutinized carefully to get consistent styling and terminology, and episodes 1-58 will receive a full translation check. Complete typesetting, instead of the simpler {\an8}Sign: style of the original show, will be done. Karaokes will be styled (simply) instead of just line-timed.

Editorial changes should be relatively few. The award that Jigoro wants Yawara to win is properly called the People's Honor Award, not the National Merit Award. All of the terms in the judo ring will be left untranslated, not just "Hajime" and "Matte." Judo terms will be given consistent spelling and capitalization.

Now, I must confess that I never watched the first 58 episodes of Yawara! In was easy enough to pick up the show in media res, and real-life time constraints made devoting 20 hours to catching up impractical. Now that I'm retired, I could watch the whole series, but I'm enjoying the week-by-week unrolling of the first few episodes. The main characters don't change much from beginning to end, of course. Still, it will be fun watching them run their courses over several years.

To me, the Blu-Rays (like the "Special DVD Edition" of episode 1) look gorgeous. Colors are vibrant, edge-burn is gone, interlacing and blended frame issues much less prominent. The first OP and ED - Miracle Girl and Stand by Me - are excellent. Miracle Girl is a J-pop earworm, albeit quite a good one, but Stand by Me is a soulful ballad that stands repeated listening. Be sure to get the second versions to avoid font problems with the OP karaoke.

So welcome back, Yawara-chan! I look forward to following your progress in the coming months and years.

Miyuki - Forever Selection

Blame BakaBT for this.

When I offered the Miyuki batch on BakaBT, Al_Sleeper asked about including the AMV (animated music video) special called Forever Selection, which offers nine songs in complete form set to excerpts and stills from the series. The FroZen-EviL team hadn't considered the special important and hadn't encoded or scripted it. I didn't want to include a random Internet raw in the batch, and BakaBT didn't want to accept the torrent without it. So a compromise of sorts was reached: the batch went up with just the 37 TV episodes, and Saiei's version of the AMV went up separately.

Even though it's a music video, Forever Selection includes a small amount of dialog. I decided to make a script for the dialog. While I was at it, I included the signs that had been typeset as well. The result was never formally offered, although I posted a patch file to add the script.

However, I was quite dissatisfied with the result. The Saiei raw suffers from a lot of jitter, because it hadn't been put through image stabilization during the encode process. It doesn't "fit" with the rest of the series, video-wise. Accordingly, I badgered Skr, the series' encoder, to do Forever Selection. He graciously agreed. I adapted my script to the new raw, which required redoing all the typesetting because of the much-reduced amount of jitter, and now the special is released.

Forever Selection does not include song translations. All of the songs in the TV episodes are excerpts from longer pieces, and the full-length versions were never translated. Still, even as just an AMV with a bit of dialog and some signs, it's a nice reminder of the show and its soundtrack. I hope you enjoy it.

This version has been added into the batch on BakaBT and the separate AMV has been deleted.