Saiyuuki (1960)

Here is the first English-subtitled version of the 1960 Japanese animated movie Saiyuuki. Up until now, the only available English version has been the 1961 dub Alakazam the Great. As was often the case back then, the script for the dub bears little or no relation to the original Japanese script. The changes in Alakazam the Great were quite extensive: all the Buddhist and Taoist elements were eliminated; the movie was shortened by several minutes; the musical score and songs were redone completely. Despite the attempt to reshape Saiyuuki into generic Disney fare, the movie was a commercial failure in the US.

Saiyuuki was based on Tezuka Osamu's highly popular manga of the same name, which in turn was based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Osamu's name was used prominently in promoting the film, although he always denied active involvement in the production. According to some sources, he was displeased with the film's happy ending, and that spurred him to form his own anime company, Mushi Productions.

Saiyuuki is set in China and recounts the adventures of Son Gokuu, a monkey king. Son Gokuu is both powerful and willful. In his arrogance, he challenges heaven itself and is punished by exile to Mount Gogyou. He is eventually released on condition that he accompany a monk named Sanzou to India in order to receive the Buddhist sutras. Along the way he defeats and then befriends the pig-man Cho Hokkai and the ogre Sa Gajou. Together, they must confront and defeat the terrible bull demon Gyuumaou before Sanzou can accomplish his mission. The core cast is supplemented by Rin Rin, a love interest for Son Gokuu, and Shouryuu, a mischievous imp whose head horn doubles as an antenna for a 1960s mobile phone.

Like the original manga, Saiyuuki is a mishmash of styles, with plenty of anachronistic elements. Broad comedy is mixed in with action and chase sequences. Western influences coexist with Asian styling and thought. For example, the gods are depicted with angelic halos, and some of its denizens are from Greek mythology. When Cho Hakkai is trying to impress his bride-to-be (actually Son Gokuu in disguise), he appears successively in formal Western attire, then a Russian Cossack costume, then as an Indian chief, and then as a hula dancer. Still, Saiyuuki is recognizably a children's film in the 1950s Disney mold. Action sequences alternate with slower sections to allow kids to "cool off." Songs are used to underline the characters or delineate chapters. And despite trials and tribulations, the good guys triumph.

Saiyuuki was Toei Douga's third color animated film. The animation is fluid and represents a real advance over the studio's previous animated movies. Despite that, I find it a bit bland. There's really nothing to engage an adult, and there's a lot of padding. I prefer Takahata Isao's Horus: Prince of the Sun, which shows signs of his unique directorial sensibility, even though it too is a G-rated children's movie. Horus is lively, while Saiyuuki is frenetic. However, Saiyuuki was a greater commercial success in Japan.

This is Orphan's second Journey to the West-themed project, after Tezuka Osamu Monogatari in 2014. Both projects originated with Al_Sleeper in the BakaBT community. For Saiyuuki, he provided the encoded raw and a very rough English translation as a starting point. Magistral (also from the BakaBT community) redid the translation and filled in some of the rough spots; then convexity gave the script a complete going over and translated the signs and the songs. M74 timed, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica and konnakude QCed. The raw is from ARR, minus their Russian voice-over track and subtitles. The encode is serviceable, but the source suffers from jitter and transcription problems. The film really needs restoration and a Blu-Ray release, but that seems unlikely.

 A few translation notes:

•  ri is an old unit of distance, equal to 3.927 kilometers.
• Gogyuu, the mountain where Gokuu is imprisoned, takes its name from the five elements of Chinese medicine: earth, wood, metal, fire, and water.

So even though it's Tezuka Osamu at one remove, enjoy Saiyuuki!

Princess Kaguya (Blu-ray)

Here is Takahato Isao's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Kaguya-hime no Monogatari). It is a fitting capstone to his long and illustrious directing career, which began with Horus: Prince of the Sun. This release has one purpose, and one purpose only: to provide a watchable set of English subtitles. We started from Fussoir's rip of the Japanese Blu-Ray and its official English subtitles. The missing lines have been filled in. The timing has been fixed. Language and grammar have been tweaked. The credits have been subtitled. And that's it. Call it Minimally Invasive Fansubbing.

Now, I don't agree with every decision that the creators took about the subtitles. There are no honorifics for example, which seems to be Ghibli's standard practice. I don't mind most of the time, but for a movie set in 10th century Japan, lack of honorifics, and the insight they provide to subtleties of class and role, is a loss. Localizing Kaguya's childhood nickname as "Lil' Bamboo" sticks in my craw because of my general distaste for using American dialect as a substitute for Japanese dialect. The dialog seems highly compressed, perhaps to allow for slow readers. But I suspect most Western audiences would listen to a dub anyway.

ninjacloud retimed the official subtitles. Skr filled in the missing lines; he made no other revisions to the original script. I edited and typeset. Calyrica and konnakude did QC. The raw is from fussoir. Of the many audio and subtitle tracks in the original, only the English and Japanese sets have been retained. The dub is fine, as dubs of Ghibli movies usually are. In fact, it's wordier than the subtitles.

Some viewers may disagree with the removal of the other audio and subtitle tracks and may want a version with French or Chinese audio or subs. For that, Fussoir's original release is just fine. This version is strictly for an English-speaking audience. If you prefer the original release but want to use these subtitles, a package with the script and fonts can be found here.

As for the movie itself: it is stunning in every respect. Its leisurely tempo and simple artwork belie the complexity of its themes and the cumulative emotional impact of the story. It distills the Japanese sense of mono no aware - the impermanence of life - more simply and elegantly than any Japanese movie I have seen. For me, what lingers is Kaguya's heartbroken reaction to the loss of the world she has known and come to love. Takahato is a poet of loss, as he first demonstrated in Grave of the Fireflies. His work here is more understated but no less impactful.

Kaguya can be seen as a tragedy in three acts. The first covers Kaguya-hime's miraculous discovery by a rural bamboo cutter and her joyful childhood in the country. The second and longest section is about her time in the capital and her increasing unhappiness at all the restrictions placed on her in her assigned role as a "noble princess." The last and shortest shows her grief and despair as her time on Earth comes to its end. The first section is joyful, and the third is tragic. The second is in many ways infuriating, but it is also a deep examination of the conflicting requirements of self, family, society, and custom. Some critics have described the middle section as an indictment of unthinking patriarchy, but I doubt that Takahata would agree (just as he has stated, quite firmly, that Grave of the Fireflies is not an anti-war movie). He portrays his characters and their situation, he observes events and interactions, and he lets viewers draw their own conclusions.

The voice actors are drawn from the world of film rather than anime and are thus mostly unknown to a Western anime audience. For example, Miyamoto Nobuko, who plays Kaguya's mother and also narrates, has been nominated for Best Actress at Japan's Academy Awards eight times, but she has never appeared in an anime before. (I saw her in 1987's Tampopo, which is well worth watching.) Takeo Chii, who plays Kaguya's father, appeared in more than 70 films before he died in 2012; Kaguya was his last role, and some extra dialog was recorded by Miyaki Yuji. Kaguya is played by Asakura Aki, a young film actress. The music is by Miyazaki's "house composer" Joe Hisaishi and is wonderfully appropriate and subtle.

The artwork reflects the pared-to-the-bone simplicity of Takahata's later works, first evident in My Neighbor the Yamadas. At times it has the beauty of watercolors, at others the simplicity of children's drawings. It always serves the story. Consider, for example, the dream(?) sequence during Kaguya's naming banquet, when she flees the crass coarseness of the party-goers. The artwork changes from rough and almost ugly as she hears their crude gossip, to the headlong velocity of charcoal drawing as she flees, and then to dreamy watercolors when she arrives back at her country home. The drawing styles reflect Kaguya's feelings and her shifting moods of anger, panic, homesickness, and resignation with little or no recourse to dialog. It's a beautiful, incredibly sad sequence.

Without further ado, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
 

Joker: Marginal City

Here's another lost 90s OVA, Joker: Marginal City from 1992. Based on a manga by artist Michihara Kasumi and writer Maki Yuu, it's a sci-fi thriller set in Blade Runner country, where it rains all the time and androids (but not cell phones) have been created. The story opens with a string of serial killing involving young women, whose hearts have been removed. On the trail of the killer are a Special Agent named Joker (a cyborg, not an android), who is allowed to be cop, judge, and executioner all at once, and a young policeman, Rikudo Rin.The trail leads to the mysterious Dr. Bayfarm and to one of Bayfarm's creations, an android named Saki. After suitable action sequences, and a pulled-out-of-nowhere plot twist that has the sole purpose of extending the action, the situation is partially resolved, and the episode ends. If it's not Oz-class sci-fi, it's not Bavi Stock-class junk either.

What distinguishes Joker from other 90s noir sci-fi OVAs is Joker's special ability: the cyborg can assume male or female form at will. As a man, Joker is a superhero, fast, lean, and deadly. As a woman, Joker is a "typical girl," pretty and interested in clothes, dating, and romance. Rin and Joker are in love. Joker is affectionate in both forms, but Rin will only reciprocate when Joker appears a a woman. This isn't a deep exploration of the implications of androgyny (read Ursula Le Guinn's The Left Hand of Darkness if you want that), and its deprecation of a male-male relationship is pretty typical for non-BL anime.

Moho Kareshi translated the episode and the songs. M74 timed the dialog, Juggen styled the songs, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica and Juggen did QC. Originally, we were going to use ARR's raw, but Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions agreed to rip and encode his Japanese laserdisc. The resulting raw has less jitter. The laserdisc picture is not quite 4:3, due to black bars in the original source.

The dialog is not complicated but it is very sparse on names. Rin's superior officer is given neither name or rank; Rin calls him "senpai" (senior). I have used his rank from the manga (inspector), because "senpai" made the dialog feel like it came out of a high-school slice-of-life dramedy. Other honorifics were removed as well, but they were few.

The voice actors were industry veterans who are active to this day. Hayami Sho (male Joker) played Hojo Akira in Sanctuary, a 90s OVA, but he is also working in the current Assassination Classroom. Tomizawa Michie (female Joker) was Latina Ascot in Hi-Speed Jecy, another 90s OVA, and C-Ko in the Project A-Ko series, but she also worked in the recent Magic Kaito 1412. Matsumoto Yasunori (Rin) was Muto in Oz, still another 90s OVA, but he has also appeared in recent shows like the second season of Magi. It's a coincidence of course, but Orphan has released all of the 90s OVAs I mentioned (Sanctuary, Hi-Speed Jecy, and Oz), and they're all worth watching.

I want to thank Crisisi on the FFShrine forum for scanning the booklets for the Joker CD albums. The booklets contained official lyrics for the insert song and the ending song, which facilitated translations. The insert song is an upbeat J-pop song covering a montage of a date between Rin and (female) Joker. It doesn't do much for the story - we already know that Rin and Joker are in love - but it does heighten the contrast between Joker's male and female personalities.

As with Sanctuary, there's a lot more in the manga than in this one-shot OVA, but unlike Sanctuary, the Joker manga has not been translated into English.
 

You can get Joker: Marginal City from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #new on irc.rizon.net.

Uncle C Needs You! (Recruiting)

Orphan Fansubs has always been a small group. It started as a one-man shop (me) and gradually expanded to a core staff of half-a-dozen regulars. However, a combination of bountiful sources and the natural ebb and flow of team members (mostly ebb, alas) has now reached a critical state. Most of our projects are stalled for lack of resources, while the availability of interesting raws has continued to increase.

I am looking for one or more translators/translation checkers and one or more QCs. For the moment, resources for timing, editing, typesetting, and encoding are sufficient.

These projects use original scripts and are stalled on lack of translation checking (and sometimes, song translation):

• Stop!! Hibari-kun. From DVD ISOs. 35 episodes.
• Boyfriend. From laserdisc. 1 full-length movie.
• Bite Me! Chameleon. From Internet raws. 6 episodes, double length.
• Marginal Prince incomplete episodes (9-14). From Internet raws. 6 episodes.

These projects use existing subtitles and are stalled on lack of translation checking:

• Gosenzosama Banbanzai DVD softsub. A check of episode 1 showed that the show needs a full translation check. 3 episodes (2-4; 5-6 were done by a different translator).
• Yume Tsukai. From DVD ISOs. 12 episodes.
• Cosprayers. From DVD ISOs. 16 half-length episodes.

These projects require original scripts and need a translator:

• Techno Police 21C. From laserdisc. This has only been available as a VHS dub. 1 episode.
• Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou. From laserdisc; ecchi. 3 episodes, double length.
• Greed. From laserdisc. 1 full-length movie.
• Condition Green. From laserdisc. 6 episodes.
• Sanada 10 incomplete episodes (10-12). From DVD ISOs. 3 episodes.
• Nora and Nora 2 (Twinkle Nora Rock Me). From laserdisc. 2 episodes.

There are even more possibilities, but I think you get the picture.

A translator/translation checker candidate needs to be proficient in spoken Japanese (old shows don't come with closed captions) and have an adequate command of English. A translator/translation checker does not need to be a native English speaker, although that doesn't hurt, of course. A QC candidate needs to have experience with fansubbing tools (particularly Aegisub) and to understand how to check not just dialog but timing, signs, and video quality.

If you're interested - even in just a subset of the projects - I'm on IRC almost all the time under my Collectr handle.

Code:Breaker OVAs

Returning to our original mission of completing unfinished shows, Orphan presents the second and third Code:Breaker OVAs. The first was subbed by Hatsuyuki Fansubs, although the release has a problem: some of the fonts weren't muxed in, notably the main dialog font. An unofficial patch to add the missing fonts can be found here.

Code:Breaker is a tense little series in which high-school martial arts heroine Sakurakouji Sakura suddenly finds herself in the midst of a secret society of superpowered vigilantes, the Code:Breakers, who in time-honored anime fashion use their powers to ruthlessly kill anyone they (or their superiors) regard as evil. Sakura becomes a cross between their warden and their mascot, and the show itself seems a bizarre hybrid between shounen and otome, with the Code:Breakers acting as both action heroes and Sakura's quasi-harem. It seemed to end inconclusively, in the time-honored shounen way, with the death of the apparent Boss leading to the discovery of the next Boss.

When the Code:Breaker OVAs were announced, I hoped that they would continue the main story and provide a greater degree of closure. Alas, it was not to be. The OVAs are collections of comic or ecchi vignettes. The Code:Breakers' superpowers are not used much, and the theme of battling evil disappears entirely. Instead, we get a Valentine's Day story, a White Day Story, a beach episode, a hanami (flower-viewing) story, a Christmas sketch, and a couple of mini-episodes about Nyanmaru as the hero of a children's show. It's all played for laughs and fanservice, with Sakura's and Ouji's assets prominently on display. In short, harmless fun - or mostly harmless.

Moho Kareshi translated both episodes, and Skr checked OVA 2. M74 timed the episodes, I edited and typeset, Juggen created new karaokes for the OP and ED, Calyrica and konnakude QCed, and bananadoyouwanna encoded from DVD ISOs.The OP and ED romanji are from the Hatsuyuki release, but the English translation is from the R1 DVDs. Hatsuyuki was also used for Nyanmaru's song and the styling of the chapter names in OVA 2.

You can get the Code:Breaker OVAs from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

Falcom Gakuen S2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Senki Ehrgeiz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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