Sunday, June 6, 2010

Touka Gettan 01 - The End



Throwing caution to the winds, I've decided to launch into this project, with Touka Gettan episode 01. I would try and release it with an English title, but it means something like "Peach Blossoms in Awe of the Moon"... and that's just too unwieldy. Now, the first thing about this show is that it is told backwards, aside from episode 25. So this first episode is really the end of the story. Needless to say, it can be quite confusing. So if you don't like series like Fafner and Shin Mazinger Z because they didn't lay out and explain every little thing in the first episode, this might not be a show for you. I found it fascinating and compelling the whole way through, despite not know what the hell was going on at first.

Vital Stats:

Source: DVD, unknown raw. The raws unfortunately have an uncropped black bar at the top of the image. But since the bitrate/quality is already so-so, I didn't want to risk re-encoding and reducing the quality further.
Video: 704x480 anamorphic 16:9 (853x480 displayed), 23.976 fps, ~850-1100 kbps.
Audio: 2.0 Stereo AAC, ~260 kbps.
Subtitles: Based on the only existing English translation, by Serin-Fansubs. Let's just say they were a bit too literal for my tastes, not to mention fraught with translation and editing errors. In fact, improving on them was my main impetus for doing this project. The TV -> DVD audio/video quality upgrade is just a convenient bonus. So expect to see a major overhaul in terms of translation, editing, styling, phrasing, and localization. As usual, I'll respect the honorific and naming conventions of the original group. Things like "TL Note: Neko means cat", not so much.

So whether you're a first-time or repeat visitor to the land of Kamitsumihara, I hope you'll enjoy Touka Gettan as I'm presenting it. You may also want to check out Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito (2003), which shares some production staff with and hasother connections to this series.

Torrent [CRC=751B9DCD]

10 comments:

  1. Interesting! I was wanting to watch this, but looking at the other group's subs those few years ago... yeah, I put this series on the back burner.

    Thanks for the release! Will follow.

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  2. Nice nice! Keep it up :D

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  3. You are officially my favourite person for the month of June. Potentially longer. I got about halfway through the Serin releases before giving up entirely. Their translation quality improved a little, but it was still substandard enough that it made following the show a chore. Glad I wasn't the only one!

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  4. Thanks. I've been waiting for someone to do DVD subs of this forever.

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  5. You should be aware that the translation for the opening theme is entirely wrong in pretty much every single line. This is understandable, since the song is extremely hard to translate - I know, I tried (and maybe some day I will actually finish it) - but you'd probably be better off just leaving the translation out entirely.

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  6. I prefer to think of it as "creative license" :P Still, I think I managed to improve on what Serin had.

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  7. I didn't actually check what you had put in there earlier, I assumed you were basing it on the Serin one. I see you got rid of that, luckily, since it was complete nonsense.

    You still seem to have some transscription errors, though. Also, there are a lot of makurakotoba in that song that you need to look up specifically to get them at all, like "akanesasu".

    Here's my old extremely half-done translation of the song: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhmpksp7_28gpf5xn

    It has what should be the correct transscription (and link to where it came from), and also lots of links to explanations of the makurakotoba. I recommend reading through those carefully, at the very least.

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  8. T-T-T-Touka Gettan! You are incredible! Maybe this time it'll make some sense! ^^ Thank you.

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  9. Yay, new translations of Touka Gettan, looking forward to this. <3 Thank you! :3

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