Koihime Musou OVA - Sworn Sibling Standoff

This is something I'd been working on long before I had the idea of creating ReDone-Subs. Koihime Musou is a fun series featuring chibis, ecchi, shoujo-ai, idol singers, and something to do with Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Unfortunately, the only English release of the spinoff OVA had eyecancer styling and Hong Kong bootleg levels of mistranslations, Engrish, spelling/grammar fail, wrong timing, and non-existent typesetting. Not to mention the inexplicable no-effect hardsubbed OP/ED lyrics. So I set out to fix the subs, though not before a newer better encode was kindly provided to me. Eventually, I wound up almost completely retranslating the OVA from the ground up, in addition to retiming ever line, doing all-new typesetting, and doing new softsubbed OP/ED karaoke. I didn't actually change the song lyrics, so that viewers can have consistency with the AonE/Menclave fansubs and the PFsubs DVD-rips that use them.

Vital Stats:
Raw: Encode by Desbreko (DVD .iso source)
Original Translations: eX-Alpha&Monti*
Video: h264, 720x480 (16:9 anamorphic), 947 kbps, 23.976 fps
Audio: Japanese, 2.0 Stereo AC3, 448 kbps
Subtitles: English, soft styled .ass
Styling: Based on Commie's styling as seen in Shin Koihime Musou TV.

*Again, there's barely any traces of the original translations left in these subs, but I must credit them anyway.

Touka Gettan 06 - Stationery Standoff

This episode of Touka Gettan brings the rivalry between two school factions into sharp focus. On one side, you have Ninomiya, led by a set of triplets whose goal in life is to surpass Naga The Serpent's OHOHOHOHOHO (why not whore ourselves?) laughing technique. On the other side, we have the Lotus Association, led by Shouko Rokujou when she's not busy obsessing over and stalking Makoto. Things come to a head in a Serious Business cooking battle. Astute viewers who remember the Serin subs will probably notice some divergent localization choices in this release. Two come to mind:

1) "Japanese Confectionery" is precisely what my dictionary software gives when looking up "wagashi." As it felt too boring and annoying to type it out every time, I've changed it to "J-Sweets." But it could've been "worse." (Or on some level, "better.") I had originally planned to give people a.f.k. Lucky Star flashbacks by calling them "Japastries," but decided against that.

2) The triplets who lead Ninomiya are referred to as "The Monarchs." I may have used the term in a previous episode, but I don't think I've explained it until now. I chose this term because it conveniently conveys a double meaning for their status as butterflies and their status as authority figures. "Butterfly Triplets" was too wordy and too obvious, while the commonly-used term "Kouchou" is too much Gratuitous Japanese for my tastes.

Fortunately, this episode's original subs didn't suffer from the "Editor and QC went on vacation" syndrome that ep 5 displayed.

Torrent [CRC=ACE5DC47]

Touka Gettan 05 - The Big Sleep

So here I am back with Touka Gettan episode 5. Sorry this took so long, but I felt like I'd been spending more time subbing than doing actual anime watching lately. Plus, this was one of the worst-subbed episodes in the original release. Tons of spelling/grammar errors, gross mistranslations, incoherent sentences, a [TLC] left visible, you name it. Take a look at the script, some of the original lines are left in comments for perusal.

But I got through it, and can present yet another wonderfully incomprehensible episode of Touka Gettan. Ep 5 features some of the Warring Triad of goddesses spending time with each other, although as we saw in episode 4, Mihashi of the Shikigami isn't going to stand idly by and let Sei get away. Oh, and Makoto sneaks into Touka's room for some reverse raep in revenge for ep 4, only it's more of reverse-preemptive revenge since ep 4 hasn't happened yet... oh, just watch the ep and see.

Torrent [CRC=19302CC3] || DDL

New ideas and 1 cancellation

So, it seems not a week goes by when I don't come across some older show and think, "Gee, this would be a great idea to work on!" But we all have our limits, so I'm trying to narrow things down a little.

Shows where work has been done, releases imminent:

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~ (2004) | Subs: A-Keep/Conclave&Faith | Raws: Transcoded from Zero-Raws .wmvs
As before, all OCR, basic checking, and karaoke are finished. Bonus eps and extras already released.
Rizelmine (2002) Subs: AIP, reconciled with AC and h-b | Raws: New encode by Sora-no-Shiro
1st 11 scripts transcribed, OP and ED1 karaoke complete.

Cancelled:

Pita Ten (2002) -- I found out that the folks at Retrofit were planning to release this show. So I decided to leave it to them, since (1) I was having difficulty with the raws, and (2) HnK's subs don't really need extensive editing or TLC for a good re-release, not in the way that Touka Gettan and Strawberry 100% have. I passed along OP/ED karaoke and scripts for the first two episodes to them, so go there for your Pita Ten fix.

Planned:

Kakyuusei 2 (2004) | Subs: Lunar | Raws: Random (so-so DivX5 DVD-rips)
Haven't seen this show, but I "somehow" came into possession of the actual English sub scripts awhile back, so it should be an easy release. I may do 2-14 of the 1999 previous TV series as a solo TL project.

Lime-iro Senkitan (2003) | Subs: ANBU-AonE | Raws: transcodes of .wmv DVD-rips (pending transcoding by another individual)
Eps 3-13 of the 2005 sequel series are another possible original TL project, assuming I can get raws.

Magic Users' Club (1996 OVA) & (1999 TV) | Subs: Modified from R1DVD, by way of anime-takeover | Raw: from the "HD Remastered" version that got released in Japan.
I'm hoping to make this a dual-audio release, since the English dub is not too bad for its age. For the subtitles, I'll "fansubize" the R1 subs a bit, with karaoke, honorifics, Japanese name order, and whatever other rewrites I feel like doing. That also involves manually adding all the songs and signs, since they were hardsubbed on the R1 discs.

Futakoi Alternative (2005) | Subs: AnimeYuki | Raws: some shoddy DVD-rips
The DVD raws may suck, but I found the AnY subs in .srt form, so I can't resist such low-hanging fruit.

And again, there's probably a few others I'm forgetting about. If there's anything else you want to request that has DVD raws available and isn't being actively pursued by another group, let me know and I'll look into it.

Strawberry 100% Final Update

And now, what I hope is the final post on this blog about the Strawberry 100% franchise. MDC has released all the remaining TV episodes and OVAs since my last post, and I hope they're a sufficient upgrade over the previous versions. Not that I've seen them, because if I ever revisit this show just to watch, it won't be for a long long time. Doing the OVAs was an interesting experience, as it gave me some practice in transcribing subs that I'll put to good use for future shows. And doing 6 different karaokes for 5 episode has helped me speed up and streamline that process as well. Find+Replace is a new good friend of mine, I can say that much.

So, while you enjoy the complete lack of conclusion in either the TV or OVA series, I'll be moving on to work on other shows, most of which should be better than Strawberry 100%. But at least there's always the manga.

(Note: links removed due to reasons)

Touka Gettan 04 - The jester stole her thorny crown

So yeah, that hiatus lasted a little longer than I wanted it to. I returned from my family reunion, spent 3 days at home, then went back on the road to see The Protomen and attend Anime Iowa. And at AI, I had a wacky weekend involving lots of alcohol, not much sleep, winning the entire Maison Ikkoku manga in a Jeopardy game, and filling in as a glowstick seller at the rave. Fun times.

But anyway, I'm finally back with episode 4 of Touka Gettan. Various evil forces are afoot, trying to control Sei, Momoka, Touka, and the Stone Sword. Has Touka lost it? Does he know he can kill? Plus, Momoka Kawakabe attracts no small amount of attention by appearing in a rather saucy torn-clothes ensemble, exposing some quite appealing waki, oppai, and pantsu. The scenes in question can be inspected via the download link below:

Torrent: [E4D93368] || DDL