Rizelmine 14 - Secret Agent Girl

Yes, they've given her a number and taken away her name, not that her name didn't sound dubious to begin with. Rizel undertakes a risky commando mission as a preliminary to her date with Tomonori, which was arranged under false pretenses in the previous episode. After the somewhat-depressing aging montage in 13, things take a downright sad turn this time around.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime Colored War Tales OVA Episode I - The Pantsu Menace

As promised, here is the first part of the two-episode OVA, Lime-iro Senkitan - Nankoku Yume Roman. After the fierce battle at the end of the TV series, the battered Amanohara is desperately in need of repairs... oh, ya know what, screw it. Festivals, yukata, swimsuits, and other silliness are what this episode is about. There's some effort by Shintarou to keep things serious and create some amount of story, but he's helpless in the face of marriage fantasies and nopan action. Oh, and there's also some crossover with characters from Lime-Iro Ryuukitan X Cross to set up the sequel.

The format of this release is going to be a little different. Rather than wmv raws, this is a new encode from R2JDVD .iso by Kaishakunin. So there's a bit of an upgrade to h264, 700x476 (anamorphic 4:3), and 2.0 AC3 audio. Translations are from Static-Subs, as they were the only group to sub the OVA. You'll have your choice of two subtitle tracks:

Track 1: Static-Subs styling, color-coded by speaker.
Track 2: ANBU-AonE color scheme, same as what I used in the TV series. The only difference is that there's no onscreen/offscreen style changes -- I won't take the time to do those unless the original subs had them.

Obviously there's no censorship differences or new scenes this time, since Static's releases were also DVD-rips. So this is mainly an upgrade from hardsubbed XviD/avi to softsubbed h264/mkv. And there are some subtitle improvements, though the originals weren't bad.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa)OVA Batch (BakaBT)

Rizelmine 13 - I'm Getting Older, Too

It's time to get underway with the second season of Rizelmine, which aired in Fall 2002 after a 3-month break between episodes 12 and 13. In ep 12, we caught a brief glimpse of a non-loli Rizel, and we're going to see more of that this time around. There's also some "boobs in your face," and a surprisingly depressing fantasy sequence right after the OP. And just like in Hollywood, fountains in parks always respond to romantic moments. Maybe it's a system similar to the Buffalo Wild Wings button?

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

This episode features the first use of the 2nd ED, so be sure to keep that file in the same folder. Also, marvel at my song-syllable-counting skills.

Lime-Colored War Tales 13 - The Landslide Brought me Down

It's been another lengthy journey on another short show, but here we are at the epic last episode of Lime-Colored War Tales. The Amanohara and the Raimu Unit have reached the inner confines of the Lushun Fortress, and they're headed for a final showdown with Rasputin and his elite Tamers. What will become of Rasputin's ambitions? What will become of the love between Shintarou and Sophia? For that matter, what will become of the love between... every non-Shikigami female in this series and Shintarou? And last but not least, will the animation crew find ways to insert pantyshots, brashots, and boobs into an otherwise serious and emotional episode? I think we all know the answer to that last one.

The 2-episode OVA is forthcoming; the sequel series, who knows?

New Scenes: None (ep 9's new scene truly was the last)
"Enhanced" Scenes:
1) 7:25~10:58 and onwards -- Sophia's outfit is a little more daring and a lot more baring. Frankly, I feel it sabotages some possibilities for genuine drama. The TV version at least keeps some semblance of respectability there.
2) 11:15 -- Very brief non-ecchi animation upgrade, replacing a still shot of Kinu's Raimu from the TV broadcast. There may have been others that I didn't notice.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT) || Scripts+Fonts Archive

And in other business, there's only one v2 for this series, for episode 02. This patch corrects one single missing word, and nothing more. Thanks to Collectr for spotting it.

Ep 02v2 patch || Ep 02v2 Torrent [CRC=819603B3]

(Miscellaneous v2 matters follow)

Rizelmine Season 1 Batch

As a little Thanksgiving present to you all, here's a batch with the first half of Rizelmine. I went ahead with this since nobody pointed out any mistakes that should've been fixed. If there are any, I'll see about fixing them when the show is complete.

Lime-Colored War Tales 13 is at the QC stage, so it'll be out before long as well. EDIT: Please use the complete series batches instead.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Rizelmine 12 - A Test of Island Courage

For me, the last episode of Rizelmine's first season brings to mind countless 80s teen comedy movies, which inevitably ended with some sort of race or contest between the plucky underdog protagonist(s) and their rick jackass oppressors. But in this contest, a kiss and a legend of eternal happiness are on the line, and certain external factions are hell-bent on manipulating the results. I believe this episode also marks the onscreen debut of Rizel's trio of Mamas, who will have more of a role in the second season.

Again, if you've seen mistakes in any of these episodes so far, let me know and I'll see about fixing them for a season 1 batch.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 12 - Now I've Lost it, I Know I Can Kill

I'm back in action, and so are the diehard crew of the Amanohara. Unfortunately, there's trouble in the ranks, as Shintarou proves that love makes you crazy and evil. But really, what teacher hasn't once thought about going on a murderous rampage against his students? And once again, the creators were unable to find places to strategically subtract clothing or add random onanism scenes, so no new content in this episode.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

Temporary Lull

Sorry for the slowdown of releases lately, but I'm staffing a convention this weekend, and things have been busy doing all the last minute preparations and planning. Lime-Colored War Tales 12 just needs QC, so it'll be released early next week.

Rizelmine 11 - The Magnificent Six

No beach episode this time; instead, we get the buildup and journey to establishing a beach episode. Or what would've been the first half of an episode, if these episodes had normal lengths. But the next episode is the end of the first season, and I may do a partial batch for eps 1-12. Let me know if you've seen any mistakes so far.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 11 - Cruel and Unusual Pampering

As the Amanohara draws near to a confrontation with the Russian army at the Lushun fortress, tensions run high and fatigue is mounting. Shintarou seems especially hard-hit, but luckily, the girls are there to comfort him. Kinu puts on a highly interactive puppet show, Asa gives a blisteringly therapeutic massage, Rinzu performs some interpretive dance, Sarasa shows her education in the Kotomi Ichinose School of Violin, and Momen... well, she makes him a special offer he's hard-pressed to refuse.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scenes: None
Enhanced Scene: 10:52 ~ 11:15 -- again, undergarments missing.

Rizelmine 10 - Matchmaking Gone Wrong

In this episode of Rizelmine that features barely any lines from the male lead, Rizel tries to help her best female friend win the heart of resident rich-boy Ryuunosuke Hououin. Part of me can't help seeing that relationship from the cynical/Sankaku view of "all Japanese women are gold diggers." But it doesn't matter here, as Ryuunosuke makes clear which age bracket is relevant to his interests.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Why I'm not releasing Angel Tales (2001)

This is a response to some comments that started on this post on Jumonji-Giri's blog. I'm going to address a few of these things because Angel Tales (2001) has been requested here as well, and I've denied it because there's already a perfectly good, or at least adequate dual-audio/softsubbed easily-available R1DVD-rip by Exiled-Destiny.

The tl;dr gist of it -- as a re-releaser, it's extremely hard to justify doing a new release when a DVD-quality, 100% softsubbed, professionally-translated release already exists, especially for a marginal-quality and obscure/unpopular show like this.

(bullet points and quotes are from comments by two Anons from 10/4 and 10/5)

Lime-Colored War Tales 10 - Take Your Place Inside the Fire with Her

The attacks on the Amanohara intensify, and there's plenty of physical damage to the ship and mental damage to one of its residents. Specifically, Rinzu Kuroda, who finds herself reliving some of the traumatic events of her cloistered past. The jury's still out on whether the drama works in this episode; it seemed good in text when I was transcribing it, but some of the acting is a little over the top. But it makes for a decent evolution in Rinzu's character arc.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scenes: None
Enhanced Scene: 6:23~7:25 (Momen's wearing even less than she did on TV)

Rizelmine 09 - Hot For Teacher

I'm not going to lie; I listened to the above line many more times than was necessary for retiming and editing purposes. But anyway, in this episode Tomonori shows he's got the balls to walk up to an older woman's residence, grab her by the hand, and lead her... somewhere. Even so, he's still not below trying to take advantage of relationship discord to try and steal the heart of the woman of his dreams. And for once, Rizel shows genuine fear and concern over the stability of her marriage.

You may notice some video issues at 10:26. Unfortunately, it's an unfixable issue from the source, and it exists in all other releases, except the AC TV-rip.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 09 - Formal Wear for Formal War

A random, invented crisis demands a random, invented solution. And on that logic, the ninth episode of Lime-Colored War Tales has our crew stopping in at port and organizing a formal ball. And actually, I wish more of these "female characters go to certain place and dress in certain outfit" episodes did formal dresses, as it's something we don't get to see in anime or real life that much. But I suppose that means more complicated character designs and more involved animation work, compared to the good old standby outfits like school swimsuits.

Anyway, this is another Asa focus episode, despite her non-appearance in the screenshot. As you might expect, her feelings about Lt. Commander Date and her femininity inferiority complex are involved.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scene: 02:56~4:17 (Sea bears foam, sleep bears dreams. Both end in the same way - CRASH!)
Enhanced Scene: 04:39~04:43 (Shintarou's not blocking the view anymore)

Rizelmine 08 - There's no getting offa this kite we're on!

Rizelmine 08 continues to develop its love polygon, which now looks something like:

Aoi Seimoto -> likes Ryuunosuke Hououin -> likes Rizel -> likes Tomonori Iwaki-> likes Kyouko Yachigusa -> likes Tomonori Iwaki

This time, it's a date at a strangely-deserted amusement park, which Rizel attempts to make into a threesome. And it seems like the Papas have some connection with Kyouko the homewrecker, as well.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colred War Tales 08 - What.

Y'know, I've been watching anime and reading manga for close to 9 years now, and I've seen and read some pretty crazy stuff. But every once in a while, something comes along that's so absurd and mind-breaking, it just makes you go "What." Like the above scene. Yes, that happened, but it's nothing compared to what we see in the added scene just before it. And as you may have guessed, episode 9 of Lime-Colored War Tales is a Kinu-centric episode, where we learn about her mysterious spiritual powers and her... rather unique connections to the Hell-Girl-style straw dolls she carries around.

Also, has anybody else noticed that many of the sound effects in this and many other series can be traced back to Love Hina, if not earlier? Listen for the "quack" at 03:35 after the new scene, and tell me you haven't heard that exact same effect before.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)
New Scene: 02:20 ~ 03:35 (immediately after OP)
Enhanced Scene: Slightly more "items" are visible in the last group scene before the ED. Thanks to Anon for pointing that out.

Rizelmine 07 - A Bust From the Past

If you think Tomonori's interactions with older women are limited to him lusting after his engaged teacher, you'd be wrong. Here we meet Kyouko Yachigusa, a highschool girl with a thing for younger boys with slightly-ripped shorts. This is also one of the two largest files in the series (other one being 04), due to the grainy-film flashback sequences. Although according to Desbreko, "the whole show is larger than it needs to be thanks to all the DVD compression artifacts." And you know what's really bad? Like many ~24 episode series, Rizelmine was released on 8 volumes with 3 eps per disc for the R2J DVD release. But as you know, it has half-length episodes, meaning those discs had effectively 1.5 episodes apiece. And they still suffer from overcompression. Even on DVD5, there should've been plenty of room to work with, though I don't know what they had in the way of extras. EDIT: I was being too charitable, see comments.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT).

Lime-Colored War Tales 07 - There's no Mental Age of Consent

In keeping with ecchi anime traditions, LCWT 07 features a Sudden Girlfriend Appearance. Only instead of a mysterious unknown girl appearing and becoming the guy's girlfriend, it's literally an appearance of a former girlfriend. However, she's no longer the woman he once knew... let's just say she's a little more playful and spontaneous. But that sure doesn't stop the students from feeling a little jealous.

And I have to admit, I like this show's OP. It's driving, it's dramatic, it's sung by the characters' VAs, and its lyrics are relevant to the show, rather than being plucked from the grab-bag of Jpop clichés. (As in "I want to become your sky and grant your dream in this sparkling season.") And I've said it before, but I don't care for re-releases that omit song subs entirely, thus showing that the groups/individuals care more about pushing their anti-song agenda on viewers than about presenting the show as well as possible. That's the beauty of softsubbed karaoke -- if you decide you don't want the song lyrics onscreen for whatever reason, you can turn them off. And I believe in letting the viewers make that decision, rather than deciding for them.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scene: 14:57~16:01 -- I have to say, it's wrong on at least one level.
Enhanced Scenes: None that I know of, but keep in mind I never actually watched the TV-rips.

Rizelmine 06 - Why doesn't he have a seat over there?

In the 6th episode of hotwife anime Rizelmine, we encounter one of the first major complications: Ryuunosuke Hououin, who shows far more interest in Rizel than her husband has until this point. And as we've seen in previous episodes, Tomonori's childhood friend Aoi Seimoto has a certain amount of interest in Ryuunosuke. And once again, this is an angle of Rizelmine that I like -- unlike many similar shows, the childhood friend character is not hopelessly competing for the main character's attention against a bevy of robot/dragon/winged/witch/magical/vampire/blood-related/succubus/whatever girls. Of course, she's competing for someone else's attention. But the point is, she has a love interest who's not the main character, thus cutting back the harem vibe a bit.

I will be away and without Internet access until Monday or Tuesday, so I won't be able to do any releases/shoutbox posts until then.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 06 - These Are Not For Eating

We're almost to the halfway point of Lime-Colored War Tales, and our brave team of battle vixens is goofing off yet again. This time it's a beach / hot springs episode, which manages to conveniently sneak in some recaps. Also, lots of food is consumed, we get a glimpse into the past of some of the villains, and no mecha summoning takes place whatsoever. But if you thought they were being lazy with this episode, wait until you see some of the DVD improvements.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scene: 10:03~10:40 -- short yet brutal; proof that these new scenes aren't all fun and games.
Enhanced Scene: 14:40~22:20, although it's off-and-on. Reduced steam, transparent hot spring water, and a few other changes.

Rizelmine 05 - First Day of School

It may be the first day of school for lots of students today, but in Rizelmine, it's only the first day of school for one "special" girl. Also, we can see that student-teacher relations are definitely off to a good start at the very beginning of the episode. Actually, I have to commend Rizelmine for being one of the few anime to feature a male student with a pure/innocent crush on a normal female teacher (i.e. not an alien/witch/robot/whatever). It's a refreshing change from all the depraved/perverted female teachers, as seen in Mahoromatic, Haruka Nogizaka's Secret, Hidamari Sketch, DearS, etc.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 05 - Field Trip or Failed Trip?

Well, Asa, it's probably because Lime-Colored War Tales, while busy with bad CG, hokey mecha designs, semi-forced drama, and shameless nudity, still has time to squeeze its characters into anachronistic fetish outfits. The Amanohara class goes on a nature walk, which Shintarou exploits to make Momen feel slightly more competent. She succeeds, but the others are a bit worse for wear. And of course, the enemy is lurking in the skies and the bushes, ready to take advantage of any weakness they perceive.

I'd thought that the lack of added scenes in this episode would spare me from translation work, but I thought wrong. As it turns out, there's an insert song that ANBU-AonE did not translate, so I went a bit "above and beyond" to look up the lyrics and add them in. Don't worry, there's no exploding panties or karaoke effects of any kind, much like the To Heart ~Remember my Memories~ insert karaoke that I did.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scenes: None
Enhanced Scene: 3:55 ~ 05:45 (certain things are missing)

Rizelmine 04 - Marital Games on Motorcycles

Yeah, I remember one time when I took my students out of the classroom for an outdoor-class type activity. It was in the spring semester, and they wanted to enjoy a nice day after getting through a somewhat harsh winter. And I also remember that they repaid me for my kindness by hiding a bunch of dirt clods in my backpack. How old were these students, you ask? I think they were mostly freshmen. College freshmen, that is.

Anyway, you can now enjoy my release of Rizelmine 04, where Rizel becomes a master of disguise and seamlessly infiltrates Tomonori's school. Massive amounts of mayhem and explosions are to be expected, but we also get a first look at another significant male character... who takes a particular interest in the hairbell-ringing newcomer.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 04 - Seductive Reasoning

As the Amanohara changes course on its to Lushun, trouble is afoot on the lower decks. One of Sarasa's priceless imported objects has gone missing, so it's time to don some detective garb and do some sleuthing. But the enemy's doing some investigation of their own, and sometimes, blind heroism doesn't pay. And did I do a ridiculously out-of-context screenshot? You'll have to watch and find out.

LCWT is a lot like Soul Link in its voice casting: famous, popular VAs for many male roles, relatively obscure VAs for the female roles. Of them, Ai Shimizu (Momen) is easily the best-known, while Yuka Aimoto (Rinzu) has had no other major roles -- just a couple of bit parts in Canvas 2 and Mouse. It's a shame, as I really liked Aimoto mysterious/soft-spoken/cryptic/Yamato-Nadeshiko/emotionless-girl performance. If she'd gotten more parts, maybe we would've heard more variety instead of having VAs like Mamiko Noto and Kana Hanazawa in absolutely everything.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

New Scene: 07:41~09:04 (featuring Rinzu, and actually makes some subsequent lines make more sense than they did in the TV version)
Enhanced Scene: 09:04~10:20 (less steam)

Rizelmine 03 - Walk like a man, smell like a man

Much to Rizel's dismay, she finds out that Tomonori has the opposite of a scent fetish. Hilarity ensues in her numerous attempts to overcome the situation. And if you're assuming anything from the picture above, it's probably not what you think. Unless that you think that some comical, quasi-abusive, non-sexual violence is about to occur.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Take the audio conversion challenge!

So yeah, I should be working on Rizelmine or some other stuff, but I've been trying to solve a vexing puzzle for a future project. As I mentioned in the past, I want to re-release the Summer 2002 series that Master of Entertainment sandwiched between the two halves of Rizelmine, G-On Riders. I managed to obtain these DVD raws, which are a definite improvement over the TV-rips, but are unfortunately encoded in .wmv with WMV3 video and Microsoft ACM audio. After changing the file names to remove Japanese characters, I managed to feed ep 01 into GraphEdit, insert the Haali Matroskamuxer filter, and create an .mkv for future muxing.

The obstacle here is the audio -- it won't load in Aegisub for retiming, it can't be extracted "as-is" by mkvextract, and it refuses to be transcoded. I was able to isolate the audio by remuxing the .mkv in mkvmerge without the video, although that raises questions of what the correct file extension should be. (.mka? .wav? .wma? .acm?)

The resulting audio file can be found here.

So, viewers, leechers, and citizens of the broader Internet, I turn to you for help: can anyone find a way to transcode this POS ancient audio track into something usable, like .mp3, ogg, or aac? As far as settings go, 192 kbps should be more than enough.

Programs I've attempted and failed with:
Audacity
Free Audio Converter
Avidemux
AnalogX Converter
AoA Audio Extractor Basic
Handbrake (no surprise that it failed)

Many of them will allow the file to be loaded, but pressing convert brings up an instantly-complete progress window, and results in a 0-byte or very small ( <1 MB) audio file. Free Audio converter actually took some time in "Processing," but then seems to hang forever after the progress bar completes.

If the audio can't be transcoded, I see my options as:

1) Use the 128 kbps mp3 audio from the TV-rips, and hope/pray that everything lines up properly. Lots of risk of desync, plus it's low-bitrate audio encoded back in 2002.
2) Play the audio file itself or the original raw in a media player, use Audacity to record the audio to another format in real-time, and remux with the video. Not only would that be time-consuming, but I'd have to compensate for human-error delays between me starting the file and starting the recording.

Lime-Colored War Tales 03 - Grief and Griefers

The crew of the Amanohara is still recovering from a loss at the end of episode 2. But that doesn't mean that classes and training can take a break to mourn. And they also find time for several misunderstandings, with sexy results. And of course, the enemy isn't going to let their little aerial pleasure cruise go uninterrupted.

New Scene: 07:39~08:54
Enhanced Scene: 15:55~16:20

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

Rizelmine 02 - Should've sent her to Abu Dhabi instead

The Zalis 30th birthday celebration spectacular continues with Rizelmine 02. Rizel tries for some fetish convergence to entice her unwilling husband, but instead winds up with fetish confusion and a firsthand look at the non-fanfic shipping industry. You can also witness some gleeful disregard for the rules of physics -- Rizel's superpowered robot body is forgivable, but what makes the floors in the Iwaki house so much stronger than the roof? (Answer: Rule of Funny and Rule of Cool.)

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored War Tales 02 - Up, Up, and Away

Just take a wild guess at what she's about to inadvertently show him. If you guessed wrong, you either haven't seen this show before, or you haven't seen enough anime like it. Shintarou Umakai has a busy time in this second episode, between random comedy hijinx, starting classes, a not-so-relaxing bath, and searching for alternative energy sources. Oh, and there's also an enemy attack, with some unfortunate results. And, we the audience get more than a glimpse at the enemy's Quirky Miniboss Squad.

New Scene: 12:56 ~ 14:37 (an extension of the previously-existing bath scene)

EDIT: v2ed to fix a missing word.

Ep 02 v1->v2 patch || TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)

While the subtitles for Lime-Colored War Tales do have an onscreen/offscreen styling scheme, I didn't put as much scrutiny into style shifts or transforms when characters move in and out of frame, as I did with Tonagura! After all, ANBU-AonE didn't do nearly as much shifting and transforming as Ryoumi did, so I don't feel obligated to exceed their efforts. At least not by too much, anyway.

Rizelmine 01 - The Bartered Loli Bride

As promised, here's the first episode of this trashy but fun Master of Entertainment series, featuring Rie Kugimiya in a loli non-tsundere role. If you were bothered by loli content in series like Strawberry Marshmallow, Stellvia, Gunslinger Girls, and He is My Master, you'll probably want to avoid this one. But a lot of Rizelmine's entertainment value comes from the sheer scandal and wrongness of the situations, not the loli service itself. I also like that it has a male lead who's explicitly interested in older women, and that it's not afraid to heap comical abuse on the female lead instead of the male lead for once. Don't worry, her body can take it.

These are not from random raws, but from all-new encodes done from R2J .iso. Not by me of course, but by Desbreko, whose work you may have seen elsewhere. He put a lot of encoding work into improving on the poor source material, including freeze-framing to correct some animation glitches and various other filtering (particularly anti-aliasing). Subtitles are mainly taken from AIP, though I checked through AC's subs to get the best of both worlds, and made changes of my own as well. I used h-b's dialogue font and AC's color scheme, so if you didn't like AIP's styling, you won't find a trace of it here. Also notable: this release uses ordered chapters, so be sure to keep OP and ED files in the same folder as the episodes, if you want them to play normally.

If you want opinions on Retrofit's release of this series, see this thread. I did not DL it myself, and can assure anyone who cares that I did not "shortcut" by taking any scripts from it.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Lime-Colored totally not Sakura War Tales - 01

This series is based on an eroge/galge/whatever, takes place in an alternate reality Taisho Meiji Japan, where the Japanese Empire is at war with demons Russians supported by demons. One young man, Ichirou Ohgami Shintarou Umakai, finds himself commanding teaching five girls of varying ages and temperaments. Said girls can pilot magically summon and control mecha that are powered by steam the human soul and Fighting Spirit.

So anyway, Lime-Colored War Tales (as I'm calling it) represents a couple of firsts for me. It's the first project I've gone into completely blind, i.e. not having watched the TV-rips normally in the past. And while previous DVD releases I've done have been a mixed bag of censorship and decensorship (Soul Link), or "just like TV, only better A/V quality" (everything else), LCWT has some definite... improvements on DVD. Most episodes have completely new scenes added, as well as other enhancements to existing scenes like missing undergarments or transparent water. And let me tell you, some of these enhancements take LCWT into borderline hentai territory.

Episode 01 has two new scenes, at 09:21~09:52 and 16:17~17:14.

TV Series & OVA Batch (Nyaa) || TV Series Batch (BakaBT)



Moving to the technical front, this release features:
Source: DVD (Zero-Raws)
Video: 640x480 (4:3) WMV3 ~1500 kbps, 23.976 fps
Audio: Japanese 2.0 Stereo MP3, ~192 kbps
Subtitles: ANBU-AonE -- easy choice, since nobody else finished the series. New scenes are translated by me. Styling uses ANBU-AonE's color scheme, but I changed the font to be consistent with Static's release of the OVA. ANBU-AonE's original font was not terribly readable.

The use of WMV3 video is unfortunate, but that's the way things go for older series like this. Kaishakunin attempted to find the R2J DVD .isos, but only came across bootleg DVDs that would've been worse than the WMV raws. So if you have and can upload the .isos, post here and we'll work something out.

Soul Link 12 - It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!

The space station is plummeting into the atmosphere. Our kid heroes have been through a lot, but now they must escape. Yet one of their own is still trapped, with a sadistic, immortal woman who can regenerate from any damage standing in their way. Do they have any means to defeat her, short of summoning mold spores and a meteor shower? And with some Skura-enhanced soldiers still roaming around, can everyone survive the arduous journey to freedom? Get ready for some tender reunions and bitter separations in the twelfth and final episode of Soul Link.

Although some flaws (in animation, pacing, and science) became more apparent in the second viewing, I still liked this show and enjoyed working on it. But then again, I'm liable to like almost anything with "based on game containing lots of cute girls" in its premise. And to complete the Navel trilogy, it's time for me to start watching We Without Wings on Funi.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa) || Scripts+Fonts Archive

P.S. Check out the script for ep 12 to see how I used physics to prove one of Yesy's lines wrong.

Tonagura! 13 - Leaving on a Jet Plane

^ What I sometimes felt like while working on this show. I kid, I kid! As much as Ryoumi's subs went against my preferences, they were competent overall. I'd say they had fewer mistranslations and timing glitches than the early episodes of Full Moon wo Sagashite that I've been working on. And now, the tremendously complex task of imitating, correcting, and improving Ryoumi's Tonagura! subs has come to an end.

In the final episode, Kazuki is wracked with guilt and regret as Yuuji and Marie prepare to end their all-too-brief return to Japan. Will this be a case of "Love will keep us together," or "Parting is such sweet sorrow"? And will there be a conclusive ending to the story, or will things stay almost completely open because the manga is *still* ongoing?

Once again, thanks go to Kaishakunin of Jumonji-Giri for encoding this show and saving us all from glitchy, bloated share raws. Special thanks also to Seal and Kaito for their work on the Russian subs, which enabled me to reproduce Ryoumi's subs without resorting to "brute-force" transcription. Next up on the agenda: Rizelmine and Lime-iro Senkitan, or "Lime-Colored War Tales" as I'll be calling it.

Torrent [CRC=14BF200F] || Raw || Patch

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa) || Scripts+Font Archive

P.S. You can also find copies of the original Ryoumi subs at the scripts link.

Tonagura! v2s - You were my favorite mistake

So, since I waited a week and didn't hear about any more major errors, I've gone ahead and corrected some issues that I knew to exist with some episodes. I certainly didn't mean to v2 half the show, but the pursuit of perfection sometimes runs across some bumps in the road. So now that this is done, I'll go ahead and get ep 13 finished up.


Eps 1&2 -- Fixed styling errors, scene bleeds, flicker, an error [our -> your) in the ED karaoke, and a few wording issues. (I originally released these before I started more exacting post-TLC/editing scrutiny of the video start and end of every line in Aegisub)

Eps 5,6, &8 -- Corrected "Yuuji" to "Yuu-chin" when Chihaya says his name, plus a few
lines of karaoke in ep 08 that were off by a frame. (I originally stated my misgivings about this in the episode 06 post, so now I've gone through and changed them. Eps 9+ already used Yuu-chin.)

Ep 12 -- Corrected one sign that stayed on screen too long. (This was a sign I added after noticing it was missing during my final QC watch, so I didn't check to make sure I set the right end time.)


Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Tonagura! Extras Package

Since Tonagura! is almost complete, here's a collection of extras that I'd been holding back from you all. Well, not really -- I waited until I had episode 13 timed, which includes karaoke timing and lyrics editing for the second ED. You will notice that there are 13 OP files, despite there being only one opening song. However, alert viewers who didn't chapterskip the OP in every file will notice that the 13 OPs show off a different variety of Kazuki pantsu in every episode. (Image is from Episode 10.)

Only the two endings and OP 1 have softsubbed karaoke; the rest are raw. And with timing on ep 13 out of the way, that only leaves 1 episode's worth of editing, typesetting, style-checking, and QC to go. Even with some simplifications from the Ryoumi originals, this has been a highly complex project. So if you've spotted any major subtitling errors in previous episodes, now's the time to tell me. That way, I can correct and patch them for the batch. I am aware of a mistimed sign in ep 12, and of several mistakes in ep 02.

Same goes for Soul Link; ep 12 will be coming soon, so let me know about any mistakes you've seen. Although, that show's subtitles were simple enough that I likely caught any significant errors during QC. Or so I hope.


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Soul Link 11 - Great Escape, or Greatest Escape?

Another spotlight on eyecatch art, this one taken before Sayaka fades in and takes over 2/5 of the picture. In Soul Link 11, Aries is rapidly falling without style, and it's going to be a hot time in the old town tonight if the station fully enters the atmosphere. In episode 10, the gang discovered a means of escape, but getting there is going to be half the fun and 3/4 the hardship. There's plenty of fast running, heavy shooting, deft piloting, and heroic sacrificing going on. Ikinobiru koto ga dekiru ka?!

I should've gotten this out last night, especially since a sizable percentage of the lines are simple phrases like Yes/Roger/No/Hurry/You okay?. But, I got distracted reading about the grim future of video gaming. Good thing I don't own any consoles made after 2000, or play any PC games modern enough to require more than an 800x600 display. So none of that "you don't actually own this game, you have to pay us monthly forever" crap for me.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Tonagura! 12 - Go mad from the revelation

Well, I don't know if staying sober for an entire weekend helped me get Tonagura! 12 out any faster or in any better quality, but here it is either way. First off, enjoy a highlight of this show's lovely eyecatch art. But the main story in this episode concerns Yuuji's very dramatic change in personality. Is this truly a farewell to perversion and a farewell to arms? Of course, the "arms" in question are Marie's firearms, which are getting rusty to the detriment of their owner. And later, Kazuki learns a shocking truth that she might have known all along.

Also, I was watching another show and found myself thinking, "Where else have I heard this guy playing a perverted/losery male character? Oh right, Yuuji from Tonagura!" The show: (Motto) To-Love-RU. The character: Kenichi Saruyama.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 10.5 - Subbing flashbacks has left me in despair!

I knew that this episode would pose a unique challenge when I started this show. Being largely composed of flashbacks, I had to track down which lines were from which episodes, and copy+paste them in accordingly so that the lines in 10.5 would stay consistent with my edits from earlier episodes. Not to mention all the overlapping narration + flashback dialogue that proved tougher to time. But I got through it, so you all can enjoy one of the better, more informative recap episodes out there. I also did a little something with the styling to distinguish between narration and standard dialogue. More notes on the format of this release and the included extras can be found in the .txt file in the folder.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Also, I did a slight site redesign, because the old format was looking too narrow even on my ancient monitor. Also take note of the pages (such as "Requests"), many of which have been around for awhile.

Tonagura! 11 - Stuck in the Friend Zone

Summer continues on Tonagura! 11 with an evening festival and fireworks displays, and love is in the air. Did I say "love"? Sorry, I meant "misunderstandings, stubbornness, and flashbacks." There's also a bath house scene... but no girls are involved.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 10 - Gotta take an infodump

Now that we're 10 episodes into things, let's take stock. We have a group of teenagers that travel to a futuristic, isolated facility. Some of these teenagers are apparently parents to at least one other character. The facility is doomed to be destroyed within a specific time frame. A mysterious girl with mysterious powers appears out of nowhere. There's some kind of virus/cell that grants its infectees amazing powers of regeneration, or effectively makes them immortal.

Yes, we can conclude that Soul Link is Ever 17 IN SPACE!! No, I'm not the first person to make that comparison.

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Tonagura! 10 - Swimsuit Malfunctions

Summer weather is approaching for many of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it comes a beach episode of Tonagura!, replete with swimsuits, girls in those swimsuits, and at least one mishap or argument involving said swimsuits. Also, Kazuki's tsundere act is apparently contagious, as Yuuji manages to get in on the fun near the end of the episode.

Coincidentally, I'll be heading to the beach myself from Wednesday to Monday or Tuesday. Only it's a lake, not an ocean, and there's no beach because we had to put rocks in to stop shore erosion from rising waters. And there won't be any girls in swimsuits either, at least not the kind that won't have me taking a seat over there if I so much as look at them. That aside, I will be without Internet access during that time, though I may be able to work on a few things. I'll also try to get Soul Link 10 out the door before I go.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 09 - Why do you want my eggs?

The ninth riveting episode of CFNM fetishism anime Soul Link brings us a gunslinging confrontation between Yuu and Cellaria. Also, Nanami questions the nature of... lots of stuff, Ryouta questions his leadership ability, and nobody in the audience questions why they can't have a younger sister as bratty as Aki.

Until this episode, Soul Link has been a show with very few signs, in fact none outside episode titles and "Next Time." But this episode actually has some onscreen text, which yesy (and I) translated and KnKF did not. Luckily, I don't think there's any other "in-show" signs until the very end of the last episode.

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Tonagura! 09 - Challengers: They always appear

Episode 9 of Tonagura! introduces some complications to the characters' relationships as we know them. Kazuki has newfound fame and a cadre of admirers, but more troubling to Yuuji is an older man out of her past. Also, I must say that Miu Serizawa (pictured above) is quickly becoming a favorite secondary character. Watch her sparkle, spin, and lay down the law. She may sound similar to a certain pink-haired, sword-wielding Student Council President, or to a leader of a mecha-musume squad that fights WORMS.

As a reminder, those who are curious about my translation and editing choices can extract the script and find various notes and comments within. There was at least one line I wanted to localize further, but didn't because of a visual pun element. And I'm also experimenting with the \q3 tag to produce the line arrangements I want without as many hard line breaks.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

G-On Riders... halp?

So, apparently I have a weakness for Master of Entertainment (M.O.E.) anime. Generally speaking, they're so bad, so cheap, and so trashy, yet I can't help but like them on some level. So in addition to the upcoming Rizelmine, I'd also like to release the show that M.O.E. sandwiched between the two seasons of Rizelmine back in the Summer 2002 season: G-On Riders. It's got Nobuyki Hiyama as a harem lead, aliens, robots, a warrior nun, a warrior androphobic miko, a ninja girl, Rie Kugimiya in a rare evil role... what's not to like, other than everything?

As you know, the TV version of the series was subbed by Mugen back in mid-2002. In addition to the DivX3 video being blocky as hell (more so on non-ancient monitors, i.e. monitors bigger than mine), the subtitles are dreadfully inaccurate in many places.

EDIT: Thanks to ma121hnter, I got eps 4/7/9 through DDLs, thus finishing the set and getting the torrent reseeded. Now all that's left is to transcode them...

Soul Link 08 - Stuck in a Moment

If you've seen AMV Hell 4 but not this series, you now know the source of the above image. We're back on Space Station Aries, where the group is about to gain another yet another uneasy friendship with a mysterious girl. Also, naíve loli is naíve, and Sayaka shows you don't want to mess with her when she's a woman on a mission. And this is to Soul Link's credit; in most other shows, a girl in Sayaka's position would be a gentle, soft-spoken Yamato Nadeshiko type who never raises her voice against anybody, least of all the male lead. But we have to remember that this is the same game company who brought us Shuffle!'s Kaede Fuyou...

It's probably not just me who thinks the quality was off in this episode. Maybe it only being 144 MB with a video bitrate of 622 kbps has something to do with it. See also the shower scene at 20:00, where I can't tell if it's added DVD censorship or just overbrightness/blur obscuring the image. The episode is mostly "talking heads," but not completely. Maybe I should look into HKG's rips or something. As always, I encourage people with the ability to find and encode R2J DVD .isos to use my scripts to create better encodes. There will be a script archive DDL made available after all episodes are released.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Tonagura! 08 - It's Time to Duel!

And no doubt the old-timers out there will remember the Sailor Jupiter definition of "talent." Sorry for the delay on this episode; I've been a bit sick lately, though luckily not sick of Tonagura! It's just such a complicated show to work on, due to all the text typesetting and dialogue styling. So between getting sleep and working on Tonagura!, the former sometimes wins out. But I managed to avoid the "LazySign" approach in almost all cases.

At any rate, this episode features a clash of the aquatic titans in a monumental (yet meaningless) swimming race between Kazuki and Hatsune. So while it's not a beach episode, there's certainly no shortage of swimsuit service.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 07 - Healing Factor

What do these lovely ladies want Ryouta Aizawa for? You'll have to watch Soul Link 07 to find out. But aside from the answer to that question, you'll also see stuff blowing up, people getting out of maintenance vehicles, people getting into maintenance vehicles, people eating, and a number of revelations about the true nature of the threats faced by our plucky cadets. Finally, a routine supply run has some surprising(ly cute) results.

I swear, there's always those one or two lines per episode that I can't satisfactorily render. I guess it goes with the territory of only being a "pretty good" translator, not a great one.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Tonagura! 07 - My Big Sister Can't Be This Perfect

In this episode, Marie spearheads an effort to find Hatsune's weak point. Presumably they intend to attack it for some amount of damage. Meanwhile, Kazuki starts helping out with the household chores for ::reasons::, and winds up failing epically in a way that only she can pull off. But as always, her losses are Yuuji's and the viewers' gains, as seen above.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 06 - It's Zombie Time!

The cadets in Sheratan suffer a devastating loss in Soul Link 06, as their beloved Cellaria-sensei makes a bold and heroic sacrifice to keep the enemy out. She will be missed. Shuuhei experiences strange visions, and is even driven to \wrist at one point. Meanwhile, Yuu's identity is uncovered, Morimoto fails industrial tech, and love or something like it is in the air. I think some people are going to regret not practicing safe sex. Or will they?

Speaking of sex, you will notice some differences between this release and the TV-rips at about 21:45. And I think you'll find these differences to be in favor of the DVD version, if only a little.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Tonagura! 06 - Death From Above

So, I'm back from Anime Detour (as of Sunday), and have almost recovered from three days of copious, almost-free alcohol and scarce, expensive sleep. Judging from conversations with another fansubber I happened to run into, I'm apparently famous. So, it's time to add to that fame with another episode of Tonagura!. This time, Kazuki and Yuuji are in a deadlocked, uncommunicative state, while Chihaya and the others attempt to play damage control.

It seems like Chihaya calls Yuuji "Yuu-chin" rather than "Yuuji," which is something that Ryoumi never caught on to. I know I didn't catch it in earlier episodes, so I might go back and fix it at some point. After reading some of the manga, I know there's a few things about the airplane in ep 02 that I got wrong, as well.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 05 - Welcome to GoodBurger, can I take your order?

Tensions run high in Aries once again, as Jararacas attempts to invade Sheratan from at least one angle. Luckily, there's still plenty of time for informal photo shoots and to serve up some sandwiches and burgers.

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Tonagura! 05 - Pictures of You, Pictures of Me

In this fifth episode of Tonagura!, an innocent little photo session goes horribly wrong for most parties involved. And Yuuji doesn't even get any Kazuki panchira shots for his troubles.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

Soul Link 04 - I... Am... You!

Unfortunately, listening to my old friends talking about their houses, spouses, kids, and careers this weekend delayed my work on Soul Link 04. But if I let down the ~450 random Internet people downloading this re-release of a 5-year-old cartoon, my pride as a basement dweller would never forgive me. Anyway, I'm hoping the low file size for this episode is due to not much happening, other than some talking, flashbacks, gathering of new allies, and glimpses of approaching danger. Because true terrorists never give up fighting for their goals -- doing so would be letting the non-terrorists win.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)