Thursday, February 24, 2011

Touka Gettan 26 - The Beginning



Just to get it out of the way first, here's the...

Torrent [CRC=53B00A67] || Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (nyaa)

It's been a long and arduous journey, but we've finally arrived at the end of Touka Gettan, which of course means the start of the story. It's quiet, simple, and yet still powerful, like a silent scream or a deafening whisper. It's probably taken me longer than it should have, but I'm going to miss this show. I don't know when I'll next have the chance to work on something this aesthetically rich and textually complex. Some people hated Touka Gettan like nobody's business, but I enjoyed virtually every minute of the show and an only slightly lesser percentage of the time spent re-releasing it.

Some special thanks and shout-outs:
* Seto_Otaku, for raws and other encouragement.
* Whatever anon set me straight on the intricacies of the OP lyrics.
* something and other posters on AnimeonDVD, whose thread was invaluable in helping me understand the series better. Same with the AnimeSuki thread.
* Tenshi_MKII and all the Serin staff. As much as I disparaged your work, I still have to appreciate that you gave this confusing, unpopular series a chance when no one else would. I guess they were all busy with Lucky Star, Gurren Lagann, Kaze no Stigma, Claymore, Hayate the Combat Butler, etc. I don't even want to think about the daunting task of translating and subbing this show from scratch.

16 comments:

  1. it was a shame you edited the subs ... sometimes liberal just sucks

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  2. Thank you for doing this; one of my favorites desperately needed DVD releases. Now if someone would do Real Drive...

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  3. Looks like I'll finally be able to watch this series and hopefully get something out of it. Thanks for your work.

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  4. Thanks for all your hard work. Will you be releasing a batch of all the episodes?

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  5. Thank you for this good work. It didn't seem long between releases. "...aesthetically rich and textually complex." Exactly. A show I like a lot.

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  6. @Niku: I haven't seen Real Drive, but it looks like one of those "720p HDTV is better than 480p DVD" shows. So, DVD-rips would only be an improvement for people who got the SD-XviD version.

    @Anon 11:18 - I'm going to keep things to a batch on BakaBT, unless people really want one elsewhere. Low demand = don't want to split swarms.

    @Anon 10:40 - I knew going into this project that I'd probably destroy some of the quirky, series-fitting charm that the original subs had. And we all have our preferences on the literal-liberal spectrum. But if you believe the original subs were good as-is and shouldn't have been changed at all, then I don't know what to tell you.

    Honestly, I don't think these are all that liberal. Sure, I translated "special" words like itadakimasu, neko, and a few colors, but I didn't dial things up to gg/Coalguys or even a.f.k. levels. You still get honorifics, Eastern name order, and a lot of notes for puns and other oddities, instead of localizations or rewrites. I understand not everyone's going to like the changes I made, but imo they were for the better overall.

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  7. What order should i watch the episodes in?

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  8. "What order should i watch the episodes in?"
    The order they were broadcast and released or course.

    Shows are released as they are for a reason.

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  9. I was just wondering what other peoples personal prefrence would be to get the best out of the series, e.g watching in Broadcast order or Chronological order

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  10. Chronological order, for best understanding: 26, 24-1, 25

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  11. No, watch it as it was broadcast. If you want to turn the show into something it isn't, you might as well just watch a different show.

    I mean, why say "I'm going to watch Touka Gettan!" and then proceed to... not actually watch Touka Gettan?

    It has a good deal of replay value too, so if you're utterly wedded to trying it out chronological, save it for a rewatch.

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  12. zalis if people really need a batch torrent other than bakabt you can pm @ zach8012 on bakabt & i can upload a batch to nyaa.

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  13. bakabt sucks.
    please do not support trackers that prioritize users who pay money (aka seedboxing, ratio enhanching). That is not what torrents are made for.
    Why did you put it on bakabt and not stick with nya?

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  14. I'll try watching it in Broadcast order first then.

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  15. @ mike j:
    1) I'm a longtime member of BakaBT, so I'm biased to think it doesn't suck :P
    2) I did not put it on BakaBT myself.
    3) As much as I'd wish otherwise, this is not a high-demand release. Maybe 6000-7000 people downloaded the Serin TV-rips in a little over 3 years, and this re-release will be lucky to reach 1/3 that amount anytime soon. Splitting the swarm on a torrent like that is not healthy. Given that (a) torrents on BakaBT tend to stay seeded for a long time and (b) this release was all but guaranteed to wind up on BBT, it makes some amount of sense for the one batch to be on BBT.

    However, since there is some demand for it, I will see about putting up a batch on nyaa. Maybe for TH~RmM~ as well. But these will be temporary batches, to be deleted when they die, because my connection still isn't good enough to sustain them.

    @CJ - feel free to watch it in whatever order you wish. However, I maintain that the broadcast order is the best way to capture the unique/WTF experience that Touka Gettan offers. It is confusing at first (just as jumping in and watching the last few episodes of any series would be confusing), but things do clear up around eps 6-8.

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