Hand Maid Mai - Over before it began

And yet another anime entry is completed by ReDone! Hand Maid Mai was a 2003 OVA set in the same world as the 2000 Hand Maid May TV series. Unfortunately, legal and financial issues concerning the companies involved have created a situation where the 2nd and 3rd OVAs exist, but are apparently in some kind of inescapable limbo. Somehow, I doubt anyone cares enough to try and work things out at this point. And maybe that's a good thing... the way things were developing in this episode, the rest of the show could've easily been lousy. In particular, the main character has lousy financial sense to the point where I wanted to troll-rewrite a line just to point out his stupidity. (But I didn't; check the script if you're curious.)

Nonetheless, I still felt the one episode that does exist deserved a better release, so here it is. There's maybe not a world of difference between ANBU's encode and the raw I used, but I think it's slightly better. As usual, you'll notice more differences in the subtitles, as I restyled them to match the Blitz-Orphan release of Hand Maid May, which is the best existing version of that series. Speaking of which, the creator/remuxer of those files, Collectr, contributed some additional editing and QC to this release. And ANBU's subs were fairly good to begin with, so there wasn't that much TLC needed -- just retiming to eliminate 3-line subs and other oddities. My typesetting is lazier, but ANBU's \moves didn't look that great in the first place.

Torrent [CRC=AC2A118E]

More Rizelmine will come out after the Memorial Day weekend.

With You ~Mitsumeteitai~ - The stone holds a power when it's there

My first "all at once" multi-episode release! Here's another old OVA, one I'm releasing despite the fact that probably nobody cares about it. With You is based on a game, was released in 2000-01, and features a childhood friend love triangle romance plot, with a fair amount of supernatural/mystery elements involved. There's nothing special or historically significant about it, but I liked it well enough when I saw it back in 2007. Thus, I decided to revisit it when I saw raws available.

These raws were distributed (but not created) by the folks at Anonymous Russian Rippers, and all I can say is, "don't expect miracles." They suffer from some undercropping, ghosting, and framerate issues, but they still offer better audio and video quality than the old .avi release by AnimeForce. However, the A/V improvements pale in comparison to the subtitle improvements, because AForce's subs were just horrendously awful. Well, the spelling/grammar was adequate, but the translations were erroneous enough that many lines and entire scenes made little or no sense. You can read more details in my AniDB comment, or check out the scripts to see some of the changes I made.

Torrent

Technical details available at the torrent link. As always, I invite anyone with access to the DVD .isos (or better raws) to re-use my subs in a new encode.

Rizelmine 21 - Why don't we *all* have a seat over there?

It's Christmas at the Iwaki house, and Rizel and Tomonori are alone, confined, and being subjected to all kinds of stimulating stimuli. Despite the post's title, I don't believe the kind of relationship depicted here is wrong, but I had to complete the running gag I had in mind. Of course, since this is the fourth-to-last episode, various forces are sure to prevent the expected outcome from happening so early.


Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

And now it's time for a little bit of "Adventures in 10-bit h264 on an old POS PC."

Sky Girls OVA - A Pilot for Pilots

In a shameless endeavor to increase the ReDone "Completed Anime" count, I present to you all the 1-episode Sky Girls OVA from 2006. There's not much time for developing the story or the setting, but there are girls wearing underwear Motion Slits, they fly in the sky, and they blow stuff up.

Vital Stats:

Video Source: DVD encode by Chinese groups SumiSora & CASO
Video: h264, 704x528 4:3, maybe 1200 kbps, 23.976 fps
Audio: Japanese 2.0 Stereo AAC, maybe 136 kbps (MediaInfo was unclear on A/V bitrates)
Subtitles: English softsubs based on Froth-Bite's translation. (Restyled, OP lyrics corrected, retimed, miscellaneous edits & TL corrections)

Torrent [CRC=14BBBE9E]

Of course, this OVA was only a trial run for the 26-episode Sky Girls TV series that aired in Spring 2007. And I'm sure the question that's on your mind is related to the one I'm about to ask: do people want to see a DVD version of Sky Girls TV from me? This wouldn't be an immediate priority, since there already is an English DVD release by Taedium. You can read my thoughts on that release here; needless to say, I decided to watch the Froth-Bite (100%-hardsubbed 400p .mp4) TV-rips instead, and I don't regret that choice. What SG TV really needs is a DVD version with Froth-Bite's subs or at least an improved F-B/Ayako hybrid.

If I were to release Sky Girls TV, should I...