Lovedol ~ Lovely Idol 01 - The Poor Man's Idolm@ster

(Image not necessarily indicative of show content)

And now, for something completely different that not many people care about, here's the first episode of Lovedol ~ Lovely Idol, a Fall 2006 anime about... idols and stuff. But mostly stuff. If you want to see an anime about lovely, hardworking, talented girls striving for a goal, all with great animation and a wide variety of music, then I highly recommend The Idolm@ster from Summer 2011. This show... well, I was initially drawn to it by the Princess Soft game origin and the Aoi Nishimata (Final Approach, Shuffle!, We Without Wings) character designs. And while it did deliver cute girls doing cute things, it didn't deliver a whole lot else.

Still, my philosophy is that even marginal/mediocre anime deserve good subtitles. This release uses the Chinese DVD-rips by A.M.E. and English subs from the only group brave enough to translate the series, We are IN Denial. And, well, no offense to those involved, but I didn't care for WinD's subbing style. Things like fragmented timing, overliteral editing (names often used instead of "you"), mistranslations, and tiny/marginless text made the episodes a bit of a chore to watch. So, I found many "opportunities for improvement."

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

More info on file technical details and subtitle changes is available at the torrent link. Although these raws are encoded in XviD, they still look better than the TV-rips. They do have a framerate issue, so if anyone can create new encodes or find better raws (like these?), let me know.

Saint October 01 - Lolis to the Rescue

Torrent [CRC=48297F24]

Here's the first episode of Saint October, a Winter 2007 anime that first caught my attention because it was one of the last latenight 4:3 TV anime. It's a quirky, strange show that involves magical Gothic Lolitas battling the tarot-power-wielding minions of a powerful corporation and its maniacal president. The colors are garish, there's what can only be called "intentional banding," and the animation had its share of issues. But Saint October was an original anime, and it shows evidence of creative ideas put into it, just without the budget and experience to execute everything properly. Still, this serious has a lot of heart as it dances between the serious and the absurd, and its dramatic parts surprised me more than once.

Needless to say, it wasn't popular enough to get fansubbed on a weekly basis, and in fact wasn't completely subbed until late last year. The existing subs are a patchwork of various groups, all with their own name spellings and renderings of common phrases. And the first half is only available in TV quality, in some cases only Xvid/avi. So, it was a prime candidate to be fixed up and edited for consistency. Fortunately, BakaBT user Alaford was also interested in the series, and is helping out with some timing and typesetting.

Subtitles will be taken from any and all groups that subbed a particular episode. See the torrent link for more technical info. Since this is mostly a softsub -> softsub project, I will be starting another 100% hardsubbed TV series (a 16:9 one) after I return from vacation early next week.