Saint October - Batches

As promised awhile back, here are a bunch of v2s for the entire first half of Saint October. If you were satisfied with the initial releases, there's nothing extremely major about these corrections. Just stuff along the lines of:

* Fixing mislabeled chapters in eps 2-9 (I'd accidentally copypasta'd the ep 01 chapters, which had a prologue before the OP)
* Minor typesetting improvements in eps 1-7 (adding extra layers and blur to satisfy the communist typesetting overlords)
* Styling consistency changes (setting a few lines to "Thought" and "Narration" like I did in later episodes)
* Terminology/consistency edits (taking a long time to edit subs from multiple groups can introduce errors)
* Other minor edits, mainly to add just a little more lulz here and there
* Minor timing splits/joins, plus some linebreak changes
* Edgeblur on the ED subs for no real reason other than "while I'm in here makin' some changes..."

The second half will have at least some v2s, though probably not for every episode. If I've missed anything significant or added any stupid typos while editing, please let me know so I can do v3s; I did not rewatch these for the batch upload. (EDIT: found a screwup -- accidentally used the ep 09 chapters for eps 10-13v2. v3 patches linked below.)

01-13v2 Torrent || 01-13v2 Patches || 10-13v3 Patches
14-26v2 Torrent || 14-26v2 Patches || All Patches (alt link)

Complete Series Batch (BakaBT)

Mizuiro Jidai 10 - Is Friendship Magic?

In its 10th episode, Mizuiro Jidai has reached the characters' 2nd year of middle school, and the fallout from the change in class rosters is a disaster of tectonic proportions. Though I can see where Yuuko's coming from in feeling distressed; I was fortunate enough to be in the gifted/differentiated/whatever track, and had many of the same people in my classes from elementary school to high school. It was only in the lousy "Gen Pop" required classes that I had to watch out for the bullies and the thugs.

Anyway, as promised at the outset, this project is now Dropped -- it was only ever meant to fill in a softsubbed/.mkv re-release of Lunar's subs for the episodes that Kiteseekers didn't release. You can get the rest of the episodes here. I think I will continue to watch the series, at least until the main story ends and the Memorial recaps begin. Though the moralizing and over-simplicity of everything do make for a slow watch, which probably also played a part in the slow releases. At any rate, I hope these 10 files help a few people enjoy Mizuiro Jidai a little better than they would have otherwise.

Episode 10 Torrent || 1-10 Batch + Extras

Since some take issue with KiteSeekers' hardsubbed karaoke, I've created separate softsubbed files for the opening and both endings so that you can watch them without subs if you wish. These are not "segment-linked" and are not necessary to download if you don't want to. OP/ED1 have karaoke since I k-timed them for my older releases of eps 1-4, but ED2 only has simple English/romaji.

Mizuiro Jidai 09 - Left Behind, No Child

In which our brave male lead publicly shames his girlfriend for her lack of academic progress, and she later apologizes to him for it. But all kidding aside, they get things sorted out in the end. I think.

Now that the convention is behind me for another year, I should be able to get some more stuff out, starting with the next/last episode of this show that I'll be releasing.

Torrent

Saint October 26 - To Trust in the Heart of the Cards

At last, I can present the final episode of Saint October, featuring the final earth-shattering battle and a fair amount of denouement. Will all the Goth-Lolis and their unlikely allies survive this encounter unscathed? Whether they do or don't, there will be some v2s for some early episodes to fix some consistency issues.

Though I will be busy with all kinds of things in the next couple of weeks, I will try to get Memories Off 3.5 released, and maybe Mizuiro Jidai 9-10 and part of one new project, as well.

Torrent AoG Patch

Mizuiro Jidai 08 - Sad Girl in Snow

After a quick time skip of a couple of months from the Christmas party in ep 07, it's time for Valentine's Day and all the heartbreak, drama, and chocolate that go along with it. Watch out for some fairly obvious moralizing to the audience about proper student behavior and all that junk.

Torrent

Saint October 25 - You must be hardened with fire!

Saint October's second-to-last episode brings us a battle royale with extra cheese, as all of the Goth Lolis face off against their greatest friends and greatest foes. Only the powers of true love, sadism, and masochism can save them now. And then things get really weird (even by Saint October standards) at the very end.

Torrent || AoG Patch

If anyone's curious about the subjects of the dedication at the end of the ED, they were two of my fellow convention staffers who lost their lives in tragic accidents over the past couple of months. (Consult Google if you want details.) While they weren't exactly hardcore anime fans per sé, I felt they deserved to leave at least some trace, no matter how small, upon the anime world. I chose this episode rather than ep 26 because the last episode doesn't have the standard ED.

Strawberry 100% TV (Blu-Ray)

This isn't my release, just a little cross-promotion: Squiggy over at Tsundere-Rips has released a Blu-Ray version of Strawberry 100% TV 1-13. It's 960x720,* 10-bit(?), no OP/ED segment-linking, with FLAC audio just like the ReDone-MDC version. The subs are from my release, though edited in some way -- if I had to guess, maybe some of my more liberal lines have been changed? You may like it more, you may not, but I figured I'd at least make sure people knew their options. No Blu-Ray exists or has been announced for the Jump Festa or other OVAs, so no legitimate HD rips of them are possible for the time being.

*Remember, this show came out in 2005 and was made in 4:3; making the move to Blu-Ray doesn't magically make it 16:9.

Mizuiro Jidai 07 - The Perils of Ancient Technology

Hmm, I wonder what Takako's talking about... Anyway, this episode of Mizuiro Jidai features backstabbing, poor communication, and laziness from catty girls who make Yuuko do their dirty work for her. Also, enjoy the capsule of pre-cellphone life, when teenagers had to navigate landline etiquette to contact their friends. Can't say I miss those days. Curiously enough though, Japan did stick with fax machines much longer than the West did, perhaps due to input limitations for kanji and such.

Torrent

Saint October 24 - Their Darkest Hour

In this antepenultimate episode of Saint October, it's probably much easier to count the characters who haven't betrayed the Goth Loli Detective Squad and their cause. But despite all the defeats and setbacks, our heroines and one of their adult sidekicks are ready to storm the castle for the final battle.

Torrent || AoG Patch

Saint October 23 - Don't Turn your Back on the City

The Reverse Company means business, and that business is all-out war, taking it straight to the home front of the Goth Loli Detective Squad and their supporters. With the whole city turned against them, will any stronghold be safe?

Torrent || AoG Patch

Mizuiro Jidai 06 - Ghost writin'

I remember a post in the old LunarAnime forums about this show, saying that "it's the kind of show that makes you want to do something else while you're working on it." While there may be some truth to that, here's Mizuiro Jidai 06 nonetheless. Yuuko gets tapped to carry her the burden of her class's Culture Festival performance on her back, with a nagging older sister behind her all the way.

I was able to get some stuff done on Saint October and a few other things while I was away for the July 4th weekend, so perhaps I can finally get that particular project done.

Torrent

Saint October 22 - Shadows of the Past

Hot on the heels of the previous releases, it's another episode of Saint October, and this one involves a long flashback into the shared histories of Joshua, Kotono, Ash, and Kurtz. It can be hard to watch at times, but it's proof that this silly little show actually does have a lot of heart. But as the screenshot shows, it doesn't forget to make us laugh, as well.

There will be somewhere in the neighborhood of some to a lot of v2s for this release, as I've noticed a number of creeping consistency errors. So if you've noticed things like attacks or terms being phrased differently between episodes, please let me know. I guess that's what happens when you spend too long working on a 26-episode series with subs from ~6 different groups plus your own edits.

Torrent || AoG patch

Saint October 21 - Only You can Conquer the Birds!

Bet you didn't expect this so soon! Saint October begins its run into its final arc with episode 21. Arcana City is descending into chaos, the main villain returns to the scene, and certain bits of information shake our heroes and heroines to the core.

This quick release was made possible by the fact that I'd pretimed eps 21-26 in the past, with the intent to translate them myself. And I actually had translated ~40% of this episode, so part of the task was just rechecking those lines before filling in AoG's lines or edits thereof for the remaining lines. I may try a modified version of this tactic for future releases. Rather than Google-translating Russian timed subs, creating blank duplicates to transcribe the hardsubs "mostly-as-is," retiming, and then re-editing, I may be able to simply retime the auto-translated subs, create blank duplicates, and then type/transcribe edited versions based on what I heard while timing or replaying them as I go... which I currently do while editing anyway. This combined edit/transcribe process might reduce the total time of the two separate steps by 25-50%.

Of course, my real obstacles to fansub progress are caring about real-world news, reading/posting on other anime sites, and playing ancient RTS games, not anything in the fansubbing process itself...

Torrent || AoG Patch

Saint October 20 - Impostory

As you may have already seen, this episode of Saint October features Esmeralda trying to strike at one of Kotono's primal weaknesses, with almost the usual amount of failure. One thing that strikes me about this show is that the two sides know relatively little about each other, as in who's connected with whom, and who's pulling the strings behind the scenes. And the next episode only brings that more into focus.

Torrent || AoG Patch
DDL (graciously provided by Yogicat, usually posted in comments when there isn't a large delay between the release and the blog post)

Mizuiro Jidai 05 - Men are key

In this Very Special Episode of Mizuiro Jidai, Yuuko undergoes a change and begins to experience the blessing and the curse of every woman's life. But mostly curse, I guess. At least Yuuko and her friends didn't try to weaponize the topic to unnerve and embarrass the boys, like some girls at my high school did.

Torrent

Mizuiro Jidai 01-04 - Re-release

Since some have been asking about it here and elsewhere, I decided I'd better do something with Mizuiro Jidai. This is a re-release of eps 1-4 with new h.264 encodes by KiteSeekers, rather than the old DivX raws I used before. I wanted to release ep 5 as well, but I ran into some encoding issues that'll have to be sorted out first. You may notice some oddities in the names of the files and the folder; if you have the KiteSeekers 11-47 batch, these files will drop right into the same folder, and appear at the top of the list, instead of having [KiteSeekers] 11, 12 ... 46, 47 followed by [ReDone] 01, 02 ... 09, 10.

As with KiteSeekers' releases of Mizuiro Jidai and other projects by them, these files contain hardsubbed karaoke and credits. However, in the folder you will also find OP/ED videos (made from the DivX raws) with softsubbed karaoke. I will also do a softsubbed kara video for ED2, even though I won't be releasing the later episodes.

Torrent

Memories Off 2nd - 10-bit batch

This is a 10-bit version of Memories Off 2nd. I'd originally held off on releasing this version because my old desktop couldn't play 10-bit without resorting to VLC, and I have a personal rule against releasing files I can't comfortably play -- a rule which also preclude(s/d) overly-high resolutions and lag-inducing typesetting/karaoke. But over the course of the project, I migrated things to a new PC that is able to handle 10-bit and 720p+, so I figured there was no real reason not to put these encodes to use.

I will also be moving on to Memories Off 3.5, and I have 8-bit and 10-bit versions of those episodes as well. Let me know if you want both 8-bit and 10-bit, or just one or the other. I can also do an 8-bit batch for Memories Off 2nd, if there is demand.

10-bit Batch (Nyaa) || 10-bit Batch (BakaBT) || 8-bit Batch (Nyaa)

Saint October 19 - Hey, Ocean!

As promised in the preview in ep 18, this is Saint October's fabulous swimsuit issue. Luckily, our Goth Loli Detectives don't let minor aviation mishaps get in the way of their fun. There's also some triangular romance in the air, but it's put on hold when an uninvited guest crashes the beach party.

Torrent || AoG Patch

Saint October 18 - The Land of Equestria

Saint October really ratchets up its aggressive absurdity in this episode, and for my part, it's time to blitz this series and get it done, as I've taken far too long with it.

Torrent || AoG Patch

Saint October 17 - Helicopter Parents Gone Wild

Time to get this project unstalled as well, with the eventful and plot-relevant Saint October 17. Ryouhei finally makes his move on Kotono, but it's not the kind of move that Joshua and Natsuki are fearing.

Torrent || AoG patch

Memories Off 2nd 03 - Love the one you're with?

And at last, we finally have the last episode of Memories Off 2nd, where numerous rainy scenes and emo moments manage to reach a conclusion. From some of the montages that get shown, I get the feeling that a 12-episode anime might've provided a better adaptation of the game, but we take what we can get. I do have the materials to do a 10-bit version of this OVA if there's interest. Let me know if you notice any errors in the current releases.

10-bit Batch (Nyaa) || 10-bit Batch (BakaBT) || 8-bit Batch (Nyaa)

I don't know why I often choose December as a month to finish one anime every day, as there's always tons of stuff going on with family and friends, and it's not cool to let the fansubbing suffer after just getting back from the convention hiatus. I've also had some PC issues here and there -- I got the feeling that my old desktop PC was having overheating/fan issues, so I decided it was finally time to migrate things over to the new PC. And after that, I had a little scare when supposedly-benign temperature monitoring program SpeedFan made the hard drive with almost all my raws temporarily disappear and not be recognized for awhile. Fortunately, it spontaneously re-activated, and none of my scripts were at risk. But I've gone through and backed up a good portion of that material so that a real failure won't completely devastate me.