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.

Memories Off 3 - How to Save a Life

I thought for once I'd present a screenshot with relevant characters, since this is the final episode of the 2001-02 Memories Off OVA. This installment features cheery, artsy, and sickly girl Minamo Ibuki, who has an unexpected connection to Tomoya's past. After going through a certain amount of drama, the episode ends on a sad and ambiguous note. At least the animators remembered to include the title this time.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

I'm not sure if I'll start in on Memories Off 2nd right away. However, I have new encodes available for it in both 8-bit and 10-bit h264. Both versions have equal file size. So the question is, do you want...

* 8-bit only?
* 10-bit only?
* Both 8 and 10-bit?

Rizelmine 24 - A Decent Proposal

It feels like it's taken forever, but here is the final episode of Rizelmine. After the insanity of the previous two episodes, it's a short, sweet, and low-key finale. Note that it refers back to certain events and objects from episodes 14-16.

This is actually the fourth DVD version of the second season, following Hono-Bono, AIP, and Retrofit's releases. Still, I think most will agree that this is the best and most definitive version, at least until someone comes along and does a 10-bit encode with the same amount of filtering and manual correction that Desbreko put into this release. And I don't think that's too likely.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT) EDIT:

A patch for episode 07v2 can be found here. That file will be in the complete batch on BakaBT. The only difference is that it adds a font that wasn't included in the .mkv. If you have the Candara font on your system, you won't notice a difference.

Memories Off 02 - Head Games

After fixing half a dozen embarrassing editing errors that I introduced, not to mention countless more TL, editing, timing, and other errors from the Anime-Keep subs, I bring you episode 2 of Memories Off. This episode features Shion Futami (the older sister of Ami and Mami? Probably not), a quiet librarian type of girl who harbors a hidden side and some dark secrets. She's not as moe as Shiori Shiomiya, though.

Note that the English and Japanese episode titles are added in as softsubs, because the post-production team apparently forgot to place the Japanese title in the video. Given how simplistic and shoddy this OVA's animation is, it wouldn't surprise me. So if you're seeing rectangles at that point, your system isn't set up to display East Asian characters properly. To avoid that issue, I normally don't use kanji in my subs, but this warranted an exception. If you wish to fix it, GIYF.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

And as before, I'm still searching for the MangAnime release of Memories Off #5. If you have or can acquire it, let me know. (Luckily, they eventually re-uploaded it.)

Rizelmine 23 - Hetalia: Waifu Powers

What started as an arranged marriage between a middle school boy and a strange girl outside of his preferred age group has morphed into an international incident. And now, we get Rie Kugimiya playing five characters with a variety of foreign accents. And that's something of a rarity. If she's not playing a robot (this show, Hand Maid May), an alien (G-On Riders), a suit of armor (FMA), or a being from another dimension (Shana), Kugimiya usually plays traditional Japanese/super-ojousama characters. (ToraDora, AkaSaka, Hayate the Combat Butler, Idolm@ster, etc.) I guess there is Louise, but that's in an other-world setting. About the only other time I can think of where she plays a human non-Japanese character in an Earth setting is her role as Shannon in Umineko no naku koro ni.

Anyway, the end of this episode shows how Rizelmine can throw tons of ridiculous action and fanservice at you, and then blindside you with an emotional suckerpunch. Look for the final episode sometime after Sunday.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Memories Off 01 - Amefuri Koneko

Once again, I'm reaching into the vaults to bring out another old and somewhat forgotten OVA from the early 00s. Memories Off was based on a romance game of some sort, though I don't know if it was ero or not. Rather than forming a complete story, the three episodes adapt different story paths from the game. They all deal with a male lead who's lost a childhood friend/girlfriend to Japan's #1 Backstory Killer (a traffic accident), and his attempts to move on amidst guilt and regret.

Since I could not find the Baka-MX version for comparison, I took the subs from the commonly-available Anime-Keep release. As always, they've been retimed and edited, this time to fix TL/timing errors, improve flow, and remove embarrassing internal notes that were accidentally left visible in the final release.

Batch (BakaBT) || Batch (Nyaa)

More technical details available at the torrent link. I'm sure some will question the use of wmv and wma, and my answer is:
1) That's how the raws were.
2) Since the wma used 16-bit depth rather than 24-bit, it worked in Aegisub without the need to transcode to another codec. Therefore, I decided not to transcode the audio, which would've degraded the sound quality.

Before anyone asks: yes, I do intend to release later OVAs in the Memories Off series. Someone has been working on finding/encoding raws for MO 2nd and 3.5 for me. However, I'd like to get the MangAnime release of Memories Off #5, so if you have that file, let me know and seed the torrent.