Guardian Hearts 01-02 -- Let the ClichéStorm Begin!

And here we are after nearly a year with the first two episodes of the 2003 Guardian Hearts OVA. One night, ordinary high school student Kazuya encounters a mysterious girl from another world, and -- wait, does the plot even matter??? I think the line on the above screenshot (extended here for demonstration purposes) tells you all you need to know. When I originally watched this back in '07, it felt so by-the-numbers predictable that I felt I'd seen it before. But I'd only seen its tropes and elements in numerous ecchi/harem series already. But who knows, maybe it's got a certain retro charm to it now? Also, enjoy Rie Kugimiya in an early-career quasi-loli non-tsundere role.

Subtitles were of course from the only complete fansubbed version, by Miyuki-Fansubs. For most of their projects, M-F's subs tried to be as literal as possible (including unnecessary TL notes), but also tended to be completely wrong, at times having the exact opposite meaning as intended. So they have been extensively edited, but as usual, you still get honorifics and Eastern name order. I also preserved the character-based color-coding M-F used, although you can switch to the "plain" track if you want to change only two styles instead of 10+. Name spellings and terms were taken from the TokyoPop manga translations, where available. The raws I found for this were from Kamigami, whose encodes seem to be hit or miss. The video here is better than M-F, albeit maybe not by as much as you'd hope, given the specs. Watching with software deinterlacing active on VLC may help. Poor source, perhaps? While we like to think of Japanese discs as having great quality, even they were still figuring things out in the early 2000s.

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Wind Christmas Special - The Cake is a Lie

Here we are at last with the Christmas special/omake for Wind ~ A Breath of Heart. This does appear to work as a sequel to either the TV series or the OVA. Enjoy opening visuals from then-up-and-coming artist Makoto Shinkai, as well.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA 03 - It's a Hell of a Town

With this, we've reached the end of the Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA series. All said and done, it reaches a fairly similar conclusion to the TV series, just with fewer side stories and a lot less emphasis on the abilities employed by the residents of Kazune City. Just remember, that "Location Where Everyone Has Powers" anime genre isn't quite so recent.

I'll also be putting out the Wind Christmas special/omake, and maybe some of the other extras that're sitting around in the raw collection I obtained.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA 02 - He Had it Coming

This episode of the Wind OVA features more exploration into the past, not only of Makoto and Minamo, but also of their parents, both living and not. We also get girls frolicking on the beach in swimsuits later on, but while tragedy from beneath the waves is averted, the real disaster is waiting on land.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA 1 - Return to the Windy City

Well, we must all soldier on despite the loss of everyone's favorite feline torrent site, but I choose to do so by kicking off the Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA. This is basically an alternate adaptation of the game, and does not precede or follow the events of the TV series. Some things are similar, like Makoto and Hinata moving to Kazune City, their meeting the rest of the group, and Makoto and Minamo reuniting. But their mother, Yuuka Okano, is merely missing, rather than deceased, and in addition to the airship, there's also a phantom train carrying a mysterious girl. (Should've used a Phoenix Down, Makoto!) This release uses some old wmv3 DVD raws, which were the only raw source I could find, and translations by Static-Subs, AKA the only group to completely translate the OVA back in 2004.

Torrent

For older torrent links on this blog, replacing nyaa.se with nyaarchive.moe should work, so please bear with me as I go back and edit them over time.

Official Mokke Failsubbing tracker

For those wondering about the translation progress on the second Mokke special for Jumonji-Giri:

It's roughly 96% done, with 258/269 lines translated and approximately making sense, I think. The 11 outstanding lines are from Mizuki's grandfather at 9:15 and 18:30, mostly stuff about kanji wordplay, ancient legends, and spirit/deity matters. But I'll keep at it, and I should be able to piece something reasonable together.

EDIT: script sent to Kaishakunin on 8/2/17.

Mizuiro 2003 02 - One Ring to Rule Them All

And now, as a special Valentine's Day present to all you other potentially-romance-deprived viewers out there, I give you the exciting conclusion of the Mizuiro OVA. Minds are made up to confront present feelings and past mistakes, with Hiyori's tenuous existence possibly fading fast. Overall, it's a short, sweet, and touching little series that I had no problem going back to for a third time.

Ep 02 Torrent || Batch (Nyaa) ||

Mizuiro 2003 01 - Trapped in the Closet II

This is yet another project I'd had sitting around for awhile; I'd thought that TSunDere was going to do it, but IIRC it got removed from their projects list. So here it is, the story of an average schoolboy, his younger sister, and their long-lost childhood friend who comes out of the a closet, with her memories stuck in the past. What happened to her, and what will happen between the three of them?

The video encode for this release comes via files shared by folks from Spanish subbing group EUR in the shoutbox, while the FLAC audio comes from a Chinese-subbed rip that I was going to use, until I obtained EUR's files and realized that they had far better detail/texture retention. English subtitles come from Miyuki-Fansubs (which was considerably more available when I first watched this OVA in 2006 than it is today), and No Name Losers (which I rewatched in 2010, and is currently on BakaBT), with the usual edits and corrections. The group with the most accurate translations or best-phrased writing seemed to change from line to line, but I think I combined the best of both releases while making improvements of my own. If you extract the script and open it in Aegisub, you can see some of the background notes that Miyuki-Fansubs had in their release, as well as comments (usually within {}, not as separate comment lines) on TL errors in the original subs and how I fixed them.

Ep 01 Torrent || Batch (Nyaa) ||

Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 17 - You Belong to the City

After a long time without much required effort, I bring you the 17th and final episode of Wind ~ A Breath of Heart. (Episode is numbered 13 on AniDB and most sites.) This episode is a recap episode that mainly focuses on Makoto's and Minamo's relationship, rather than covering the entire story of the series. No doubt it caused some confusion when it aired at the end of the TV broadcast, as it includes some content from the DVD-only episodes 9.5/10 and 10.4/12 that no one had seen at that point.

Anyway, now that I've recovered from some mysterious post-holiday illness that had me running a fever of 102 (or 38.9 for those of you in the non-insane part of the planet) while trying to watch the Nanoha A's movie, maybe I can get to re-releasing another mid-00s VN adaptation and a couple of shorter OVA projects (including, perhaps, the Wind ~ A Breath of Heart OVA), as well as that pesky Mokke episode some have been asking about.

Ep 17 Torrent || Batch (Nyaa) || Ep 10v2 Patch

The v2 patch for episode 10 only changes the Next Episode title of ep 11 at the end of the episode.

Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 16 - The Kid who Stays in the Picture

We've arrived at the bittersweet epilogue episode of Wind ~ A Breath of Heart, wherein our happy couple enjoy the school festival while reflecting on what they've lost. Or is it lost? While the airship and the abilities it conferred seem to have vanished, one tormented figure seems to be enjoying life in a different vessel. This episode was originally DVD-only episode 12.5 ("When Feelings Are Answered"), but has been renumbered as 16. Guess that just leaves the full-series recap episode 13/17 now.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 15 - To Make Kazune City Great Again

After a busy couple of months and some setbacks in the form of lost Internet connections, I bring you episode 15 of Wind ~ A Breath of Heart. Turns out you can't put ancient curses and traditions to rest without some losses along the way, and Makoto is about to find out what they are.
Re-numbering note: this episode is known on most sites as episode 12, "With the Wind."

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 14 - I Invite You to Burn

This episode of Wind offers a look back into the dark, tragic past of Hikari and Kazune City alike, with a shocking conclusion. Maybe six feet ain't so far down. Astute viewers may note that this episode is nearly twice the size of any other episode of the series. Well, I hope you like extended flickering-light film-grainy flashbacks complete with artificial scanlines, weird flower overlays, and dark scenes punctuated by fire and sparks. In other words, it's a tremendous bitrate hog, perhaps on par with the sandstorm flashback in Iriya's Sky, Summer of UFOs ep 02. Fortunately, the GFE encoder wisely allowed this episode to break filesize consistency with the other eps. On the other hand, Static-Subs kept it at 99 MB (CD-R/7?), and the results were rather lacking, as can be sampled below. I don't even want to think about how this ep looked at 75 MB (CD-R/9??) in Anime-Keep's release.

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As with previous episodes, this has been renumbered; it's better known as episode 11, "Destiny from the Ancient Times."

Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 13 - Resistance is Futile

After everything turned out for the best in the previous episode, Makoto finds Hikari up to her old tricks: making people disappear and doing vaguely violent things to them. Apparently the more interaction a girl's had with the male lead, the more danger she's in.

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Renumbering note: this is elsewhere considered ep 10.8/S3, "Uncertain Feelings".

My Wife is a High School Girl 13 - Twilight of the Cockroaches

Well, what better use for a 6-day weekend than to put the final QC touches on the final episode of My Wife is a High School Girl? No doubt the manga story continues on, but the current crisis of Iwasaki-sensei finding out about the secret marriage is resolved reasonably enough. And for as much flak as this show gets, from its original subbers and others, I still came to appreciate it in the end. A lot of romance anime end at the love confession, or maybe a first-kiss scene, so it's quite rare to see the ups and downs and the conflicts and reconciliations of a married couple. It's especially rare in the ecchi/harem genres; this show, Rizelmine, and Godannar are the only three examples I can think of off-hand, as most shows involving married life tend to be less otaku-oriented, like Human Crossing or Rumiko Takahashi Anthology. It's just a pity we never got a flashback showing how their relationship got started.

Torrent || Batch (Nyaa)

As usual, if you see subbing mistakes (as opposed to subjective editing/localization decisions) in these releases, please let me know so that I can correct them. In addition, credit also goes to xess, Riza|Hawkeye, and the rest of the crew at the now-defunct fansubbing/DVD-ripping group LIME-Anime for soldiering through this series back in 2005. While they weren't able to get me the original scripts due to FTP/HDD crashes, I still would've been hard-pressed to release this series without their contributions.

Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 12 - Gonna Need a Nicer Boat

In this starkly intense episode of Wind, Minamo's feelings of grief, jealousy, and rejection boil over into a concoction most perilous. I get the feeling this is what happens when you trip a few flags for other girls by doing nice things for them, while generally/half-heartedly heading down one particular game route. Luckily, things turn out a little better for this Makoto than for that other one. Or maybe this Makoto's results are just as good as the other one's were, until they weren't.

Torrent

Once again, this episode and all others after 09 have been renumbered in my release to remove decimal/fractional values. Although I'm numbering it 12, this episode is listed on AniDB and elsewhere as episode 10.4, "Tell me your Feelings......"

My Wife is a High School Girl 12 - Fight for your right to Party!

Sadly I can't achieve Sakura's goal, but I can bring you the penultimate episode of My Wife is a High School Girl. Part A features an argument over messy white liquids being spilled in the wrong place, while Part B features a standard near-fatal minor respiratory ailment causing mass chaos and a comedy of errors. However, both parts set the stage for the crisis that will unfold at last in the final episode.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 11 - The Final Sacrifice

After several false starts and frame shifts that I'm not sure I ever needed to do, I present you episode 11 of Wind ~ A Breath of Heart, which is generally listed as episode 10 on database sites. Things get real this time around, and somebody's on the ultimate chopping block with no Rowsdower around to save them. Some of the scene connections and transitions don't exactly make sense, but I assume there's some game information I'm missing out on here. At some point, there will be a v2 of my ep 10, though it will only change the title of the next episode at the very end of the video.

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My Wife is a High School Girl 11 - The Toxicity of Our Masculinity

For the first half of this episode, we have a stalker with a Showa-era mentality going after Asami, and some unwitting pointers from Kyousuke just make matters worse. Then we return to the school social setting for part B, with some actual plot threads from previous episodes surfacing again. The school field trip, among other things, brings a bathtime fanservice scene that is still no different from the TV broadcast. Thank goodness this isn't a recent SHAFT anime, or we could be looking at additional steam for our viewing displeasure.

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Wind ~ A Breath of Heart 10 - The Toxicity of Our City

The script for this episode exhibits the peculiar property of having the least dialogue of any episode so far, but the largest total amount of lines. Thank goodness the fine folks at GFE took care of a whole lot of frame-by-frame typesetting. At any rate, I've decided to renumber the remaining episodes of Wind to remove fractional/decimal episode numbers. So, this episode is better known as episode 9.5, the first of the DVD-only episodes that were translated by Shinsen-Subs rather than Static/Keep. Minamo's father confronts Hikari about the more sinister side of Kazune City, and, well... not a whole lot else happens, I guess?

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My Wife is a High School Girl 10 - Cruel Intentions

A series of bad ideas by Kyousuke leads to yet another person finding about his connection to Asami, though Iwasaki does not yet grasp the true form of their relationship. Though she does reveal herself to be a liar and a hypocrite, if you've been paying close attention. Needless to say, Asami's not pleased with the general situation...