Soul Link 12 - It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!

The space station is plummeting into the atmosphere. Our kid heroes have been through a lot, but now they must escape. Yet one of their own is still trapped, with a sadistic, immortal woman who can regenerate from any damage standing in their way. Do they have any means to defeat her, short of summoning mold spores and a meteor shower? And with some Skura-enhanced soldiers still roaming around, can everyone survive the arduous journey to freedom? Get ready for some tender reunions and bitter separations in the twelfth and final episode of Soul Link.

Although some flaws (in animation, pacing, and science) became more apparent in the second viewing, I still liked this show and enjoyed working on it. But then again, I'm liable to like almost anything with "based on game containing lots of cute girls" in its premise. And to complete the Navel trilogy, it's time for me to start watching We Without Wings on Funi.

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P.S. Check out the script for ep 12 to see how I used physics to prove one of Yesy's lines wrong.

Soul Link 11 - Great Escape, or Greatest Escape?

Another spotlight on eyecatch art, this one taken before Sayaka fades in and takes over 2/5 of the picture. In Soul Link 11, Aries is rapidly falling without style, and it's going to be a hot time in the old town tonight if the station fully enters the atmosphere. In episode 10, the gang discovered a means of escape, but getting there is going to be half the fun and 3/4 the hardship. There's plenty of fast running, heavy shooting, deft piloting, and heroic sacrificing going on. Ikinobiru koto ga dekiru ka?!

I should've gotten this out last night, especially since a sizable percentage of the lines are simple phrases like Yes/Roger/No/Hurry/You okay?. But, I got distracted reading about the grim future of video gaming. Good thing I don't own any consoles made after 2000, or play any PC games modern enough to require more than an 800x600 display. So none of that "you don't actually own this game, you have to pay us monthly forever" crap for me.

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Soul Link 10.5 - Subbing flashbacks has left me in despair!

I knew that this episode would pose a unique challenge when I started this show. Being largely composed of flashbacks, I had to track down which lines were from which episodes, and copy+paste them in accordingly so that the lines in 10.5 would stay consistent with my edits from earlier episodes. Not to mention all the overlapping narration + flashback dialogue that proved tougher to time. But I got through it, so you all can enjoy one of the better, more informative recap episodes out there. I also did a little something with the styling to distinguish between narration and standard dialogue. More notes on the format of this release and the included extras can be found in the .txt file in the folder.

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Also, I did a slight site redesign, because the old format was looking too narrow even on my ancient monitor. Also take note of the pages (such as "Requests"), many of which have been around for awhile.

Soul Link 10 - Gotta take an infodump

Now that we're 10 episodes into things, let's take stock. We have a group of teenagers that travel to a futuristic, isolated facility. Some of these teenagers are apparently parents to at least one other character. The facility is doomed to be destroyed within a specific time frame. A mysterious girl with mysterious powers appears out of nowhere. There's some kind of virus/cell that grants its infectees amazing powers of regeneration, or effectively makes them immortal.

Yes, we can conclude that Soul Link is Ever 17 IN SPACE!! No, I'm not the first person to make that comparison.

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Soul Link 09 - Why do you want my eggs?

The ninth riveting episode of CFNM fetishism anime Soul Link brings us a gunslinging confrontation between Yuu and Cellaria. Also, Nanami questions the nature of... lots of stuff, Ryouta questions his leadership ability, and nobody in the audience questions why they can't have a younger sister as bratty as Aki.

Until this episode, Soul Link has been a show with very few signs, in fact none outside episode titles and "Next Time." But this episode actually has some onscreen text, which yesy (and I) translated and KnKF did not. Luckily, I don't think there's any other "in-show" signs until the very end of the last episode.

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Soul Link 08 - Stuck in a Moment

If you've seen AMV Hell 4 but not this series, you now know the source of the above image. We're back on Space Station Aries, where the group is about to gain another yet another uneasy friendship with a mysterious girl. Also, naíve loli is naíve, and Sayaka shows you don't want to mess with her when she's a woman on a mission. And this is to Soul Link's credit; in most other shows, a girl in Sayaka's position would be a gentle, soft-spoken Yamato Nadeshiko type who never raises her voice against anybody, least of all the male lead. But we have to remember that this is the same game company who brought us Shuffle!'s Kaede Fuyou...

It's probably not just me who thinks the quality was off in this episode. Maybe it only being 144 MB with a video bitrate of 622 kbps has something to do with it. See also the shower scene at 20:00, where I can't tell if it's added DVD censorship or just overbrightness/blur obscuring the image. The episode is mostly "talking heads," but not completely. Maybe I should look into HKG's rips or something. As always, I encourage people with the ability to find and encode R2J DVD .isos to use my scripts to create better encodes. There will be a script archive DDL made available after all episodes are released.

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Soul Link 07 - Healing Factor

What do these lovely ladies want Ryouta Aizawa for? You'll have to watch Soul Link 07 to find out. But aside from the answer to that question, you'll also see stuff blowing up, people getting out of maintenance vehicles, people getting into maintenance vehicles, people eating, and a number of revelations about the true nature of the threats faced by our plucky cadets. Finally, a routine supply run has some surprising(ly cute) results.

I swear, there's always those one or two lines per episode that I can't satisfactorily render. I guess it goes with the territory of only being a "pretty good" translator, not a great one.

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Soul Link 06 - It's Zombie Time!

The cadets in Sheratan suffer a devastating loss in Soul Link 06, as their beloved Cellaria-sensei makes a bold and heroic sacrifice to keep the enemy out. She will be missed. Shuuhei experiences strange visions, and is even driven to \wrist at one point. Meanwhile, Yuu's identity is uncovered, Morimoto fails industrial tech, and love or something like it is in the air. I think some people are going to regret not practicing safe sex. Or will they?

Speaking of sex, you will notice some differences between this release and the TV-rips at about 21:45. And I think you'll find these differences to be in favor of the DVD version, if only a little.

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Soul Link 05 - Welcome to GoodBurger, can I take your order?

Tensions run high in Aries once again, as Jararacas attempts to invade Sheratan from at least one angle. Luckily, there's still plenty of time for informal photo shoots and to serve up some sandwiches and burgers.

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Soul Link 04 - I... Am... You!

Unfortunately, listening to my old friends talking about their houses, spouses, kids, and careers this weekend delayed my work on Soul Link 04. But if I let down the ~450 random Internet people downloading this re-release of a 5-year-old cartoon, my pride as a basement dweller would never forgive me. Anyway, I'm hoping the low file size for this episode is due to not much happening, other than some talking, flashbacks, gathering of new allies, and glimpses of approaching danger. Because true terrorists never give up fighting for their goals -- doing so would be letting the non-terrorists win.

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Soul Link 03 - At least there's no earthquakes in space

However, the third episode of Soul Link does find our plucky cadets faced with several serious threats, such as terrorists, a nuclear disaster, and a startling lack of firearms safety. Oh, and around 02:11, you'll find a bit of enhancement over what the TV-rips showed.

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Soul Link 02 - Short Skirts in Zero Gravity

One thing that struck me about Soul Link when I first saw it was the voice talent involved. No, not the female characters -- many of them are played by nearly-unknown actresses. However, we do have Norio Wakamoto (Shigemichi Morimoto) and Takehito Koyasu (Kazuhiko Nitta, pictured above) in the same show, and that can only mean awesomeness. Other than that, this 2nd episode features some of Soul Link's rare "typical VN" comedic scenes, like with Shuuhei and Aki's meeting. Enjoy them if you can, while you can.

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I didn't detect any additional censorship vs. the TV-rip in this episode. Let's hope that Sayaka panchira scene in ep 01 was a one-time aberration.

Soul Link 01 - Doesn't Navel ever get tired of this stuff?

In the words of an Engrish-speaking flight announcer, "Welcome to the Space," and welcome to the first episode of Soul Link. Despite its reputation, origins, and images like the above, I found this to be a surprisingly good sci-fi drama. In fact, this first episode is practically a bait-and-switch operation, as the silliness and fanservice generally declines from here on in. It may not be the greatest show ever, and some episodes are full of exposition and infodump, but it's still better than it lets on.

For the subtitles on this, I'm once again using the work of the fine folks at Yesy. However, I'm also comparing things with Kaze no Koe Fansubs' subs to get a second opinion on TL and editing. Several things from KnKF's release will be implemented, including the general styling and the use of "Aniki" and "Nii-san" when Ryouta and Aki address their older brothers. And of course, I'm adding my own input to the subs as well. Encode source is from SumiSora, and I suggest you obtain the raws if you can; I will be offering xdelta patches to go from CNsub -> ENGsub, in an attempt to improve distribution speeds.

Despite the one verified instance of added censorship on these DVDs (see 02:30 in this file), I think the audio, video, and subtitle (TL/editing/timing + hardsub->softsub) improvements in this DVD release are worthwhile.

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Soul Link Preliminary Post

So, after some deliberation and more work on more episodes, I've decided to release Soul Link. I saw at least one scene where the DVD was less censored than TV (instead of more), so I figure things will sort of balance out. But before I get started, I have a couple questions for you all:

1) Can anyone upload one of the episodes that AnimeUniverse released to a filehost? I'd like to take a look at what they did with the OP/ED lyrics, even though I've already done some editing/corrections to the lyrics myself.

2) As stated previously, the subtitle source will primarily be from yesy. Styling will be similar to Kaze no Koe Fansubs' release. I also pulled down the KnKF release just to get a "second opinion" on TL and editing. One notable difference I've seen so far is that yesy used "Brother" when Ryouta and Aki address their older brothers, while KnKF used "Aniki" and "Nii-san." Which rendering would you rather see in my release, the localized/yesy version, or the unlocalized/KnKF version?

Soul Link - Extras Package

So yes, Touka Gettan 25 is coming along, but all those blasted signs were wearing me down. So I decided to do something random and unexpected, although I'd had these files and some of the translations sitting around for awhile. This torrent contains several extras for the Spring 2006 series Soul Link, many of which have never been available in English.

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Raw source: SumiSora

Contents:
Creditless Opening (with softsubbed karaoke based on yesy's translation)
Creditless Ending (same as OP)
DVD Picture Drama Specials 1-3, translated by me. Despite what you might expect, these are just scenes of characters reminiscing about their pasts; there's no ecchi or nudity to be found here.

But the real question, as I've posed in various places, is: should I work on a DVD version of the series itself? Soul Link is in a curious position in that in at least one place, the DVDs appear to be more censored than the broadcast version, as noted by one commenter here. I can confirm that what he says is true. Nonetheless, the DVDs do offer a dramatic overall A/V quality improvement from the TV-rips, and I know I can improve the subs* beyond the mere hardsub -> softsub upgrade. So if you do want a DVD version of Soul Link, make your voice heard.

Either way, this show's status may sit on "Specials Only" on AniDB for awhile, as I have several other series I could start after finishing Touka Gettan, and all of them have more scripts ready to go.

*subs would be from yesy, since (A) that's the TV version I watched, and (B) the other options are KnKF (fail editing) and Your-Mom (unobtainable, even worse fail editing, and jokesubs)