Shinigami's Ballad 04-06 - It's a Wonderful Life

Well, I might've had this second half of the series done sooner, but I had to unstall and blitz through a few episodes of Yes! Pretty Cure 5, which was a full translate/time from scratch effort. Anyway, this concludes Shinigami's Ballad. Maybe it descends into too much melodrama here and there, but it's short and sweet and doesn't overstay its welcome. Out of this batch, episode 6 is my favorite, though 4 and 5 are certainly good as well.

The episodic format is nice, but it does leave you wanting more, or wondering if a continuing story could develop. Perhaps the (untranslated?) light novels would provide answers. There is also a live-action adaptation, which I have not seen.

Torrent

If you have the files that are (for now) on BakaBT, I finally learned how to create non-ghetto patches to convert those eps 4-6 into my releases. Please help seed if you can. Didn't realize that the files on BakaBT were changed, so the patch likely won't work.

So I heard you like batches...

If you've been watching the nyaa.eu front page recently, you'll see that I've been posting a few batches for older ReDone projects. These shows have previously only had batches on BakaBT, so I decided to answer the demand for public-tracker alternatives. Recently-posted batches include:

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~

Soul Link

Tonagura!

Lime-Colored War Tales TV & OVA

I will likely be removing the single-episode torrents for these as time goes by. Some older projects like Strawberry 100%, Touka Gettan, and Rizelmine already have batches on nyaa linked in the final posts under those labels. Various shorter OVAs also got public-tracker batches at the time of completion.

And just for record-keeping, the following ReDone releases are not yet on BakaBT:

Hand Maid Mai
Sky Girls OVA
Memories Off #1
Shin Koihime Musou OVA

Shinigami's Ballad 01-03 - Beyond the Grave, Beyond Tears

As hinted at before, this is a "secret surprise" batch release. I'd been doing some work off-and-on with this series for awhile, and figured it was finally time to throw something out there. Shinigami's Ballad (AKA Shinigami no Ballad, AKA Ballad of a Shinigami: Momo the Girl God of Death) is one of my favorite short series from the mid-00s. It's only six episodes, but few series manage to lay down a pervasively melancholy, tearjerker mood for so much of their runtime. But I shouldn't be surprised, as its director Tomomi Mochizuki has been involved with numerous other "strange and wonderful" series like Zettai Shounen, Twin Spica, Yami to Boushi, and Touka Gettan. So I hope you all can enjoy it as I did when it aired in 2006 (and when I rewatched it in 2007).

01-03 Torrent (ep 01 43BB3778 , ep 02 4B94AA3D , ep 03 8BD343A1)

More technical/subtitle stuff below.

Lovely Idol 02 - You think you've got talent?

As far as the old-school Sailor Moon definition of the term goes, I think Kotoha has the most talent of anyone in this bunch. Still, this show's manager (who actually has a name!) decides to ignore that and pursue the elusive legendary street performer, Mizuki Sakaki. But the four girls pictured above notice this obsession and decide to help, with cutely disastrous results. Nevertheless, Lovedol Gen-3's numbers are increasing, even if those increases come from unlikely places.

Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Thanks again to the Anon in the ep 01 comments for tipping me off to the audio delay issue in even-numbered episodes of AME's rip. Fortunately, the first "HA!" of the OP coincides exactly with the appearance of the title graphic. So I just had to time out the difference, which for ep 02 was 660 ms. Unfortunately, I didn't see any steam reduction in the shower scene at 8:25, so no DVD enhancements there.

Saint October 02 - Poison Ivy Attacks

Why yes, President Kurtz, I know what happens if I fail at life, but what if I fail at fansubbing as well? What then? Though actually, I didn't even need to load the audio to fix minor mistakes while QCing this episode, so I guess that's a good sign. Anyway, mystery boy Ewan continues to mysteriously defy all attempts at identification, and Reverse's supervillain-wannabe Kurtz has his subordinate send another subordinate on another kidnapping mission. And somehow, I get the feeling that the Reverse Company will be hearing some calls from DC Comics' legal department.

Torrent [CRC=9EE26C0C]

But despite a couple of trips, I haven't been completely inactive -- after the next episode of Lovely Idol, I may bring out a surprise short series in one or two batches.

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.