Rupee Shards

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anime, encoding, fansubbing, images, internet, manga, music, video games, youtube

Created By Desbreko

YOU are SHOCK

The Des decided to do fansubbing again. As I've mentioned to some people already, about a week and a half ago I poked Dagger about translating the Lucky Star OVA. I got the first part of the script a week ago and today we released the finished sub; not a bad turnaround time for a forty-two minute episode with nearly seven hundred lines of dialogue and a bunch of signs to typeset, I think. I'm a little disappointed that EnA beat us to release by mere hours (especially since I think our release is better >_>), but whatever. Like the previous Aria episode we subbed, I wanted to do it primarily for ourselves so I'm not too concerned.

As for the OVA itself, it's obviously awesome—it's Lucky Star, after all—but it's also got several points of greater awesome. First, Kagami being forced into Hatsune Miku cosplay, which I have dubbed Kagamiku. This is too moe for words. Second, the whole MMORPG chapter. We never got to see the MMO that Konata plays in the series but they animated the in-game scenes this time. And, finally, Lucky Channel—in live-action. I would say more but I don't want to spoil its awesome.

My Aria the Animation box set arrived a few days ago and I've fallen in love with the series all over again. I've only watched the first DVD (ep1-4) so far, since I was busy with subbing and all the new fall anime starting, but every moment of every episode is pure bliss.

Speaking of the fall season anime, I've been and will continue to post thoughts in Shinmaru's Fall '08 Anime Season thread over on OtakuBoards rather than here, so check that out of you want to see what I'm watching. Though I need to make another post and update my list again.

Kinsoku Jikou Desu

Holy crap, I've been on OtakuBoards for seven years. Now that I think about it, ~~no one else from when I joined still visits the site regularly, other than James.~~ only a handful of people from when I joined still post regularly... Though now I'm responsible for a large part of the site so I have an excuse like James. Yeah, I'm going to go with that.

Speaking of OB, I just uploaded a bunch more avatars to the gallery for people to use. A new member pointed out a while ago that we didn't have any Haruhi Suzumiya avatars, which was a bit surprising. Somehow I missed the series when making avatars and no one else had submitted anyway. I couldn't let that stand.

My plan to skim through the episodes in search of good screen shots to use for avatars turned into me watching the entire series again over the course of a couple days. This was the third time I've watched Haruhi, and I'm not sure if it's because I watched it in broadcast order again (the second time was in chronological order) or because of a longer period of time between screenings, but I found it a lot more entertaining than the second time. Actually, it's probably a combination of both, but whatever. I had fun and saved 226 screen shots, 49 of which turned into avatars.

ef - a tale of memories also got some more love from me in the form of 19 avatars. I can't wait for a tale of melodies to start next season.

I've been meaning to write another Hatsune Miku post for a while now but haven't gotten around to it. There are plenty of good songs I've found since the last post.

Moar people need to come to the Anime Club chats. It's fun with just me and Michi (and Shin next week!) but, seriously, Minami-ke is awesome and deserves more attention. I think it's the best comedy/slice of life series I've seen since it aired.

Saving the best for last, it's Sabrina's birthday today! Everyone send her gifts.

A memory I don't want to forget

I finished watching ef - a tale of memories. Yes, already. I completely ate it up and loved every minute. Now I feel a bit of a fool for skipping over it for so long, though I can't quite decide whether I'm glad I at least waited until it finished airing. ef is the sort of show that has a lot more impact (at least for me) when I can watch multiple episodes in a row rather than having to wait a week or more between them.

This also poses a problem. ef - a tale of melodies starts airing next season, but should I watch it week-by-week or wait until it's complete? Honestly, I doubt I'll have the patience to wait at all, but at least it's putting up a struggle.

I also went and re-read Dagger's posts about ef since I actually know what she's talking about now. So: OMG more Mizuki yesssss. I now have a greater appreciation for the picspam. And, while we're on the subject of picspam, here's a screen shot of Chihiro that I took:

The moe, it's just too much...

I love it when shows include extra art like that during the next episode previews.

Next on the to watch list is Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto, aka Someday's Dreamers. It's another series I'd been thinking about watching for quite a while but never got around to. Funnily enough, I didn't realize until a few days ago that it's related to Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ which I'm watching as it airs this season.

One more time, One more chance

It took me quite a while but I finally finished watching Gakuen Alice. (Mostly due to the fact that I've picked up way too many currently airing series and those tend to take priority.) It's a bit hard to sort out my thoughts about it, though. I started out really into it and watched the first eleven episodes in two days. Then I got distracted and didn't watch any for a couple weeks until I got back to it and watched an episode here and there. And finally I watched the last nine episodes in another two days. So did it hold my attention or not? I'm not sure.

I did like the series, though, even if I didn't find it particularly amazing. It was a nice departure from the standard magical girl formula.

I also just watched 5 Centimeters Per Second so I'm feeling like someone grabbed my heart and gave it a good wrenching. It was absolutely beautiful, both in its art and animation and its story. The amount of feeling conveyed through some scenes was downright breathtaking; Takaki's cold and lonely train ride through the nighttime snow was especially vivid to me. Though I haven't seen too many other anime movies to compare it with, I think it's my current favorite.

Next up on my to watch list is ef - a tale of memories. I'd been thinking of watching it ever since it started airing during Fall season 2007 but I never got around to it. But, hey, as long as I finish it before ef - a tale of melodies starts this fall I figure it's okay.

Isogashii Isogashii

Lots has been going on lately but I've been too lazy to post about things individually.

Two chains please, extra heavy.
I hired two new moderators on OB recently; congrats to Korey and Darren who joined us in the Arcade and Theater, respectively. Picking out new staff almost always takes a long time and this was no exception. It's also a rather boring process so it's become one of my least favorite parts of being an admin. But it's one of the most important parts of my job, so I do it anyway and take satisfaction in knowing I play such a central role on the site.

It's funny, though, that even after I became an admin, but before I took over hiring new staff, that I never really thought about what was involved in it. So when James came along and said, "Hey, I'd like to put you in charge of hiring," I was just sort of like, "Okay." Then when it came time to actually find some new mods I was like, "Oh snap, I see why he doesn't have time for this anymore." But it's worked out nicely since I do have the time, even if I find it boring compared to other stuff I do.

Walk outside and you'll get cancer. No, really.
As some know, I went on a short vacation with my family over the fourth of July weekend to the Eureka area on the coast. We went partly to escape the smoke that has been covering most of northern California for weeks now. It's been clearing up lately but for a while it was so thick here that visibility was reduced to only a couple hundred yards. I don't think there had ever been another time in the summer here when I couldn't see blue sky for a week straight.

The vacation itself was a mix of fun and not-so-fun. For some reason both my and my mom's stomachs decided to be a pain after we went out for dinner on the fourth so we ended up having stomach cramps instead of watching fireworks. That was certainly not a good trade. But our visit to Fern Canyon the next day was a lot of fun and we took some nice pictures, which I may get around to posting later.

The Des does fansubbing.
There was a DVD-only bonus episode of Aria the Origination that was released a few weeks ago in Japan but, after waiting a while, it seemed no was was going to sub it. And, since I'd rather not have waited who knows how long for the R1 DVDs to see it (the first season of Aria is only now being released in the US this September and Origination is the third season), I found a raw and managed to get Dagger to translate it for me.

I had never produced any subtitles or worked with Aegisub (the best open source software for creating ASS format subtitles) before but I learned fast. And, for a first time effort, I think I did a pretty awesome job. It was an interesting experience, though I don't plan on doing any more subbing unless another similar situation presents itself or Dagger wants me to sub something.

We released the episode publicly since there weren't—and still aren't—any other subbed releases by the time I finished. Look around and you should be able to find it if you're interested in seeing our work.

You need to go watch Slayers nao.
The new Summer season anime started around the beginning of the month so I've been picking up some new shows. The highlight of the season is Slayers Revolution, which marks the continuation of the first three Slayers TV series after eleven years, so that's totally awesome. And I couldn't be happier with Revolution; it's staying incredibly true to the series' roots while featuring some nice upgrades in the animation and music. In addition to Slayers, you can read my opinions on the other new shows I'm watching in the Summer Anime '08 thread on OB.

You know what you doing. Take off every sig.
I've been working with boothten in organizing signature of the week contests on OB. The current winner will get a little SOTW graphic in their member title, which I'll be handling since only admins can edit titles. Hopefully it'll be another fun, ongoing project for the graphics people out there and also a way for others to get involved in the Art Studio forum through voting on the signatures.

Adam: im thinking about implementing chat on theO
Everyone should be aware of theO's impending chat room launch by now. I was involved in testing it, which was fun. I made Aaryanna cry by trying out the warn feature on her. (And then I did it again later. Aren't I horrible?) And I'll be there for its launch tomorrow at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (6:00 PM Pacific Time for me), helping out with moderation whenever I happen to be in the chat.

I look forward to using the chat to find more people to own in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Boku wa makeru wake ni wa ikanainda!