Blue SWAT Episodes 31-36

Our heroes may have one less issue to worry about now, but that doesn’t mean they’re fully in the clear.  Jisp has a whole rolodex of contacts to throw at the team, and our team may need a little more firepower if they wish to succeed.

Oh, hi!  Hope you all had a splendid holiday season.  Welcome to 2023!  This batch acts as a sort-of breather before next batch marks another new era for the show.  You can probably guess what’s coming, but if you can’t, the episode title of 37 spells it out for you.  But that doesn’t make this batch weak at all!  The episodes here are… actually really, really good?  The show is having some troubles deciding on a tone, but maybe that just makes the moments of joy and sadness that much more poignant.  Who’s to say?

Oh, and there’s a new weapon thrown in here as well, but it’s, like, the least important or notable thing in this batch.  But it’s here now, and it’s pretty sweet actually in terms of design.  A huge variety of writers in this one.  It’s weird having an episode written by Uehara (his only contribution to the show) followed by an episode written by Kobayashi (which is a lot better than it has any right of being given the plot.)

This will be the longest batch I release of this show, so don’t get used to this.  It’s just a good, solid block of episodes that now you all get to enjoy.

You can find the episodes on the Pastebin, as per usual.

Continued thanks to Florida Scrubs for their help timing scripts.

Also, episode 32 has Shou in nothing more than a speedo.  You’re welcome.

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Blue SWAT Episodes 27-30

Out with the old, in with the new.  Shou must’ve been a good boy this year, since he gets some new clothes AND a new ride.  Things go… not as well for Zaji.  Hurry up, Sig!  Fittingly for the holiday season, there’s a running theme of family, specifically parents and children, in this batch.  The reunions for pairs that have grown distant… even if that reunion is to be but a moment.

After last batch was… something, this batch is a solid return to form.  Episode 28 is a real swerve of an episode.  Very original in plot.  Also very excited about episode 30.  When I originally watched the show, I remember thinking how much I wanted a particular scene to be subbed so more people could see it.  It’s not, like, this amazing, incredible scene, but it restored my faith in the show after the episodes before had been hit or miss.

But, yeah, more new revelations and even some spooky shenanigans in this batch.  A good capstone to 2022, since I’m definitely not getting the next batch out before the end of the year (it’ll be a bit bigger than usual.)  What a year for Metal Heroes.

I’ll add a quick content warning for episode 30 though.  It’s no secret by now that Blue SWAT has a lot of quick flashing lights, and usually they aren’t too bad, but there’s one used in episode 30 that goes on a little longer than usual and is pretty bright.  If you’re sensitive to flickering lights and made it this far, just skip from 12:55 to 13:02.

Get to the Pastebin and get to watching!  Hope you all enjoy.

Thank you all for your continued support, and to Florida Scrubs for helping with script timing.

Blue SWAT Episodes 23-26

After the bombshells of last batch, the battle continues for our gallant heroes.  When Blue SWAT is put on the ropes, their only hope is a miracle.  A big sparkling miracle from beyond the stars.  Could it be an ally for the team in their lonely battle?

Also, there’s, like, a group of kid sidekicks in this batch as well.  They’re definitely a thing.

So, uh, this is kind of a weird batch for the show.  If episodes 13 and 14 were the first signs of the show trying new things (and by new I mean relying more on typical toku conventions), then these episodes mark the full departure into that shift.  Blue SWAT has a… less than great reputation thanks in large part due to this known tone/style shift.  It is what it is, though I think the hate is way overblown.  The show still has a lot of really great episodes coming up… but to be frank, this is probably the weakest batch of the show I’ll put out.  At least in my opinion.

Hey, at least we’re now over the halfway point (already!), with twice the episodes translated as when I started working on this.  Blue SWAT is a really fun and unique show, and I can’t wait to get the rest out to you.

As usual, big thanks to Florida Man for helping with the script timings.

New episodes have been added to the Pastebin folders.  Get to watching!

Denshi Sentai Denziman (Now in HD!) Episodes 15-28 + Movie V2

Hey, folks.  Sorry this took longer than expected to come out, but hey, that’s life.  Getting into the actual meat of the show here with the bits of lore that really make Denziman something ahead of its time in some ways.  Lots of fun episodes, and Machiko Soga really gets to ham it up here.  Really cool now that I’ve done Spiderman to realize Kiyama’s love interest in episode 25 played Shinko from that show.

While not a new release in terms of quality, a few lines in the movie have been updated, so it’s been rereleased here.  A big thank you to RaikoKnight for their help in the updating process.  I appreciate how thorough you’ve been in this.

Not much else to really say.  It’s more Denziman in HD!  So get to my Pastebin and enjoy!

Life’s been… stressful for me recently, so all of your continued support does mean a lot to me.  Thank you.

Blue SWAT Episodes 19-22

MOVE AHEAD, BLUE SWAT!!  This batch has it all.  Secrets revealed, old men who can’t keep their hands to themselves, and more homoerotic undertones than you can shake a stick at.

While I wouldn’t call Blue SWAT a plot-heavy show, it is notable that almost every batch will have some type of shakeup or addition in it, and this one is no exception.  The show teased it in the last batch, but now it’s time for the real story, the real heart of Blue SWAT.  Buckle your seat belts, because you are not ready for what this show has in store.  …In this batch or next batch for that matter.

Small content warning on episode 21.  The above text didn’t lie, there’s a short scene where there’s sexual assault framed as comedy.

All new episodes have been added to the Pastebin.  Check the comments if you’re unsure how to use it.

Quick thank you to Florida Man for helping with the script timings.

P.S, more Denziman will be added sooner than you expect, so keep an eye out for that as well. 🙂

Hope you enjoy!

Blue SWAT Episodes 0-18

Hello there!  How’ve you been?  Well, I hope.  Didn’t see this coming did you?  That’s right, I have a new project in the works, specifically the 13th installment of the cult classic Metal Heroes series.  With so much Metal Heroes excitement already this year from Weeaboo Shogun, Kamen Scrubs Sentai, and, of course, Megabeast Empire I think it’s only appropriate to add to it.

Not only am I excited to be able to work on one of the last (!) Metal Heroes shows to be subbed, but I’m also excited due to the show itself.  Blue SWAT as a toku show is rather experimental in a way I think toku fans outside Japan will appreciate.  The show aims to be grounded in a way very, very few other toku do.  Well, as grounded as a show about aliens trying to invade the planet can be.  The suits are very minimal and don’t carry any special power or functionality (they’re literally just referred to as armor), and the weapons are designed to look like actual military weapons (plus a laser cannon, since, you know, toku.)  The show has a surprising amount of grittiness, at least early on.  It is not surprising this show was NOT a hit with children at the time.  It is almost anti-marketable for children.  The aliens are made to look very scary, and the framing of shots and the score accompanying makes this feel almost like a horror or thriller movie.  Like a toku version of a cross between The Thing and They Live.

That’s not to say the show is all doom and gloom.  Blue SWAT is also very funny, and that’s thanks to its cast.  There’s no dedicated “comic relief” character in this show, and they all get time to joke around and hang out.  The show does a great job of having them naturally come together, and before long they feel like a bunch of old friends ribbing on each other.  The main cast also all get sufficiently fleshed out before too long, which is more than a lot of Sentai can say.  The cast of Blue SWAT is one of toku’s best IMO.

But enough about the show, let’s talk about the subs.  Regarding Rampage, I have been given reason to believe they will not continue the show in English, or at least within any short amount of time, so I’m taking it upon myself to finish this hopefully soon-to-be cult classic.  The subs for the early episodes are not simply Rampage’s work released again, as I went through and made updates to fonts and went line by line throughout every single episode.  While most of the work done for those early episodes is indeed Rampage (and I did keep some elements of the styling going forward), it is not 1:1.  I’ve put a lot of work into this release, and I DO want to give credit to those at Rampage for their work on the early episodes that a lot of my work is based on, but also do know this is a different release of those episodes.  Just watch the episodes and you’ll see what I mean.  I’ve also continued to include the opening credits moving forward, and added them into 11-13 when they weren’t included before.  A fair amount of scrubbing.

The other shoutout I want to make is to Florida Man of Florida Scrubs, who is doing me a big, big favor of getting me timed scripts.  Timing is what holds me up not for its length, but because it is very boring and tedious.  I only decided to do this show on the caveat he got me reasonably timed scripts, and so far he’s delivered.  He deserves thanks as well.

Consider this post my declaration that unless something unexpected happens, Blue SWAT will be finished.  Future batches will not nearly be this big and more the usual 4-5, but I didn’t just want to release 1-13 (plus the episode 1 preview) again without some more episodes to chew on.

You can find them on the newly created Blue SWAT Pastebin, both soft and hard.

Regarding HD Denziman, more of that should hopefully be on the way soon.  No need to worry there.

Regarding stuff taken down recently (BFJ, Deka’s VS movies), I should be able to get it all up soon now that I can take my mind off this.

Thank you all for your continued support.  I hope you enjoy Blue SWAT just as much as I did when I first watched it.

Denshi Sentai Denziman (Now in HD!) Episodes 1-14

Welcome back to the tea party.

Last year, Toei Channel began reairing episodes of Battle Fever J. They were remastered and in HD, and this year Denziman received the same treatment, so you know I have to provide an updated version for this show as well. Like BFJ the quality is really incredible, and I didn’t notice any weird blurring in sections like that show had. Just really, really happy this fantastic show looks so good.

But that’s not all! RaikoKnight of Thunder King Productions offered to help QC this release and clean up anything off or phrased in a less than ideal way, meaning these episodes are not entirely the same scripts as the old SD releases. Not to fret, nothing super important has changed, but now some lines shall be more accurate and/or sound better. This truly is the definitive edition of this program. I highly suggest checking out their work on Changeman and Goranger if you have not already. Make sure they get the kudos they deserve.

The plan is two more batches of this size and then one more final smaller batch to wrap up the show. Scheduling will depend on multiple factors, but as long as raws are supplied the whole show will eventually be done.

Soft and hard versions are up on my Denziman Pastebin now. Enjoy!

Toei Spiderman – The Complete Batch

So where to begin, huh?

You might be wondering what this batch is and why it took so long.  Well, sit back, grab something to drink, because this is going to be a long post full of twists and turns.

I, admittedly, was slacking on the show for a while, but at some point I felt the urge to get back to work on this.  I decided from very early on “I’m just going to release the remaining episodes in one large batch since it’s been so long.”  Everything was splendid, until I hit an unexpected roadblock.

The tail end of episode 34, as well as the entirety of episode 35 had video errors.  This caused the audio and the visual tracks to become more and more desynced over time.  Episode 34 wasn’t too bad, but episode 35 was unwatchable.  Plain and simple.  I hoped this was an issue with the audio track and I could resync it manually, but to no avail.  The issue was with the video, potentially caused by errors encountered by the program used during the ripping or encoding process.

I was honestly at a loss of what to do.  The raws I used were from years ago, with the uploader being anonymous.  I contacted others in the subbing community to see if they had the discs or would be able to make raws, and I struck out there too.

See, with the nebulous copyright of this show, there are very few ways to watch it.  I can’t rip it from the TTFC app since it’s not on there, and the only DVD set (the ones the raws came from) was extremely expensive (thousands of dollars) probably due to being out of print.  My determination, my ambition, to get the show done was starting to sink.

But this is when I got lucky.  I mentioned my issues to some others on a certain Discord server, and one of the users (DigitMZ) managed to come to my aid.  It’s thanks to him this batch exists at all, at the very least in the way that it exists.

I had overlooked on Nyaa that someone earlier this year had uploaded the ISOs to the DVDs.  I’m more used to looking at Blu-ray ISOs and did not realize that the ISO names corresponded with the discs.  With them, I could extract and reencode to create new raws for the episodes.  So that’s what I did. I put in my settings, and created new raws for 34 and 35.  And that’s when I made a discovery.

My raws ended up being just that much better looking than the raws I used earlier.

It’s not by a crazy amount, but the video is noticeably more crisp, with less of the good film grain being smoothed away.  I felt it worth to do this with the entire series, meaning that all of the episodes, the movie, and the special released today are using these even better raws.  Don’t worry, I made sure to go back and edit the scripts to make sure they fit.

So what’s included in this batch?  Not just the remaining nine episodes, but all of them plus all of the previous Spiderman releases on new, crisper raws.  Not to toot my own horn too much, but this is IMO the best this show has ever looked, and probably will ever look given the unlikeliness of an HD rerelease (though with Spiderverse 2 coming out, anything’s possible.)

ALSO included in this batch is an interview done with Stan Lee regarding this show that was included as a special feature on the DVD set.  There’s one softsub version that has two subtitle tracks, one just for text and the odd bit of Japanese (enabled by default), and the other as a full set of captions, English and all.  Obviously I can’t put both in one hardsub file, so they’re marked “simple” and “full” respectively.  It’s a very nice interview; Stan Lee was a good man, may he rest in peace.

So, yeah, this batch is pretty massive. Enjoy some final notes…

• One of the few major changes made in the previous episodes is that I decided to change one line of the ending theme.  While the ending theme does mean either, I feel this translation better fits the melancholy theme.
• While “kitsune” does mean fox, it also refers to a type of yokai spirit that’s a shape-shifting fox, meaning the name of the Machine BEM is also at least a little mystical in nature.
• “CQ” is radio code for saying you want any others on that frequency to respond.  It’s like a call saying you wish to speak to someone, anyone.
• Dr. Miracle is played by Mitchi Love, who you might recognize as Karen in JAKQ.
• One of the kids in episode 36 keeps repeating “goyou da!”  It’s hard for me to translate into English as it basically is the boy asking for submission, in that to him his detective squad upholds a certain rank or authority, so others must submit.  It’s such a short phrase, so I translated it as “Bow before us!” to maintain the idea of him acting high-and-mighty while asking for others to submit before them.  I think it gets the idea across best.
• Great King Enma as a figure is not actually one of evil in Japanese mythology.  Rather, he is the judge of the dead, seeing who deserves to go into Hell, which he rules over.  Like Santa, he keeps a list of the good and bad deeds of people and judges based on that.
• Botulism bacteria are real things that can be found in areas with little oxygen.  They can infect you through cuts, and is known to be fatal.  Fun.
• Episode 39 is really interesting because the version used in the old subs is, in fact, edited and cut.  See, the episode contains flashes of the manji symbol, also known as a swastika.  It’s being used as the old, more positive connotation here, but it’s not a big factor in the plot, so the old version actually cuts out an instance, it edits the video to hide the symbol, and it mistranslates a line intentionally because that line refers back to the symbol.  So my version of episode 39 can in fact be called an uncut version!
• A character in episode 39 is referred to as being “5th dan” in kendo.  He would have at least a decade of practice.

That’s it!  Get to the Pastebin and enjoy!  Remember to change SSKR to mega.nz.  I have a standalone release I want to do.  Discussion of the future will take place after that release is out.  Thank you.

Battle Fever J (Now in HD!) Episodes 39-52

One last batch for the road!  It’s the team’s final tangos with Secret Society Egos.  Who will prevail?  If you’ve been following my releases, you probably know already.  But, hey, at least this time you get to see it in high definition!

The links have now been posted on the Battle Fever J Pastebin doc for these episodes.  Like before, simply replace SSKR with the site link mega(.)nz without the parentheses.

I’m glad these versions were able to be got as they simply look fantastic, even if there’s weird blurring in places.  Oh well.

If you haven’t been following my Twitter for updates, do know Spiderman is on the way, but the behind-the-scenes details have been a roller coaster.  We’ll get to that when we get to that post, but it’s coming.

‘Til next time!

Battle Fever J (Now in HD!) Episodes 25-38

More HD Battle Fever for you all.  The summer episodes, the shakeups, they’re all here.  I like how much the show develops the side characters in this show beyond the main team.  Even someone like Tomoko who would be relegated to a couple lines in another show gets two episodes here where she gets the ball rolling on the plots.  Maria’s here now, and that itself is reason enough to celebrate.

Please remember that you need to change the links in the Pastebin doc.  You need to replace the SSKR in them with “mega . nz” without the spaces.  Just an added bit of security.

The new links are on the BFJ PB doc now!  You can find them here!

More Spiderman coming soon!