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.
Berndadelta Subs 