Chiryokumaru

Chiryokumaru is a short Studio 4°C action ONA that was released on November 1, 2016. It’s the second and most recent title in a series of recent collaborations between Studio 4°C and the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation to promote the latter organization’s Japan Kanji Aptitude Test. (The first one, Kanojo ga Kanji wo Suki na Riyuu. [or Why She Loves Kanji.], was a two-episode romantic comedy that has since been removed from public viewing.)

There’s only one sentence of dialogue in Chiryokumaru, so this was a very short project for us here at Magai. Morellet did the webrip, translation, timing, and typesetting. Al_Sleeper and Abystoma did QC. Morellet also transcribed the Japanese dialogue, so we’ve included Japanese subs in addition to the default English subtitle track. We also released both 1080p and 720p versions of this commercial, which will likely continue to be our policy for future–and maybe even past–webrip projects where both 1080p- and 720p-resolution rips are available.

 

Bangs

Bangs is a very short instrumental ONA from May 2011 by Eriko Osikawa (押川 恵里子). Osikawa produced it as an undergraduate student in the Design and Communication program at the University of Toyama. She describes it on YouTube as the story of a girl with long bangs and a boy who is bothered by her.

Morellet did the webrip, translation, timing, and typesetting. Abystoma, Al_Sleeper, and HoneyClover did the quality checking.

Suntory’s Tennensui × “your name.” Collaboration TV commercials (v3)

This is a set of three short TV commercials for Suntory’s Minami-Alps Natural Mineral Water (or Tennensui/天然水 in Japanese). Released during August 2016, they were directed by Makoto Shinkai and feature the two main characters from his latest feature-length film, your name. Although they were created using cuts from this movie, they do feature some new scenes created specifically for these commercials.

Morellet did the webrips, translation, timing, typesetting, and Japanese transcription. Collectr edited the scripts. Abystoma and Al_Sleeper QCed.

Also, in case anyone’s wondering what the bottle caps say, it’s “This product can be frozen, too.” It didn’t seem necessary to include this as a TL note, but I mention it here in passing as a trivial tidbit.

A Grandma’s Goldfish

When people grow old, their memories often become unstable. Our memories in old age become like water: unstable and easily displaced. This is the theme upon which Kaori Iwase based her independently produced animated short A Grandma’s Goldfish. The main character in the film has dementia and can no longer remember the past. She only pays attention to her beloved pet goldfish, Tama-chan. One night, however, she has a dream in which Tama-chan’s fish tank overflows and becomes a river in the hallway outside her bedroom. As the old woman makes her way down this “river of memory,” as Iwase calls it, she discovers the reason behind her love of goldfishes.

A Grandma’s Goldfish was produced at the Tokyo University of the Arts (also known as Geidai) and was released in October 2012. Iwase completed it as her graduation production while a student there. It went on to win the Film Award at the 24th annual CG Anime Contest in 2012 and the Tokyo Anime Award, specifically the Open Entry Award, in 2013.

When this movie was released on DVD as part of the 2013 Tokyo Anime Award Collection, it was the only one of the Japanese-language works to not come with English subtitles. So, although there is very little dialogue in this short, this release marks the first time that this film has been made available with English subs. I ripped the video from YouTube; translated, timed, and styled the dialogue; and did the typesetting. HoneyClover did QC.

With Love

Here’s With Love, a short, whimsical mina ONA from April 2015. It tells the story of a young girl named Megumi who, at the start of summer vacation, comes home from elementary school carrying some cherry tomatoes that she lovingly grew at school. Megumi can’t wait for these tomatoes to ripen and turn bright red, and she tells them this. To her surprise, however, one of them responds back!

With Love is the debut work from animator and director Shiori Mizutani (水谷汐里). Ms. Mizutani is currently a student in the Visual Media Program at the Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences. She made it during her first year of studies there, and it ended up winning several awards at film festivals.

Here at Magai, I did the Web rip, translation, timing, and typesetting. Collectr edited the script. Al_Sleeper and HoneyClover did QC.

The Nine-Colored Deer (v2)

Here is The Nine-Colored Deer, another short film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Released in 1981, it was inspired by ancient cave paintings from within the Mogao Grottoes in northwestern China. These paintings themselves were based on a traditional Buddhist story called “Ruru Jataka,” which you can read online here.

This is the first available encoded release of this movie with English softsubs. We once again have released jointly with macros74 (M74), who kindly provided a new R3 DVD encode for this project. HoneyClover transcribed the English translation from YouTube; timed the English and Chinese subs; did extensive translation checking; and corrected one incorrect line from the official Chinese subs. I edited; Al_Sleeper and I QCed. HoneyClover and I jointly did the typesetting.

One note about the filename: We had previously released this short on BakaBT as just a straight webrip from YouTube. This is why this new release is labeled as being our v2, although it is the first time we’ve done a softsubbed version involving original subtitling work.

The Buffalo Boy and His Flute

Continuing with our series of traditional Chinese ink-wash animation movies, here is The Buffalo Boy and His Flute. It was directed by the well-known Chinese animator and director Te Wei. Like our two previous installments in this series, The Praying Mantis (1988) and Snipe–Clam Grapple (1983), this 1963 instrumental short film was produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio.

This project was a joint with macros74 (M74). Huge thanks to macros74 for doing an original DVD encode for us. HoneyClover translated the Chinese text. Morellet edited and timed the signs. HoneyClover and Morellet jointly did the typesetting. Al_Sleeper and HoneyClover did QC. Special thanks too to carks for QC assistance.

We finally started a blog!

Well, thanks to our friend carks’s encouragement, we here at Magai finally started a blog! We’re a small anime fansubbing group that’s been around for a little over a year now. We usually focus on independent and obscure Japanese animation and old-school kodomo and mina shorts, but we try not to hem ourselves in too much. Actually, we had originally planned to primarily do resubbing projects (à la ReDone Subs, Polished Subs, Jumonji-Giri, etc.), but so far we’ve mostly done original translations.

We’ll be posting on here when we release new videos. We might also talk about things like plans for future projects and the release status of current/planned projects. Speaking of which, we’ll be releasing a new video later today as part of our series of traditional Chinese ink-wash animation shorts!