Some news

Due to some personal matters which I need to attend to, I will not be able to conduct fansubbing activities for the rest of this week.  Therefore, we will be on hiatus until Monday, March 5th. 

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Porphy no Nagai Tabi Episode 22 released!

In this episode, Porphy continues west along Italy.  He makes lots of new friends on the way. 

The town he ends up in, Caulonia, will play an important role with the next few episodes.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Porphy no Nagai Tabi Episode 21 released!

 

In this episode, Porphy's backpack goes missing, and he has to somehow find it in Matera.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Little Women II - Jo's Boys Episode 20 released!

This episode is one of my personal favorites.  This one is not in the novel, but it is one of the episodes that talks about what the children at Plumfield want to do when they grow up.  Considering that Louisa May Alcott was rather progressive on her views of what women are capable of doing at that time (namely the late 19th century), it is no surprise that this episode (and the two or three episodes in the last 10 episodes of the series) shows Nan doing things that no one would have expected her to do, even for that era.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

This marks the half-way point for Little Women II - Jo's Boys.  Here's what's coming up for the next 10 episodes:

1.  For those of you who missed Dan, he'll be back soon.  In fact, one of the more famous parts of the novel involving Dan and the stolen money is about to come up really soon.

2.  There are already allusions to how much Daisy and Nat care for each other.  We'll see the culmination of that in episode 30.

3.  We're also about to come up to a part where we see how progressive thinking is taught by the Bhaers, in particular about woman's rights.

4.  Nan finally decides for sure what she wants to do when she grows up.

We hope that you will continue enjoying the series.  This series has been a joy to work on.

Porphy no Nagai Tabi Episode 20 released!

In this episode, Porphy somehow ends up in the city of Matera.  What he sees in this city is not what it seems.  This is the first of a two-part series in this city.

My Annette Episode 8 released!

 

In this episode, Lucien and Annette get into a disagreement due to a misunderstanding.  They later patch up and enjoy the fall festival together.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure Episode 12 released!

This episode is one of my personal favorites out of the whole series. 

In this episode, Coco gets dreams of a silver shell of which she has knowledge of its power.  She enlists Lucia, Hanon, and Rina to find it.  However, the Black Beauty Sisters get a hold of the shell first, and attempts to harness the power.  Unfortunately, they do not know the true nature of the power they hold.

You can obtain this from your standard torrent indexing sites, or you may download them from the DDL links on Wasurenai's web site.

Little Women II - Jo's Boys Episode 19 released!

"Quite lost, but I did not care, for I made up my mind that it would be best to wait till I was an old lady before I played with kites again; and you see I have waited," said Mrs. Jo, beginning to pull in the big kite, for it was getting late.

"Must we go now?"

"I must, or you won't have any supper; and that sort of surprise party would not suit you, I think, my chickens."

"Hasn't our party been a nice one?" asked Tommy, complacently.

"Splendid!" answered every one.

"Do you know why? It is because your guests have behaved themselves, and tried to make everything go well. You understand what I mean, don't you?"

"Yes'm," was all the boys said, but they stole a shamefaced look at one another, as they meekly shouldered their kites and walked home, thinking of another party where the guests had not behaved themselves, and things had gone badly on account of it.

- Little Men, Chapter 9

For Valentine's Day, we're releasing an episode of Little Women II - Jo's Boys.

This episode involves the ball at Plumfield, which is probably one of the most well-known chapters in the novel.  Those of you who have read the novel will understand how good manners and politeness can go a long way into making something go well, while bad manners and rudeness can go a long way into making something go really horribly.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Porphy no Nagai Tabi Episode 19 released!

In this episode, Porphy arrives in Italy.  He quickly learns a few common sense things about traveling to a foreign country after meeting with a nice stranger on the street.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

This is our first release using the new tracker.  Please contact us if you have any difficulties.

Status update

Torrent tracker situation

We're still in the process of moving torrents to a new tracker.  This means a lot of our releases are currently not seeded, as NyaaTorrents' solution to the tracker shutdown is not reliable.  We can do new releases, but migrating all our releases will take time.  We thank you for your patience, and apologize for the inconvenience.

Release scheduling

I'm about 1/3rd of the way through translating Porphy 19.  We'll try to get this released some time this week.  We will be on hiatus from 2/10 to 2/12 as I will be out of town and will not have access to my encoding computer.

My translator for Little Women II has gotten me the script for episode 19.  I will check that before handing it to the timer, and I will be personally translating episode 20 (it is one of my personal favorites).  We should have episode 19 out by Valentine's Day. 

My Annette episode 8 will be scheduled for release for the middle of next week.

Releases are to be suspended for the time being

NyaaTorrents, the torrent tracker we use, has shut down the tracker portion of the web site, effectively turning it into a listing service only.

As we only do releases via BitTorrent, this means we will need to locate a new tracker, migrate all the torrents to the new tracker, and have the torrents seeded.  Until this is done, releases will be suspended.

We apologize for the inconvenience and hope that we can get this situation resolved as quickly as possible.

EDIT: I'm in the process of migrating our torrents to another tracker.  Releases should resume in a day or two.

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure Episode 11 released!

In this episode, Lucia, Hanon, and Rina invite Mikaru to go shopping with them.  As a result, Kaito ends up coming along.  However, Hanon and Rina attempt to divert Mikaru's attention so Kaito and Lucia can be together.

You can obtain this from your standard anime torrent indexing sites, or you may use the DDL links on Wasurenai's website.

Little Women II - Jo's Boys Episode 18 released!

In this episode, Stuffy was ordered by Jo to go on a diet and exercise regimen.  Unfortunately for her, Stuffy writes about what he had been doing, and his mother heads to Plumfield to pull Stuffy out of there and to insult the students and the school in the process.

Unfortunately for her, Jo got angry. 

This episode is not in the novel, but it was quite good nevertheless.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 18 released!

In this episode, Porphy is spending his 13th birthday on a ship headed to Italy.  He meets some new friends on the boat.

My Annette Episode 7 released!

This episode demonstrates how to make cheese.  This episode is one of my personal favorites in the series.

We suggest that you do not use this episode as instructions to make Swiss cheese.  A good set of instructions to make Swiss cheese may be found here.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 17 released!

In this episode, Porphy finds out what happens to Mina.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Fansubbing errors

It's been a while since I've done a fansubbing post.  With the fact that I've been going through health problems, it makes for a perfect way to talk about something that is hotly contested among fansubbers, namely the concept of "quality" and "errors".

Right now, I'm probably have about half my normal amount of energy to do things.  The main reason is that I'm currently on several allergy medications, and they have two effects.  One is that they tend to knock you out, and the other is that your mind gets a bit foggy sometimes.  When both of these happen together, I tend to do things like the following when I translate:

 

Luckily, my timer caught it and put a note in to have it fixed.  I try to not translate when I don't feel 100% able to do so (which is why we've had fewer releases this month), but sometimes I do, and I end up taking a risk of making mistakes.

The best way to not have an error is to not make them.  This has nothing to do with the amount of time you spend working on an episode.  It just means that you have to be focused and alert.  When you're missing one of the two (or in my case, missing both of them), mistakes occur.

There's heated discussion about quality control in fansubbing.  Typically, a group will designate someone to do quality control to prevent things like what I illustrated from happening.  However, anyone who has done any sort of work involving the publishing industry knows that there will almost always be something that will slip by, and fansubbing is no exception to this rule, no matter how much quality control is used.

Furthermore, in fansubbing, the person who you least want to notice your error will find the error, and will publicly ridicule you, claiming that your release lacks "quality" due to the error.  For this reason, many groups no longer do quality control because the reward simply is not worth the extra effort.  In a way, it's an application of Murphy's Law.

I won't go into whether it really is worth doing quality control in this post, because this is something that has no clear answer.  I wish there were a clear answer, but those of you who actually know what quality control really means knows that the anime fansubbing concept of quality control is not really "quality control", and "quality control" has a specific definition behind it.  This specific definition is backed by statistical analysis and tools.

For the purposes of this post, I think the main things to learn from what I said is that:

1. The way to prevent errors in fansubbing is to not make them
2. It's impossible to never make an error
3. Focus and alertness are critical to good fansubbing work
4. Quality control done in fansubbing is not really quality control 

My Annette Episode 6 released!

This is the first in a set of episodes that is not in the novel.  Annette's father takes Annette and Lucien up to a little cabin up in the mountains as part of the summer foraging for their cows.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

This is a reminder that Licca Fansubs is recruiting translators, timers, and editors. Please contact us if you wish to contribute your skills.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 16 released!

In interest of not spoiling anything, we will only say that Porphy seems to always be one step behind Mina.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 15 released!

In this episode, Porphy and Mina end up taking drastic action after Porphy finds out that they would be separated.