This project had actually been in the works for a while despite me never posting anything about it on the blog here, but now that this title is finally finished, I felt it was appropriate to go & post this on the site.
Usually I talk a bit about the history of a project and how it came to be or what circumstances unfolded that convinced me to pick it up, but unfortunately there isn't much to talk about for this anime. The short version is that I heard from another subber in 2023 that Orguss 02's English "subs" were really just dubtitles, and I offered to collaborate with user "ImAWasteOfHair" on getting this re-subbed when I heard he had the same plans for doing the exact same thing too.
That's really it, although the project admittedly took more time to finish than I expected. Crazy that the first episode was released in 2023(!!!) and the concluding episode was finally released last month (nearly three years later... whew!) but despite everything, all the episodes managed to get released in one way or another.
Now, I had actually talked about this on Twitter already, but this batch introduces a lot of new changes for all of the episodes. I understand that not all followers of this blog use Twitter, so I'll post below all the highlights of this batch:
- New typesetting—we switched to a new font for the main dialogue at Ep. 5(?), but aside from that, the rest of the typesetting throughout this project was kept pretty basic. I took it upon myself to update this project with better fonts for on-screen signs & dialogue—this was implemented in Ep. 6's first release back in January but all of the previous episodes now carry the same fonts for consistency. Additionally, thanks to Windii, the OP and the text introduction in Ep. 1 have both now been typeset as well.
- New encodes—we were previously using Bunny Hat's set of raws for this project, but it wasn't until some time last month when I noticed that the raws seemed to be... pretty small in size, which I thought was suspicious. TL;DR is that they might have been "great" for its time, but in the current age, they're really not good. At all. Not only were they severely compressed (resulting in notable quality loss), but somehow even the colors were changed, too; it's not Toei-levels of bad, but it's definitely noticeable. Admittedly this does change things, as I was under the impression that these raws—to some extent—were a close representation of what the BDs generally look like. I can see now that's not the case, though...
Naturally, I wanted the best for this project, so I acquired new raws. The quality is considerably better here and the anime's original colors (as presented on the BD) are also preserved as well. Click here for a Slowpoke Pics comparison between the old raws by Bunny Hat and the new raws. Just a general note—due to the way that site operates, there's a chance the pictures might expire in a few years from now, so I'll try and update this post accordingly if that ever happens.
- Ep. 4 Timing—I had been re-timing these episodes during my initial QC passes for this project throughout the years in which I had been working on it. As such, this meant I had re-timed Ep. 4 too. After the standalone release of Ep. 6 was put out last month, I decided I'd re-watch the whole OVA just to check & see if I missed anything; Ep. 4's timing was very different than what I remembered it to be... worse, even.
Well, as it turns out, ImAWasteOfHair accidentally used the old version with the bad timing (the initial version before I had re-timed it) and applied all the edits to that version before muxing it & putting it up for DL on Nyaa, resulting in a release that was different from what we intended to put out in the first place 💀 (sasuga)
In any case, the episode was re-timed... again, by both Yume and I 😅
- Miscellaneous changes—the timing for the theme songs and some other typos that slipped through previously have been fixed. Some of the episode names & other military terminologies have been adjusted too.
Other minor edits to various lines here and there were made, but it's nothing that warrants being mentioned, if you ask me.
A final note—it's somewhat related to this title, so I'll go and mention it. There were two VHS releases for this OVA; the first release came in 3 tapes, each one containing two episodes. The second release was one episode per tape. In the first release, and only the first release, they had actually included in a behind-the-scenes extra at the end of the tape, documenting the process for this OVA and how it was made. To my knowledge, these are VHS-only—I managed to grab the first two tapes but am still desperately seeking the third tape. Once I grab ahold of it, I'll absolutely sub these extras as I'm a sucker for them!!
Anyways, consider this to be the most essential release of this OVA, for now. Grab this from the usual spot.
