Whirlpool of Joy (1992)

 

It's not often that I sub random episodes from TV shows (actually, I think this is the first instance of me doing so...?) but I had to make an exception here under very special circumstances.

So, what exactly is this? Let's look at Wikipedia JP...

In 1990, an anthology TV show debuted titled DRAMADAS—this show consisted of separate stories that were split into five 15-minute episodes, with the stories ranging from eroticism & surrealism to violent content. 

It seems like one of the show's notable key points is the fact that there were various notable directors & screenwriters who were involved with some of the show's episodes—Wikipedia JP lists a few examples but the only ones I could identify from it were Kiyoshi Kurosawa & Chiaki J. Konaka.

Anyways, DRAMADAS ceased its daily broadcast format in April 1991 and was relaunched as DRAMADOS—shifting from its five 15-minute episode schedule to a single weekly 30-minute episode schedule. Additionally, this new revamped show ditched the genres of its predecessor and instead now focused on "three elements"—Dream (D), Occult (O), and Strange (S), which according to Wikipedia JP was meant to align closely with the worldview of The Twilight Zone.

Unfortunately, neither DRAMADAS nor DRAMADOS have complete home media releases—only select episodes were ever published on both VHS & DVD. A DVD release was put out in 2005 containing the only stories that Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed for both DRAMADAS & DRAMADOS, the latter of which today's release comes from.

What is it about? Honestly, I couldn't really tell you even if my life depended on it, because I found it to be really confusing & I don't even know if you have to be Reddit-levels of smart to understand it. The main gist is that the protagonist—played by Keiji Matsuda (who I just so happened to see recently in the 1989 film Kitchen, lol)—is surrounded by "joy" every day, which he severely despises. He revolts against his father (a fortune-teller) and his own fate, though I'm really not sure if that ever goes anywhere at all, considering how this ends.

Truthfully speaking, I can't say I really liked this. It's not bad, but the first thing I ever watched that was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa was his Sweet Home movie—this episode honestly felt like an amateur student film with regards to overall quality and it's kinda crazy that he went from directing an influential horror film with lots of effort put into it... to this 🥴. 
But regardless of what I think, the only existing fansub of this episode that was online before today's release was an AI + machine-translated version. Nobody deserves to watch anything of that level of quality and I was certain nobody else was going to provide their own translation any time soon, since that's unfortunately the norm with most titles in the live-action JP drama community.

Final note: maybe I might go and sub Kurosawa's DRAMADAS story that was included in the same DVD as Whirlpool of Joy. Not a priority at the moment, though.

Nevertheless, enjoy! This can be found at the usual spot.

Tantei Monogatari - Episode 5

This episode officially marks the first-ever instance throughout the journey of this ongoing fansub in which an episode was posted within the same year as the previous one before it. BANZAI!!!

Anyways, that aside... in today's episode, a man from the Fukui countryside going by the name of Ichiro Tamura comes to Shunsaku Kudo for assistance—Ichiro's sister, Yumi, has suddenly left the countryside to go work at a café & has requested Ichiro to not come looking for her... all while requesting a small loan of 100,000 yen to cover for her expenses. Ichiro begins to worry when he finds out she doesn't work at that café anymore, so Shunsaku accepts the job & attempts to track her down.

However, during his investigation, Shunsaku not only notices Ichiro being in poor health, but he's even carrying around with him a duffel bag containing more yen than anybody can imagine! The duffel bag has seemingly caught the attention of several goons who are after Ichiro... just what exactly is going on here?

Ep. 5 can be found at the usual spot.

Tongari Boushi no Memole - Episode 11 & 12

Today's release—on my end, at least—will consist of both Ep. 11 & 12. I gave the folks at Inka-Subs the OK to release 11 without me since my blog was (temporarily) deleted from the net at the time of posting.

Now that it's back up I figured it'd be a good opportunity to finally post 11 here alongside 12. Having said that...

Episode 11 — Memole & friends are introduced to a music box gifted to Marielle from her father—however, Marielle has no interest in it and yearns for nothing more than to be able to hear her father's voice again. When Memole discovers that Mushy—a resident from the village Riruru's citizens are currently residing in—is able to nearly mimic the voice of Marielle's father, she hatches a plan to make Marielle happy by attempting to gift her a special "magical" music box of sorts that allows her to hear her father's voice once more.

Episode 12 — During a conversation with Marielle, the position of Lupang's father—Torirone—as a "master thief" gets brought up. Lupang, however, is too embarassed to admit it to Marielle & instead lies about his father being a policeman. Torirone, frustrated with Lupang's refusal to tell her the truth, writes Marielle a letter announcing his intentions to steal her piano in order to prove his worth as a thief.

You can grab both episodes at the usual spot.

Inka's write-up:
https://www.inka-subs.net/2025/07/lonelychaser-inka-tongari-boushi-no-memoru-12/

  

Double Release: Sonic Soldier Borgman - Episode 32 & 33

Episode 32 — With newly uncovered instructions left behind by Memory in the event that anything happens to her, the Borgman team sets out to the Megalo Building to prepare for a final showdown against Dust Gead and the others. Meanwhile, Memory & Shinji—having been captured by Dust Gead—attempt to seek out a way to escape the cell they're confined in while Memory sends out a distress signal for Borgman.

Episode 33 — Anice discovers a clue that possibly hints at the current status of Memory & Shinji, but due to the urgency of the original task at hand, she and the other Borgman members are forced to set them aside temporarily while they continue onwards to the GIL Triangle. In the meantime, Miki & Chief Burger try to figure out a way to safely evacuate the citizens of Megalo City, but the kids from Gray Town discover something in Tokyo's old subways that may solve exactly just that...

Both episodes can be found in the usual spot.

Back from the dead... sort of?

TL;DR — Blog is back under mysterious circumstances that I don't even know about. I'm taking advantage of this & continuing to post on here while I still can. All mentions of the cat site on here have been removed, too.

(Long version below)

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Those of you who have been actively keeping up with my fansub blog and its fansub releases—whether it be through Discord, Twitter, or some other means—may already know by now that this month was absolutely not a good one for me.

For context:
A couple months ago, one of the blog posts I had submitted on here for the ongoing Tongari Boushi no Memole English fansub was flagged by Blogger—they had sent me an e-mail explaining that the blog post got DMCA-flagged due to it linking to an illegal website.

For the safety of this blog, I can no longer name-drop the site name here, but it's a 4-letter site. You already know which one it is.

Anyways, the DMCA was filed by Eric Green—he manages a company solely focused on issuing DMCA notices & takedowns towards any sort of content that is seemingly infringing on copyright. Years ago he was constantly targeting people selling their own fan-made anime merch on Etsy but in recent months he's begun targeting fansub sites as well.

I've no clue if this guy exists or not—someone on Twitter wrote that when he contacted his company via e-mail to dispute one of his DMCA notices, he received an e-mail back from the company telling him to go kill himself...??

Continuing on.
My blog post for that one aforementioned Memole episode was flagged and I had to remove the link in order to keep the page up. 
This is a difficult topic to argue about—not "difficult" in that it's emotionally hard, but in the "who's right or wrong" kind of sense. 
Was the site I linked illegal? Technically, yes.
However, at the time of flagging, Eric was supposedly representing VIZ Media and that Memole episode got flagged due to it having been "licensed" by VIZ. Not only is that absolutely false, but Memole has never even been officially licensed here in the US in its entirety at any point since its release in the 80s, so the fact that Blogger even allowed the takedown to go into effect is wild.

I tried talking about it on Twitter to bring more awareness to this, but despite my follower count at the time of posting (3500+ followers...!!), nobody really RT'ed it and it went by unnoticed. Not saying people had to RT it like crazy but I am still admittedly a little bit shocked that nobody wanted to spread the word around & bring light to the fact that some guy was going sending false claims against fansub sites. But I digress...

The next couple of months went by smoothly until two weeks ago when I woke up early one morning and received another DMCA flagging e-mail from Blogger—only they actually decided to delete the entire blog while they were at it. It was the result of further DMCA flagging from Eric Green, though this time he was supposedly representing Crunchyroll and flagging down posts of mine of anime that CR had the "rights" to (lol??).

The fansub uploads on **** weren't affected & this didn't change whether I could continue fansubbing or not, but I genuinely enjoyed writing out a lot of the posts of this blog—especially the ones (usually the movie fansub posts) where I go a little in-depth about how I discovered the movie or how the project came to be. They're not Orphan Fansubs-level of detailed, but still worth reading IMO. To see all of that seemingly wiped off the internet... it was, at the time, genuinely devastating.

I didn't intend on releasing any more fansubs until I got a new blog up & running and until I figured out where I could make one that'd be safe from false DMCA flagging. One of the folks from Inka-Subs offered to help set up something for me once they could figure out how to get it up & running.

Well, yesterday... someone DM'ed me asking if my "appeal" went through, to dispute this blog's takedown. Had to ask what they meant because I didn't submit anything—until they told me they asked because they saw my blog was up & running again. And sure enough: it was?!

I honestly don't know what happened. I didn't receive any e-mails telling me that my blog was back up nor if the DMCA takedowns themselves were flagged by Google due to it being partially false (sasuga, Google). In any case, the blog seems to have been restored back to the way it was.

So, what's next?

Going forward—I'm completely omitting any sort of mention of the 4-lettered feline site, as even just writing out the name without linking to the site itself seems to trigger the DMCA filters. I've went back & removed the links on past blog posts & torrent releases too, and will now resort to writing it out the same way Orphan Fansubs does on their releases:

"Find it at the usual spot."

Also, I've went ahead and backed up this blog—if the decision to bring this blog back somehow gets reversed and it's yeeted from the internet again then at the very least I can import all of this blog's posts into wherever else I decide to make the new blog from scratch.

NEVER KILL YOURSELF