Just in case anyone wonders or cares.
I was out of work for an extended period of time, I’ve been pretty depressed. I’ve finally landed a job, but its mostly 2nd and 3rd shift, which is kinda rough.
Point is, I haven’t obtained any “new” laserdiscs this year, haven’t even looked. Orphan is building up a batch at the moment, so at some point I’ll send them the money for that, and I will get back in the capturing game.
I have watched the first few episodes of Saki, and I think I will probably try a few more, but I don’t see myself finishing the series or any of the sequels. The series seems to lean on a fundamentally bad premise, best explained by scifi author Larry Niven.
Larry Niven is best known for his “Known Space” universe, including the award-winning Ringworld. In Ringworld, we learn that mankind has been secretly subjected to a eugenics program to develop luck. Yes, “luck” is an actual force in this universe, just roll with me for a moment here.
Niven’s Known Space universe stories cover about a thousand years of human history, ultimately ending with a very lucky human species. But Niven wrote few stories that take place at the end of this timeline, because he quickly realized that having infinite luck is actually pretty boring to write about.
And this brings us back to Saki: Saki is portrayed as having amazing luck. She is practically handed amazing hands right out of the initial draw, and this is portrayed as some sort of “talent.” Sorry, I’m not convinced so much as I am bored. I want to see actual skill and decision-making, and so far I have seen very little of that.
The fact that the series assumes you know all the intricasies of mahjong going in doesn’t help my enjoyment. It could be argued that that’s my own fault, not the show’s fault. And yet, I know none of the intricasies of baseball, yet I loved Touch. I know that you hit the ball and run the bases without getting tagged by the ball. The few times weird rules got involved, they were explained. Saki does not do that, the only explanations we get are in the subtitles themselves, and they go by so quickly as to be almost unreadable.
The whole “light yuri” thing doesn’t work for me either. If you’re gonna go there, just go all-in.
I’m sorry, I got more enjoyment, and more knowledge of the game, from watching the Mondo Women’s Mahjong Championship on Youtube. Saki doesn’t quite work for me.
I haven’t captured anything in the past few weeks – I’ve been rather ill, like in the hospital ill. I am doing better now. I’ll get back to capturing… soon?
On the upside, I have managed to acquire a very rare treasure. It won’t arrive for a little while yet, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Got another shipment of laserdiscs from Japan. I have a huge collection already, and I have learned – the hard way – that I can’t remember everything I own. Its also hard to lay hands on any specific disk, because there are thousands of them to flip through, with spines written in Japanese (which I can’t ready as quickly as my native English). So I have a specific process I started following a few years ago.
First, any original plastic the disks are sealed in, or are loosely sitting in, is trashed. This means that disks that have never been opened are opened – No “mint-in-box” in my collection. The oldest disk I have ever unsealed is Mosaica, which had been sealed for over thirty years. This might upset some, but I have my reasons. For one, I have a number of disks with damaged corners, because the original shitty plastic shrinks, and it crumples them. And I think that laserdiscs are meant to be used, and even if I never play them, I want full access to the disk and any inlays that might be in there.
I replace all of the original plastic with poly sleeves I obtain from bagsunlimited.com. For most disks, I use 12.75×12.75 3mil sleeves with flaps, which are meant for audio records, but work perfectly for laserdiscs, as the dimensions are the same. I do not seal the flaps. I put the disk in with flap on top. The flaps all flop over, which keeps dust out, while at the same time keeping the contents accessible. By not lining up the disk jacket opening with the sleeve opening, it prevents the jacket’s contents from ever accidentaly coming out. Finally, the bags slide against each other very smoothly, allowing one to pull a disk off the shelf easily without scuffing any jackets.
I have additional, specialty, sleeves. I have thin 2mil flapless polybags, which I use for individual disks in boxsets. I have 14×14 3mil flapped sleeves, which I use for smaller boxsets, ones that are 3-4 disks. For larger boxsets, I have very large 2mil sleeves I got off of Ebay years ago, I don’t know the dimensions. I think they came in lots of like 1,000, which is effectively a lifetime supply unless I hit the lottery someday. I have two giant-sized boxsets – Maison Ikkoku, and The End of Evangelion. For those I had to take several extra-large sleeves, cut them up, and re-tape them into custom-sized sleeves.
Next, I catalog the disk in a spreadsheet (https://www.otakubell.com/LDs/listing/). This is a LibreOffice document. I make sure I track the catalog numbers of disks, because as I don’t read Japanese all that well it is often easier to find disks by their catalog numbers.
Finally, I put the disk up on my shelves. My collection currently occupies four entire sets of Ikea Gorm shelving, which I have polyeurathaned to help protect it. I have a number of large flat steel bookends to hold all of the disks upright – two side-by-side sets on either end of each shelving section, help in place with screws, and two side-by-side in the middle for additional support.
However, those shelves are currently full, and I don’t have enough disks, or any room, for a fifth shelving unit yet. So, the overflow is being put into plastic corrugated archival boxes, also from bagsunlimited. Ikea no longer has Gorm, so I’m gonna have to figure that out someday.
I remade almost all of my old torrents after the nyaa.se collapse in May, with one exception: The Leisure Club 1. I didn’t remake this one, because at the time I knew I had the second volume on the way from Japan. As it turns out, it took a few months longer than I thought it would, but I received it this week and am working on it now. So, in the very near future both parts will be released together.
I never remade my old subtitled works. Of those: I need to recapture Yagami’s Family Problem one of these days, but the volume 2 disc is trapped inside a broken player. Who’s Left Behind is FINALLY being reissued on R2 DVD later this month, no point in my recapturing that. I might purchase it if nobody else remakes it and do it myself. Exper Zenon has been remade by somebody else already.
That leaves Stardust Paradise and Mospeada Live Love Alive. I want to recapture Stardust Paradise, but can’t find the disk at the moment. I’ll probably re-release Mospeada at the same time as I do Stardust Paradise, whenever that is.
So I got word, through a third-party, that somebody on BakaBT believes they have contacted me regarding Miracle Girls episode 33 and 34, as they were actually dupes of 35 and 36. I don’t know whom you imagine you have contacted, because it certainly wasn’t me. In any event, fixing now. But since you haven’t ACTUALLY contacted me, I have no way to get the corrected files to you directly, so I guess you’ll just have to grab them from the public torrent once I post it.
I feel the need to set a policy with regards to donations, as its actually become a bit of an issue. I never imagined I would need to do such a thing, so thanks and stuff, folks. The short version is: I’ll capture your discs, but I am not accepting free discs anymore.
If you have anime laserdiscs you want me to capture, I’m open to that, I can capture your disc and send it back to you. I am (probably) open to buying the disc from you. If you are buying discs from somewhere to send to me, I insist on paying for at least part of it.
Let us be very clear: In capturing laserdiscs and releasing those captures, I am willfully violating both Title 17 of the United States Code in my own country, and the Berne Treaty Convention in pretty much every other country on the planet. I am NOT, however, going to profit off of my criminal activities. And getting a bunch of free discs is just profit in another form. So thank you, but my ancient fansubber paladin code is kicking in.
As a side issue: There is no point to my capturing a laserdisc if a title has already been reissued on DVD or Bluray. You’ll get better results from those.
Due to the collapse of Nyaa in the wake of the (completely obvious) Dutch fansub ruling, I am in the process of migrating releases to anirena.com. Anirena allows multiple trackers, which nyaa mostly disabled, but doesn’t have functioning DHT, which sucks. Anyhow, I’m just doing a few a day, so it will be a few days before everything is restored.
I will never release titles on a private tracker. If you see my stuff on a private tracker, it didn’t come from me. I have no interest in stroking the ego of leet file hoarders. I’m breaking the law for the benefit of the general public, not just for a select few.
If patsu.cat is ever finished I will also release there, but at the moment its still a work-in-progress.
Unfortunately, ran into a serious problem and had to revert otakubell.com from a backup. Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit lax on backups, so the last backup was from 9/8/16. I’m so sorry.
