Yeah, the Negima Ala Alba OAD #1 set bundled with vol. 23. It was really funny because I was joking to myself right before going to the manga shelves about Kino actually bringing the set in because two days earlier, I checked Amazon.jp and it was out of stock. Then I turned in to the manga “N” shelf and went, “Oh. Shit.” After intensive scrutiny of nearly half an hour pacing the Japanese section, I decided to go for broke and buy it. Now I’m nicely RM 180.20 in credit card debt hell, orz.

That said, it’s a pretty nice set I guess, containing tankouban #23, the DVD itself, a hard box to store the other 2 DVD’s graced with a nice piece of Akamatsu’s art and Kazumi’s Pactio card, all put in to one unassuming box. Pretty much worth it for me, since I am collecting the tankouban volumes (still need to get vol 19-22) and with all the nice extras. I like the quality on the Pactio card especially. Now I’m officially one of the two persons in Malaysia to own the Ala Alba DVD, assuming the other set in Kinokuniya gets bought too, XD.

Now, how to deal with being broke, my dietary choices are very constrained right now… orz. Also, I better preorder DVD 2 and 3 from Amazon.jp instead. Much cheaper than Kino after shipping. Damn j00, Kino, damn j00.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Yes, I did it. Go get it at the IRC channel, #ala-alba@irc.rizon.net, or look for it at the usual tracker sites.

The why?

Because one gloomy Tuesday, I felt bloody terrible. I felt really depressed and my brain felt as if it was repeatedly punched, kicked, spat upon and had a stick shoved up it’s rear multiple times, making me even contemplate death by gravity or sharp objects. In short, I was really emo.

Lucky for me, when I’m emo, some part of myself tries to channel the negativeness in to something productive, and for some reason, on that particular Tuesday, I really felt like subbing Negima Ala Alba #1 since it was already a week it was released and none of the usual places had any news of any kind about it.

The how?

Translation: Bloody easy, actually, with only snags mostly at the spells. Thankfully not so many this episode. I admit I used AQS’s releases as a reference point, but the subs are definitely original t/l by me, so if you’re not satisfied, you can drop me a message at the channel. Also, a short shoutout to desudesu for reading the text parts for me. I am Japanese illiterate. Seriously. Total time: 2 hours.

Timing: The longest part of the job. I had to learn it from scratch, using Aegisub. Thankfully, it’s actually a lot more simpler than it looks, and the only problem was how addicted I got in to getting the perfect timing for the lines. Timing post-processor is a bit hard to use though. Total time: about 2 days.

Typesetting: I nearly had to learn this part too, but thank god Akanari came to my rescue and provided me with very decent typesetting. Total time: about a few hours.

Karaoke: Yeah, right. Although if someone wants to help us do it, I’m happy to receive your help for a v2 :). Total time: zero.

Encoding: Yet again, hats off to Akanari for doing that too, including doing the Xvid version. Original plan was to mux the script and raw together then throw it online. I’m really grateful to him. Oh yeah, raw was taken from [QTS]. I’d credit him/her/them, but I can’t find any info about him/her/them. Total time: a day or so.

QC: Second longest part of this job. Had to make a few decisions about my t/l, and make it as natural as possible. Really took up a lot. I did like 17 major revisions of the script. Watched the episode about ~40 times or so too, to make sure everything looked okay. Total time: about a day.

Distro: Oh dear god, worst part of the whole thing. I could’ve released this a whole day earlier if it wasn’t for the fact that mine and Akanari’s lines decided to act all PMS-ish, and keep cutting off our sends to each other, and the uploads to the FTP, graciously provided by my friend, who runs Getbyte2u.com, and also let me use it to seed the release. I love you, Jeya! XD

In short, the past 3 days have been really a whirlwind and a great learning experience for me. As a bonus, I get much adoration and e-p0n0s as well as curing me from another bout of depression! Ahh~ the therapeutic powers of anime, hehehehehe.

Again, I’d like to thank everyone who helped me out on this little project of mine; Akanari, desudesu, defho and jayapc87. I really owe it to you all to have made this a success. Guess I owe you all a meal, eh. Haha.

Lastly, if you’d like to help us out, you’re welcome to contact me at the channel. I’m planning to do the next two episodes as well, when they are released. Constructive criticisms, comments, questions and/or expressions of thanks are fine and very much welcome too. Just don’t come in and troll please, ;).

Update: Possibly doing v2, by encoding from a better source, and also to fix up some errors in t/l.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

No sheer amount of tears or words will express my happiness towards the new Negima OAD, Ala Alba. Finally, after 5 years, a real Negima animation production!

Seriously, I love how accurate to the manga this series is. All the eye colors are correct, the characters are acting themselves properly and the amount of eyecandy is just win. Animating Chao’s final battle and her return was quite the cocktease of the production team, dammit.

I sure shed tears at finally seeing animated gothloli Asuna, lolita Evangeline and Daisuke Ono was definitely born for the role of Albireo a.k.a KFC. They also dealt with the spell casting in a unique way, with the characters on screen chanting the spells in the Japanese meaning while the Latin chants are relegated to the background as a chorus of sorts. It does make it quite hard to catch the words at some parts, but I think this is very interesting way of the production team to deal with the spellcasting chants.

Content-wise, it correctly adapts chapters 176 and 177 of the manga, with minor changes here and there, but those are pretty much unnoticeable anyways unless you’re a perfectionist. So expect to see … wait, I’m gonna post like 80 screencaps of the episodes anyways, so enjoy! Right, 56k’ers better watch out.

P.S. OAD means Original Animation DVD. Got asked like 10 times tonight already.

Long post is looooooooooooooooooooooooooong, kekeke.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.