I love the thing that this series is trying to prove: you can even have a great story if your main characters aren’t perfectly looking guys or girls. So many of them have lost their parents, so many of them have had a troubled childhood and they’ve had to endure the most horrible things in some cases, but nearly all of them have a perfect thyroid. Minamo may be annoying at times, but the only other female main character in anime that I can recall who doesn’t look perfect in every single way is Sunako from Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. Heck, even among major side-characters you hardly see any non-perfect-looking girls or women. Gintama and Blue Drop are the only two that I can name out of the top of my head. In the same way, I can’t remember any other anime with a main character of above seventy years old apart from Millennium Actress.
Anyway, enough blabbering. It indeed turns out that the diver from the previous episode was Haru, and in this episode attempts are made to find out what made him change back to his 30-year old self inside Metal. A few tests are run, to see whether he’s an able cyber-diver, but after numerous tests, he keeps on failing in his original body. In the end, it turns out that Minamo, combined with a dire situation is able to trigger this change. When Minamo checks up on the guy, for a minute she sees the face of his younger self. I’m not sure whether that was just her imagination, or the influence of Metal is more than just on-line. This episode already showed that divers are screwed if they dive too far into Metal and lose consciousness, because you actually need to get your cyber-body back. Much like the Matrix, actually.
On a totally different side-note: the fansub-scene has changed quite a bit compared to two years ago. Really, at this point, roughly two weeks after the start of the season, RD and Kaiba have finally also gotten subbed and the only unsubbed series left is out of all series Toshokan Sensou. I remember that two years ago, I had to wait four weeks until the majority of new series had gotten its subs. The fansubbers are slowly changing from quality-based to speed-based. I remember how back then, people used to talk bad about speedsubbers, but right now everybody seems to have accepted them.
This thing looks complicated…
Do you think it’s better to marathon it or to follow it on a weekly basis ?
Also, about the side note, I don’t think that what the fansubbers are doing right now can be called “speed-subbing”. Speed-subbing consists of skipping somehow vital steps of the fansubbing procedure, such as verifying the timing, the spelling errors, etc., ultimately to be able to release the thing only a few hours after the raw popped up.
(You’ll tell me that Dattebayo also do speedsubbing AND manage to give us good translations and good subs timings, but don’t ask me why, these guys are amazing machines.)
Two weeks compared to a few hours only is quite a difference, and while two weeks is not a month, it’s still quite some time : I think that they managed to find a juste milieu between quality and speed. I’m glad the fansubbers manage to do a very good job within two weeks or so : considering that they do not owe us shit in the first place and that two weeks isn’t that long to wait, I’m really feeling like these fansubbers are being the most generous and amazing people on the Internet.
I think there’s several reasons for this. The tools for fansubbing are becoming more available are are easier to handle. Computers are becoming more powerful and quality RAWS are readily available not even 24 hours after a show has aired.
On top of this, anime also keeps getting more popular and more and more people learn Japanese because of their interest for anime, and naturally some of these people want to take a swing at fansubbing, since they probably started out watching fansubs and now want to try it out (for various reasons).
In the beginning of the seasons there’s always a bunch of random “noname” groups that pick up new series and sub a couple of episodes. Usually with very little quality-checking and poor translation. These groups usually disappear after a few weeks, and a more established group takes over.
It’s wierd that Toshokan Sensou isn’t subbed yet, since it’s a very well made series by a well known studio. I’m guessing it’s because the dialogue is heavy, and all the “trash” groups won’t bother picking it up, because their “translators” isn’t up for the challenge.
Well this is a breze of fresh air, with a main character being a little older 30-80 ‘sh, not a teen for this one, the only other anime that i like with an older main C was Ayakashi Ayashi which i enjoy to no end dispide the lack of interested from people, i think it would have turn out fantastic if it wasn’t cut short, hopefully this one will turn out as enjoyable for me as the latter was ;).
I’m glad the Shinsen group picked up this series. They did an exceptional job handling ‘Ghost Hound’, another Prod. I.G. project. 🙂
I agree about the refreshing aspect that Minamo and her friends aren’t perfect looking. Well, Sunako from Yamato actually did look perfect when she had her “moments”. I mean she had a perfect figure…at least. But in the way, they presented her, it’s true that she was less than perfect.