This is the fourth and final time I am putting this up. The only improvement I have made to it is restoring one frame that was lost (due to a quirk of inverse telecine). I am also including scans of the LaserDisc artwork and a DVD cover I made from that artwork. Original notes follow. NOTES: There are five previously-available versions of this that I am aware of: 1) MKV file based on the Indian Entertainment bootleg DVD. Really good quality and properly converted to progressive frames, but with annoying watermarks from Indian Entertainment and an overly high contrast ratio. 2) AVI file apparently based on VHS that may actually be a low-quality LD cap. Picture has a lot of ghosting and is improperly deinterlaced (blend mode), resolution is 528x368, and audio is a lousy 96 kbps. Nonetheless this was my preferred version due to the lack of watermarks. Incidentally, after fixing the contrast, I got basically identical ghosting here, so this may be an issue with the source. (1) also has the contrast cranked up way too high, but you can still make out a little of the same ghosting as further evidence of this. 3) WMV file (LD rip) that was available on Winny and similar services. I’ve never actually seen this one, and it is probably long gone from file-sharing services. 4) RMVB file from da-anime.org. 320X240 capture of the hardsubbed U.S. Manga Corps VHS tape. Very little to recommend about this one, except perhaps nostalgia value for those who grew up with that VHS version. :) 5) AVI of an Italian (DVD?) source, entitled “La Foresta delle Sirene”. Has the original audio track and an Italian dubbed track. Certain intertitles and other content are translated into English (!) (e.g. the very first intertitle says “FEBRUARY 1936” instead of 一九三六年二月). Godawful blend deinterlacing. So when I happened upon an LD version online at a good price, I couldn’t resist buying it. The laserdisc itself is in pristine condition, with no scratches whatsoever, and I made a new capture. Details: - Captured with the Micomsoft XCAPTURE-1 through composite (LD video is natively composite, unfortunately) at 720x480 with Lagarith lossless codec and PCM audio. - The main feature is telecined, so I was able to inverse telecine it to restore the original progressive frames. Unfortunately, the studio logo and credits were interlaced, so, after YADIF deinterlacing them, I had to convert them to 23.976 to match the rest of the film. I was able to get a pretty good result nonetheless by using YADIF’s bob mode to get a fluid 60 fps, then converting from that down to 23.976, so there is no jerky motion on these sequences as there was initially when I used the default 30 fps YADIF mode. so I used YADIF’s bob mode to get a framerate of 59.94 and used a variable framerate for the file as a whole. - Video was compressed using x264 at CRF 18.0 11.0 with the Veryslow and Animation presets, and audio was compressed to 192kbs AAC in iTunes. This time, I used a 1:1 SAR, as artificially setting the dimensions to 4:3 resulted in certain things looking squashed, e.g. the computer-animated balls in the studio logo clip - I added the U.S. Manga Corps subtitles I transcribed myself, along with a more literal fansub that came with (2), a Russian fansub I found online (on which I did my best to get the timing right without actually editing each individual timecode), and the Italian audio track from (5) above (but it’s off after the 30 minute mark because I based the timing of my cuts on video (2); this could have been perhaps fixed in mp3DirectCut or something, but oh well) (edited in mp3DirectCut to make the timing accurate throughout), so there are quite a few options here, though I did not go so far as to include the English subs from the Indian Entertainment release (“You were attacked by a mink, right?”). :) NOTES FOR VERSION 2: I am sorry to do this, but I noticed (too late) with the original upload that there were some pretty big contrast issues. I noticed about a day after uploading that Towa’s hair turns completely (#FFFFFF) white with no waves in it and you can’t see Yuta’s ear when he eats the meat, among other issues. My capture settings were perfect for old-school gaming, but apparently not for LD. :( Well, I coudn’t live with that, so I recaptured with improved brightness and contrast settings (so that on the highest-contrast part of the video, the end credits, the background approaches black without being perfectly black and the text approaches white without being perfectly white). Doing this unfortunately increased the appearance of chroma noise from the composite source, but a slightly tweaked version of John Meyer’s almost magical chroma noise removal script (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=671219&Replies=19) took care of that (and cut filesize like crazy due to x264 no longer needing to deal with all that noise). Also, I used a variable framerate this time, so the studio logo and end credits (both now running at 59.94 fps) look much better too. All in all, I can now say with confidence that this is the best version of this OVA out there, bar none. I really hope that in spite of my screwup of uploading the other one without looking over it with enough of a fine-toothed comb, people will still grab this one. Since I re-cut the video to be frame-for-frame the same, all other streams are the same as on the original upload. NOTES FOR VERSION 3: This is the third time I have put this up, but I have made further improvements to the capture: - Manual touch-up (content-aware fill, mainly on short lines one pixel high) in Photoshop on literally thousands of frames from the uncompressed capture to get rid of dropout from the analog source, as well as on one frame the inverse telecine didn’t take on. - Removal of dot crawl on the edges. - A new English-dubbed track from a VHS source (I bought it specifically for this). - Styled sub option for the U.S. Manga Corps subs (MPC-HC recommended for styled subs–VLC does poorly with text formatting like italics) - Much higher compression quality (CRF 11–I wasn’t too happy with CRF 18 in a few parts of the film, notably very dark scenes) Sample image here, showing off many of the improvements: [](http://i.imgur.com/IP2ndMa.png) The top image is the original capture, with only inverse telecine applied. The bottom image is the final video. This frame features the single worst instance of rolling dropout in the entire 55 minutes just above Yuta’s shoulder (which lasted about 30 frames or so and which I edited out frame by frame), you can see dot crawl artifacts in the blue area of the left edge, and there is a ton of chroma noise throughout. Enjoy!