DDLs on our blog: https://bistrotjurer.wordpress.com/   Hello! We are now subbing Omoikkiri Tanteidan HadoGumi! (Translated as Hard-Boiled Detectives HadoGumi!) Airing in 1987, HadoGumi is the 7th entry in Shotaro Ishinomori’s Toei Fushigi Comedy Series. 5th grader Hiroshi Kuroki and his friends, pulling a prank on their teacher and class, create a video starring a fictional phantom thief he made up named “Matenro.” However, this character appears before them in real life and challenges them to put their lives on the line. Hiroshi and his friends Susumu, Satoru, Takeo, and Yasuko form the detective group HadoGumi, in order to track down and catch Matenro. They soon learn that Matenro is not messing around, as he continually terrorizes these children. Who could Matenro be? What are his intentions and goals? How is he always one step ahead of HadoGumi? HadoGumi is an extremely fun and intense series. It follows the adventures of these kids, and I’ve got to say that they either chose the best group of child actors imaginable, or they had some amazing acting direction, because I love these kids so much. They have amazing chemistry and sell the series so well. And along with that, this series actually gets surprisingly intense and even dark at points. It really explores this idea and the consequences of this masked man terrorizing a group of children for a whole year. Despite being a part of the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series, I honestly don’t think I’d call HadoGumi a comedy. Not that it doesn’t have jokes, but I’d primarily call it a mystery/thriller/adventure series before I’d call it a comedy. It is one of three TFCS shows whose head writer is not Yoshio Urasawa (although he does write several episodes of the show). Rather, the head writer was Takashi Edzure, who previously wrote the second half of Skyrider, Kamen Rider Super-1, and would go on to be the head writer for Kamen Rider Black-RX. There’s actually quite a few Toku alums/debuts in HadoGumi. Believe it or not, 3 of the main 5 child actors have all had major parts in other works. Hiroshi’s actor would go on to play the character Euphrates in Ipanema, a later TFCS series. Satoru’s actor previously played Kakefu, one of the main child character’s friends, in the previous Fushigi Comedy show, Morimori Bokkun. Susumu’s actor, while not having any other major toku roles, would later go on to provide the voice for Kenta in My Neighbor Totoro! And even in the periphery, there’s a bunch of other actors with multiple toku roles in the supporting cast. Hiroshi’s father would later play Ipanema’s father. (We also previously saw Hiroshi’s father as God in that one episode of Robomaru.) Hiroshi’s mother previously played the mother in Pettonton and the mother in Nemurin, and would go on to play Takashi’s mother in MarinGumi. (4 Fushigi Comedy shows where she plays the mother of the main character? Dang.) Satoru’s father is played by Toku Noshio, a major toku voice actor. He has way too many roles to list off here. I counted 34 different toku series that he has a voice role in, usually as several different monsters. Most notably, we all have seen him as Pochi in Robomaru, as well as Yakisora in Robot Hacchan, Iron Mons in Machineman, and Ben K in Metalder. While he has had a few in-person roles in the past, this is his only major in-person toku role. Susumu’s mother is played by Rie Shibata, who is a major player in the Fushigi Comedy Series. She plays Aunt Iron in Morimori Bokkun, Toshikazu’s mother in MarinGumi, the evil aunt in Paipai and Ipanema, the detective character in Poitrine, and ET Aunt in Shushutorian. She has a major role in 7 of the 14 Fushigi Comedy shows. And finally we have the priest, played by Kouen Okumura, who has a very wide range of toku roles, with major roles from 60s, 70s, 80s, and 00s toku. Most of you may recognize him as the curry shop owner from Abaranger. He also played the janitor on Suki Suki Majou Sensei, the father of the main character in Mahougumi, the vet in Pettonton, and the uncle in Nemurin. One more thing about the show details: This is the first Fushigi Comedy show (and maybe the first toku ever?) to have its audio recorded while filming. Most tokusatsu of this era were filmed without recording audio, opting to have all of the audio dubbed in later. Kamen Rider didn’t do live audio recording until Kuuga, and Sentai didn’t do live audio recording until Shinkenger. While the audio quality isn’t great, I think it’s a great change and really helps the performances here. There’s one big thing we really need to talk about. The name: HadoGumi. This romanized name comes from the original title, 覇悪怒組. There are multiple ways to go about romanizing this title. The hepburn romanization (the type of romanization you see most often, and where the name “Supaidaman” comes from) would be “Haadogumi.” Some other types of romanization would give you “Hādogumi.” (The bar on top of the ā means to elongate the a-vowel.) And if you’ve seen Toei’s English YouTube channel, they spell it as “Hard Gumi.” The most immediately apparent choice would be Hard Gumi. While Toei’s YouTube channel is wrong about a lot of names, which otherwise have conflicting official romanizations from other sources, Hard Gumi is not a bad romanization. As explained in episode 2, the “Hado” is supposed to represent them being “hard-boiled” detectives. (And “Hard” would be pronounced “Haado” in Japanese.) It’s not that simple though, as it’s worth noting that the name is written in kanji. Normally, when a Japanese word or title uses words from another language, katakana is used. Because the title is in kanji, there’s a double-meaning to the name. But more than that, there’s a much simpler reason that we went with HadoGumi: “HādoGumi” is the name written on their hats. You can see their hats in one of the thumbnails at the top of the blog post. This romanization is used frequently in all of the merchandise and marketing for the show. This isn’t like Gorenger where it’s on, like, a hang-glider in one episode. They wear the HādoGumi hats every episode. It’d be confusing for us to constantly call it Hard Gumi in the subs when you see them wearing “HādoGumi” all the time. Though, we dropped the ā because it’s harder to type and use consistently. It’s just not a symbol that’s used ever in English. So we just left it as HadoGumi. And finally, let’s talk about our team! bluephlash, our previous translator for Robomaru, is not involved in this project. As he mentioned in his retirement post for Metallic Fansubs, he was not planning on taking any more collaborations other than the ones he already started, and that still holds true. It was such a pleasure working with him, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors. With that said, AMeanMotorScooter (Our QC for Robomaru and the man behind Berndadelta Subs) is taking over as head translator! (He also was the translator for Zenkai Bean Theater.) Scooter is a great friend of mine, so I’m happy that I can continue to work with him. And on top of that, we have Dr. AEP doing additional translation! WeeabooShogun is also helping out; he previously subbed the Rescue Hero trilogy, as well as the anime Shinkalion! An anonymous timer has joined our team, though his timings start with episode 27. Personally, I’ve timed episodes 3 through 27, and I’m doing QC for every episode. That’s it! Special thanks to GuSTaVauM for the raws as always! Also, I have to give a special thanks to Makabishi! He was transcribing a bunch of the TTWO translations into .ass files, and he allowed me to use his scripts for our first two episodes! I took out all of the translations before giving the scripts to the translator, but having the script pre-timed saved me a bunch of time. Enjoy! I hope you all enjoy HadoGumi as much as I do! Notes: -The kanji that make up HadoGumi roughly translate to “Supremely Evil and Enraged Group.” Omoikkiri Tanteidan HadoGumi – Episodes 1-5 Timing 3-5, QC: Azurillkirby Timing 1-2: Makabishi Translation: AMeanMotorScooter Additional Translation: Dr. AEP Additional Help: WeeabooShogun