Remember what I said about us not picking this up as a project? Well, scrap that, because we are. It’s quite clear that no other group is going to work on this show (this being a 24 episode show also probably puts a lot of newer groups off), so we’ve teamed up with Osu! to bring all the episodes of Ran to you guys.
This is a mahou shoujo (magic girl) series about Isozaki Ran and Naha Midori, 2 girls with psychic powers such as mind reading, mind control and shooting fireballs. It’s targeted at a younger audience but the show seems quite interesting, though I’m probably the only one in the group that thinks so.
Anyway, we’re releasing episode 03 first. Episodes 01 and 02 will come later, which will have some translation fixes. Some notable ones are:
- Tsutano City – the name of the city Ran lives in
- Fureai Ginko (Contact Bank) – name of the bank in the news
- Takoyaki Tak-kun – name of the main character in Ran’s mother’s novel
- Shion Nore – katakana spelling of the perfume Ohara-sensei wears. Apparently it’s some kinda olive smell. No idea of the etymology, so I can’t locate the actual spelling for it.
That should get you all up to speed if you’ve watched the previous episodes already. The h264 version is 720p and weighs in at 300MB. The XviD version is 396p at 230MB. Ran compresses poorly, so the filesizes have to be significantly boosted to maintain quality. Apparently fireballs take up a lot of bitrate.
Lastly, we still do have some other surprises lined up for you all. Enjoy.
Download: Ran 03 (XviD) – [Bittorrent | Direct Download]
Download: Ran 03 (h264) – [Bittorrent | Direct Download]
6:38 pm on July 10th, 2008
Thank you for picking up the series! I’ll be looking forward to your next release.
6:40 pm on July 10th, 2008
same thing bill said 😀
gokurosan
6:41 pm on July 10th, 2008
i cant watch this on sd, the art is too beautiful to just watch the on sd
6:58 pm on July 10th, 2008
Really thanks a lot for picking this up. Had expected at least one other group to go after it, but guess that’s how it goes. Ton of appreciation here.
7:02 pm on July 10th, 2008
Thanks for picking this up. Though I will miss those witty comments of yours.
7:19 pm on July 10th, 2008
Yay! I watched the first 2 episodes a few days ago, and surprisingly, it was quite good.
7:28 pm on July 10th, 2008
I love this show so much. thanks for picking this up. It’s very interesting.
7:43 pm on July 10th, 2008
@beautiful
A lot other shows were done in SD from beginning and there was nothing to complain about it. I’m happy to be able to watch it in SD on a standard DVD palyer instead on my PC with a litte 22″ TFT.
IMO this looks like one of those upscaled shows from standard resolution so technically it is SD.
9:04 pm on July 10th, 2008
Woot! Thanks guys, my ability to to pick up what was going on when watching the raws was getting real dodgy. As an aside I think the best fit show for you all in the coming fall season is Skip Beat, I think Ureshii is planing on picking it up but a m.3.3.w. tag on it would make me happier. ;P
10:43 pm on July 10th, 2008
Like the people posting before me my sincere thanks for picking this one up after all.
11:42 pm on July 10th, 2008
I love you guyys!! Thnks so much for picking this one up!!!!
12:12 am on July 11th, 2008
Thank you very much for this, it’s the kind of show that I really like. xess you rock !
12:17 am on July 11th, 2008
Thank you so much! 🙂 Waiting for the updated first two eps now!
1:23 am on July 11th, 2008
WE – LOVE – YOU
omg really, thank you m33ws!
1:25 am on July 11th, 2008
Thanks for picking up Ran.
Just watched your Ep 3.
Nice work!
Ran and Itazura… nice combi!
3:23 am on July 11th, 2008
Thanks for picking this up!
I fell in love with this show at episode 1 and now that I know I’ll be getting a steady dose I jumped a hole through the roof.
8:39 am on July 11th, 2008
I love m.3.3.w, y’all never seem to let me down. xD Thank you so much for picking this up. 😀
9:13 am on July 11th, 2008
Thanks, just watched the three first episodes. Not bad at all – I’m gonna follow you on this trip…
11:24 am on July 11th, 2008
As for lowering the file size for the HD version, can I suggest splitting the OP & ED karaoke from the main file & then just linking them like what BSS did with Kure-nai? I know the OP & ED might be big file sizes as well, but in the long run, it’ll help lessen the strain on your servers & probably save you time as well.
2:21 pm on July 11th, 2008
@Felo (8)
You probably need new eyes, this show was broadcasted in 1440×1080 with real HD quality. But SD on a big SDTV will probably look better in some people eyes as it’s ‘bigger’.
@ohteirony (19)
There’s one problem with using that technique on a running series: the x264 encoder gets like weekly updates, and in time the op/ed I created a few months back, might not be linkable anymore with the older op/ed, and then you need to include a new op/ed again, so the gain is then gone… Ordered Chapters is mostly handy when encoding the whole series in one go.
4:03 pm on July 11th, 2008
Thank you for taking up the subbing for this series.
4:28 pm on July 11th, 2008
great news
thanks for the subbing
6:35 pm on July 11th, 2008
Is the limitation based on the OP/ED having a different encoding setting than each new episode, or is there just a certain time period or number of repetitions before the link is invalidated? Shouldn’t the link work as long as the file name of the OP/ED isn’t changed & the OP/ED & each ep is located in the same folder? You said that it just might not work. Has there been a test done that unquestionably proves if it will or will not happen?
12:23 am on July 12th, 2008
@ ohteirony (23)
I’ve encoded several things with Ordered Chapters (not active projects) and the filenames isn’t the thing that’s linking them. The MKV files contain a certain “ID” which is unique for each MKV (something like CRC) and that is what links them.
But the limitation of Ordered Chapters at this moment, is that the encoding settings/codec type must be exactly the same for all files otherwise you will get major glitches and the linked files won’t really be playable as linked files.
But I have had one time that in 1 week x264 changed 2 times making my encodes I made a week ago unusable for ordered chapters… I mostly use the newest codecs, but when encoding ordered chapters I’d rather stick with 1 version till I’m done with the project. But that’s not smart to do when doing with a running series as x264 is heavily being developed still. And the compression ratio still goes up.
4:40 am on July 13th, 2008
I think I stumbled across an error…
The title of #3 given in the file is “Ran, run”, just as #2 was. Preview of #2 indicated #3’s title to be “Ran, fly”.