Prince Vladimir

Another project that fell by the wayside oh so long ago. The Russian animated film, Prince Vladimir.
And oh boy, is it a visual treat.

The film, in a nutshell, is a highly romanticised fantastical version of the (true) story of Prince Vladimir: who was raised Pagan (The film mostly deals with the god, Perun) who after a spiritual awakening, converted Kievan Rus’ to Christianity. (A predecessor state of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) Attempting to thwart Vladimir is an evil pagan sorcerer and (recurring villains in many Russian films set in a similar time-period) the Pechenegs.

Substantial portions of the film take place on the isle of Peryn, where a lot of artefacts regarding the worship of Perun exist to this day.

I hope you’re sitting down for this, dear reader, because this may come as something of a shock to you: In a move most unlike Russia, this film is peppered with propagandistic elements pandering towards the Russian Orthodox Church.

I know, I know. But I assure you: this was the first and last time Russia stooped to propaganda.

I always dream of doing this to people who walk slowly in front of me browsing on their phones.

Jokes aside, IMDB user Mayflowermay said it best:

A dangerous wind of Russian nationalism is blowing from this movie. A kid who would watch this movie would learn from it that horror can be nothing but heroic and fun while done by Russians-or at least by blondes.

There’s a lot of Russian animation out there, including several gorgeous looking films from rival Melnitsa Animation Studio (on Youtube with English subs) featuring glorious Rus Aryians facing off against the savage (or alternatively cute & incompetent, depending on the film)Turkic hordes. Remember; in actuality these various cultures actually were quite intertwined; it’s called Eurasia for a reason, after all.

Obviously this can conjure up some uncomfortable feelings, especially through a critically thinking adult lens.

The above comments might seem like I’m squating over this film, ready to pinch a strategically dropped loaf on it; I’m not.

I’m aware of the realities of Russian media, and the need to placate the Russian Orthodox Church: the primary sponsor of this film. Yet the film does try to at least offer a little bit of nuance in regards to its depiction of paganism and the quintessential “see, not ALL the Pechenegs are bad” character.

To be fair, I played a county in Crusader Kings 2 that bordered the Pechenegs and they were absolutely vicious. I was in Ironman mode, too. I’m just as valiant as Prince Vladimir in my own way, right? Take a number, ladies; I’ll get back to you.

I dated a Pecheneg in high-school: true story!

One of the things I love about Russian animated films is that there’s a complete lack of any sort of consideration for the global audience. In a world where storytelling conventions are increasingly globalized, it’s refreshing to see. This is pure Russian storytelling and it assumes you’re intimately familiar with a lot of these legendary figures, places and customs in the same way people from an Anglo centric background might be with Robin Hood or King Arthur.

This film is also on Youtube with English subtitles, but in 4:3, bad quality and cut into nine parts. One gentleman did kindly do a translation accompanying the videos. It might make for an interesting comparison to this translation.

Anyway, enjoy. The film is beautiful to look at, well-paced, has a great soundtrack and provides an insight into a culture not often explored in the Anglosphere; the memes regarding the Soviet Union and “only in Russia” notwithstanding. Provided you discuss the context and certain depictions contained in the film, it’s also a great film for children who might be “Disneyed Out”. Yes, it’s a little darker and violent, but this was, afterall, primarily a family film.

Unfortunately, it barely broke even. It wasn’t as jovial as the “3 Bogatyrs” franchise, which some mistook this as being a part of (Prince Vladimir is a character in those films, too). People were also put off by the more serious tone and violence coupled with the aforementioned pandering to the Orthodox Church. The video source for this was from a DVD release; no official Blu-ray release ever came out to my knowledge. I did an upscale to 1080p.

GOOGLE DRIVE LINK

Le Chaînon manquant / The Missing Link (1980)

Picha (Jean-Paul Walravens), is a Belgian comic artist and animator. After the international cult success of Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle, an animated adaptation of his adult comic, Le Chaînon manquant, known in English as either The Missing Link or BC Rock, was greenlit.

With a significantly larger budget than Tarzoon, Le Chaînon manquant is a significant upgrade when compared to its predecessor in almost every way:

• The animation is far superior.
• The music, composed by the late Roy Budd, is really quite beautiful at times.
• The songs, performed by Leo Sayer (Yes, THAT Leo Sayer) are pleasant and catchy.
• Some of the creature designs are actually quite creative and funny.
• The writing and story is actually quite good and paced well.
• Above all else, the story has heart; something lacking in Picha’s other works (in my humble opinion).

Honestly, Picha’s stuff is not what one would call high brow; despite his works often being labelled as “for mature audiences”, it’s generally of the, “HAHA that looks like a PENIS!” variety.

The Missing Link has some of that adolescent humour, but it’s elevated by its production design, creative flourishes and above all else, heart.

I first saw this in Australia, in 1989, when I was nine years old. Heartbroken that my parents didn’t allow me to rent Fritz The Cat, this film proved to be a lucky compromise, having been rated “M” in Australia. More of less, it’s the equivalent to an American PG-13 (Which this movie most definitely would *not* be rated in the USA). Kids could see “M” rated movies in the theatres without a parent as it was only recommended for mature audiences and not enforced unlike the dreaded “R” rating. For reference, films like Aliens, Predator, The Terminator were rated “M”. Commando was rated “R”. Distinction seems nebulous? The Australian ratings board agreed, and created the MA15+ rating (meaning you had to prove you were at least 15 when attending the theatre) several years later, for films containing content too extreme for an “M”, but not extreme enough for an “R”.

The Missing Link clearly struck a cord with me because I remember it fondly to this day. Unfortunately, it never achieved the success that Tarzoon did, nor did Picha’s post-apocalyptic comedy follow-up, The Big Bang, which, like Tarzoon, is nowhere near as good as this. For a while, it seemed that Picha’s stuff did attract a following mostly in PAL regions like Scandinavia, UK, Germany and Australia.

There were actually two English dubs for this film. The one I originally saw, which was a mostly faithful adaptation of the French version, and a dub for the US market, which was retitled as BC Rock. It featured significant re-writes and Roy Budd’s score and Leo Sayer’s songs were completely excised and replaced. The main character, “Oh” was rewritten as a kind of an American frat-boy and not the sweet monosyllabic individual he is in the original and more faithful dub. I heard a bit of BC Rock and hold absolutely no affection for it. Bill Murray voices the dragon in both versions, however.

In terms of commercial releases:

• It was released on DVD in France, Germany and Australia (Though I’m told that the Australian DVD release may be the BC Rock version, which is ponderous considering the original release in video rental stores in the 80’s was the more faithful dub)
• Scandinavia had a slightly better release with “The Picha Collection” with all three of his earlier films. Amazingly, these are all the English dubs, with no option for the original French language present.

Sadly, the video quality is severely lacking in all commercially released DVD versions of this film; with Sub-par audio quality, bad contrast and even worse ghosting problems abound. The version I found is a little bit better in the ghosting department but there’s discolouration in the “de-ghosted” areas. I suspect they attempted to de-ghost the shitty masters they were given.

I did what I could; upscaled it, and subtlety adjusted the colours and contrast. I can proudly say that this is the best the film has ever looked on home video. That’s not saying much, sadly. Despite claims of the audio being in stereo, I can’t see any difference between the left and right channels.

So, presented to you is the first English subtitled release of this film. As with all Bubby-Subs releases, I’m sure there are mistakes and occasional mis-translations. Some lines come across as gibberish because they quite literally are. Croak, the pterodactyl, is occasionally named as “Scratch” because the protagonist can barely string a grammatically coherent sentence together and is prone to mispronouncing and/or misnaming things.

I hope this film wiggles its way into your heart the way it did for me, all those years ago.

GOOGLE DRIVE LINK

Hui Buh – The Castle Spirit

This was subbed and released YEARS ago. There is an auto-translated version floating around on the internet but this version was actually translated by a real human. 

Here it is in good old fashioned, archaic, barbaric, Neolithic SRT format. 

It is only a matter of time before Vulcans make first contact with humanity now that we have mostly put the SRT format to rest. Humanity is ready; almost.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/oauoejgskllbwcf/hui_buh.srt/file

Heavy (ヘヴィ) 1990

Ohhh boy. Look at that embarrassing banner.

Look at the shoddy design of this blog. The shame! The shame!

Almost exactly nine years since my last post, I now return, like a father returning to the son that he forgot he locked in the attic.

In true Bubby-Subs fashion, this isn’t necessarily the definitive translation of this delightful title, a 1990 OVA based on an eight-volume manga.

Enjoy!

EDIT: In true Bubby-Subs fashion, some glaring mistakes were overlooked. It’s not really going to affect your enjoyment of the show, but regardless, here’s a V2 of the subs. Fixed the font issue, Alex Gordon being “Alex King” and a few grammar errors.

You can grab the V2 Of the subs here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/swypqoojto9ne9v/Heavy+Movie+(ヘヴィ)+(LD+640×480+x264)+V2.ass/file

Torrent:

https://nyaa.si/view/1327164

Red Photon Zillion 27-31

I certainly can’t take much credit here.

The prophet of the Anime love; the great Lord Strongblood appeared to me in a dream and demanded I finish off this epic 80’s classic. Upon waking, I discovered Anime-Classic’s translations in my possession; All I needed to do was locate the raws, time, encode and voila!

Big thanks to the late, great Anime Classic for allowing me to use their translation!

You can find Zillion in its entirety at BakaBT.

I hope you love this show as much as I do! I tried to make the filesize, encode and styling as close to Anime-Classic’s as possible so as to be succinct.

In the meantime, I’m thinking of releasing a V2 of the Witcher; Stay tuned!

Swedish Crusader Epic; Arn Tempelriddaren / Arn The Knight Templar (English Subs)

The most expensive film in Scandanavian film history and a sequel on the way this August, Arn The Knight Templar definitely deserves a broader audience.

BIG thanks to Hampus for translating!

Now, I have included two version of this;

The first I retimed for the CHD 1080p release, for those of you that wish to see this in High Def the files are available on the ed2k network. Here are the ed2k links:

ed2k://|file|[圣殿骑士].Arn.Tempelriddaren.2007.BDRip.1080p.x264.DTSHD.Audio-CHD.D1.avi|4673888256|2ac246be630948b452ee3039f8355c1d|h=EOJHVHB6E5LKA7RME3R5YXKF2LUKXQMM|/

ed2k://|file|[圣殿骑士].Arn.Tempelriddaren.2007.BDRip.1080p.x264.DTSHD.Audio-CHD.D2.avi|4671051776|8fc3a1f95afca28329a1e768cc30677b|h=R756MKEF7FTFSFVPYS5RT7R7HV3JFHP2|/

The pirate bay is hosting the DVD rip version with a whopping 630 seeders, here.

And finally, both versions of the subs can be downloaded from here.

Violence Jack OVA Series; Uncut

Behold, Violence Jack! The infamous OVA based on the even more infamous Manga; Violence Jack. Created by the man who is destined to mentioned in the third testament; Go Nagai.

I did my best to “remaster” the video, as the print, whilst being of relatively good quality, is somewhat aged and little bit faded. Thus, I adjusted the colour palette so that it could resemble the original print more. This was done by comparing the video form the Italian DVD with that of production cels and production stills. Additionally, I applied some subtle sharpening filters which makes the image a little bit crisper, it’s vert subtle.

I have kept the AC3 2.0 audio intact and did not re-encode the soundtrack into stereo MP3. This was done at the expens of a more compact file size. The bitrate is also slightly highter than normal as I didn’t want any compression artifacts.

Download the torrent here, and PLEASE help seed.

EDIT:You are more than welcome to make any changes to my sub file, here it is.

http://www.zshare.net/download/12182549518f6cf7/

Naturally, you can load up my subtitles using such programs as MPC (Media Player Classic) and whatnot.

Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 720×576 25.00fps 1344Kbps
Audio: Dolby AC3 44100Hz stereo 159Kbps
Subtitles: English (Translated from Italian, which I am told is 90% accurate to the original Japanese)

The Witcher / Wiedzmin

I oversaw this project for over 2 years until it’s completion. This was by far, the hardest project to manage; almost every episode had a different translator!

Wiedzmin / The Witcher

This is a Polish TV series called “Wiedzmin” (Known in English speaking regions as “The Witcher”) This fantasy TV series is based off the fantasy novels and short stories of Andrzej Sapkowski; Poland’s # 1 fantasy author.

This TV series was also compiled into a film called “Wiedzmin” but it’s almost impossible to understand due to the fact that a 13 episode TV series was pushed into a two hour movie.

Ed2k link is here.

Torrent link, (Episode 1-13)  here.

(Note: The Torrent link contains an “alpha version” of Episode 1 with huge, ugly subtitles, this version was a test release and not ment to be mass circulated; Those who wish to obtain the superior version of episode one, please drop a comment.)