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Thursday, December 15 2016

Cream Lemon around the world: Americas

By elgringo on Thursday, December 15 2016, 13:53 - Talk

(last edit 2018/11/23)

Before going for another release, I'd like to discuss a bit about the fate of the series outside Japan. Despite being heavily focused on loli characters, a bunch of episodes managed to get released in some places where sexual censorship is in principle not an issue. But not always in the most faithful way... Will edit the text later if I find more informations.

USA:

Around the late 80s (1987 at earliest considering the corresponding japanese release dates of some episodes), a company called Excalibur Films, lead by Arthur King (pun intended?) imported a bunch of japanese adult animations. That company released (and is still releasing) all kind of real life porn as well.

Under the hilariously named 'Brothers Grime' label, some Cream Lemon episodes were released, as well as other titles, namely 'SF Lolita Fantasy' and 'Little Mermaid Series: Telepatist IQ 315'. Three tapes were released in total, all dubbed with various results, from pathetic to hilarious (Rall). Most of the time BGM tracks were replaced by some crappy elevator music (not always, you can hear Pop Chaser BGM on the edited Rall episode, and I suspect the opening music of Star Trap to be taken from Violence Jack 1). One of the goals was probably to hide as much as possible the actual origin of these episodes. They probably had access to all episodes released up to mid-1987 but have chosen to publish only a few.

The videos were edited to death, in order to increase the sex scenes duration with all kind of dirty tricks, like looping over the same frames even more than the japanese version, going through the same scene backwards and forward, and putting the same shot at different places (including putting it on a different episode). Funnily enough, some sex shots were removed in the process, in White Shadow you miss a small part of the car sex scene and a few seconds of the final scene. Obviously the meaning of many scenes were changed in the dub. The (only) positive aspect is that all episodes are uncensored, for the parts that were not removed lol. The last tape has also an interesting editorial choice as it's regrouping the horror-themed episodes.

The following episodes were imported and renamed as:

Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons Vol.1 (NO Cream Lemon contents)
SF Lolita Fantasy OME-1 Part 1 -> Gonad the Barbarian
Little Mermaid Series: Telepatist IQ 315 -> Search for Uranus (whatever it means)

Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons Vol.2
Part 3 (Rall) -> Offenders of the Universe (Rall was released uncensored in Japan)
Part 10 (Star Trap) -> same title

Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons Vol.3: Pandora An Erotic Trilogy
Part 17 (White Shadow) -> Pandora Part 2: The Black Widow (some explicit shots missing)
Part 18 (Demonic Doll/Madol) -> Pandora Part 3: Living Shadows
Part 38 (Dark) -> Pandora Part 1: The Dark Forest

brothers_grime_2-Offenders.jpg

They can be also found on DVD format but the quality is VHS-like (transcoded?). With this material it is possible to fully decensor the 4 episodes concerned except White Shadow. Rall does not count since it was already uncensored thanks to the "tentacle trick" in the japanese VHS/Betamax and LD releases.

There is another collection of VHS/DVD releases, with a much higher number of episodes being picked. A label called Blue Animation, belonging to Filmco (another murican porn maker), imported illegally a lot of 80s and 90s adult animations. The VHS tapes are all with original japanese dialogue and original censorship (duh!), a lot of the title or credits screens being removed. It is possible that an episode is not complete, and that there is a bonus episode after the main episode. A few titles made it on DVD, I indicate below which of them are confirmed on that format.

Here is the known listing concerning the CL episodes:

Part 1 (Be my Baby) -> Be my Honey (DVD)
Part 2 (Escalation 1) -> Schoolgirl Orgies
Part 3 (Rall) -> Beautiful Girls of Anime (what were they smoking???)
Part 4 (Pop Chaser) -> Pop Chasers
Part 5 (Ami Again) -> The Story of Ami 4
Part 8 (Super Virgin) -> Super Virgin Groupies
Part 13 (Ami III) -> The Story of Ami 3
Part 14 (Narisu Scramble) -> Sex Academy
Part 24 (Etude 2) -> Summer Love Games
Part 31 (Ami Sorekara 1) -> The Story of Ami 1 (DVD)
Part 32 (Ami Sorekara 2) -> In the Midst of Sadness (DVD)
Part 33 (Ami Sorekara 3) -> Ami's Climax
Part 34 (Ami Sorekara 4) -> The Story of Ami 5
Ami Seishun Graffiti (compilation of Parts 1+5+13) -> The Story of Ami 2 (DVD, incomplete as it's missing the part corresponding to Part 13)
Tou (Toh?) Moriyama Kessakusen (compilation of episodes made by Moriyama Tou/Toh, so 17+25+30) -> The Story of Toh (they thought Toh is a character name mwahahaha)

Some more episodes available only as 'bonus', for instance Part 30 (Cherry Nayuuutsu) has been identified on a DVD release. There is much more titles to be found as I said, some like Secret of Teleclub or Travelling Fantasies (aka Fruits Version) existing on DVD.

Quite recently a 6-volume compilation DVD was released, each volume running for 3 to 4 hours (!) of animated smut. Again there is no guarantee that each episode featured is complete, and you get most of the previously listed episodes again in a completely random way. Thanks to some screen previews a few extra episodes were identified (Escalation 3, Europa no Inshou, Aoi Sei, Ikenai Mako-chan 1). They were maybe available as bonus in the original VHS releases. Quality is as good as a 'japanese VHS -> american VHS -> american DVD transcode' can be.

Moreover there is another series of bootleg DVD releases made by some label that I forgot the name of, will add a few words later. Nothing groundbreaking, but you can find among those releases some ecchi titles that were never officially released on DVD in US, like Minna Agechau (take that CPM!).

Brazil:

In the country of drug dealers and transgender people football and samba, a japanese expatriate called 'Toshi' (Toshihiko Egashira apparently) had the idea of importing anime tapes in Brazil, and not being scared of adult material he included Cream Lemon in the lot. In the Everest Video label you can find most the first 16 episodes. Among those 16 there is no confirmation for a release of Ami III (part 13) or Escalation 3 (part 16) yet. He got his hands also on some regular anime and tokusatsu shows. About the Cream Lemon imports, I don't need to go into all details, since a lot is already explained in the following links:

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonho...
http://www.jbox.com.br/materias/son... (currently in maintenance, see the archived version at https://web.archive.org/web/2014051...)

sonhos_molhados_1.jpg

If you don't get the portuguese, use online translators as I did. :P

The series was renamed as 'Sonhos Molhados' (Wet Dreams in english). I can say that there are 7 VHS tapes confirmed at the moment, and that each tape includes 2 episodes as far as I can tell. That makes 14 episodes out of the original 16 confirmed for release. For 5 6 all those 7 tapes I have found cover scans. As I have also found a LQ rip of the first tape (Amy my Baby, containing episodes 1+5 in full), I can say that the contents is original japanese dub with green color portuguese hardsubs, and that the whole thing is uncensored! In principle it is possible to use the uncensored shots on the japanese raws, but sometimes there is dialogue at those moments, meaning horrible green text on picture. The quality of that rip is very questionable so an uncensored version of episodes 1 or 5 is out of question for the moment.

I have seen various tapes, mostly the 'Mako-chan' and Rall tapes on a brazilian auction site called Mercadolibre, but can't really buy them at the moment as it requires a local address for shipping. If you are interested to help finding and buying those tapes please contact us through IRC or email or smoke signs. It seems the tapes were recorded into NSTC format, and not PAL which is the brazilian television standard as far as I know.

I have seen a bunch of brazilian localization of the Blue Animation DVD releases, like Be my Honey, which is not surprising considering the 'cult' following of the series there.

sonhos_molhados_4_thumb.png

The next part (or parts) will be about good old Europe.

4 comments

Wednesday, May 23 2012

About Cream Lemon and the birth of adult anime

By elgringo on Wednesday, May 23 2012, 15:07 - Talk

Now the real deal starts, well almost ;D

1078845211337.jpg
They look all so tasty, don't they ^o^

Adult anime was born only in the mid-80s, mainly because up to that time there was no market place for them, whether on television or cinemas. There were some experimental works on animation aimed for a mature public, like the "Animerama" trilogy made in the late 60s and early 70s by Tezuka Osamu. But these are not pornographic by modern criteria.

In the early 80s, magnetic tape devices, using VHS and Betamax formats, became more widely available to the public, so production of material aimed for a direct release on that media was economically viable. The concept of Direct-to-video animation, called "Original Video Animation" (OVA) in Japan, started in late 1983 with the first 30 mn OVA called Dallos made by Bandai and Studio Pierrot. Adult anime followed soon after with "Lolita Anime" (sic), produced by Wonder Kids in February 1984. The first two video releases were divided into two stories of 15 mn each, adapted from manga stories of Nakajima Fumio. The third release was a single and longer story with Miu, the first adult anime iconic character (she got two further appearances).

Soon after a new company called Fairy Dust was created, and planned a release of "Cream Lemon". Similar to Lolita Anime, it would be made of two short stories of about 15 mn, put together on a 30 mn video release. The first story, "Be my Baby" would deal with pretty young Ami having fun in the shower while being peeped by her Onii-chan, then doing some ecchi stuff with him (including laser saber penis play and the most dramatic ending you will ever see in adult animation). The second story called "Escalation", would follow Catholic schoolgirl Rie, having some night time finger activities with her Onee-sama, then joined by a third girl for vibrator and licking play, before getting finished off by a strap-on, full lesbo style. A second episode was already on schedule with two other short stories, "Rall" (the same heroic fantasy stuff as we know?) and "I-Doll" (apparently the main theme was rape, no idea what happened to it...). In parallel, an adult movie project called "Project A-Ko" was also under production.

Rumors tell that when they submitted the first episode in this form to the NEVA (Japanese censorship board for video releases), it was rejected because it had "too much sex" (as if it was a problem with the already endless flow of adult live action videos). They had to rework the whole thing, splitting the two stories into separate episodes. The part filled with sex scenes became 'Part B' of each episode, and a 'Part A' with introduction plot (mostly without sex scenes) was added to reduce the sex/story ratio :D. A "Be my Baby" introduction monologue stating that Ami was 11 years old and that her Onii-chan was her 'real' brother was removed (shocking!). Note that the original video editing was released (without the introduction monologue if that rumor is true) as 'Part 0' in 1988. "Rall" was also reworked also as a separate release with a SF setting added (episode 3), The "Project A-Ko" production was delayed until it was revived two years later as a general audience movie. In the meantime, "Pop Chaser" came as an derivative work to some of the staff involved (episode 4). The fifth episode saw the follow-up adventures of Ami, the rest is history.

Apart from this series, years 1984 and 1985 got a flood of adult OVA, most of them involving very young looking females, so that period is often called the "Lolita Boom" era. The Lolita Boom era was not exclusive to anime, it existed on the commercial manga and magazine medium since 1982 (Lemon People and Manga Burikko leading the pack), and in doujin releases since 1979 (thank you Hideo Azuma). Many companies joined the trend, some of them being Adult Video makers, some created from scratch, all aiming to milk pockey money of the adult animation fans obviously. Some labels to mention are Orange Video House (they also released the Guinea Pig live action series) with their Super Adult Animation series, Alice Japan, and Nikkatsu (famous for their Roman Porno movies), teaming up with Uchiyama Aki for the weirdest stories of the era. In 1986 the market became completely saturated with the excessive amount of releases, many being mediocre, and it crashed. Only Fairy Dust stayed on the field, most likely because their works were always above the pack in terms of quality. Despite having a bunch of releases regularly made after the market crash (Urotsukidoji, La Blue Girl, Demon Beast, Guy, etc), the adult animation market was not fully revived until the Holy Summer of 1994 and the start of Pink Pineapple productions, and is being strongly active since then.

Fairy Dust produced episodes steadily between 1984 and 1990, and a few extra ones up to 1993. They have covered many kind of genres and themes you can find in normal anime (romance, school, heroic fantasy, horror, SF, mystery, mecha, magical girl) and many fetishes (incest, yuri, tentacles, hypnosis, SM, rape) though the focus was not on the fetishes most of the time, but on the plot. The list of episodes can be divided into "series" according to release periods:

Original series (1984-1987, 16 episodes) with all the classics: Ami series, Escalation series, Rall series, Pop Chaser, Ikenai Mako-chan series, Star Trap, etc

"Shin" series (1987-1988, 9 episodes) with mostly stand-alone episodes, exploring new fields (and trying to get rid of Ami lol): Madol, Yume Iro Bunny, Etude series, Summer Wind, etc

Ami Sorekara series (1988-1990, 4 episodes) with more Ami adventures, set 3 years after the original series ending

Manga Best Hit series (1990, 3 episodes) with original/adapted work from popular mangakas of the time (Tou Moriyama, Yui Toshiki, Kei Amagi)

Miscellaneous (1985-1993, 6 episodes) with episodes that do not fit in the previous: Ami Image (mostly music video, no sex on it), Sotsugyou Album (extended compilation of the original series), Astalot (a Kazuna Kei special, sometimes put together with the Manga Best Hit series), Zoku Kuro Neko Kan (a follow-up of part 11 set 30 years after), Dark (based on a contest apparently, and one of the longest episodes), Aoi Sei (set in Canada, includes incest and beastiality, what can be worse than that lol?)

In total 38 OVAs were produced with original material, though Sotsugyou Album is mostly made of highlights of the original series. On top of this, a short movie feature was produced in 1986, which was meant to be the conclusion of the Ami plot at the time. Somehow the fans did not like neither the ending (with Ami leaving Japan to join her Onii-chan) nor the tentative replacement as the Etude series, so Ami Sorekara was made as a proper conclusion (with still a kind of open ending). The movie was released as a double-bill with the finished "Project A-ko" work. Both movies have nudity, but no sexual content.

one comment

Friday, April 6 2012

About the team (or how to learn patience for getting cookies)

By elgringo on Friday, April 6 2012, 23:26 - Talk

Before (re-)posting our releases, let me make some historical remarks. I cannot tell all details about the first years of the team, as I joined the IRC channel soon after the release of episode 7, and I made contributions to the releases starting from episode 10.

Once upon a time in 2006, there was a pervert from Asia (not japanese, but who knew the language) called terkie. He got interest on a rather obscure adult anime show (for westerners at least) called Cream Lemon. I will describe that anime in the next post. He managed to convince the Anime-Mosaic team to help him on that, and one release was done in early 2006. The team was called Hentai-Mosaic as a subsidiary of Anime-Mosaic. But terkie didn't like the idea of belonging to a sub-team. So he gathered other retro perverts, in particular a german dude whose nick was ics-. They made a new version of episode 1, and went on with four more episodes. The new team was baptized "lamonae" for some reason, something related to lemonade IIRC lol.

lamonae team (eps 1-5)

  • translator: terkie
  • timing: ics-
  • encode: SuperJ
  • QC: 'Rage, Insectae

After ep 5, terkie somewhat disappeared. No progress could be made in the releases because you know, a japanese-english translator is the first wheel of the carriage in such cases... He returned after almost a year, so that years 2007 and 2008 could get their share of subbed 80s perversion.

lamonae team (eps 6-13)

  • translator: terkie
  • timing: ics-
  • encode: SuperJ
  • QC: minteh, Wagg13

That is during that second period that I joined first the IRC channel, for some censoring issues that were never really settled. :P Once again the key person of a fansub team disappeared, apparently real life called hard this time. After the second disappearance of terkie, the team was still unable to get a new translator on board. In fact they had many of his translation scripts for the episodes to come, but nobody to discuss with the corrections to be done.

There were some applications for a translator, but the candidates did not really stay for long. The important thing is that the team refused to pay a person for doing the translation work. It may be a mistake on the long term, but in my opinion fansubbing should not involve money. You cannot call something a "fan" activity if money is part of that activity. In that long tunnel of emptiness, there was still some releases, in particular "part 0" which was a 'remix' of eps 1 & 2 and did not require extra translation. I also became officially part of the team, which had never been over-crowded anyway. :p

The light came out of the tunnel when we managed to get a translator for real. And in addition he was a native Nihonjin !!! dako helped us for a few months only, but this allowed us to release eps 14 and 15, only two years after ep 13 xD. Also our new encoder made the jump from AVI/Xvid to MP4 goodness. In early 2011 dako disappeared, and right after the Fukushima disaster came... not related, but it reflected how hopeless was the situation once again. We managed to release episode 16 (with *secret person*) and episode 17 to 20 with some extra help from the official Film Comics since they contain the full japanese dialogue (yay!). The latter ones were possible thanks to a french fellow, Lopyan, who had a japanese girlfriend to help us, talk about a perfect pair ;-)

lamonae team (eps 14-20)

  • translator: terkie, dako, ???, Lopyan
  • timing: ics-
  • encode: RobinK
  • QC: ics-, elgringo

This is more or less where we stand, as I post this message. Lopyan has actually moved to Japan recently, we hope to keep contact with him for more ecchiness!

Holy Hentai Goddess, please forgive us for our sins... hallelujah.jpg

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Thursday, April 5 2012

Hello perverts of the world

By elgringo on Thursday, April 5 2012, 12:57 - Talk

Bonjour tout le monde! Hallo die Welt!

[lamonae] speaking here ^^

I think this would be a nice place to share our releases in a more professional way. 

Sooner or later I will post more about all the stuff we have made since... over 5 years. ZOMG!!!1

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