**Kare Kano** has had a hard life; this torrent attempts to bring together all the various options, based around the 20th anniversary BD release. ### Artistic Problems Kare Kano is the last of the iconic animes directed by Hideaki Anno for Gainax. But it is in effect unfinished; Anno lost or stepped back from full control of the project partway through, and the rather disorganised completion that follows doesn't complete the story or resolve character storylines. (He stepped away from Nadia partway through as well, but in that case returned to make a satisfactory completion.) Part of the story may be that the mangaka greatly disliked the treatment of the story, but there are other possibilities too. There is a good account of the problems in this article: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2018-12-21/20-years-of-karekano/.141157 ### Technical problems The media for Kare Kano was mostly destroyed, so remastering had little to work with. Gainax's production was also very messy, featuring layers recorded at three different frame rates, and a mix of digital and film editing. The resulting quality is not as good as one would have hoped for, even on DVD. Details of the issues are given and illustrated in these articles: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=16207750&postcount=3426 http://m1el.github.io/karekano/ ### Version differences The BD version returns (presumably) to the original TV form of the series. Several early episodes have no OP (for some reason the similar source used by [Judgement] has the OP in episode 1 unlike the BD), and the recaps in ep 14 and the first half of ep 15 are silent with a voice-over commentary in places - they also include what appear to be diagrams of viewing figures. The original DVD release added the OP in the episodes where it was missing, and also replaced the recaps in eps 14 & 15 with completely new edits including the original audio instead of the voice-over commentary. The English DVD release (and dub) followed this pattern; it also replaced the previews, which in most episodes had featured the Japanese seiyūs speaking on-camera, with similar footage of the US VAs reading the English previews to camera. For some reason, the later RightStuf/Nozomi release restored the Japanese seiyū footage while including outtakes of the US VA's - go figure! ### This version Whether there will ever be an official English release based on the remastering, I have no idea. Meanwhile, I have tried to assemble the things such a release should contain. #### Video The main series video is taken from the Japanese BDs of the 20th anniversary remastering. The source is 1080; some people will point out that the original material doesn't justify this resolution - however, it is the way the remastering has been presented, and it would be perverse to reduce it to 720, only for it to be increased again for display on most screens. Any extra layer of processing can reduce quality, and in any case, re-encoding at a smaller size saved less space than I expected. #### Japanese Audio Also straight from the BDs. The quality is not stellar, and I decided that flac was a waste of space in this instance. #### English Subtitles Taken from the release by [Judgement], unchanged apart from timing adjustment and tweaks to fit the BD video. #### English Audio The audio was sourced from the RightStuf/Nozomi DVD release. It was edited to retime it to the BD video, and to remove the OP in the episodes that the remastering didn't include it. Unfortunately, this revealed that the DVD remastering was incompetently done, and there were significant multiple glitches in several places in every episode - these were clearly introduced at a late stage in mastering, as they affected the Japanese soundtrack identically. Every glitch was isolated and fixed at the sample level, and this took several times longer than the editing for timing! #### Recaps in Episodes 14 and 15 [Judgement] didn't have subtitles for the voice-over commentaries; however, [Sizumeru-Subs] found a translation online and incorporated it in a revised release which I have used here. There was also never a dub for this speech, so I have used the Japanese audio as the "English" track for those parts, with just the preview in ep 14 and the whole second half of ep 15 using the English soundtrack. The DVD versions of the recaps are included in the BD extras, where I have edited in the English audio and a rip of the DVD subtitles. #### Extras I have included the BD extras (with added sub and dub for the alternate recaps), the extras from the DVDs I have, and the clean EDs from [Judgement]'s release. Also I have included the previews with the video of the US VA's, chopped out from [Exiled-Destiny]'s version. #### Bonus As bonuses, I have included the manga, for those who want the whole story, and the four-disk CD set of the OST.