Masked Rider Agito - 51 (FINAL)

Farewell, Hikawa!

Farewell Agito!

This has been a long time coming. Far too long we think.

But we aren't done yet. First we have the shameless advertising for the movie, then the movie itself. Then we have to go back and give proper video versions of 1-10, and leave these silly 640x360 XviD videos in the past (aside from the shameless advertising that isn't really worth watching anyway).

Also expect some patches abound for 12-26, if only to update the font size to readable (the original style was scaled against said 640x360 videos and not enough thought went into the change to full anamorphic ED) and to swap to HeatMetal's translation of the OP.

Then, at last, a nice complete batch.

But if you have been watching along, and aren't too worried about the past, you can now finally finish the second Heisei era Masked Rider show; the cornerstone of the majority of its decade, without having to put up with the horrors of Cruel Angel Productions and BrownRanger's collective incompetence.

We hope you enjoyed the flight.

Masked Rider Agito - 50

Don't you just hate when the police abuse innocent citizens?

Masked Rider Agito - 49

Man, why you gotta go and leave her out in the cold like this?

Masked Rider Agito - 48

Don't you just hate when you forget to take your Gills inside.

Masked Rider Agito - 47

47.

The gang's all here. Also Scrappy Doo.

Masked Rider Agito - 46

You need nicer meeting quarters.

And with this, only one disc remains. It acts as a continuous arc, so look forward to that. Remember back when Masked/Kamen Rider shows didn't slavishly adhere to two episode story arcs? Good times, eh?

Masked Rider Agito - 45

Masked Rider Agito - 45

Masked Rider Agito - 44

You've some 'splainin' to do, Shouichi.

Masked Rider Agito - 43

Clench those teeth.

Masked Rider Agito - 42

Masked Rider Agito - 42

Welcome to Volume 11, second of three five episode discs. Welcome to probably the most important episode of the series. And, finally, welcome to by far the greatest victim of DVDShrink's tyranny.

You may notice that this is by a wide margin the largest episode yet. Why? Because this episode is full of grain. Not wheat or corn however, but noise that was intended at some point to approximate film grain. As the show was filmed digitally, this was always fake, but even fake grain stands up poorly to MPEG-2 compression. Recompression with half the bitrate results in nearly unwatchable garbage; averaged out blocks dancing as far as the eye can see.

In an attempt to salvage the video quality and deliver the best approximate of the original experience, the scenes that included this fake grain have been aggressively smoothed, and then even more grain layered over the top. This new grain is larger and even less like true film grain than the original, but it has the benefit of obscuring blocks that averaged out, making it merely look low detail behind the wall of grain. x264 is very capable of preserving such grain, but it comes at a price: bitrate.

It was at this point that we realized the true depths of the horrors some anonymous Japanese person loosed upon the world by running these last three discs through DVDShrink. May god have no mercy on his soul.

Masked Rider Agito - 41

Yes, we know that this was telegraphed by the episode 39 preview and then shown in the end of 40, it was awesome and we wanted to use it as a preview image.

Masked Rider Agito - 40

Oh look, once again G3-X getting owned because it isn't using its gun.

May as well stick this link here, it's a folder with only known working links. Well, they were working at last checking, who can ever tell how long a jumbofiles link will continue to work.

Masked Rider Agito - 39

This effectively symbolizes the treatment of Agito in Decade.

We mean the picture, not the link. The link is just the episode, there's nothing symbolic about it.

Masked Rider Agito - 38

You didn't say the magic word.

By the way, do not believe the lies wikipedia has told you. The events of the TV special contradict this episode entirely, and would have spoiled you on the previous. Neither the special nor the movie are canon, and as such will be released after the end as the bonus features they are.

Jumbofiles will be the death of us.

Masked Rider Agito - 37

What a cutie.

Similarly, now with more different link.

Incidentally, this marks the first episode of volume 10, which is the first of three five episode discs, and therefore also a sharp downturn in video quality. It'll be a little while before it's painfully obvious though.

If anybody has more money than sense and wants to contribute things, proper DVD9 rips of volumes 10-12 (nobody needs/wants money or to hold onto physical goods of this) would be a very good place to start. The first nine volumes are bitrate starved in places, but nowhere near as pressingly.

Shit sources aren't going to stop this train from rolling though.

Masked Rider Agito - 36

Masked Rider Agito - 36

Look upon ye works and despair. What a mess.

Now with a more different link.

Masked Rider Agito - 35

Masked Rider Agito - 35

You all noticed his transformation pose changes for this, right? It's kind of neat.

Masked Rider Agito - 34

Masked Rider Agito - 34

Misunderstandings like this are how you know this is an Inoue show. The way this misunderstanding is resolved is why everyone is mad about his later ones.

Agito Re-ups

Apparently some links aren't working? Jumbo is great and super fast when it works, but when it decides not to, it is literally The Worst.

26 http://jumbofiles.com/lq5392jk6zng
27 http://jumbofiles.com/sf2g57jpj4xq
28 http://jumbofiles.com/b4wp0zn75977
30 http://jumbofiles.com/k9cw7hp8193j
31 http://jumbofiles.com/wu9hl3lx2bgs

Let us all see if these are less grumpy.