Never Give Up / ネバーギブアップ Movie (1997) [VHS, AVC, FLAC] (Gakken Anime)
RAW by WOWmd
Translation & typesetting by Perevodildo
Editing by Paul Geromini
For reasons yet unknown to science, some of WOWmd’s recent encodes only play in VaginaVision™️ mode in VLC, and some make it shit the bed with dropped frames. To properly enjoy this release, you’ll need some actually capable player, such as MPV.
This is a Gakken (educational) anime, produced as educational material, and distributed in a very limited number of copies directly to schools on VHS. Needless to say, this never received any home release or any meaningful attention at all, therefore nobody, myself included, had ever heard of it up until now, and you won’t find this title in any database, even the release date is uncertain. This website says 1997, this one says 1998 was when they acquired it, so the 1997 release date seems plausible. The fact WOWmd managed to acquire it on VHS is a miracle in itself. And being a human rights awareness PSA, it’s probably one of the most boring shows you’ve ever seen.
Even more miraculously, just as this sub was about to enter the editing/QC stage, a 16 mm film reel popped up on Japanese auctions that we hoped someone from the fansubbing circles would acquire for an even higher quality release. However, through severe miscommunication and probably just good old stupidity, the reel ended up with someone we don’t know, so there is only minimal hope to ever see it scanned in HD.
This show is educational anti-discrimination propaganda, the problem with it is that it’s about a very autistic type of discrimination, specific to Japan, which I need to explain before even attempting to describe the plot. I’m talking about the Burakunin issue. In a nutshell, Japan had been living with a caste system for as long as it existed. Within that system, the “burakunin” were the lowest caste, ostracized by everyone else and comprised by people of “impure” occupations: butchers, gravediggers, human waste cleaners; the closest analogy is probably the Indian “untouchables,” but the term is a little unwieldy, has a strong association with India, and is not entirely on the spot, so for this translation, I also considered such terms as “Pariah, Roma, wetback, caste-born” until I finally decided that “Buraku” is still untranslatable in this day and age.
The system was hereditary, meaning that if you were born into the caste, you’d be wearing that stigma for the rest of your life. Naturally, over time, Japan Westernized and the caste system was abolished and outlawed, but as we all know, old habits die hard, especially in Japan. In our days, it’s not impossible for a person of “normal” descent to work one of those “impure” jobs, and not be considered a “buraku”, while a person born as buraku would still be seen as one even while working in a decent occupation, therefore buraku themselves aren’t very keen on finding a decent job, and even to this day, they comprise over half of the yakuza members in most groups.
Historically, Burakunin lived in their own detached communities, which eventually got incorporated into urban areas, but also retained the stigma, spreading it to all the people born in such districts, aptly called “assimilation district” after the anti-discrimination measures were introduced, in a sense, only exacerbating the issue. And that’s exactly what happens in the movie.
The lead character, Iba Takeshi, grew up in a burakunin family, in a burakunin district. Throughout his life, Takeshi had been ostracized and bullied for that, and all the pent-up aggression leads to him growing up into an unruly bosozoku. In the course of this movie, Takeshi learns how to stop worrying and start living. And that’s it. The Americans managed to defeat, or at least, marginalize their problem with people of color in the course of the 20th century, but in Japan, a limited number of people are still willing to discriminate against their own kind for the dumbest reasons, and that’s this movie’s raison d’être.
But even that is not the end of Takeshi’s problems. Buraku sounds a lot like the English “black,” or its borrowed Japanese counterpart, and for the ease of reading, that’s exactly what the bullies are calling Takeshi—ブラック. In other words, this movie is about the discrimination against the black, give or take. NOW you’re properly equipped to watch it.
TL notes:
The show takes place mostly in Osaka. While the Kansaiben is still one of my arch nemesis, here I saved myself the trouble of making the characters sound retarded (“Whatcha yappin’ 'bout, yuh?”) like in other shows, since the characters with “normal” accent to make any distinction with are in a minority.
He wanted to use your scholarship to send you to university
Refers to government scholarships, introduced as part of the burakumin assimilation program.
The staff here is nothing to write home about:
Directed by 小野豪 (Go Ono). I couldn’t find any info about him.
The story is written by someone named 小阪田敦正 (Osakada Atsumasa) and he seems to only have two works—this and a 2003 live-action “ラストからはじまる / It Begins in the Last,” with a similar theme.
The cast includes a lot of one-off or obscure actors. For the most, it seems to have been their only role ever.
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