dark Night Head of the soul

What do you do when you want to watch a Japanese drama from 1992? You pray for raws. And where do you turn when there’s no english subs? You pray for a miracle… or try and do it yourself! 

My quest to truly understand Night Head felt like it ought to start with the 1992 television drama, but there was one major hitch – for a long while, it just wasn’t available. Rare Doramas seems to have uploaded it back in 2011, but based on the comments I can see, these went in and out of availability for around the next 10 years. ¹ In 2023, someone on archive.org uploaded rips of what I believe to be the taiwanese DVD, which has a higher picture quality but also includes absolutely atrocious english subs embedded in the files (which I blame the manufacturer for, rather than the uploader).²  Based on my own comparison these subs are usually nonsensical, if not outright inaccurate. If you’re a frequenter of the cat site, don’t be fooled by the ‘Live Action – English-translated’ tag on the version that was uploaded just last month – those are the same as the original uploader’s work, only repackaged and mislabeled.³ 

would you prefer pizza or apple pie with your beer?

But you might be wondering, where am I getting those Japanese subtitles from? Well, the truth is – I’ve been making them myself. To begin with, while I can stumble my way through a lot of Japanese things raw, I wouldn’t be able to share it with my partner. But what’s really such a bummer to me is that as english subs are more readily available ‘legitimately’ on release, it feels like less and less people are willing to watch things raw, no matter how much they want to see something. Doing so to puzzle through helps with learning Japanese, but with appetites sated by so much ready access, that curiosity and urge to push through the confusion atrophies, leaving shows like this out in the cold. People want to see it, so why don’t they try!! 

Additionally, as more and more Japanese subs are available on release, it feels like even fewer people are willing to take on shows where they’d have to fansub things by ear the old-school way. Working on this project, I can kind of see why – it’s hard!! I’ve gained a lot more respect for the folks out there that still put tremendous effort into such tedious – and often thankless – projects. I say ‘thankless’ because it literally seems to be that way – so much of the community spirit surrounding projects like these appears to be fractured across social media and often paired with petulant expectation. I’ve seen so many subbers opt for private forums, discords or tumblr accounts (if not outright quitting) because of jerks reuploading their subs – stripped of credit – to dodgy, profit-mongering streaming sites.

Would I ever tackle a full translation? I think I’d prefer working with others – because I’d love to contribute to the fansubbing ecosystem, as well as meet anyone else as stuck on this series as I am. So, if anyone else would like to work on this with me, reach out! Let’s use the remaining 70% of our brains to get this show out to the masses!! 

In the meanwhile, as a fun easter egg for those of you who want access to the scripts – they are out there, for free… if you know where to look.

In a throwaway comment on wikipedia about the PS1 game, it was implied that the game itself contained the very screenplays I was looking for! After puzzling through some gameplay videos on youtube, I cracked it – a completed play-through of the game provides you with a shortcut for a secret menu, as well as a ‘fanclub’ code for entry.

secret menu instructions & fanclub code, for anyone interested!

Past the secret menu there’s a bunch of fun stuff that I’m not sure anyone has talked about before, as none of the longplays I saw on youtube actually went that far. Which is a shame! I’m planning to cover the whole game in more detail myself in future, so hopefully more people can check it out. For now, what’s most important are the scripts – they are indeed all there! I find the menu very charming, with the icons of the physical scripts, though the pixellated text and lack of pagination may make them difficult to actually use. as far as hidden secrets go, though, I really like it :^)

1. currently, these raws are available! ↩︎
2. I’m not sure if this uploader is the original ripper, but credit where credit is due! thank you for preserving this! ↩︎
3. barring dougal’s work on the movie, the subs for the show available on avistaz are also garbage. ↩︎