X-Bomber (1980) [TSHS] episodes 01-02

So a few years ago I subtitled the first episode of this puppet series created by Go Nagai, in homage to the classic 1960s UK Gerry Anderson Supermarionation series that were just as popular in Japan as they were in their home country. Ironically X-Bomber wasn't as popular in Japan, but it was a smash hit in the UK. The US only got a few compilation movies on pay-cable, and eventually a poorly done VHS release.

A friend of mine recently alerted me to the Star Fleet/X-Bomber Homepage, a UK site devoted to the series. On their forum, a member called Bladez636 had posted an English translated script for episode 2, translated by DragonQuestWes. Apparently they were planning to subtitle episodes 1-3 and 18 (the latter being the recap episode that was never dubbed into English) but the project stalled and the translator never got around to working on episode 3.

In any case, I asked Bladez636 for permission to subtitle episode 2 with their unused script, and he kindly agreed. Of course as long as I was subtitling episode 2, I had to do some clean-up work on my old version of episode 1 (ya’ll know how I am) and here is the result.

Who knows if I'll get around to subtitling more of these. I'd like to do the test pilot episode, and possibly that recap episode 18. But the X-Bomber thingy I'd really like to subtitle is this rare behind the scenes special that aired the week before the series premiere. It's on YouTube in Japanese with original commercials here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1S9MThYnzk. If only I could find a better copy of this, preferably MPG but at least an h264 640x480 at a decent bitrate. Shame it wasn't included as an extra on the DVD set, but these type of specials often get wiped after they air, and sometimes only fan recordings like this one exist.