Oniisama e
From Free net encyclopedia
Oniisama e (おにいさまへ…; lit. "To [my respected] elder brother") was an anime series that aired on NHK from July 1991 to April 1992, based on the manga by Riyoko Ikeda.
It is commonly known in English as Brother, Dear Brother, this being the translation given to it by the fan sub group TechnoGirls.
The series originally started out as a manga in the early-mid 1970s, about a 14 year old girl (Nanako Misoono (御苑生奈々子 Misoono Nanako)) who attends a prestigious academy and deals with life as a high school student via writing letters to her "brother" (generally, brothers in this sense are merely older men who agree to read someone else's letters, like a sort of one-sided pen pal). The manga has never been officially released in English, though it has been translated into Italian. Lililicious, a scanlation group, have been scanlating the manga of Oniisama e into English.
The anime series spans 39 episodes and ends when Nanoko is about 17 and a half years old. The show's themes can be dark, ranging from incest to suicide attempts to life-threatening illnesses. The series was also dubbed and released in Italy and France, though it was pulled after 26 episodes, due to strong adult content.
It was also released in Arabic speaking networks in the early 90's under the title "Akhy El Aziz" (My Dear Brother). It was shown a number of times before being taken off the air, the anime is rarely available to Arab audience due to its content, as it was unheard of for an animated series with such content to be being broadcast in an Arabic speaking country.
Fan Subs
TechnoGirls is best known for subtitling the series. They subtitled 1-35 of the 39 TV episodes. The analogue versions are 1-28 and digital versions 29-35. A digi sub group called The Anime Instrumentality Project released the last episodes 36-39 around 2003, which had a much higher quality picture and sound than the tape versions. (the video source was DVD. However, converted into a DiVx file. In a twist, the Techno Girls tape versions were converted to AVI files and uploaded as a torrent (the Techno Girls have often expressed their dislike for people who profit off of their work, though no money was involved concerning transferring the tapes to avi files, as far as public knowledge goes.) Note: The Techno girls also do not approve the conversion of either analogue or digital works they have done without their permission.
[1] http://www.technogirls.org/barbara/anime/tapelist.htm
The Lililicious scanlation group is scanlating the Oniisama e manga into English, and as of late August 2005 are up to chapter 7.