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I’m sorry I haven’t posted any official updates in quite a long time. I’ve actually made a few changes to the forums since my last update, including a small change in appearance. But actually, I’ve been somewhat neglecting the main site since it will be completely redesigned sometime soon. As a result, the main blog won’t be available as it is now as I won’t be using WordPress anymore. Updates will be posted in the Site Updates forum, and displayed on the main site using RSS.
I haven’t done as much as I hoped as far as Outlaw Star goes over the past few months, so I hope to change that soon. One of the first changes will be the Gallery section of the site. Yes, finally! Whilst I could update the gallery bit by bit, instead I’m gathering a huge collection of Outlaw Star fan images (and requesting permission from the artists) and I plan to have the section filled with content by the end of this month. Images will be categorised so Outlaw Star fans can find wallpapers and various pictures, in addition to AMVs in just a few clicks.
Members may also be interested to know that I’ve lowered the post requirements for user title increases (e.g. from Outlaw to Notable Outlaw, to Distinguished Outlaw, and so on.)
I’ll announce other plans in a separate update soon.
Since sometime this morning I’ve been having a lot of problems with the site. I’ll give you the skinny, but for security reasons I can’t go into specifics. In short, the database vanished. Bam. Gone. I was told by my host I may have renamed or deleted the database, despite not having touched the control panel for a couple of days. The good news is that they did provide a backup, but a whole day’s worth of posts is gone. Fortunately, that only amounts to around 10-20 posts since most of that time was spent in the chat room last night, and of course the past twelve hours the site was down anyway. Sorry to those who have lost a few posts, though!
Anyway, the gist of it is that I’m being blamed for this for an illogical reason. The worst part is that this happened at random. So, the bad news is that unless they come up with a damn good explanation, I’ll have no choice but to move to a different host in the very near future. I don’t like the idea of crap like this happening with no warning. I will keep you updated.
Update: I’ve had a talk with my host. Despite what I said about them, over the past few years (yeah, I’ve been with them for a long time actually, since Outlaw Star UK used to be on a second server) they’ve been genuinely helpful to me. I’ll most likely stick with them. As you can tell I’ve been pretty agitated today, but in the end they’ve been kind and handled the situation well. So long as we can address this database problem, it’s all good. 
For those of you who have been in the loop, you’ll know there’s pretty much been a forum blackout for close to two months now. What started off as a seemingly simple server move turned into database corruption and, to put it bluntly, shit hit the fan. The database is now restored and I’m hoping we can get back to where we were with a decent level of activity soon.
Thanks to everyone who has checked back from time to time and had patience. Something else I should announce is that there will no longer be advertisements on any of the site. There will also be some nice features coming soon, but expect an update on those.
See you on the forum.
This update is a few days overdue, so I apologise for that. I figured I’d pack a couple of updates into one, however.
October’s winner is lloydSSJ4, who has been a brilliant contributor to the forum and definitely deserved to win this time round. Well done Lloyd! The votes were interestingly evened out, with every candidate receiving at least one vote, which is nice to see. Lloyd has been awarded 2500 wong, and he will soon receive an achievement for being a Member of the Month, which I have procrastinated on making. My apologies! You’ll receive it soon.
Want to become an November candidate? Becoming a candidate is simple enough. You just need to have an account and have posted twenty-five times for the month by the 25th of November. However, becoming a candidate and being an influence in the community are two different things. Be a positive contributor and if you weren’t successful last time, think about what you could have done differently to earn those votes.
Unfortunately, there is a complication. The site will be down for some time this month because the site is moving server. You’ll know about this when the time comes. The server move will allow a lot of positive changes to the site, since currently there are a lot of limitations in place. Be sure to read the MotM rules in the relevant forum, and heck, even say congratulations to this month’s winner.  Thanks again.
Now for some new games in the Arcade. Again, sorry this is a late update. I should have posted this sooner, but there are some really awesome zombie games in the Arcade now, a couple of which you may remember if you’ve played a lot of Flash games over the years…
 The Last Stand: How long can you last against the zombie onslaught? [Category: Defence]
 Boxhead – The Rooms: Rack up a high score by killing an insane number of zombies. [Category: Action]
 Zombie Survival – Outbreak: You’ll have to react quickly and use your trigger finger wisely if you want a chance in hell of surviving this. [Category: Action]
 Maho vs. Zombie: You’ll need to invest some time in this rewarding zombie defence game if you want a good score. [Category: Defence]
I’d like to wish everybody a great Bonfire Night. Provided I don’t stay out to watch the fireworks for too long (I want to record some nice footage) I’ll add one or two fireworks games and edit this update. Finally, if you’re interested in earning more wong and making it big, I’ll be adding achievement awards. For attaining certain scores on many of the Arcade games you’ll receive some nice bonuses. It takes time to make these achievements and everything else on the site, but stay tuned for an update.
No new videos yet. I’m going to get Camtasia (I use this for most recordings) set up soon. In any case, here are four new Arcade games recently added. My favourite of the bunch is certainly the first one. Whilst I’m a fan of Fullmetal Alchemist, it’s a pretty fun game.
 Fullmetal Alchemist – Flameout: Help everyone’s favourite Flame Alchemist, Roy Mustang, to destroy the attacking hordes of chimeras using his flame powers. [Category: Anime]
 PixelField: Move across levels collecting blue pixels to advance. [Category: Puzzle]
 Time Crisis 4 – Training Mission: Shoot the terrorists in this simple VR training mission. [Category: First-Person Shooter]
 Ultimate Video Game Quiz Challenge – NES: Think you know a thing or two about the NES? Think again. [Category: Quiz]
The polls are now open. Anyone who has been at least semi-active for the past month should definitely cast their vote. There are nine candidates this month. Vote for the one who you believe has best supported the community in October alone. Polls will close on Halloween. For more information, click here.
Good luck, candidates.
All together now…
OVER 9000!
I’ve been waiting for this milestone. Well done to everyone who has posted. I appreciate it. The forum isn’t overly active, but I’ve seen it transform from a ghost town into a small community of awesome people. Heck, that isn’t the right term either. Transform sounds instantaneous. This has been a continuous journey with many great discussions and a lot of well-written posts. I wish some of the old regulars could return. Maybe one day, eh? Perhaps by the end of next year we can hope to triple this number or more. Be sure to introduce friends. I’m very thankful to anyone who helps with promotion.
On a closing note, for many months now I was going to give a surprise award to the person who made the 9001st post. That would be Heresiarch Grimm, a name I still have to occasionally check the spelling of. (You’d be better off just calling him Grimm.) Enjoy your reward of 9001 wong. That wasn’t predictable, was it?
So I recently announced I was going to start writing Outlaw Star articles on a regular basis. Unsurprisingly, when I asked what people wanted, an article about Outlaw Star 2 was by far at the top of the list. Well, I’m the kind of person to research something quite deeply so I hope this will satisfy you. It may also disappoint you, however. You may like that it will clear things up a little bit. You’ll probably hate the proposed storyline of the sequel. There are also two Outlaw Star sequels. I also heard a thing or two about a prequel to Outlaw Star, but that was probably just a rumour, though anybody can come forward with information about that.
First of the two sequels is called the Sword of Wind, and was first planned in 1998. It was going to be an OVA. This stands for Original Video Animation. Sometimes OVAs are short anime series with just a few episodes. However, in the preliminary plan of Sword of Wind, it was specified that it would only be a single episode, set three years after the original Outlaw Star’s ending. I do have quite a lot to say about this, and I’ve translated Morning Star Studio’s plan which was on their site in Japanese for a short while in 2002. However, later that year in 2002, Sword of Wind was cancelled. Outlaw Star’s creator, Takehiko Ito, confirmed this himself, when he was asked about it.
“Hello. My name is Takehiko Ito. I can speak a little English. You looks project in my site contents. It’s plan for Outlaw Star 2. But, that title is only plan and frozen yet. We planning new and different project now. Sorry. I love Outlaw Star too. Maybe I continue Outlaw Star by comic. Thank you!”
However, eventually it was discovered that a sequel to the manga was being made. Indeed, Takehiko Ito did mention this in the comment above. Its working title was Outlaw Star 2: Retaliation. Unfortunately, I can’t provide much speculation or much of anything. Probably like most readers of this article, I’ve only seen a little of the manga. I know that it has a darker theme and Hilda’s role is considerably different, but since only a small amount of the manga has been fan-translated (an English version was never published), there isn’t really much I can say about it. Myself and other members of Outlaw Star UK have been discussing getting a fan translation project going, and it seems that our member SethClanclan has already figured out a lot of the storyline and deciphered a fair bit of the rare novels! I look forward to the day we’ll have the manga complete in English. So, let me tell you about Outlaw Star 2…
Outlaw Star 2: Sword of Wind
It’s very possible you really won’t like the storyline of this. So, for a short amount of time in 2002 Morning Star put some information on their site about Sword of Wind. It didn’t stay on there for long, but a few pulled the information off the site and tried to understand it. Fortunately, thanks to the existence of the Wayback Machine, you can still view the original Japanese page. I’ve researched this quite a bit and the conclusions others have come up with. First of all, I should leave a little disclaimer here. It’s possible I’ve screwed up big time with my translation that will follow. However, it’s also possible that the Outlaw Star fans’ who tried to translate it in 2002 were incorrect and that incorrect information has circulated across the Internet.
For the most part, my translation was completed with the assistance of Google and quite a lot of improvisation since some of it was so hard to translate using these methods. A lot of it wasn’t so difficult. The problem is that my translation contradicts what is posted nearly everywhere online. Common belief is that Jim gains possession of the ship called the Sword of Wind, is good friends with a new character (a spacecraft engineer) and goes to help Fred Luo. From my translation, it seems these things happen with Gene, not Jim, although Jim still knows the doctor and is attracted to his daughter, Diva. You might want to search online for what others have written about this and compare it with my own findings, as I make no guarantees about my translation’s accuracy.
PDF of Sword of Wind Translation
You should probably read that first. I translated about 90-95% of the original document, although I didn’t include a couple of sentences I could not translate. That document should tell you the basic gist if you want to trust my translation. (Hell, I don’t know if I do! But if you can improve it get in touch.) To summarise, Fred Luo goes to the Oracion Star System to try and arrange a business deal with the Links group (I’ll delve more into this below since this interests me) but does not meet their expectations. When leaving, Fred Luo’s transport ship mysteriously explodes. Gene Starwind is no longer working closely with Jim, and Melfina has become a secondary character and is simply attending college. During his travels sometime in the three years since the end of Outlaw Star, Gene met a spacecraft engineer who he became friends with. Said engineer builds incredible new ship: the Sword of Wind. Jim is attracted to the engineer’s daughter, Diva. This engineer is called Doctor—
(Robotnik/Scratch images created by Rock-Zilla at deviantART.)
No! Holy shit, NO! God damn it, that’s wrong. He’s Dr. Sputnik, not Dr. Robotnik.  So, Gene is pretty good pals with this guy. He sees a news report on TV about Fred Luo, stating that it is unknown whether he’s alive or dead, and Gene decides to go and rescue him. That’s pretty much where it ends. Morning Star makes it very clear many times that this is an early plan of the OVA and isn’t final. I’ve been thinking about a few things. You might remember that at the end of Outlaw Star, Gene decides to head to the Oracion System. I will assume he has stayed there since. After all, if he was elsewhere in the Toward Stars universe it would take Gene a long time to reach Fred after the crash. Dr. Sputnik escaped with his daughter as an exile from the Pyotr Empire. Here is a map that shows where it is. (For your convenience here is the map without any arrows. Thanks a lot to Seth who identified and translated everything on this map.)
In case you haven’t already spotted it, below you can see the Oracion System.
Okay, so you can see from how far away Oracion is from say Sentinel or Heifong (and it took Gene days to travel to and from those two in Outlaw Star) that they’re probably in Oracion near Fred like I said earlier. So what’s my point? Well, I noticed something about the series Angel Links. First of all let me say that I think Angel Links is very mediocre and contradicts a lot of the things in Outlaw Star. (For instance, Saurians such as Duuz in Law and Lawlessness are naturally born races, whereas in Outlaw Star they are created artificially by humans using dinosaur genes. Instead of Saurians they are also called Dragonites, which is even more confusing since that’s the name of the very rare and expensive gems in Outlaw Star, which they called “dragon stones” instead.) I also really don’t like Sword of Wind’s story, but regardless, I noticed something very interesting. In the first episode of Angel Links, Fred Luo is seen for a few seconds in an extremely posh building where the Links group (who are very wealthy, I should add) are. Now, let me paste this part of my translation from the PDF…
Fred Luo exits sub-ether in his transport ship and arrives at the Oracion Star System. Soon after
reaching his destination, Fred expresses his disappointment; “These Oracion System people
from the Links group just say I am poor, and insist I’m only offering bribes for men.” His two
bodyguards awkwardly nod.
Take a look at this crappy (I don’t own Angel Links and I never will; I grabbed this from YouTube) screenshot of Fred from the first episode:
 Could this just merely be a coincidence? In Sword of Wind unless my translation is wrong, he is in the same building as the Links group and soon after leaves, just as depicted here, with two bodyguards. I must deduce that Morning Star was considering some kind of merge of the storylines of Sword of Wind with Angel Links. Indeed, Outlaw Star was already set up for this since Gene went to Oracion. I believe that eventually Takehiko Ito abandoned Sword of Wind but still decided to keep a Fred Luo cameo in Angel Links. Well, that was extremely long-winded. I’m looking to personally ask Takehiko Ito quite a few questions, but unfortunately he’s like a phantom. Did you know Takehiko Ito is only a pen name and he has many of them? Well, time to wrap this up with Retaliation, which I don’t really have a lot to say. Just pictures.
Outlaw Star 2: Retaliation
These are some images of what was apparently going to be a manga sequel. (As explained earlier in the article, this became apparent after Sword of Wind was officially canned.) I don’t think any information was released about this and just the artwork below.
This confuses me a little bit, because you can clearly see Hilda in the final image and her ship, Horace. Maybe it’s Retaliation that was meant to be the prequel? A prequel about Hilda would really kick ass. So I’m not really sure about Retaliation, but if anyone can shed some light that would be great. One other “sequel” is a fifth volume to the manga. The manga consisted of four volumes, but this small image of a fifth volume was posted quite some time ago.
So, that’s pretty much it. Feel free to discuss this in the forum thread. (Check out the Outlaw Star UK Articles section.) I think only the biggest Outlaw Star fans would have read the whole thing, as most would be fine with just the PDF. Also remember to let me know which articles you’d like next! I know various Outlaw Star topics I could write about, but reader input is always welcome.
I actually forgot to post this. Oops! I think at the time I felt reluctant to post the results and then I forgot. It’s my job though to be consistent in posting these updates. So, the winner is… *drumroll*
Me, a.k.a. Mantis.
Yeah, not to boast or anything, but hey, consistency’s consistency. I only bought a couple of tickets, but the mighty green insectoid gods gave me 1600 wong. That’s almost as much as Gene got for taking down the fake Zomba, so that’s not bad, right? Tickets aren’t that expensive and you might get lucky next time. There’s only just over a couple of weeks left until October’s lottery is over, so it might be worth the gamble. Good luck.
September’s Member of the Month polls ended in a tie, but the rule of a tie is the member with the most posts in the month wins. (It’s the fairest way of handling a tie I can see, aside from the site staff making a choice which might be seen as biased.) So, although Dr. Killjoy and kokirininja had the same number of votes, kokirininja won and he has been awarded 2500 wong and a golden name for nearly a month. He’ll also receive an achievement soon.
Want to become an October candidate? Becoming a candidate is simple enough. You just need to have an account and have posted twenty-five times for the month by the 24th of October. However, becoming a candidate and being an influence in the community are two different things. Be a positive contributor and if you weren’t successful last time, think about what you could have done differently to earn those votes.
For the most part, it’s because a lot of people chose to vote for the same person and not enough people voted, so I don’t feel there was a very good spread. So even if you don’t become a candidate this month, please do vote anyway when the polls open on the 24th. Be sure to read the MotM rules in the relevant forum, and heck, even say congratulations to this month’s winner. Thanks again.
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