Thoughts on Anime Blu-ray and possibly 3D

You can find it on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Akira-Collect...T098/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338790640&sr=8-2

For some reason only the expensive version is available. I got mine a couple years ago from Best Buy. It was just the regular version, like $20 I think.

 

Amazon.ca carries it but it's out of stock temporarily

http://www.amazon.ca/Akira-Blu-ray-...U182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338838208&sr=8-1

At $60 you can see why no brick and mortar stores are carrying it.

Haven't heard anything about the transfer being better then the DVD from Pioneer

 

Well, it's HD, unlike the DVD. It looks pretty good to me. I believe both the DVD and the Blu-ray are based on the HD film transfer from 2001.

 

Review of the Bandai version from 2009

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewshd/akiraghost2friday.html#aki

 

I have the Japanese BD set and it is extremely clean looking. Makes you want all of those classic 80's OVAs to come out on BD right now. Too bad 3x3 Eyes was only upscaled, still better than the DVD though.

 

Really? That’s great news. Do the BluRay versions have all the extras from the DVDs as well? Oh, and are they English subbed? I can understand Japanese but there are some parts of BBC that are a bit too technical at times.

 

Well, I went ahead and ordered the Bubblegum Crisis Bluray set for only 7000 yen and ...........



..... well, the image quality is very good. Still a little soft but considering the age of the animations this is an excellent remake but the question is, do you really need it when you have this?



You see, the BluRay while having a vastly improved picture over the DVD which looks like it's been copied using shitty composite due to all the bleeding crap on the reds. It contains NO extras at all. Yes, that's right. NO BLOODY EXTRAS!!! It doesn't have any subtitles at all, only the Japanese soundtrack (No bad thing actually) and NO, and I'll say it again, NO extras! Just look at how jam packed the DVDs are with extras.



It's a bloody disgrace that a western made DVD of a Japanese animation can be so generous with the extras while the Japanese BluRay with much more space has sod all. In an ideal world you need the DVD for all the extras (so many of them) and the English subs and the BluRay for the far superior image and sound.

One thing I did notice that I've never noticed before is this very cheeky cameo (without permission I'm guessing).



Yeah, it's Panthro from Thundercats!!!



Yakumo

 

Yeah, that does piss me off... it seems they do it on purpose, so you have to buy both the DVDs and the Blu-rays if you want to have the extras as well... greedy bastards.

 

What makes it worse is that the BluRays should cost 21'000 yen with tax included. That's a lot of money. You could buy 3 brand new PS3 or 360 games for that much money.

 

I heard that alot of companies don't like the idea of putting their anime on blue ray because, anime is cheaper in the usa. The problem is that the usa blueray discs are the same region as the japanese blue ray discs so anime companies will lose money because of importers. This is what I have heard. I guess If this is such a problem remove the japanese audio option for the blue rays.

 

And yet there are Ghibli films on blu ray that aren't on blu ray in the us. of course they are crazy expensive. The Totoro/Grave of the fireflies pack is almost $200

one problem with US anime blu rays is alot of them (mostly Funimation) are released ONLY as combo pack. This is a problem with blu ray in general though I don't understnad blu ray/DVD combo packs. If I wanted a DVD of something I'd just buy the DVD If I wanted a Blu Ray i'd buy JUST the Blu ray If I wanted a digital copy I'd probably have Itunes or something for the digital movie. (All my digital copies are going to my cousin)

Blu Ray/DVD combo packs make no sense and in a niche thing like anime it REALLY makes no sense

 

It is still true that most Japanese people do not buy DVDs, even if they were crazy cheap as they tend to rent or watch them on demand. I believe that if you look at the back of most BR/DVDs it will say something like SALE or RENT, the last part is generally why they are so expensive.

 

I remember getting a catalog for VHS tapes back in the day and movies in said catalog were between $70 and $120 apprently they were rentals

 

Japanese don't do on demand but they do love to rent. On demand video services here are years behind the west. Even our 360s only have the Zune player and HuLu. That's it! And Hulu has far less stuff than the west. It's crazy because we have the internet speed but just no quality services.

 

Those companies have told Amazon to not ship the US product to Japan. Try ordering some and see for yourself.

 

Get a VPN service and then it doesn't matter too much. I use US Hulu to watch current shows and US Steam to register my games all of the time.

 

I still probably wouldn't watch it really. I like to watch British shows mostly (since I'm British) and I get all of them from UK Nova or TheBox normally the same day of broadcast in the UK or a day later and in HD most of the time. For US shows I sort of like the older stuff such as the 80's Knight Rider. Saying that there are a few modern shows I watch. Steam isn't for me either since I like physical media. I do use the UK Xbox Live to get DLC for none Japanese games though.

 

Well I'd think a middle man would still cost less. Heck if I were getting paid (fat chance), I'd consider helping once in a while getting anime to Japan.

 

Really? Looks like Amazon don't care because I order 90% of my BluRays in US format from Amazon.com I must have had about 20 or so discs by now with a few more on the way. Or is it only anime that is effected?

 

Honestly, I don't see not having extras as a con. Because most people just want to watch the movie. While I do like seeing how things were done as much as the next guy. It's not a requirement and i'm not going to lambast something for it. However if the price is way high then I can see how it would be a welcome legit complaint.(Especially in Japan where Anime pricing is absolutely absurd.)

Also you have to consider that releasing old Animations on Blu-ray can be a doubled edged sword. Any low quality stuff from poor animating(Or even Shadows behind characters on the film from cel placement) or low budget will be a lot more apparent.
Then there's whether they have the original film master in the first place to make the new transfer. If they use a not so perfect master the results won't be as good as they could be. Sometimes they just upscale from SD masters.(Which are usually a mixed bag. But still entirely watchable)


But too, it's Animation and so the increase in quality isn't always going to be as apparent in comparison to real life movies.

However Personally I like the increased quality whether marginal or not most of the time.

like the ZZ Gundam Blu-rays
Older release

R2 Remastered DVDs


Blu-ray (720p so the website isn't stretched to kingdom come)


It looks clean enough. A lot of compression artifacts are improved upon and it looks filmic with all the grain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNjf0OeMCkA Here's one of the OPs from it on youtube in 1080p. (But it's been stretched to 16:9 for some reason. I don't recall them being stretched. It should be 4:3. But still you can see how nice it looks in motion)