Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

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cosmosamurai
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Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by cosmosamurai »

Well, it looks like I just entered a new phase in collecting madness - a 16mm film print of Starzan episode 30 from eBay (ep 20 in pic, as the seller had a number of reels). A Japanese print, with the reel still in the bag from the Imagica film lab, it seems likely to have been used as a master for some abortive attempt at localizing the show (it came from California, naturally with Hollywood and all, and the title slip on the case has the episode name, etc. in Japanese on the back with a sticker in English on the front. As a print used for production, it has basically no wear like a TV broadcast/exhibition print and there is no color fade (seller pic captured from a projection of one of the prints).

Very cool stuff - I still kick myself over missing some eps of Harlock that apparently were found a few years back. The appearance of these studio prints are usually similar, in a rugged shipping case with metal corners and cloth closure straps, and caches of them surface every now and then as someone stumbles on the remains of some defunct localizer from waaay back, in a storage war auction or similar. That kind of history is really neat, and makes these prints a piece of history. Considering these shows were usually filmed in 16mm, these prints are faithful records of the original.

I just need to dig out one of my projectors, as I have a beautiful 1940s Bell & Howell and a newer one from the 70s-80s. Another missed chance was when a complete 35mm Troma print of Totoro was on Ebay over a decade ago, before much of the Ghibli recognition, and it could have been mine (a 35mm PJ is more daunting tho, along with reel changeovers).
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cosmosamurai
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by cosmosamurai »

The actual film.
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DKop
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by DKop »

If you can find a way to capture this let me know, I'd love to get a copy and share that with some people online that I know will enjoy it :D
davemerrill
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by davemerrill »

that is 100% filled with awesome!

Collecting film is a road that I have been tempted to start down, but so far I have not yet begun that journey.
cosmosamurai
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by cosmosamurai »

DKop, have you seen this 16mm episode somebody transferred onto Youtube?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRJNxiclLY8

I think they took a video of a projected screen, with a telecine or scanner it would be a bit less washed out etc. (but it's still the best clip on YT from that rare show and looks pretty good). Film reels are pretty much HD before HD was a thing, provided you have good enough capture tools.
cosmosamurai
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by cosmosamurai »

Dave, your Starzan article is a very interesting treatment of the space "King of the Jungle" and that background made this print even cooler. The mystery of what plans these prints were attached to is deep - seemingly more than just a US representative shopping the show around, as the episode numbers that have surfaced suggest they had the whole run. The mind boggles at the possibilities...
SteveH
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by SteveH »

cosmosamurai wrote: Sat May 19, 2018 7:38 am Dave, your Starzan article is a very interesting treatment of the space "King of the Jungle" and that background made this print even cooler. The mystery of what plans these prints were attached to is deep - seemingly more than just a US representative shopping the show around, as the episode numbers that have surfaced suggest they had the whole run. The mind boggles at the possibilities...
Well, it's not fair to hint and tease. Who was it? There must be some record of who was shopping it around. It's not normal for a licensor to have a complete run of a show on hand before a deal is made, it's far more normal to have one or a handful (5 the usual number) episode translated in some manner (dubbed like the Ziv Captain Harlock, subbed like the 16mm print of the first episode of Dunbine, shown at the 1984 World Con, and the 5 episodes of Zillion and Nadia dubbed by Harmony Gold and re-purposed by Macek's Streamline Pictures as 'video comics').

(why dub only 5 episodes? The thought was that if they couldn't get anyone to 'bite' and back a show they could be run as a week long 'special event', or even rotated into a 'Force Five' style carousal of a blanket 'name' with changing content. Conversely they could even be cut down and edited into a 'movie'. It was a somewhat clever idea but as always poorly, nay, ineptly executed. )

I mean, running dupes of the master prints and shipping them to the USA is expensive on what ultimately is speculation.

So I'm guessing it WAS Harmony Gold, as they had a butt ton of Tatsunoko licenses sewn up circa the mid '80s, even if most of the shows ended up shopped to Europe.

Ya know what's funny? These reels for StarzanS appear after the series comes out on home video in Japan, after DECADES of being 'lost'. I can't help but think there's a bigger story here than just "Oh an old attempt to localize this has surfaced". But then again, sometimes a cigar is just a surrogate phallic object. :)
runesaint
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by runesaint »

You might as well ask whatever happened with Saban Entertainment dubbing 13 episodes of Dragon Quest as Dragon Warrior and then....doing nothing with it.
Hm.
davemerrill
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by davemerrill »

I'm sure Fred Patten knows the story, if there's any story other than Tatsunoko aggressively marketing their shows to a worldwide audience. They were always on top of their game when it came to putting their product out there. I mean, they basically sold Gatchaman three times, that's a neat trick if you can pull it off.

I had a lot of fun researching that Starzan article and all I had to work with were off-air VHS copies, some in absolutely miserable shape, and it seemed like the very next day wham, there the show was, on BD/DVD. That's how the universe works sometimes.
cosmosamurai
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Re: Collecting anime film prints - Starzan!

Post by cosmosamurai »

Some additional info - I just won the episode 34 print and these prints appear to have been stuck in 1991 based on the Imagica lab label, so there's another piece in the Starzan puzzle.
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