Star Blazers Remastered

[davemerrill]

I don't know if I've mentioned this here, but certain individuals have re-mastered Star Blazers using HD Yamato video and good-quality audio from the American broadcast of Star Blazers. Sequences that were edited from the American version for content or time have been restored using existing audio and a little creative editing. Other sequences that did not make it onto the Voyager DVD release of Star Blazers, like the "coming next episode" bumpers, have also been restored where possible. It's kinda cool and you should check it out!!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... GtkvNXkfPY

[greg]

That's good news for Starblazers fans, but I'd rather the company allow the original Yamato to be released subtitled for North America. I am a bit intrigued with Starblazers, though, since I've never seen it. It was just slightly ahead of my time. With the way shows were edited for television so much back then, I have a very hard time wondering how they handled the second season especially, when a bunch of the characters die in the big fight at the end.

[_D_]

Go here:

http://www.ourstarblazers.com/

[davemerrill]

The American company that owns Star Blazers is a branch or a subsidary or a whatever of Nishizaki's Japanese outfit, that at one time was called Office Academy and later became Voyager. The show and all the films were released on home video in the United States, but they were produced as cheaply as possible and it's unlikely they will ever throw any more money at releasing a subtitled version of the original series in America.

Until recently Tim Eldred was producing their website, but somebody at corporate decided the stuff he was doing didn't fit in with their plans, so they cut him loose. Now the 'starblazers.com' domain takes you to a bare-bones site and Tim's stuff is up at ourstarblazers.com. It's my feeling that they are in another round of licensing the property to Hollywood and want nothing that may confuse the various legal departments. That's my guess.

I'm a fan, but in my opinion Star Blazers was for its time a really well-done adaptation. The voice acting is great, they went through a lot of trouble to smooth over or re-engineer things like Japanese text and on-screen violence that in other shows would simply be cut, and they went to great lengths to preserve the spirit of the original - including the musical score. Most of the on-screen death is not directly shown, but the show does not disguise the fact that characters die (Saito/Knox's death in the end of the Comet Empire being explained away through dialog is a notable exception).

[_D_]

Yes, I had heard that they want to produce a live action Star Blazers movie. Because I have been following the Yamato saga for so many years, Star Blazers has now become confusing for me. I wish them luck with their project though...

[Daniel]

I see you Corn Pone Flicks fellows are at it again -- another job well done! I myself am interested in preserving now long-gone TV-broadcast only stuff, so I'll definitely be taking a look.

Due to the extreme rarity of these clips, some of the sound had to be sourced from, of all things, audio cassette recordings made back in the 1980s.

Audio cassettes, versus VHS/Beta, were used as source material in some instances in this project? That's interesting. What's the story here?

[_D_]

As I recall, the original tapes I had made in 1980 also contain all the bumpers for upcoming episodes. I think the tapes I had from the Vancouver airings also have them. Would have to check for sure though...

Just watched a tape with episodes from the end of series 1 and the "in our next adventure" bumpers are on them. Interesting. no?

The Vancouver tapes from 1983 also have the bumpers from series 2. Also some neat commercials for the GI Joe comics from Marvel as well as a cool Zoids commercial I have not seen on Youtube...

[davemerrill]

I see you Corn Pone Flicks fellows are at it again -- another job well done! I myself am interested in preserving now long-gone TV-broadcast only stuff, so I'll definitely be taking a look.

...

Audio cassettes, versus VHS/Beta, were used as source material in some instances in this project? That's interesting. What's the story here?

Back in the day, and I'm talking WAY BACK IN THE DAY, before everybody had VCRs, we'd sometimes record our favorite TV shows onto audio cassette, just so we'd be have SOME recording of the show, even if it was just the audio.

I may be misremembering what I was told by CPF, however. I know most of what he's used has come from VHS.

[_D_]

I have recordings of the first manned lunar landing on 3 inch reel to reel tapes. Makes me feel really old...

[Heibi]

And if you really want subtitled versions of the uncut, unmolested, no added/changed dialog of Yamato you can always download series 1 and 2 from my torrents on nyaatorrents.