The Old School Otaku Lounge

Too bad all the remastered versions of Robotech have the sound effects tracks replaced with all new sound effects. I have the original remastered Macross, Mospeada, and Southern Cross on DVD, so it's not like I need Robotech for anything other than nostalgia. Replacing the sound effects totally kills that.

I heard about that, so laaaaaaame. I don't know why they ever do that. :/

Just a reminder, next Tuesday, 08/27/13, Discotek's box of Space Pirate Captain Harlock is due to street.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DEL ... UTF8&psc=1

And right now Amazon has it at a pretty decent price.

Duty for Tomorrow! Buy it!.

Anyone here who gets Harlock first, tell us about the DVD quality. I've heard that a few Discotek releases lately have had some minor annoyances.

llj wrote:Anyone here who gets Harlock first, tell us about the DVD quality. I've heard that a few Discotek releases lately have had some minor annoyances.

Oh, I'll be all over it looking for mistakes and flaws.

Is there anything specific I should look for? I have to say, most of the complaints I read back in the days of Anime on DVD were completely lost on me, because the people complaining had these super elite home theater setups. Me, I just have a quality low-end flatscreen and a DVD player so I won't be able to tell if it isn't true Dolby 5.1 surround or anything like that.

Skips, loading failures, out of synch subs I can spot.

I'm a tad concerned about how many episodes seem stuffed onto each disc.

llj wrote:Anyone here who gets Harlock first, tell us about the DVD quality. I've heard that a few Discotek releases lately have had some minor annoyances.

What kind of flaws? I'm friends with a guy who handles a lot of their authoring, and he's absolutely meticulous. Discotek, I've found, have also been good about pursuing and acquiring the best masters-- their recent release of the four theatrical Saint Seiya movies is top quality, you can really tell that the recent HD remaster was their source.

SteveH wrote:I'm a tad concerned about how many episodes seem stuffed onto each disc.

42 episodes, 6 discs. Should be seven episodes per disc. As long as they're using DVD9s, they should look fine.

Along with the aforementioned Saint Seiya movies, I've also nabbed the Gaiking and Starzinger compilation movies that Shout! Factory has been releasing over the summer. These are pretty odd productions, the products of a vanity project by a Toei exec named Kozo Morishita. Mr. Moroshita's idea was to create compilation movies of some of Toei's classic properties (ones that hadn't had compilation movies before), dub them in English, and offer them over VOD services. Hilariously, for years these films were only offered over broadband pay services in Japan. But last year, Amazon started offering them to own via digital (at the hilariously expensive price point of $15 per film), and Shout! started with Gaiking in May.

These are dub-only, but the video is in pretty great shape and the discs are rock-bottom cheap-- I got each set (3 movies on 2 discs per set) for $12ish via Amazon. The dubs are pretty hilarious affairs-- Winckler's most significant adventure in dubbing anime is TEKKAMAN THE SPACE KNIGHT from way back when, and it shows. The audio mix is kind of flat, the voice cast is unusual (the evil overlord in Gaiking is played by Robert Axelrod, he of Power Rangers and Steve Brule fame-- and the Chinese pilot aboard the Star Dragon is none other than SF author David Gerrold!), and the delivery leaves something to be desired. Don't believe me? Just check out the vines I've been posting.
https://vine.co/v/hMQjH5mFTqT
https://vine.co/v/hMQ92K1JPHu

Needless to say this isn't great stuff if you're a purist, but I'm not. I'm having a lot of fun watching these, and have already preordered Danguard Ace. According to Winckler and his team, they've also dubbed compilation movies of Gegege no Kitaro, Tomorrow's Nadja, Flower Angel Lunlun, Captain Harlock, and Fist of the North Star. I'm hoping we see the first three sets released, at least-- I'm not sure the Harlock and HnK sets could come out here, since Discotek's already released those TV series.

I've also nabbed the first 26-episode set of Right Stuf's Princess Knight. I've had a huge pile of assorted episodes of this show for years, so needless to say I'm happy to kiss those old bootlegs goodbye. The video quality on these sets is generally good, though TRSI had to recreate the OP with elements from Tezuka Productions. These are also dub-only, since the original producer (Joe Oriolo, no less) made edits to several episodes. I'm also having fun watching this show, which is crudely animated and dubbed at times, but also really colorful, zany, and inventive.
https://vine.co/v/hM5px2upi0n
https://vine.co/v/hMpPKL76TpW

That's what I've got on my "classics" pile currently. I'm jonesing pretty hard for Right Stuf to cough up a release date for Space Adventure Cobra TV - they were promising late 2013 when they announced it at the beginning of the year. We'll see!

Mike Toole wrote: According to Winckler and his team, they've also dubbed compilation movies of Gegege no Kitaro, Tomorrow's Nadja, Flower Angel Lunlun, Captain Harlock, and Fist of the North Star. I'm hoping we see the first three sets released, at least-- I'm not sure the Harlock and HnK sets could come out here, since Discotek's already released those TV series.

I'm preeeeeeeetty sure I've seen the dub of Flower Angel! If its the same one that came out in the 80s, at least. OH MAN. That was my first "magical girl" show, I think that's why I latched onto Sailor Moon so hard when that came out. I remember it not being intolerable (iirc, the English opening music was re-written with a Stevie Wonder sound to it, and wasn't that bad!) I'd totally pick up a release of that for nostalgia factor alone!

Mike Toole wrote:I'm jonesing pretty hard for Right Stuf to cough up a release date for Space Adventure Cobra TV - they were promising late 2013 when they announced it at the beginning of the year. We'll see!

I've been wondering about this myself. I hope they haven't run into technical problems with it or something.

Mike, I've gone on and on about the Japanese and 'old playbooks' (as I'm sure you recall ) and those Shout! Factory discs sure have that feel- not only reacting to the American anime industry 'common knowledge' of the '90s that long TV series (i.e. anything that isn't a movie or OAV) just couldn't sell, but also the Rental business 'common knowledge' of the '80s, anime is kidvid and kids just can't handle anything over 90 minutes.

Add to that the Tekkaman thing. Recall, Fred Patten was onboard with that, and HIS creative vision was to emulate Battle of the Planets, only without any budget to add in 7-Zark-7.

Add to THAT the odd idea that Force Five and Shogun Warriors are BIG THINGS so let's trade on that nostalgia coin.

(Yes, both are 'things' and have intense vocal fan voices but nowhere near the market of the 'mass successes' like Robotech or Sailor Moon or the ever eternal Dragonball Z)

So, that all sounds like a recipe for a super hot mess to me. Product designed for times and markets long gone.

I guess the thing that I dislike about those compilations is they likely close the door to any of those series getting a full release. Mind, I'm not so worried about Gaiking but I could do with a nice Starzinger set, ya know?

And here's where I get back to that 'playbook'. Now that Kozo Morishita has had this project reach market (regardless if he's still attached, or dead, or whatever) it is forever enshrined at Toei as "the way to do things in America".

Because this wasn't some rinky-dink release by some nobodies like ADV, this was a MAJOR RELEASE (well...) by a MAJOR HOLLYWOOD COMPANY (well, we know they're a boutique releasing company, not like Warner Bros or Paramount) and that, that has been the goal, the mark of 'making it' for decades.

Never mind that if the discs sell more than 5000 units I'll be shocked to my very socks. Really, there's just no market! These would be a staple at Blockbuster- in 1989. But there is no Blockbuster anymore. Have they hit Netflix? Did Shout! even solicit to them? There's no Suncoast anymore to promote and buy 10,000 units. How will people even HEAR about these nowadays?

ah, anyway, best of luck to them. I'm glad you're enjoying them. I'm just waiting for more Discotek goodness. DR. SLUMP SPACE MOVIE, bitches! YO!

Honestly, I wish more long TV series would get the compilation film treatment. Hit the highlights, we're busy people, got things to do, I am not gonna be watching 73 episodes of Starzinger, let's face it. Terrible dubbing I can live without, though.

Mike Toole wrote:

llj wrote:Anyone here who gets Harlock first, tell us about the DVD quality. I've heard that a few Discotek releases lately have had some minor annoyances.

What kind of flaws? I'm friends with a guy who handles a lot of their authoring, and he's absolutely meticulous. Discotek, I've found, have also been good about pursuing and acquiring the best masters-- their recent release of the four theatrical Saint Seiya movies is top quality, you can really tell that the recent HD remaster was their source.

Lovely Complex had some issues with blurring AND jaggies, although there was speculation that the problems originated from the source materials. Same people mentioned that Samurai Pizza Cats also had some similar issues.

http://www.fandompost.com/oldforums/sho ... plex/page8