The Old School Otaku Lounge

Various versions of the Daicon Opening Animations have been bouncing around on YouTube and NicoNico for years, but this one seems a hair better than earlier efforts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUjooR9sqM

The realities of Daicon IV's amateur production and limits of the LD format suggests that might be as good as we can get, although it would be great to see a fan restoration effort a la To-Y from a few years back.

Thanks for these! I never tire of watching them

I finally got around to watching the youtube video. Thanks for the link!

Before I ever got into old anime (80s and 70s) and despite having more modern anime tastes at the time, Gainax was one of the first studios I actually looked up more information about. The first time I watched these openings (either in middle school or early high school) I thought they were intriguing and cool then and it's still a treat to watch every time I see them. It got more enjoyable for me to watch as I grew older and could actually recognize more of the references.

Since this was something I knew about before I cared about old anime, I assumed that most anime fans at school were aware of the Daicon III & IV openings but it didn't take me long to find out that I was sorely mistaken.

karageko wrote:
Since this was something I knew about before I cared about old anime, I assumed that most anime fans at school were aware of the Daicon III & IV openings but it didn't take me long to find out that I was sorely mistaken.

Ah yes.. I also suffer from the problem in that I presume that if -I- know something, everyone else knows it too. If something is easy for me, it is easy for everyone.

It is often not true, but I still have trouble with it sometimes.

Zimmerit wrote:The realities of Daicon IV's amateur production and limits of the LD format suggests that might be as good as we can get, although it would be great to see a fan restoration effort a la To-Y from a few years back.

I've had "HD remaster" versions of the Daicon Openings pop up in my YouTube feeds and searches for a while now - whenever it get down on anime, I can always watch them and remember how cool anime was and it kinda picks my spirits back up. Much like that To-Y fansub, these are at-home, amateur jobs; I don't know if there are any qualified pro-editors behind them or not. One example I've found is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-840keiiFDE

It's only the openings for 3 and 4, unlike what looks like the whole LD you linked, but it might be possible to get a bit cleaner version despite the LD source. I understand that it's a huge PITA to do but I feel like getting very clean transfers of older anime is the next step in our overall passion project, if we can consider the history of fan recording and fan distributing Japanese Cartoons as an integral part of the fandom.

runesaint wrote:

karageko wrote:
Since this was something I knew about before I cared about old anime, I assumed that most anime fans at school were aware of the Daicon III & IV openings but it didn't take me long to find out that I was sorely mistaken.

Ah yes.. I also suffer from the problem in that I presume that if -I- know something, everyone else knows it too. If something is easy for me, it is easy for everyone.

It is often not true, but I still have trouble with it sometimes.

Count me in on that, too. I'm surprised by it in mysterious ways, like sitting on a panel and I just nonchalantly drop some fact or figure and everyone just stops in their tracks.