The Old School Otaku Lounge

As someone who has always been interested in different types of video formats, it’s become a hobby of mine to seek out anime releases on some of the more obscure formats available.

I recently picked up a copy of the U.S. release of Honey Honey (a series that Dave Merrill has done an excellent job covering on his Let’s Anime blog) on Video8, a format that was typically more well-known for its place in camcorders rather than commercial releases.


Image of Honey Honey on Video8 and a size comparison with a standard DVD release—the Video8 cassettes are very compact!

After doing a bit of research, it seems that the Video8 format may have received more support for commercial releases in Japan, though I haven’t encountered any of these myself. It seems that some of the DragonBall movies were released on Video8 in Japan; despite searching, I have never seen any images of these releases.

Has anyone else ever stumbled across anime released on Video8? Any other collectors out there?

Wow! Talk about obscure. I have never seen these before. Maybe I have seen them, but my brain couldn't register what I was seeing, so I didn't pay attention.

So what do you view these on?

greg wrote:Wow! Talk about obscure. I have never seen these before. Maybe I have seen them, but my brain couldn't register what I was seeing, so I didn't pay attention.

The support for commercial releases seems to have been rather small, even in Japan. Still, it would be interesting to see if you start noticing these in any shops now!

greg wrote:So what do you view these on?

There were actually several models of Video8 VCRs, though I've never seen one in person. Retro Thing has an interesting overview of a Video8 VCR and the format itself. I'm planning to pick up one of the VCRs on eBay to capture this tape (and any other future Video8 tapes I pick up), but I believe you can also play these with the use of a Video8 camcorder with A/V out.

oh wow, even more obscure than Beta now! Nice pick up. You'll have to let us know how the picture quality is when you're able to watch it!

usamimi wrote:oh wow, even more obscure than Beta now! Nice pick up. You'll have to let us know how the picture quality is when you're able to watch it!

I'll keep everyone posted; hopefully the tape has aged well!

Is Video 8 what we knew as High8? I recall Paramount released a number of movies on High8, 'The Hunt for Red October' being one that sticks in my mind.

No, wait, am I thinking of the digital tape format that eventually became a main computer 'backup' media for a number of years? Back in the days when 8 meg of RAM would cost hundreds of Dollars and a disc drive able to hold a whopping 250 meg could cost $500 or more?

DAT. That was the stuff. The tape designed to compete with CD. It was different from High8 I'm pretty sure.

Lordy, so much to remember when it comes to dead or otherwise forgotten media.

SteveH wrote:Is Video 8 what we knew as High8? I recall Paramount released a number of movies on High8, 'The Hunt for Red October' being one that sticks in my mind.

According to this page, it looks like Hi8 was the successor to Video8, similar to how S-VHS followed VHS.

SteveH wrote:No, wait, am I thinking of the digital tape format that eventually became a main computer 'backup' media for a number of years? Back in the days when 8 meg of RAM would cost hundreds of Dollars and a disc drive able to hold a whopping 250 meg could cost $500 or more?

DAT. That was the stuff. The tape designed to compete with CD. It was different from High8 I'm pretty sure.

Yup, looks like you are correct about DAT being used for computer storage!

SteveH wrote:Lordy, so much to remember when it comes to dead or otherwise forgotten media.

Couldn't have said it better myself; trying to keep track of all of the different types of forgotten media would certainly be a daunting task.

Kame-Sen'nin wrote:

greg wrote:Wow! Talk about obscure. I have never seen these before. Maybe I have seen them, but my brain couldn't register what I was seeing, so I didn't pay attention.

The support for commercial releases seems to have been rather small, even in Japan. Still, it would be interesting to see if you start noticing these in any shops now!

greg wrote:So what do you view these on?

There were actually several models of Video8 VCRs, though I've never seen one in person. Retro Thing has an interesting overview of a Video8 VCR and the format itself. I'm planning to pick up one of the VCRs on eBay to capture this tape (and any other future Video8 tapes I pick up), but I believe you can also play these with the use of a Video8 camcorder with A/V out.

For some reason, I seem to recall a model or two of VHS VCRs that could play Video8/Hi8/Super8 tapes in addition to standard VHS cassettes? Was that a thing or am I getting confused with something else entirely?

Neat find though! I'm curious, what formats have you found anime on for commercial release? While I doesn't surprise me that there were commercial beta releases, I've probably only seen ads for commercial beta and home recordings. I only learned about SVHS through fansubbing and that as the only time I saw anime on SVHS. I'd never thought to look for any on formats outside of the big ones (VHS, LD, Beta, etc.)

As a side note to DAT tapes being used for computer storage, my last couple years of university I got a bit of exposure to tape back up. The first company I worked with we had only a little bit of DAT machines; mostly newer (ie, 10 years old about) LTO tapes. When I interned at a bank there were a lot more DAT machines, about 50/50 DAT/LTO and it would not surprise me in the slightest if they were all still running. When I was studying for my undergrad, tape was still being pushed for disaster recovery and business continuity back-up solutions because while tapes themselves were very expensive, price-per-megabyte was cheaper than equivalent hard disk drive (at enterprise level) with the added benefits of less storage space required (to which is something we can all relate) and easier to archive.

Wow, this is awesome! I'll have to keep my eyes peeled on eBay if any Video8 titles show up, especially since I have a recording deck that can play these (granted, if it's still working).

Whenever people talk about obscure/outdated video formats, I always think about this scene in Bamboo Blade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaKeB5iZrIs

For me, I'm mostly only interested in formats that were superior to VHS in terms of picture quality. Although I have a strange curiosity for cartoons on the Super 8 format. It's interesting to me on a mechanical level.