Okay, here’s my prolonged explanation on how
Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (His and Her Circumstances, or
Kare Kano) from Q-Tec is probably the best the show will ever look given the circumstances behind its production.
Gainax, for all their incredible work, did some
really dumb sh*t
in the 90s.
(Here they are burning Kare Kano cels. This is from the ED to Episode 19. They did the exact same thing with Evangelion, and as a result, what few cels still exist are worth a fortune.)
In fact, it started
in the late 80s, but really came to a foothold when they began TV anime production
in the 90s. What was their offense? Implementation of digital effects.
Essentially, once computers came down
in cost
in the early 90s, animation studios were given cool new opportunities
in how to produce the visuals.
In 1995, Oshii’s Ghost
in the Shell became the first anime film to be fully composited on a computer, as it allowed for the implementation of digital text, frame manipulation and CG. Gainax, like IG, were among the first to implement digital stuff into their anime.
When one looks at the DVD release of Kare Kano, it’s presented at 29.97 fps like most DVDs, so a simple 2:3 pull down was done. When de-interlaced, it can be frame rate corrected, and some of it looks fine, but then we get to the biggest issue- 30i text.
For reasons beyond me, Gainax added digital text at 30i on top of a 2:3 telecine. So, you have 2D animation at 24p and digital text at 30i. What a mess. So for that reason, Q-Tec did the right thing
in presenting it at 1080i, as it would look really poor when frames are chopped out.
The next episode previews are pure 30i.
But, remember what I said- they added the 30i effects on a 2:3 telecine. Well, that was
in MPEG-2, presumably at SD resolution, and while it looks fine on a CRT, when put on any flatscreen display, the side effects are obvious. Telecine of the time wasn’t perfect, but by doing it at SD resolution, scenes with this digital text would have to be upscaled, as remember, the original cels were burned, and unless the original 16mm film with just the 2D animation exists (I have no clue) and that text was redone from scratch, it’s SD forever.
Which brings me to my next point. More downsides of doing stuff
in SD quality. Dot crawl is kinda obvious. Look closely, and you’ll see it.
Look at Miyazawa Yukino’s eye. While it’s blown up 200% from the DVD, and pixelation is obvious from blowing up from so low a resolution, you can see a checkerboard pattern
in her eye, hair and head cap. It’s pretty distracting. This is due to the D2 tapes.
In addition, while not digital by nature, Kare Kano was edited... on film. Like, they actually edited the film by cutting off frames of the film and you can see splice marks
in some frames. You can see the tape splices (that’s what the clear thing is). While not as often as Dot crawl appearing (which is pretty much at all times)- when it comes up, it’s insanely jarring as you see an artifact that ruins the image to a large degree.
Now, Q-Tec’s smearing can’t fix the film splices, but it can fix dot crawl. Take
Blue Submarine No. 6 Being an early digipaint series it has ugly dot crawling, and because Q-Tec smears the area with the colour it’s supposed to be, it has the side effect of eliminating dot crawl.
In particular look at the man’s jacket. Take a look:
(DVD, Bandai)
(Blu-ray, Q-Tec)
Overall, Kare Kano is royally f**ked. Add
in how Nozomi/RightStuf’s DVD release is censored- using the broadcast version of the series- with poor video compression and it’s impossible to find a perfect release. The only thing that will be improved for sure is the audio. It’ll be lossless (most likely
in LPCM), so it’ll have more clarity than any DVD release.
Can Q-Tec save Kare Kano? Nope. Dot Crawl is eliminated, but at the expense of some detail via smearing, which can be seen by some as an improvement over a sh*tty 480i telecine with bad compression (of the era- it had to be exported somehow, and I assume
in poor quality). So, Kare Kano looks like an early digipaint anime now. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. But, it was always doomed from the start. Unless they somehow find that 2D animation film and re-do all the text and effects, ala Star Trek TNG, it will never be
in true HD. It was mastered to D2- a composite video source, thus explaining the dot crawl and rainbows.
Sorry it’s a long post, but it had to be to explain everything.
Diagram to explain it:
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Finland
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Iceland
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Ireland
Israel
India
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Norway
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Linear Mode
