Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets) Collection Oct 29

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Thomas Guycott

Manga are comics, so no there aren't any missing episodes.

And that presentation method looks awful.

Agreed, the DVD presentation of the manga was pretty poor in layout. But re-done in HD it could have looked far better since it would have had sufficient resolution to include the English text within the comic art itself, if they actually bothered to do that, which they obviously didn't.

[Batmon77]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I'll probably try it with the English audio dubbing first. I'm actually unfamiliar with that new dub and it seems they put some work into it, so it may not be a bad option. But if the background audio sound fx or music suffers due to the dub I'll likely go with the original audio. Depends how well made the dub is. A lot of times I find the dubbed version of any release suffers in quality compared to the original audio.

i watched the dvd last night and the dub sounded better than the original.

but the original japanese has a natural drama thats slightly lost with the dub remix. either way u get the story in the end.

[reanimator]

I watched episode 1 subtitled, episode 2 dubbed. The dub is perfectly fine, but I'll probably stick with the original language track in the future.

PQ is very nice. I would agree that the colors look slightly washed out, but this is certainly preferable to any over-cranked neon colors.

[Weirded Wonder]

Who has the best price on this?

[Kriztoffer Swank]

This can currently be had from ImportCDs.com for $62.34 using promo code SAVE10. That price includes shipping (though there's an additional $1.50 handling fee for the entire order).

[blu_jake]

Originally Posted by mar3o

That's obscene. Those are the kind of sellers that make me sick to my stomach.

I hope no one here buys that, since that is the Japanese version of the boxset. The price is actually pretty close being that it would be an import copy. Plus that version does not include any English at all. Basically that version was released in Japan only a few years ago & is probably where the HD masters were sourced to Sentai.

[blu_jake]

I have the complete DVD set from when it was first released & have always thought 9 bonus dvd's was overkill. Each bonus disc was at most maybe 15-20 minutes of material & some of it might have been repeated. All of the bonus materials from the original 9 dvd's could easily have been put onto 3-4 discs. I believe it was more of a marketing thing to have them packaged as 2 volumes each with a 3rd bonus disc. those boxes takes up so much space, but the art by Alex Ross is too beautiful not to display. Even 6 sets (each with 3 volumes + 1 bonus disc) would have been better than the 9 sets that were released. But i digress. Suffice to say, 1 single BD seems sufficient enough for all the original bonus material as well as the OVA's.

[reason108]

Originally Posted by blu_jake

I have the complete DVD set from when it was first released & have always thought 9 bonus dvd's was overkill. Each bonus disc was at most maybe 15-20 minutes of material & some of it might have been repeated. All of the bonus materials from the original 9 dvd's could easily have been put onto 3-4 discs. I believe it was more of a marketing thing to have them packaged as 2 volumes each with a 3rd bonus disc. those boxes takes up so much space, but the art by Alex Ross is too beautiful not to display. Even 6 sets (each with 3 volumes + 1 bonus disc) would have been better than the 9 sets that were released. But i digress. Suffice to say, 1 single BD seems sufficient enough for all the original bonus material as well as the OVA's.

Yes! The space saved on my shelf is almost like getting an brand new shelf. The blu ray handles the material well. They do have the OVA`s and extras on 2 different discs though. I think they could have fit some of the missing extras on the disc had they tried. Perhaps the layout of the original dvd menu manga material kept them from transporting it over.

[Weirded Wonder]

Thanks for the importcds price & discount. Cancelled my other order and saved $70.

[JMK]

Gatchaman Blu-ray Review

[Weirded Wonder]

Great review. Cannot wait until my copy arrives.

[Rahxephon]

I bet the box set is region A locked?

[Vlahka]

Just wondering if the new english dub voice actor for Kiop does that silly musical stutter thing from the original dub. That always got under my skin.

[Thomas Guycott]

Originally Posted by Rahxephon

I bet the box set is region A locked?

It is.

Originally Posted by Vlahka

Just wondering if the new english dub voice actor for Kiop does that silly musical stutter thing from the original dub. That always got under my skin.

The English dub for Gatchaman is significantly more faithful to the original Japanese performances than Battle of the Planets. Neither version of Jinpei possess Keyop's weird musical tic.

[Vlahka]

Awesome thanks for that. I'll most likely listen to the japanese track but I'm glad that stupid thing wasnt repeated.

[Rahxephon]

Originally Posted by Thomas Guycott

It is.

Thanks.
I hope there will be a UK release of the show.

[mar3o]

I was expecting to hear a bit more discussion in here surrounding this set. I won't get to open mine until Christmas. I read the review on this site. The screenshots look very good - nowhere near as washed out and bright as the other, earlier-posted screenshots looked. The screenshots included with the review look very natural, though a bit faded in color perhaps. Nothing a bump in my tv's color saturation can't improve. Overall it sounds very good, but it's a shame about the stretched extras. What on Earth were they thinking? Could it just be a mistake?

[tkbryant]

My copy shipped today from importcds.com via USPS from CA to IL. I probably won't get it til Monday...Saturday at the earliest. Really looking forward to this. After seeing the US dubbed episodes via online streaming, this will be a HUGE leap in quality for me.

[reason108]

Originally Posted by mar3o

I was expecting to hear a bit more discussion in here surrounding this set. I won't get to open mine until Christmas. I read the review on this site. The screenshots look very good - nowhere near as washed out and bright as the other, earlier-posted screenshots looked. The screenshots included with the review look very natural, though a bit faded in color perhaps. Nothing a bump in my tv's color saturation can't improve. Overall it sounds very good, but it's a shame about the stretched extras. What on Earth were they thinking? Could it just be a mistake?

Well, I had received mine a while back and have posted some comments but at that time not too many people were posting because they had not got them yet. I would assume the conversation will pick up some once others get their set. But, people tend not to have much to say when things have been done right.

However, I feel that there are some minor issues and 1 or 2 bigger issues with this box set.

My Complaints/Concerns:

1) The outer box that the blu rays are housed in doesn`t convince me that it will hold up for for the long run. It is not built like the previous dvd`s boxes were. But, hey, at least it is thicker than a slipcover.

2) This set is missing some of the extras from the previous dvd box set. Mostly the manga stuff and the Japanese voice actors profiles, etc.

3) The extras disc content is stretched. Its obvious but not too exaggerated. But, I did mention that it was obvious, right?().

4) Does not contain all of Alex Ross`s artwork from the previous dvd box set. It would have been nice to have it in a booklet but there is an book for sale. But, that means that you have to spend more money. Nice!


Otherwise, there is improved pq as one would expect with perhaps more accurate colors. Though I think it might be too cleaned up; too nice looking. But, I always remember the show looking very gritty. Now, it is a lot prettier.
Overall, I would give it an 4/5. Had it included all of the extras and artwork and had non stretched extras then I could see giving it 5/5. But, besides what it does offer, the best thing about it is the amount of shelf space that I am saving. But, instead of selling my older dvd box sets like I originally intended to do, I have to store them so that I can have the extras and bonus content the way it should be.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by reason108

Well, I had received mine a while back and have posted some comments but at that time not too many people were posting because they had not got them yet. I would assume the conversation will pick up some once others get their set. But, people tend not to have much to say when things have been done right.

However, I feel that there are some minor issues and 1 or 2 bigger issues with this box set.

My Complaints/Concerns:

1) The outer box that the blu rays are housed in doesn`t convince me that it will hold up for for the long run. It is not built like the previous dvd`s boxes were. But, hey, at least it is thicker than a slipcover.

2) This set is missing some of the extras from the previous dvd box set. Mostly the manga stuff and the Japanese voice actors profiles, etc.

3) The extras disc content is stretched. Its obvious but not too exaggerated. But, I did mention that it was obvious, right?().

4) Does not contain all of Alex Ross`s artwork from the previous dvd box set. It would have been nice to have it in a booklet but there is an book for sale. But, that means that you have to spend more money. Nice!


Otherwise, there is improved pq as one would expect with perhaps more accurate colors. Though I think it might be too cleaned up; too nice looking. But, I always remember the show looking very gritty. Now, it is a lot prettier.
Overall, I would give it an 4/5. Had it included all of the extras and artwork and had non stretched extras then I could see giving it 5/5. But, besides what it does offer, the best thing about it is the amount of shelf space that I am saving. But, instead of selling my older dvd box sets like I originally intended to do, I have to store them so that I can have the extras and bonus content the way it should be.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I'm curious - have you been able to fix the stretched extras by switching aspect ratios in either your blu-ray player or your tv directly? My Samsung tv allows me to switch instantly between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios which is quite useful at times. But how effective it is would depend on how they stretched it. If they did a full stretch from 4:3 to 16:9, then by setting my tv to 4:3 it would "squish" it right back down to 4:3 with the proper black bars. But if they did something weird with the stretching then setting my tv to 4:3 wouldn't fix it completely because it would still wind up with an odd aspect ratio even set to 4:3. I'm curious to find out if the stretching can at least be corrected easily.

Also, do you find the color to be pale or faded at all? My one thought on the image quality of the screenshots on this site's review is that while it looks quite nice with accurate colors, it does look a bit less saturated than I was expecting. Maybe that's how it really was and we're used to seeing the colors over-saturated in "Battle of the Planets"?