Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets) Collection Oct 29

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Thomas Guycott

With a lot of anime series, the subtitles for the OP and ED alternate between English and Japanese for odd and even numbered episodes. It's just a trend by American anime distributors.

No kidding? I didn't realize this. Well I guess that explains it. Do you know what the reasoning is behind this?

[eastx]

Originally Posted by mar3o

No kidding? I didn't realize this. Well I guess that explains it. Do you know what the reasoning is behind this?

Some people want to sing along/read along to the lyrics karaoke-style, hence the romaji lyrics. More people want a translation. Putting both the translation and romaji on-screen at once is visually distracting, so they just alternate between episodes.

[Kriztoffer Swank]

When I said I'd prefer the product over a refund, they replied, "Unfortunately we cannot send out replacements." My only guess is that since their site doesn't show that it's in stock, they don't want to put a replacement copy on the backburner and issued a refund to prevent any further problems; or maybe it's in their policy not to send replacements for whatever reason.

The tracking info they provided is a big, fat blank, so that doesn't give a clue as to where the set got lost—if it even left their warehouse to begin with.


As to romaji lyrics, yeah, it's just fun sometimes to see how the lyrics are pronounced. I like anime releases that alternate English and romaji lyrics in the opening/closing.

[blu_jake]

blu ray looks wonderful, only complaint is the special features being stretched. Was lucky enough to find a used copy at a local record shop for $70. I put that copy on hold & went home to grab my dvd copies. I traded those in & got about $85 dollars in trade credit. basically I made $15 to upgrade to the blu-ray version. It was a good day indeed. Plus the set takes up MUCH less shelf space than the DVD box sets did, I will really miss the Alex Ross artwork though, But i still have most of that in the form of the top cow comic books.

[Weirded Wonder]

Is there a starblazers thread?

[Aztek]

Hi,

I finally decided and bought this set from bestbuy online, fortunately the package arrived in almost perfect condition(a couple of small dents on the corners but nothing to big to activate my OCD at full capacity ), I finally used a 50 dlls reward certificate that I wasn't sure in what to spend it but when the price on BB went to $85.99, I thought it was time

I'm still on the first disc, but oh man! the episodes look GORGEOUS, seriously I've never seen this series like this, I (re)watched a few of the extras, and in them, there are a few clips from the DVD, and WHAT A DIFFERENCE!, I also watched a bit of the OVAS and they look amazing too, I believe they are in 1080i, but still they look great!, so far I'm very happy with this set


And about the subs, they are quite big actually, here's a couple of pics:



As you can see in the second one, the text is "popping out" of the picture, and I don't think it's because the lines of the subs are to large, it must be the size of the font.

Originally Posted by blu_jake

blu ray looks wonderful, only complaint is the special features being stretched.

Yeah, I don't why they did that, but there's a way to watch them on FS, and as you can imagine is by changing the aspect ratio on your TV to 4:3 and then the extras will look fine, of course you will see the menu(BTW amazing picture on the background on the extras disc) compress, but no big problem there, you will only do this to watch the extras in their correct AR.

Originally Posted by blu_jake

Plus the set takes up MUCH less shelf space than the DVD box sets did, I will really miss the Alex Ross artwork though, But i still have most of that in the form of the top cow comic books.

I was very surprise on the size of the whole collection on DVD, I mean I knew that it was a big difference, I own the DVD boxsets, but once I had the bluray set on my hand and compare it with the DVD collection it just hit me

The art of Alex Ross is the main reason that I want to keep my DVDs, the art on the boxsets and DVD cases are amazing, I hope I never have the necessity of selling them

Originally Posted by mar3o

I'm not sure how I feel. The compression is of course far better - the DVDs are packed with compression artifacts. And the darker areas of the DVDs hide a lot of the details. The blu-rays show off a lot more shadow detail. But the color looks so incredibly under-saturated, I can't help but wonder if this is how it should look. Either every other version of Gatchaman/BOTP has been grossly over-saturated ever since the first day I saw it on tv in the 70's, or the color in this set is dialed down drastically.

Actually the "under-saturated" look is what I really like about this set, if this is not how the show is supposed to look, I don't know, but I found this youtube video, it's promo for the bluray release of " Mach GoGoGo", "Gatchaman" (among others) in Japan:

タツノコプãƒ* テレビアニメシリーズ ブルーレイBOXコレクション ver.2 - YouTube

I'm not really sure, but the clips there look a lot like the american bluray release to me, and I'm guessing that Sentai Filmworks use the Japanese HD transfers, I can't imagine them doing their own remaster/restoration.

I can't really say that the show should look like it's presented on the American bluray release, but if indeed Sentai used the HD transfers from Japan, then we can have a certain level of assurance that the HD remaster was done very carefully.


Anyway, it's not perfect set, sure, but I'm very happy with it, the episodes look great, the audio does its job, all the DVD extras are here(well I believe Sentai didn't include some comic books scans or something like that) plus we get the 1994 OVAS also in HD with the same English voice cast as the series, which I'm very grateful that Sentai Filmworks decided to dubbed them, I've never heard the Urban Vision dub, so I can't say which one is better, but I'm glad that they have the same cast.

Now back to Gatchaman!

[llj]

Anyone who buys a lot of Sentai BDs will know that subs that spill off the aspect ratio are common for them. It's not a problem if you're watching on a TV, but if you're projecting it, it is annoying.

This company has a lot of annoying quirks and QC issues but as far as I know Gatchaman is one of their best treated titles.

[monkeyjb1988]

Originally Posted by Aztek

I also watched a bit of the OVAS and they look amazing too, I believe they are in 1080i, but still they look great!, so far I'm very happy with this

You maybe just answered my question: you would say the OVAs are true HD or up scaled? Wouldn't matter to me either way (104 episodes tends to do that ), just curious. Thanks.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by eastx

Some people want to sing along/read along to the lyrics karaoke-style, hence the romaji lyrics. More people want a translation. Putting both the translation and romaji on-screen at once is visually distracting, so they just alternate between episodes.

Or they could just include an alternate subtitle track. Weird that they don't do that. - seems like the perfect solution, unless it's hard-subbed.

Thanks for the explanation though - now at least I know the reasoning behind it!

[llj]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Or they could just include an alternate subtitle track. Weird that they don't do that. - seems like the perfect solution, unless it's hard-subbed.

Thanks for the explanation though - now at least I know the reasoning behind it!

If they create two separate sub tracks for a relatively trivial thing, it's just another thing to worry about when it comes to BD production (and Sentai's QC is iffy at best--making things too complicated is a glitch in the making). So they just opt for the odd-even episode method. If it were a movie, though, they would have probably went with an alternate sub track.

[Underworld54]

So through 23 episodes and it's neat to see the progression of the animation (Less crude) and the new opening sequence (closer to BOTP). Loving this set!

[mar3o]

I received my replacement blu-ray case from Rightstuf to replace the first case which arrived broken. Amazingly fast service - I just talked to them a few days ago about this, after christmas, and I got it yesterday! And they shipped it free too. Great customer service!

If this had been Amazon, I would have had to ship the entire set back to them and wait for a new one to arrive, when it was fine except for the first case.

[Weirded Wonder]

Originally Posted by Underworld54

So through 23 episodes and it's neat to see the progression of the animation (Less crude) and the new opening sequence (closer to BOTP). Loving this set!

Through the first 9 episodes here, absolutely amazing. My youngest tagged along and she's hooked.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Beard Esquire

Through the first 9 episodes here, absolutely amazing. My youngest tagged along and she's hooked.

Awesome to hear there's a new fan getting into it! I'm a bit slow here - I just watched episode 3 tonight. I'm really enjoying it. I've never seen the series, other than as Battle of the Planets ages ago growing up, so I don't remember most of these too well, especially since they're so different uncut. Part 3 had a huge death toll. I guess a lot of them do uncut. The US version always had an explanation how everybody got away just in time, or everything was staffed by robots, or some such silliness.