Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise - Releases

[Rolo]

Thanks for the post as I was on the fence of purchasing this BD.

Is yours an import or domestic BD?
Is the soundtrack much improved with the PCM track or the Dolby TrueHD track?

Thanks!

[MOONPHASE]

Wow it looks awesome i cant wait for Wings of Honneamise to come out

[u_nick]

Great news, an d thanks for those shots. Hopefully this will make more and more people realize that animation will benefit from Bluray as well!

[MOONPHASE]

So this means Bandai is neutral to the format war if you count Freedom on Hd-Dvd. Funimation we know supports Blu-Ray but not sure if it supports Hd-Dvd or not and all of the other anime companies dont know which one to support like for instance ADV Films even though in Japan they already have the Air Tv Blu-Ray boxed set and I watch the english dubbed and I think all anime fans should purchase it, its a great anime series .

[u_nick]

From what I can tell Bandai And Bandai Visual are different. Bandai Visual went HDDVD first, releasing Freedom and a couple others maybe, but then their entire country went Blu. They still had contracts to uphold apparently, so they couldnt just drop it all together. so they went dual-format. People are assuming theyll eventually go blu only.

but from what i understand, the Bandai with the larger number of releases (formerly Love Hina, other general releases, etc) is a different company, so we dont officially have an announcement or plans on what they are going to do.

EDIT: Also I'm hoping we get an announcement of ADV soon. Now that they own or are running the sales for Geneon, they have a ton of titles between them that I would LOVE to see released on Blu. Especially the recently licensed Gurren Lagann

[WickyWoo]

Both Bandai Japan and its US subsidiary are releasing on both formats now

All the titles they just announced are Blu only, and the HD versions are not sold in retail stores in Japan

Sounded like filling a contractual obligation to me

[FF750]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

All the titles they just announced are Blu only, and the HD versions are not sold in retail stores in Japan

Sounded like filling a contractual obligation to me

Then I stand corrected, I thought they were still doing both in Japan like they were here.

[Frode]

ADV does not have the rights to Air BD, which doesn't really matter much since it was an upconvert to begin with. They *did* get the complete remastered 5.1 audio track though and included it on the DVDs. That alone is very much worth it. It's just too bad they didn't get any of the extras.

They also have no plans of releasing hi-def on either format at this time. It's just too expensive and the sales number don't support it. Anime on DVD sells pretty low numbers to begin with, and I can't think of any titles they might have that could sell well enough for it to be feasible. Maybe if they release Akira in collaboration with Geneon and Bandai Visual, but that's pretty much the only one that comes to mind.

Bandai Entertainment.. is not going anywhere close BD for a long time either. At the current growth rate I'd say we probably have a year or so before you see more of the US anime studios commit to a HD format. They have a lot of SD material that's never going to come out in hidef to begin with, so they can afford to wait.

[WickyWoo]

You're probably going to see a lot of disc co-productions with Japan

For the record, all the non-theatrical anime coming out in "HD" are upconverts

[Frode]

FLAG is not an upconvert I believe. It's more of a compilation OVA.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=ANSX-5024

That leaves Air and Yukikaze, which are upconverts as you note.

[Frode]

Full Metal Panic, Rahxephon, and Noir were announced for WMV-HD way back, but were pulled and never actually released.

A little bird told me that it's fairly safe to say that Air won't be released in the US on BD. A lot would have to happen for that to be a reality, and DVD sales aren't a factor in this case. If you like the show or are interested in it just get the DVDs. The only thing you're missing out on is an interview extra and two music videos specifically made in hi-def for the Japanese BD.

[MOONPHASE]

the interview i wouldnt care about the music in Air is awesome and i would like to have music videos of Air in HD. Since I have the PS3 with the latest system update i get to watch Air in HD anyways so its not a complete loss for me but still I would buy Air BD with the english dubbed anyday even if it means buying 10 copies. When there is an anime i really love watching Ill buy as many copies as i want even though that would mean not being able to afford others.

[Frode]

Well if you really want the videos you can order the Japanese release.

[FF750]

Originally Posted by Rolo

Is yours an import or domestic BD?
Is the soundtrack much improved with the PCM track or the Dolby TrueHD track?

Thanks!

This is the domestic BD/DVD combo I posted about a few days ago. The street date wasn't supposed to be until first week of September but my favorite online anime store always seems to get their stuff early.

I didn't really have much time to check out the soundtrack - I just gave the discs a quick viewing in snippets so I can't really comment, plus I'm not really picky about audio. There didn't seem to be a lot of directionality or surround effects to the parts I watched (the rocket launch for example) but it's an old movie so I wasn't expecting much except for clean audio which it did deliver on. Anyway, the last time I watched Honneamise it was on VHS so I'm more than happy with this release