Anime DVD Release Comparisons

[PGW]

Can someone explain this whole "angle" thing to me? I popped in disc one of "Kiddy Grade" and switched angles on both my computer and standalone, and everything looks 100% identical. What was the point of this?

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Justin Sevakis

Back in the early days (over a decade ago now), Funimation used to release DVDs with both the English and Japanese versions of the opening and closing sequences included, accessible as alternate angles. It was kind of a cool feature -- those who selected the dub got translated credits, while those who selected the subtitled version got a more Japanese experience. And if that wasn't what you wanted, the other version was just a button-press away.

The problem with doing this is that DVD has some major technical limitations that make multi-angles kind of a bad idea. The biggest issue is that the players themselves can't read the disc any faster than 9 Mbps -- and that has to include all of the video, audio and subtitles. Assuming the disc has stereo English and Japanese audio, that eats up at least 0.4 Mbps, leaving only 8.6 Mbps for video. Having two different angles at once brings you down to 4.3 Mbps, which simply isn't enough for a decent picture -- you have to over-compress the video. Funimation's encoding quality in general wasn't so hot in those days, so at such a low bitrate the image REALLY suffered.

The early days of DVD usually meant people watching their discs on old analog tube TVs, which were so bad at reproducing detail that poorly compressed video often went unnoticed -- DVDs were such an improvement over VHS that people were still pretty happy. But as people gradually switched to flatter TVs employing newer technology, people began to notice. And those multi-angle discs just were not looking so good.

About a decade ago, the company hired some new production staff who realized that this was a problem, and the practice was put to bed. Ever since then, Funimation only includes the English credits -- which annoys some fans who would prefer to also have the original Japanese credits -- but it's a lot better than having garbage video quality. In the years since, the company has quietly reauthored most of the old discs and reissued them. This was never an issue with Blu-ray, which came well after all of this happened.

Could the practice return? It's doubtful -- Blu-ray doesn't really support multi-angle features the way DVD did, so instead you'd have to use seamless branching to "choose" between the two formats -- they would not be switchable. It's also a huge pain in the butt, and probably not worth the trouble.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ans...-05-09/.101627

FUNimation actually sort of continues this practice with streaming. Subbed streams for FUNimation titles leave the Japanese credits alone regardless of if you're watching the broadcast or home video version, and if you watch the dub, the credits will be in English. Honestly wish FUNimation would adopt the Sentai Filmworks method of credit rolls, that being, leave them alone and have an English-translated credit roll later. Also, would be great if FUNimation put their staff after the Japanese. FUNimation likes to make their staff look like the original creators/being more important than the original Japanese staff with their current placement.

[PGW]

Thanks, BigOnAnime. After I posted that, I began to suspect the credits were involved somehow.

[MOONPHASE]

I will personally never support the English Credits Scroll after the episode like Sentai does. Most of the time those Credit Scrolls are a joke and they Credit almost no-one except for like the main people who worked on it. Are sometimes when Sentai Credits more people in those but not often.

[GeoffOliver]

It’s really annoying when the credit scrolls are after every episode on a disc, especially when they repeat the same basic people over-and-over. Just once per-disc is fine. Honestly, I prefer translated credits unless the materials make it impossible.

[SpazeBlue]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

The ADV release of Princess Nine lacks the 5.1 Japanese audio track present on the Nozomi release. If one plays the 5.1 track for the opening, you get various sound effects during the opening, like when a bat hits the baseball.

Does it trade the 2.0 track for 5.1, or does it have both? The listing on the site only mentions 2.0.

[BoscoTheMan82]

The Lucky Penny release has the English 2.0 track and the Japanese 5.1 and 2.0 tracks

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by GeoffOliver

It’s really annoying when the credit scrolls are after every episode on a disc, especially when they repeat the same basic people over-and-over. Just once per-disc is fine. Honestly, I prefer translated credits unless the materials make it impossible.

The thing about credits is the opening are for general staff that don't really change from episode to episode, ending credits however are a much different story. Ending credits change from episode to episode, this being the Japanese staff, Japanese cast, as well as the English cast, and if you've ever looked at say FUNimation credits, it's very common for multiple things to change from episode to episode, mainly the ADR scriptwriter, ADR engineers (Free!: Dive to the Future had 13 of them), and mixing engineers. Also, the way FUNimation does many English-translated credits can be pretty bad. See: Assassination Classroom (Ugh at that opening), High School DxD, and the many shows they ruined when they didn't receive creditless materials (Birdy the Mighty: Decode especially suffered)

[GeoffOliver]

Well yeah, if they don’t have textless footage, they should never even attempt translated credits, unless they do what FUNi did for the DBGT endings (and the brief unique footage in opening 2) and properly rotoscope the credits out, but that’s not always worth the time and money. The most notorious example I can think of is Tokyopop butchering the Vampire Princess Miyu OP/ED with still frames and blocky credits because they didn’t get textless copies (Maiden Japan’s reissue fixed this).

It does annoy me when almost no Japanese staff are credited, like with Dragon Ball. The only non-English crew that FUNi ever credited were Toriyama, the director, composer, and theme song writers. I’ve heard that the Japanese dictate exactly who gets credited on their end, but that’s just ridiculous.

[BigOnAnime]

These still need to be put on here.

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

Some other things to note:

-Martian Successor Nadesico: ADV Films accidentally released the TV broadcast version. When Nozomi got it, they used the JP Blu-ray as the source, and the animation corrections caused things to not sync up properly. ADV Essential Anime Collection | Nozomi Release
http://catsspat.dyndns.org:2080/anim...001/index.html

-Sakura Diaries: Originally released with an English dub, but it turned out to be the edited version. Later the show was released uncut but subbed-only, then in 2005 the uncut version was dubbed with a different cast.

https://twitter.com/MichaelToole/sta...27577863626753

Also I finally realized that both the Nozomi DVD release and Blu-ray release of Martian Successor Nadesico are missing the English commentaries that were on the Essential Anime Collection discs, and thus also the 2008 Perfect Collection which re-used those discs. They're also missing the 5.1 upmix ADV added for the English dub for the Essential Anime Collection.

What the English episode commentaries were:

-Episode 1: Brett Weaver, John Swasey, Mark X Laskowski, Matt Greenfield
-Episode 10: John Swasey, Kelly Manison, Matt Greenfield, Paul Sidello
-Episode 19: Cynthia Martinez, Jay Hickman, Matt Greenfield, Tiffany Grant

[SpazeBlue]

Yep, got caught up in other things. Should be finished this weekend.

[Raye]

I had no idea alternate angles hurt picture quality until BOA pointed it out. Unfortunately, there are just some releases containing them that I will never part with and don't feel like upgrading like my special editions of BECK and Speed Grapher. The artboxes are very cool, and the special edition singles for Speed Grapher have to be some of the best FUNi has ever put out as they are near identical to the Japanese release.

[BigOnAnime]

With Beck, there's good reason to still have the singles, the following extras are not included in the 4-disc releases.

"A Life on the Road" Music Video, "A Day in the Life" Director Commentary, "With a Little Help From My Friends" Cast and Director Commentary, "We Can Work It Out" Music Commentary

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=283040

FUNimation was firing on all cylinders back in the day, their singles releases in terms of packaging are indeed gorgeous. If you want to know who was responsible for some of them including Speed Grapher, that'd be Antimere Robinson who sadly left a long time ago. BTW, quite a shame that FUNimation doesn't credit their graphic designers when it comes to the packaging design, they do it only for who designs the menus.
https://antimere.myportfolio.com/funimation

[sagadego]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

These still need to be put on here.Also I finally realized that both the Nozomi DVD release and Blu-ray release of Martian Successor Nadesico are missing the English commentaries that were on the Essential Anime Collection discs, and thus also the 2008 Perfect Collection which re-used those discs. They're also missing the 5.1 upmix ADV added for the English dub for the Essential Anime Collection.

What the English episode commentaries were:

-Episode 1: Brett Weaver, John Swasey, Mark X Laskowski, Matt Greenfield
-Episode 10: John Swasey, Kelly Manison, Matt Greenfield, Paul Sidello
-Episode 19: Cynthia Martinez, Jay Hickman, Matt Greenfield, Tiffany Grant

if the 5.1 upmix is like their other upmixes like sakura wars tv and rahexphon,then no loss then since it's not good compared to ones by funimation imo

[BigOnAnime]

Some other ADV stuff that had a 5.1 mix on the original release or re-release that was later dropped, or is OOP without a re-release. Only thing put on the short-lived Essential Anime Collection line that lasted from 2004-2005 that didn't have a 5.1 English upmix added was Sorcerer Hunters.

-Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP.
-Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, retained on FUNimation releases, stereo audio not present.
-Burn Up W: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP.
-D.N.Angel: All ADV releases had English 5.1, Discotek DVD is 2.0 and has none of the video extras.
-Dragon Half: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, Discotek DVD is 2.0.
-Golden Boy: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, retained on Media Blasters release with the original stereo audio brought back as an additional option, 5.1 dropped for Discotek re-release.
-Gunsmith Cats: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, seems to be retained on the AnimEigo Blu-ray release.
-Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection and subsequent re-release, still OOP.
-Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection and subsequent re-release, still OOP.
-New Cutey Honey: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, 5.1 retained on Discotek release, stereo audio not present.
-Ninja Resurrection: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP.
-Plastic Little: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP.
-Ruin Explorers: English 5.1 mix added for Essential Anime Collection, Maiden Japan DVD is 2.0.
-Sakura Wars OVA 1: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP. Video quality and subtitles are of significantly better quality on the EAC DVD. https://imgur.com/a/Iv5guXI There's also staff changes on the actual credit rolls and not just the disc credits (pretty much all EAC DVDs had that happen), they can be seen on the ANN page and here.
-Slayers: Book of Spells: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection and subsequent re-releases, still OOP.
-Slayers: The Motion Picture: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection and subsequent re-releases, still OOP.
-Super Atragon: The Motion Picture: English 5.1 added for Essential Anime Collection, still OOP.

[HaiiroYurei]

Hey, I'm bumping this thread to ask about the various DVD releases for the Oh My Goddess! OVA's. As far as I can tell, there's four English-friendly releases:
-The initial Animeigo release
-The MVM release
-The 2006 "Remastered" Animeigo release
-The Madman Entertainment release

I hear that the video quality varies wildly between releases. Does anyone know which stands up the best?

[micpp]

Originally Posted by HaiiroYurei

Hey, I'm bumping this thread to ask about the various DVD releases for the Oh My Goddess! OVA's. As far as I can tell, there's four English-friendly releases:
-The initial Animeigo release
-The MVM release
-The 2006 "Remastered" Animeigo release
-The Madman Entertainment release

I hear that the video quality varies wildly between releases. Does anyone know which stands up the best?

So, the original Animeigo, MVM, and Madman releases are actually the same discs (the Animeigo release was coded regions 1, 2 and 4, and MVM and Madman used the same disc masters). The quality on these is pretty ropey, as I think Animeigo was using old composite masters from their VHS and LD releases. It does have multiple angles on the OP and ED to switch between the Japanese credits and textless credits (with English credits applied by softsubs) which is an interesting feature, similar to early Funimation discs.

The Animeigo remastered release uses the same encode as the Japanese DVD release, with the English audio tracks added in. I think this technically makes the maximum bitrate go out of spec in some places but I haven't known this to cause any playback issues in practice. This uses a newer and cleaner film transfer for the episodes without any composite video weirdness (although I think the OP and ED are still composite-sourced due to the video-generated titles). Although unlike the previous release it's locked to Region 1. The special features are carried across and the remastered Animeigo release adds liner notes as a menu option (I think early pressings of the original Animeigo release had the classic "recipe card" style liner notes included as an insert).

So the remastered Animeigo release is the one to get, unless an HD transfer eventuates one day. It's got much better video quality than the earlier release.

[TThomas]

Are you sure about Madman & MVM reusing Animeigos discs? Some sources claim it was PAL - not to mention that the best selling DVD player in the UK during that time wasn't able to play R2 NTSC discs. Iirc all anime dvds in the UK were PAL until some time after 2012, when they started switching to NTSC in some cases.

[micpp]

Originally Posted by TThomas

Are you sure about Madman & MVM reusing Animeigos discs? Some sources claim it was PAL - not to mention that the best selling DVD player in the UK during that time wasn't able to play R2 NTSC discs. Iirc all anime dvds in the UK were PAL until some time after 2012, when they started switching to NTSC in some cases.

I owned the MVM releases and they are definitely NTSC and start up with the Animeigo logos and everything! The Madman ones list "NTSC format" and region codes 1/2/4 on scans of the covers I have seen on ebay auctions so that would indicate they are the same.

It would not surprise me if there's sources that just assume these discs were PAL because that's the norm for UK/AU releases, without actually checking.

[HaiiroYurei]

Originally Posted by micpp

So, the original Animeigo, MVM, and Madman releases are actually the same discs (the Animeigo release was coded regions 1, 2 and 4, and MVM and Madman used the same disc masters). The quality on these is pretty ropey, as I think Animeigo was using old composite masters from their VHS and LD releases. It does have multiple angles on the OP and ED to switch between the Japanese credits and textless credits (with English credits applied by softsubs) which is an interesting feature, similar to early Funimation discs.

The Animeigo remastered release uses the same encode as the Japanese DVD release, with the English audio tracks added in. I think this technically makes the maximum bitrate go out of spec in some places but I haven't known this to cause any playback issues in practice. This uses a newer and cleaner film transfer for the episodes without any composite video weirdness (although I think the OP and ED are still composite-sourced due to the video-generated titles). Although unlike the previous release it's locked to Region 1. The special features are carried across and the remastered Animeigo release adds liner notes as a menu option (I think early pressings of the original Animeigo release had the classic "recipe card" style liner notes included as an insert).

So the remastered Animeigo release is the one to get, unless an HD transfer eventuates one day. It's got much better video quality than the earlier release.

Man, thanks for such a thorough response! I'll have to keep my eye out for the later Animeigo set, then (hopefully without selling an organ, as it goes for a lot of money now).

Speaking of Harem Anime that never got a Blu-Ray release, would you happen to know if there are any substantial differences in the video quality for the two releases of Tenchi Universe? I know Funimation re-released the series ages ago back when they had the license, but I noticed that release was on less discs than the original Pioneer Releases. Is the video quality for Funimation's release better, or on par with the Pioneer release?