Thanks

Thanks! The US BD release has abysmal banding and noise levels, hands down the worst I've ever seen on physical media.

Thanks!

@FortressMaximus That seems to be common. Serial Experiments Lain's USBD was atrocious. I assume it has to do with keeping costs down and preventing reverse importation.

If only got Second season.. :(

Thanks

@sxales Do have anything in the works for Zoids Chaotic Century or the Zoids series in general? They all have bluray releases in Japan now it seems

Thank you sxsales for sharing your work here--just watched the series again and enjoyed it more than before.....especially appreciate the BD source and all the extras.

@FortressMaximus In some cases (not all) japanese publishers slightly reduce the quality of the master copies that they send to US distributors. Just a little corruption whether it's a slight color tint or extra noise or banding - this will make them worthless for re-import which keeps Japanese fans buying JP BD's at insane prices (I think it's something close to 10,000 yen/$100 USD for a BD with 2 or 3 episodes on it? I could be wrong). US distributors don't even have a choice in what kind of masters they get - they have to agree to whatever to even get the license. In cases where an anime is mega-popular and re-imports won't really harm anything, this doesn't seem to happen (e.g. Neon Genesis Evangelion). I also don't think quality is compromised on limited collector's editions either, when they happen (at least the ones I've seen comparisons on).

oh my god these Cleo subtitles are atrocious. Whoever did the translation, or whoever edited it, has a middling grasp of English grammar at best. There are several immersion-breaking grammar and/or diction errors approximately every 30 seconds (I counted for several minutes), and the flow is very stilted. None of the characters' distinct personalities shine through in the text. It feels very robotic, like it's written by someone who doesn't understand the emotions being expressed by the characters in each scene (perhaps the translation was made, edited, and QC'd without anyone referencing the audio while they worked - that would be kind of key to grasping the emotion of what is being said and translating that into suitable English). Anybody have any recommendations for better subs for this? edit: Tracked down the source Cleo used for the subs - goes back to Final8 who in turn sourced their script from Wasurenai (http://wasurenai-subs.com/) from the Wasurenai BD Xvid (no I'm not kidding) release of this show back in 2012. Whether it was Final8 or Wasurenai that introduced all the horrific errors, it doesn't matter. The fact is that they are really bad and need some serious work. This is definitely not a long-term archive-quality release as-is - would be perfect with fixed subs. I will see if I can track some down but I'm not getting my hopes up. edit 2: Futher comparisons show that while Wasurenai's script was bad, Final8 somehow made it slightly worse. I guess I'll see if I can pull the "official" Funimation/Crunchyroll subtitles from somewhere. Normally those are supposed to be the worse option, lmao...