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NEWS: Astro Boy's 1980, 2003 TV Series Streamed on YouTube




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bossyman15



Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 29
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:14 am Reply with quote
awww why isn't this subbed?
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fighterholic



Joined: 28 Sep 2005
Posts: 9194
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:17 am Reply with quote
I'm wondering if Manga Entertainment is going to impose regional restrictions on their streaming like we've been seeing other companies do.
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Anton Chigurh



Joined: 03 Dec 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:40 am Reply with quote
I was amazed to see how the dub for the 2003 cartoon retained the original's spirit and did not really manage to embarrass anyone involved. I haven't checked the 1980 cartoon but looks like appointment TV considering the source.

Also, reading Pluto after having an idea of who the characters are can be a bit overwhelming but also rewarding.
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Anton Chigurh



Joined: 03 Dec 2007
Posts: 76
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:41 am Reply with quote
I was amazed to see how the dub for the 2003 cartoon retained the original's spirit and did not really manage to embarrass anyone involved. I haven't checked the 1980 cartoon but looks like appointment TV considering the source.

Also, reading Pluto after having an idea of who the characters are can be a bit overwhelming but also rewarding.
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dxInt



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:10 am Reply with quote
Hi, I registered to this forum just to make this post.

I think this bears mentioning on your news post, as it is quite a huge deal for an Astro Boy fan like me, and will probably be to others as well!

The youtube channel showing the 2003 Astro Boy series is showing the series in widescreen. This is the first time the dubbed anime is being presented in its widescreen format. The us broadcast, the dvds, and the stream on hulu are all fullscreen with (terrible) pan and scan. It's really fantastic that the show is finally being made available in all of its original glory, as the animation quality of this tv series is exemplary and very nearly unmatched.
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edzieba



Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 433
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:36 am Reply with quote
dxInt wrote:
The youtube channel showing the 2003 Astro Boy series is showing the series in widescreen. This is the first time the dubbed anime is being presented in its widescreen format. The us broadcast, the dvds, and the stream on hulu are all fullscreen with (terrible) pan and scan. It's really fantastic that the show is finally being made available in all of its original glory, as the animation quality of this tv series is exemplary and very nearly unmatched.
That's interesting. Are you sure it is the DVDs that are Pan&scan, and not that the youtube version has been cropped? That sounds a lot more likely for a 6-year-old series than that it has been recently remastered with an expanded frame and no additional DVD release, or that the original DVD release was inexplicably not the full frame.
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dxInt



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:45 am Reply with quote
Did you read what I said?

The DVDs are pan-scan 4:3, this latest youtube version is widescreen and uncropped. I know this because I own the DVDs, and have watched the first two Crackle/Youtube episodes.

The show was created and animated widescreen. The Japanese DVDs are also in widescreen. Just look at the Japanese OPs and EDs on youtube. All widescreen.

It hasn't been "remastered" at all, they're just showing it the way it was originally animated with the English dub, for the first time EVER. The Hulu stream, the original American broadcast, and the US DVD boxed set were all 4:3 pan-scan.
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Anime World Order



Joined: 05 May 2006
Posts: 193
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:47 am Reply with quote
Anton Chigurh wrote:
I was amazed to see how the dub for the 2003 cartoon retained the original's spirit and did not really manage to embarrass anyone involved.


I don't exactly agree with this assessment. I think there were a lot of problems with the 2003 dub as it pertains to editing/removal of footage and rewriting of dialogue/plot. The fact that the music was all changed and the series was not presented in its original widescreen format didn't help either. The above commenter mentioned that the new streams are at least in the original widescreen, but that doesn't fix everything else.

A few years ago I interviewed one of the people that was staff for the 2003 Astro Boy series (among many other things), and he brought up that one of the most major alterations for the 2003 Astro Boy dub was that Astro Boy's personality had to be fundamentally altered from his traditional, iconic portrayal. Go ahead and listen to that if you find yourself with 90 minutes to kill, or you could use the timecodes to skip to just the parts where we talked about Astro Boy. EDIT: and then consider listening to my comparisons of the Astro Boy origin tale as depicted in the manga vs the various anime adaptations over the years!

Oh Sony, why do you do such good releases of your anime movies but such dire releases of your anime TV series? Besides the fact that they never released an uncut, widescreen set of the 2003 Astro Boy series that included the Japanese audio, I for one am still waiting for the rest of Cyborg 009!

Last edited by Anime World Order on Fri Apr 24, 2009 9:33 am; edited 1 time in total
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dxInt



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 9:10 am Reply with quote
Completely true.

And I'm sure you covered this when you reviewed the series AWO, the Japanese creators were pressured to conform to certain guidelines that came from on high at Sony as they were creating the show, with the hopes of making the anime accessible to a mainstream English broadcast channel.

While I think the American influence didn't harm the version that the Japanese got at all, the fact that the English localization butchered story elements, irrationally reordered episodes, and never sold a subbed release, is pretty failtastic on Sony's part.
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jsc315



Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 106
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:58 pm Reply with quote
I agree with you AWO i watched the 2003 version on hulu and it came off as a saturday morning cartoon. I couldn't watch it past the 5th episode.
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edzieba



Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 433
PostPosted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:35 pm Reply with quote
dxInt wrote:
The show was created and animated widescreen. The Japanese DVDs are also in widescreen.
Ah, I'd assumed you were talking about the R2 DVDs being 4:3. I can't check the youtube stream anyway: it's region locked.
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