Forum

Barbobot wrote:

It's not so much censored as just changed unnecessarily. Backgrounds are replaced entirely for generic sparkly backgrounds in some scenes. That type of stuff.

Edit: Here's the link showing some of the changes. http://www.otakutale.com/2014/nisekoi-tv-blu-ray-comparisons/

Had you checked a later article on that same site, for comparisons done on BD volume 4, you would have come across this pic; Comparisons BD vs TV (somewhat NSFW)
(Note, the TV is on the left and Bluray on the right, just in case you get confused...)

Blanchimont wrote:

Had you checked a later article on that same site, for comparisons done on BD volume 4, you would have come across this pic; Comparisons BD vs TV (somewhat NSFW)
(Note, the TV is on the left and Bluray on the right, just in case you get confused...)

I hadn't seen that yet. What's even going on with these censors? They are doing them in reverse.

Yeah I was surprised when I saw that. I expected the scene and stylistic changes with Nisekoi since SHAFT always does that, but not the extra steam. Even if SHAFT hasn't really done anything with a lot of fanservice, up until this point they've always shown more skin on the BDs like the monogatari series.

I have two theories: 1) they're trolling us
2) it was a mistake; the directions for the animators or team doing the steam overlay were reversed

configspace wrote:

Yeah I was surprised when I saw that. I expected the scene and stylistic changes with Nisekoi since SHAFT always does that, but not the extra steam. Even if SHAFT hasn't really done anything with a lot of fanservice, up until this point they've always shown more skin on the BDs like the monogatari series.

I have two theories:
1) they're trolling us
2) it was a mistake; the directions for the animators or team doing the steam overlay were reversed

Shaterri wrote:

Yet another: Kaiba.

Beat me to it. Siren has a pretty good art house library of content including Denno Coil, Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy, House of Five Leaves (before the US got it), Chihayafuru, Welcome to Irabu's Office, and Perfect Blue.

I wish there was a US version of them.

Barbobot wrote:

Edit: Here's the link showing some of the changes. http://www.otakutale.com/2014/nisekoi-tv-blu-ray-comparisons/

While I don't have too much of a problem with them changing some of the backgrounds, that gif reaction is a weird one.

Yeah, I don't see too much point in wiping over a background so it's all one colour in scenes where a sparkling effect is already being used to draw attention to the characters...I see less need to add emphasis on Chisaki's reaction in that scene.

I always enjoy this column, thanks for answering so many interesting questions every week. Many of these are also questions of my own but I'm always too lazy to actually ask anyone.

I've never been to a convention yet, but I'm hoping my cousin will let me tag along with him to this one that's coming up in New York soon. I'm not even sure what it's called and I'm pretty sure it's a much less popular and celebrity filled one than something like AX or Sakura Con, but it's a start. I'd just like to take part in the fandom and atmosphere more personally eventually instead of always doing it behind a computer screen.

Miyazaki may be a grouch, but I can't help but love the guy for what he's created. Smile

I wonder how he feels about Ghibli's new television anime premiering in the fall? It sounds very interesting to me and I like the western inspiration due it's origin. Looks like your typical Ghibli production, and that ain't a bad thing at all. It's just cool to see them taking a new direction, plus Goro is directing! I really liked Poppy Hill so hopefully he can recapture that same magic.

Interesting to read a sample of the Academy members. I like to think that if Jason Statham doesn't like a movie, he shoots his screener disc.

Samo8412 wrote:

Sadly, Australian and UK releases are cursed by the PAL format. The exclusives from Siren Visual are usually great, but I could have sworn that Madman's Nichijou DVD has been sped up a noticeable amount, on the TV broadcast at least.

I still get Siren Visual's releases but I stay away from Madman's because I know the same show is usually available in the US and hasn't been converted to look worse.

Wow, are the NTSC/PAL wars still on?

Japan shares the US's NTSC video format - which is 30 fps, not 24. Old anime was produced on 24 fps film, so whether converting to NTSC or PAL there was a compromise - NTSC interpolated/interlaced frames, PAL speeded up by 4% (usually not noticable, except menu music maybe a semitone lower than the same music in-show). The big problem with older PAL releases was films that had undergone a shoddy 24 -> 30 -> 25 conversion, picking up all sorts of artifacts along the way. A straight 24 ->25 conversion OTOH is close to ideal.

I suspect the digital formats of modern anime production are more flexible, with variable framerates and ultrahigh definition image, which are then mixed-down to NTSC. In theory the digital original could also be mixed down to a PAL-native format. Only DVD authors of Australian-only releases could give a sure answer on this.

Justin said: "anything encoded to 25 fps usually won't even play back properly on American TV sets." -- Really? When I used to watch NTSC on my PAL CRT TV, there were thin lines between the pixel rows (and crummy colour; old video engineers' joke: "NTSC = Never The Same Color!"), but with a high-def LCD TV or PC monitor, there should be no noticable format difference.

http://www.filmbug.com/dictionary/pal-ntsc.php

Fun fact: In the movie Aliens, in scenes where video monitors are shown, the video format was PAL, and the film was shot at a synchronised 25 fps.

Gah, all this NTSC to PAL talk gave me flashbacks to the ol' Evangelion Platinum Collection debacle. The ghost images -- oh Lord Almighty, the horror of it all!

I sheepishly bought 6 (six!) volumes of that silvery abomination before the first sight of the images they spat out - ever so blurrily spat out - gave me a stroke. A plague a' ADV's houses.

to Andrew: There are very, very few dubs that originate in the UK and even fewer that are actually made here (two in recent memory - and one of those was a documentary). We over here keep an eye on what both the US and Australia are doing, since the dubs come from the US and a lot of UK anime is dependant on sharing costs with Australia (none of the UK companies have the equipment in-house so a large proportion of UK DVDs were authored by Madman and replicated locally, while MVMs BDs are all foreign discs imported and repackaged).

re subtitles:
I remember complaints about Sentai using the Crunchyroll subs for.. I think it was Koihime Musou. This was before MX Media when the Crunchyroll subs could be really dire. I have to hope that they fix up (or preferably redo) the subtitles for TLR:Darkness since whoever made those clearly didn't speak English as a first language...
The Beez DVD release of Durarara used the Crunchyroll subtitles (possible modified, I didn't compare but I recognised some lines).
FUNimation always does their own subs, even when Crunchyroll has already subbed something.

BlueThunder06 wrote:

I have only picked up two of Manga UK's releases of Aniplex titles (Sword Art Online and Blue Exorcist), but that was just because I really wanted the DVDs but didn't want to pay the exorbitant prices.

In terms of DVDs, Manga's are likely to be lower quality than anything in America if for no other reason than Manga only releases PAL discs which means they need to be converted. It's not as bad as the pre-HD days when everything was converted from NTSC to PAL, and PAL actually has technically higher resolution than NTSC, but I am finding the speedup more and more annoying.
For BD, our releases are often clones of those from other regions. The exception is Kaze, who author their stuff in France and like to cram as much on a single BD as possible while removing any extras.

yuna49 wrote:

I do wish Siren would consider releasing some shows on Blu-ray, especially Dennou Coil. I'm pretty sure it was one of the early HD productions. I believe I read somewhere that Blu-ray has not really expanded all that widely in Australia so perhaps the market just isn't there. Madman does sell BR releases, but I only saw live-action films when I skimmed their inventory. Perhaps it's a problem getting the Blu-ray rights because of fears of reverse importation.

Dennou Coil was HD, but it wasn't anything like "early". For whatever reason, the initial release in Japan was DVD-only though and the BD re-release didn't come until later. Siren may well have to go back to Japan to obtain the BD rights and even then, going it alone it would probably be difficult. Also, I believe that Dennou Coil was Eric Cherry's personal project and he left Siren to form Hanabee.
And, frankly, Anime Limited used Siren's masters for their Durarara BDs and are having to re-do them all because they sucked.

fuuma_monou wrote:

IIRC, Australia is Region B like the UK, so reverse importation for anime would only be a concern on a region-free Blu-ray.

It would be nice to think so, but despite 99% of Manga's BDs being region B (and 100% of their DVDs being PAL), they still have to fight with Japan over reverse import fears.

eyeresist wrote:

I suspect the digital formats of modern anime production are more flexible, with variable framerates and ultrahigh definition image, which are then mixed-down to NTSC. In theory the digital original could also be mixed down to a PAL-native format. Only DVD authors of Australian-only releases could give a sure answer on this.

Justin could go into more detail with what is possible with HD-CAM but, frankly, trying to convert a mixture of frame rates to PAL would be even more of a nightmare than just 23.976fps; you can't just "mix down" when you need a fixed 25fps output and I can't imagine how bad a mixture of PAL speedup and standards conversion would be. It's not like any anime has a mixture of film and CG elements any more anyway.