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Answerman - Why Can't Western Publishers Make New HD Remasters of Anime?

There are a number of shows that I'm sure film elements are completely lost for. You can tell because Japan keeps re-releasing ratty old analog masters of them, even on Blu-ray.

In the case of not having the original master, why don't they do what they did with DBZ Kai, or is that too expensive?

Storage is another prime issue. You really need to have ideal storage conditions (literally segmented, climate & humidity controlled rooms) to properly store analog tapes and reels. Most companies do not have/had this sort of space available nor could they dedicate resources to properly HVAC control.

American companies have often been told a specific classic show they're after has no good elements, or that the film has been lost, and then a brand new HD version magically shows up on Japanese store shelves a year later. I've heard gossip that "Show X had its masters lost in a fire," so many times, only to later be completely proven wrong, that I've stopped believing it.

I understand the lack of preservation back in the 60s and 70s, with no home media, there was little point in storing something that you may very well never rebroadcast. I've heard that with Saze-San, they have never rebroadcast any of the episodes, aside from an anniversary special.

In the case of not having the original master, why don't they do what they did with DBZ Kai, or is that too expensive?

*cough*Toei and Sailor Moon*cough*cough*, although I guess that was more a matter of a remastered DVD version that was mysteriously withheld from Viz, despite being used for a recent R2J DVD release and subsequent releases in Italy and elsewhere.

I really have to wonder if Toei has the film materials at all, their recent Japanese Blu Ray release for Sailor Moon is not that good. Italy's release source is a mystery for everyone, and fans are not quite sure just from *where* did Italy get their masters from, since popular opinion says that the Italian release has better quality than both the R2J DVD and the Japanese Blu Ray. If there really is one single master, that would mean that Toei's just awful in processing it.

Being an employee in the public sector for film preservation, I believe that the general public doesn't have a real grasp of the challenges presented by pre-digital analog formats. It's immense in all sense of the word and there are no easy solution(s).

In addition to pretty much everything mentioned, one very big issue during the 80s/90s was accepted analog format(s). Many companies pushed their products off onto companies during this time, and there was a sense of a race of sorts in what type of analog format was acceptable. Thus you get a tremendous amount of 2nd generation reproduction "masters" in a variety of formats; UMatic, D2, Beta, etc, with very little in-operability. Even if you do have the means by which to access these formats, most of these transfers are HEAVILY dependent on high-quality equipment to produce anything remotely acceptable to modern viewership.

Storage is another prime issue. You really need to have ideal storage conditions (literally segmented, climate & humidity controlled rooms) to properly store analog tapes and reels. Most companies do not have/had this sort of space available nor could they dedicate resources to properly HVAC control. Even if older masters of materials from say the 80s/90s are located, there is a good chance of material deterioration that would require a lot of digital clean-up work. In a good deal of cases it may not even be worth it.

Format and storage issues lead to a lot of instances of where stock of analog tapes and films were simply discarded. Once you realize you're running out of space and a vendor tells you "oh yeah you'll have no issues with the footage on so-and-so format" things quickly got discarded. This was fairly prominent in the broadcasting industry. I'd imagine that indeed there are a lot less "original masters" of footage out there than we may think, but as far as 2nd Gen reproduction "masters" there's probably a good handful of them of older series out there.

Are there ever actual, genuine cases of anime being lost in warehouse fires? There's the original Osomatsu series?) being lost after it aired in the 1960s but in the 1990s, somebody was able to find the original film and submit it to the rights holders: [url]https://lostmediawiki.com/Osomatsu-kun_(found_anime_series;_1966)[/url]

kasumicc wrote:

I really have to wonder if Toei has the film materials at all, their recent Japanese Blu Ray release for Sailor Moon is not that good. Italy's release source is a mystery for everyone, and fans are not quite sure just from *where* did Italy get their masters from, since popular opinion says that the Italian release has better quality than both the R2J DVD and the Japanese Blu Ray. If there really is one single master, that would mean that Toei's just awful in processing it.

Yeah and speaking of the Japanese upscale, Madman in Australia has recently gotten some heat for this because they picked up those masters for their own Blu-ray releases and announced that they're also using it for the SuperS & Sailor Stars DVDs instead of the Italian masters, which had been used for the previous 3 seasons, so they went from using good video to downscaling an upscale of not so good video.