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MarshalBanana wrote:

GotenZ1 wrote:

This. It's a shame that shows like FLCL and early One Piece episodes (and many others) were only produced at 480p. But it is what it is.

One Piece started production just before Cel animation started to disappear.

One Piece was always animated digitally, save for the first movie and the original Jump OVA. It started being animated in HD with episode 206 in 2007, also earlier than most anime.

And then there's shows like InuYasha that were cel-animated in the beginning, but switched to digital part-way through. The first half of that show would greatly benefit from an HD remaster, but the second half wouldn't. The Final Act episodes were the only ones animated digitally in HD.

Cel animation can look fantastic in HD if it's remastered properly. Too bad Toei doesn't know how to do that. It's their fault there's no good HD version of shows like Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star, Slam Dunk, Galaxy Express 999, etc. We had an opportunity to get a good HD version of Dragon Ball Z since FUNimation has access to their own 16mm prints, but we all know what happened there. I'm not sure if Toei kept the original film for those shows, but apparently they did junk the original audio tape masters for them all, except Sailor Moon.

But cel-animated TV shows/OVAs lucky enough to get proper new scans like Ranma 1/2, Utena, Tenchi, etc look terrific. I wish companies would fund more telecine scans here, like AnimEigo's doing with A.D. Police Files, but I know that's not always the most financially feasible thing to do.

I own a couple cels from the 1988 Vampire Princess Miyu OVA (along with the pencil sketches), and they're still in good condition. I also own a cel from Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and one from Scooby-Doo and the Witches Ghost, and even though neither made the cut of their respective films (their scenes were re-animated at some point), they still came with the Hanna-Barbera seal of authenticity. Apparently HB did sell most of their cels to collectors. Also, Carl Macek used to help run a shop that was totally dedicated to selling the cels from the film Heavy Metal. They would literally run the film in a loop on a TV screen, and someone could point out a shot they wanted, and Carl would go into the warehouse and pull the scene and find the cel they wanted. Anime companies really should have found more efficient ways like that of getting rid of their cels.

Cutiebunny wrote:

@leafy sea dragon-- It was the studios that considered the cels, backgrounds and anything else used during the animation process as trash. This applies to more recently made series as well. I own a lot of background artwork from a 2009 CG series called Kobato., and even then, Madhouse was just folding the backgrounds to fit into a standard size circular bin.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was not uncommon for people to go dumpster diving for these cels, backgrounds, etc. While some studios, like Toei, would package up some of their cel garbage and then resell them, more often then not, once the cels were filmed, they were trashed. The plastic used to make cels, acetate, was cheap and plentiful, and wiping them off for reuse was not a good use of resources. Some studios, like Madhouse, did hold on to their premium artwork, like artwork used for promotional purposes, as a sort of rainy day slush fund, but most of the stuff that was used under the camera was either thrown out or some employees took it home to resell through retailers like Mandarake.

All right, they are simply thrown away. When I was younger, I avidly read anything I could about how cartoons were made and read that cels were most often thrown away, but because much of what I read were written by historians and collectors, they'd be quicker to emphasize cels sold on the secondhand market. As a result, I grew up on the impression that any cels that depicted a complete action with complete characters would be sold and the ones thrown away were fragments, like mouths and arms (as is seen on that episode of The Simpsons where Bart gets a cel of Snagglepuss's arm).

Hoppy800 wrote:

Animation cels being burned, that's unforgivable sin and animation cels being trashed, I'm surprised people haven't been canned or blacklisted for crap like this. You don't toss history away, you donate it to a museum or sell it to collectors who will take care of it.

What a waste, the so called "garbage" these studios refer to could've been enough to set up a museum.

Also, the lack of proper archiving is something I've known for a while, anime needs something like this

I'm going to take a guess and say that animation studios simply didn't have the storage space necessary to hold on to every cel they used. Even one 30-minute episode would require thousands, if not tens of thousands of cels (depending on the quality of animation). If a studio with a large output like Klasky-Csupo held onto all of its cels, it'd need a warehouse the size of the studio itself just to hold onto one year's worth of cels in respectable condition.

Most cels are not that appealing to collectors anyway. You'd have to layer them together to have a complete image, and you're going to have leftovers. People might like a close-up of a character from a scene of him or her talking with a cel of an open mouth layered over it to make a complete picture, but who's going to want the other 5 or 6 cels for that shot's other mouth movements by themselves? If the character blinks, they'd need at least two more cels for the eyes, and not many people would want the cel for half-closed eyes.

I should point out that I'm not an expert of film restoration and remastering, so please forgive any inaccurate statements or misinformation on my end. I'm speaking solely based on what I've seen and understood from various sources regarding the subject.

I'm all for remastering, don't get me wrong, but they need to be done right and I believe they can be. Just looking at Bubblegum Crisis is proof of that, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Megazone 23 is going to turn out because all we have now is a crappy looking version.

I really wish the old reels had received better treatment because it is distracting when watching an old anime seeing all the black and white dots, dust, hairs and burnt grain and all that crap.

In fact. I was watching Transformers The Movie on VHS the other day and compared it to my DVD and a Blu-ray version. Despite what many people will say, the remastering for it wasn't so good. They made it too bright, and they cropped it. Animation errors that were unnoticeable before are now as clear as day, adding to the already noticeable mistakes. It contains a lot of damaged frames, dust, and you can even see dust or other residue on cel layers sliding along with an object pans that sideways over a still background. Also noticed that in Gundam F91.

The VHS, while grainy, did however hide these errors, or rather, they mostly appeared to be shortcuts, very well, especially since the movie was supposed to be dark and full of shades. The scene where Optimus Prime's eyes flicker before they fade, his nose bridge was colored blue like the rest of his helmet, but on the VHS, it looked like really dark shading.

With regards to Dragon Ball Z. I don't know why but the early episodes of DBZ seem to have quite a few irregularities but after that the only problem it has is how jittery it is.

Sadly, the one thing we can't seem to get rid of is the jittery pictures. I don't mind cropping, it's one of the least harmful things they can do, but not when it comes to unstable footage. The Level sets for DBZ were almost unnoticeable, since they were trying to stabilize it, which they stopped with their later blu-ray re-release (season sets), and the zoomed in selective cropping made it much more jittery than ever.

[quote="NJ_"]

ParkerALx wrote:

First I've heard of this, any screencaps? I ask because unlike their TV shows, Toei usually gives their movies proper HD remasters and with two exceptions (all 3 of Galaxy Express 999 (which were heavily DNR'd) & most of the Digimon movies), they have actually looked great so far.

It's been discussed over at blu-ray.com, and the people there are pretty keen at pinpointing upscales and other deficiencies.

Source #1 (unfortunately his/her image links no longer work)
Related Post

Source #2

PurpleWarrior13 wrote:

One Piece was always animated digitally, save for the first movie and the original Jump OVA. It started being animated in HD with episode 206 in 2007, also earlier than most anime.

And then there's shows like InuYasha that were cel-animated in the beginning, but switched to digital part-way through. The first half of that show would greatly benefit from an HD remaster, but the second half wouldn't. The Final Act episodes were the only ones animated digitally in HD.

It looks like cel animation(admittedly it is hard to tell the difference between flat paint and solid digital colour), it has the same look as the first Movie as well. It seems weird that Inuyasha would be on cels and not One Piece when the former came out at a later date, even if it is a different studio. To my knowledge, the only show from the 90s to be done with Digital Ink and Paint Serial Experiments Lain.

MadHi wrote:

I'm all for remastering, don't get me wrong, but they need to be done right and I believe they can be. Just looking at Bubblegum Crisis is proof of that, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Megazone 23 is going to turn out because all we have now is a crappy looking version.

I really wish the old reels had received better treatment because it is distracting when watching an old anime seeing all the black and white dots, dust, hairs and burnt grain and all that crap.

I noticed a lot of dust and debris in Honneamise. They can definitely digitally edit these defects out, but it requires extra processes and extra money, so it's not always viable. Still, I'd rather have a rough and grainy BD over a DVD that "hides" the issues, because the benefits so outweigh the minor negatives.

I too am waiting for that Megazone 23 BD, one of the best cyberpunk anime of that era and so painfully and gloriously 80s. As for Bubblegum Crisis, that remaster is kind of getting old these days, much like Honneamise's. Comparatively, Lodoss', Outlaw Star's and even Shin Cutey Honey's BDs are nearly pristine, like you're looking at completely fresh film reels straight from the day they were shot. It's incredible. I just wish it'd be possible to see more niche old stuff get some HD love, but I doubt the likes of They Were 11, Area 88, Odin, Iczer-1, Outlanders, Lemnear, Birth, or Dangaioh are coming any time soon. Hell, even some Dirty Pair: who doesn't want to see the movie's or the OVA's openings in 1080p?

And further: I hate that people like Bennett the Sage review some older anime on DVD when perfectly AMAZING BDs are available. He's like a old school turbopleb.

Is there any anime that works with even a certain amount of cel animation today? How economically viable would returning to that process of animation be in today's anime industry?

Anddo wrote:

Is there any anime that works with even a certain amount of cel animation today?

To my knowledge, every anime show that appeared after around 2005 was made with digital animation...

Anddo wrote:

Is there any anime that works with even a certain amount of cel animation today? How economically viable would returning to that process of animation be in today's anime industry?

Sazae-san was the last, and I imagine they were able to get away with it because they had hundreds of thousands of cels they could probably just re-use every episode without having to redraw every time (probably not really, but it doesn't seem so unlikely.)

As for bringing it back? They'd need to spend a lot of money to get things like the cels and paints, and I suppose we're not even to go them bothering with film as they'd just digitally photograph the cels. Could it be possible for a short labor of love by veterans? Yeah, but probably not gonna happen.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

I'm going to take a guess and say that animation studios simply didn't have the storage space necessary to hold on to every cel they used. Even one 30-minute episode would require thousands, if not tens of thousands of cels (depending on the quality of animation).

Going by the cel-based series that I collect, your average episode of Cardcaptor Sakura had around 300-ish backgrounds, some of which were used multiple times per episode. Some backgrounds were paired with multiple cels to create a sequence, and some backgrounds were used only once and for one cel. Studios tried to cut down on the amount of cels they'd have to produce for any one episode, which is why there was a lot of reliance on bank sequences, such as Opending and Ending sequences. Some series, like Sailor Moon, took that farther by inserting transformation and attack sequences. While creating each sequence initially took a lot of time, as it would be used almost every episode and sometimes for multiple seasons, it would be used to save the animators time each week from filling up space that would have needed to have been filled by new material.

The layering of images, such as a different layer for the head, facial expressions, etc. was not popular with anime studios. Each cel layer adds a shadow to the overall image, so sequences consisting of multiple layers look darker in comparison to a sequence consisting of just one layer. In most cases, the animators chose to redraw the character multiple times during the sequence, with each cel in that sequence being slightly different. For example, it's very common to find a sequence of a character speaking, and to see that there's a cel with the entire character with their mouth fully open, another with their mouth partially open and their mouth closed. Series that had small budgets often resorted to certain techniques, such as close-up facial conversation shots, as these shots could be repeated several times per episode, with perhaps the only additional cost being a different background.

It's hard to say what the demand would be for 'unattractive' cels. There are completionist collectors, such as myself, who don't mind buying these in between images, especially if I already own a couple from that sequence or have the matching background.

Hmm, I see. Most of what I know about cel animation is in regards to western animation, which has way more frames per episode than anime and is more reliant on layering cels together, and hence cels that depict a complete character and/or a complete action are small in number in comparison to incomplete ones. Anime's animation is focused on getting as much detail and action onto single frames as possible, whereas western animation prefers smoothness and natural-looking movements.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

As for bringing it back? They'd need to spend a lot of money to get things like the cels and paints, and I suppose we're not even to go them bothering with film as they'd just digitally photograph the cels. Could it be possible for a short labor of love by veterans? Yeah, but probably not gonna happen.

It gets increasingly difficult to get ahold of cels with each passing year, as fewer and fewer people make them. As a result, cels become more and more expensive to get ahold of. The Simpsons was animated using cels for as long as the budget allowed for it, but they eventually switched to digital because animating with cels was getting too expensive (both in obtaining cels and in finding animators willing to draw on cels).

The only current example of cel animation I can think of is Cuphead, which is one of those labors of love and is done to make the video game look as authentically like the Ub Iwerks shorts as possible. Even then, however, each frame is painted digitally.

ParkerALx wrote:

It's been discussed over at blu-ray.com, and the people there are pretty keen at pinpointing upscales and other deficiencies.

Source #1 (unfortunately his/her image links no longer work)
Related Post

Source #2

Thanks, guess we can add that to the list of screwed up BDs from Toei.

MarshalBanana wrote:

It looks like cel animation(admittedly it is hard to tell the difference between flat paint and solid digital colour), it has the same look as the first Movie as well. It seems weird that Inuyasha would be on cels and not One Piece when the former came out at a later date, even if it is a different studio.

Keep in mind that this is Toei plus they had other digitally-animated shows airing at the time with the first seasons of Digimon & Doremi premiering 7-8 months earlier so they were already getting used to digital animation at that point.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Hmm, I see. Most of what I know about cel animation is in regards to western animation, which has way more frames per episode than anime and is more reliant on layering cels together, and hence cels that depict a complete character and/or a complete action are small in number in comparison to incomplete ones.

That's definitely changed with digital animation (where obviously you don't have to worry about the thickness of the acetate):

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

MadHi wrote:

I'm all for remastering, don't get me wrong, but they need to be done right and I believe they can be. Just looking at Bubblegum Crisis is proof of that, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Megazone 23 is going to turn out because all we have now is a crappy looking version.

I really wish the old reels had received better treatment because it is distracting when watching an old anime seeing all the black and white dots, dust, hairs and burnt grain and all that crap.

I noticed a lot of dust and debris in Honneamise. They can definitely digitally edit these defects out, but it requires extra processes and extra money, so it's not always viable. Still, I'd rather have a rough and grainy BD over a DVD that "hides" the issues, because the benefits so outweigh the minor negatives.

I too am waiting for that Megazone 23 BD, one of the best cyberpunk anime of that era and so painfully and gloriously 80s. As for Bubblegum Crisis, that remaster is kind of getting old these days, much like Honneamise's. Comparatively, Lodoss', Outlaw Star's and even Shin Cutey Honey's BDs are nearly pristine, like you're looking at completely fresh film reels straight from the day they were shot. It's incredible. I just wish it'd be possible to see more niche old stuff get some HD love, but I doubt the likes of They Were 11, Area 88, Odin, Iczer-1, Outlanders, Lemnear, Birth, or Dangaioh are coming any time soon. Hell, even some Dirty Pair: who doesn't want to see the movie's or the OVA's openings in 1080p?

And further: I hate that people like Bennett the Sage review some older anime on DVD when perfectly AMAZING BDs are available. He's like a old school turbopleb.

I haven't seen Bubblegum Crisis except in HD, I saw it for the first time earlier this year so I can't compare it to any pre-existing formats. But I was impressed nonetheless with what I saw. The colors and were vibrant but not too bright, I like how there were almost no dust, hair, or residue. The picture was 99% stable. If it had any jitter, then it was very minor and unnoticeable even when sitting close to the screen. And the opening concert sequence was gorgeous! So, either it was well-taken care of or they actually did go the extra 100 miles to fix it. I find it to be the best looking 80's anime I've seen.

I also watched Osamu Dezaki's Black Jack this year in both SD and HD. The HD version, while nice and clear, had one issue. Whenever a scene changed the first frame of the new scene looked a certain way and then suddenly 'adjusted' itself. They clearly took pieces of identical frames and layered them over the first frame/s to hide any damages or irregularities, but the layers were badly misaligned and to go through scene after scene seeing that eventually reached a point where it got too annoying.

In fact, I did a little experiment of my own, repositioning portions of the the identical shots at the start point of the frames of each scene and I ended up getting them into the right positions, and I did it on SONY VEGAS PRO and on a 15-inch HP laptop monitor. I don't know how they messed it up. I hope I explained it well.

I actually want to start a remastering project for Transformers The Movie but I need to find a high quality video of the 4:3 aspect ratio version. Frame by frame, I want to fix all the animation mistakes, stabilize the footage, fix damaged frames and remove the dust.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

I just wish it'd be possible to see more niche old stuff get some HD love, but I doubt the likes of They Were 11, Area 88, Odin, Iczer-1, Outlanders, Lemnear, Birth, or Dangaioh are coming any time soon. Hell, even some Dirty Pair: who doesn't want to see the movie's or the OVA's openings in 1080p?

Yeah. I'd buy a bunch of those.

I also wouldn't mind if some of the best stuff of those tough inbetween years are still looked at, even if they won't benefit nearly as good as that old cel stuff, particularly the ones that truly deserve it with particularly impressive art like the first FMA just got (which looks quite good). For example, Wolf's Rain, gorgeous show that could probably look so much better than the old DVDs.

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