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Answerman - How Does Old Anime Get Remastered?

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.

I personally would love to see the early digipaint shows get an updated facelift. It would be an easier task in a logistic sense since the studios don't have to go on an adventure looking for the lost cels.

Not digipaint, but another excellent remaster would be Martian Successor Nadesico. I'd put it on the same level as CCS's and Lodoss in overall quality. For those who want to relive this classic and those who're curious, I highly recommend the remaster.

Some digital shows such as Manabi Straight, Kannagi, Gurren Lagann, and parts of Gundam Seed/Seed Destiny have been lucky enough to get re-composited in HD. I wish more could get this treatment, but it probably depends on whether the original files are still available or not.

I wasn't that impressed, it's got fairly noticeable aliasing/jaggies like the Sentai release of the Patlabor TV.

The poster child for the digital transition is Mahoromatic since the original series in 2001 was cel animated, while the sequel a year later was digital. Princess Mononoke also stands out, since in the extras they talk about having to use digipaint for part of it due to time constraints.

Gonzo as a studio neatly encapsulates the SD digipaint era; all their shows are digipaint (often blended with CG) and, up until their bankruptcy in 2009, their (TV*) shows are all trapped firmly in upscale land.

* I remember Brave Story (2006) coming out on BD, although the super-duper edition I got was DVD-only (IIRC the BD didn't have subtitles either, and I didn't have a BD player anyway) so that was probably done in HD? I'm not sure about Gin-iro/Origin either (the BD came out a couple of years after the DVD in Japan, and I again only have it on DVD).

I've only seen the Seed and Seed Destiny remasters and while the effort was there to polish the original, there were quite glaring anomalies. Inconsistent splicing in between the old and new animations and using original SD resolutions for several scenes were the most jarring.

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)