Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - The Strange Saga of Star Anime Enterprises
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FLCLGainax
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The Malibu Graphics debacle with the Captain Harlock TV series deserves a mention. Back in the early '90s, they promised fans uncut Japanese episodes but instead just recycled an older butchered dub with out of sync audio to boot!
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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Japan isn't as organized as people believe... Japanese companies lose track of films and TV series all the time. I think they're worse than the American companies are at this! At least in the US (and the UK, too) they can proudly proclaim they wiped videotapes and tossed cans of 16mm film of "worthless" TV series and newsbroadcasts into the Hudson River (or the River Thames for the UK courtesy of the BBC) over 40 years ago! They're pretty sure they know how they disposed of these things in the West... Japan -- not so much! Listen to some of the old radio podcasts or read Justin Sevakis' column and you'll see. Like the US, a lot of Japanese shows only exist on videotape now. The video/audio quality is horrible and some of this stuff is so old and cultish that the original audience for it has basically died out. The companies that own these shows don't think they'll make money so they don't bother to put them up for licensing. A lot of old anime also has bathroom quality audio... This is the JAPANESE audio side, NOT the English dub! A lot of English dubs have actually done 5.1 since the late 1990s but there's still a Japapnese stuff that is still stereo (at best). Dragonball --the original audio quality on that series (and Z) IS AWFUL... Again, I'm speaking of the original Japanese audio. Most of you have only seen the versions with the re-recorded and remixed audio-- that's NOT the original, and they actually had to recast some of the characters in the series for the re-recordings because in the interim original cast members had died! (The voice actress for Goku is one of the oldest surviving original cast members for that series.) The same is also true for Dr. Slump which has had a few episodes put up online in the usual place initial "Y" "T". There's animation produced in the West that's decades older that has far better audio quality. Japan produces superior quality stereo equipment so I don't get WHY the recording quality of a lot of anime is so bad! To top this off, there's a LOT of missing films and master materials in Japan, OR said films and master materials are in awful condition. - They LOST the film materials/masters for Project A-ko which is why that film hasn't had a Blu ray release... and it WAS shown abroad in the 1980s. You'd think by now they could located a 35mm print but it hasn't happened or private collectors don't want to loan their prints out for hi-res scanning... - A MUCH BIGGER loss for Japan... They wanted to do a 4K restoration of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai but they couldn't even use the original masterprint for the film because it had been lost or thrown away! They had to scour the world for the best existing 35mm prints and make a new master from those. http://akirakurosawa.info/2016/02/23/seven-samurai-and-ikiru-restored-to-4k-screened-in-japan-this-year/ To be fair, Seven Samurai isn't the only film they had to scour the world to find existing prints of to make a new master/do a restoration of.... Warner Bros had to do the same over a decade ago for the original 1933 King Kong. The original masterprint for that film had deteriorated into goo years ago and they had no other choice if they wanted to present the film decently on DVD AND preserve for posterity (to make $$$ off of long after people have forgotten about the two remakes...) |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2545 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I'm right there with you, Mike. Hell, I'd do that myself if I had any sort of business sense... Or enough money (doesn't help that licensing costs are nowhere near their post-bubble lows now)... Or the self-confidence to even attempt such a thing. There are just too many unknowns for me to actually give it a try, and I'm too much of a spineless wimp to take a risk like that.. However, I did actually send an e-mail to dentsu USA once under the pretense of a new company, as a joke, and they actually sent me a PDF about what titles the company was handling & was available for licensing (no prices, though); no questions asked, not even what the name of the company is. In some ways it truly is as easy as Anime Midstream told Mike. As for other short-lived anime companies, I think everyone here's already listed all of the rest (enough for Mike to do a Part 2, quite honestly), but I think I'll have a soft spot for ArtsMagic. While the CG anime doesn't look special & is highly outdated (& to think they actually planned to put Malice@Doll out on Blu-Ray at one point!), I did enjoy the DVD I saw of Salaryman Kintaro once years ago. I now have all five DVDs & will definitely give that show another try, because there's no way in hell that anime will ever see a re-release. |
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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Omigod, that was me! *laughs* Yeah, Discotek definitely has more of the passion of Shout! Factory, and the desire to put out those sorts of releases, even when they have to put out ones Mill Creek style. Believe me, this Discotek fan would LOVE for this company to have the money of Shout! Factory. On the other hand, hey, if someone building a business slapping taped-off-tv quality Japanese, or otherwise, dubs with barely legible subs onto $5 releases is what it takes, this old-anime fan will take it. It's not my desire to have it that way, and will pay to not have it that way, but if that's how it has to be, that's how it has to be. As for short-lived companies, Anime Sols going down was my heart-breaker. The site was up during a time that was busy for me( Hi, Integrity Toys), so I was only able to slip in with the 4 Creamy Mami sets. That's a frustration with crowd-funding; You can't save up for something or slap it on a Christmas list. I was sad to see the site fail, as it was a favourite of mine. Those 10s of views on the videos, that were talked about in an ANN podcast, I was a big contributor to that. |
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Bamble
Posts: 130 |
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Ah yes, the Idol Fighter Su-Chi-Pai anime, which existed pretty much to be a minimal plot showcase for a bunch of cute characters, the odd one or two of which occasionally lost their clothes. That is, in the original Japanese release. Why Hirameki bothered to release this otherwise-forgettable OVA and then edit out one of its selling points is a baffling decision. They even edited one of the extras that had interviews with production staff by ending the video with the the immortal text: "The rest were omitted due to the obscene matters."
It was pretty clear from S'more's comments at the time that they only received the hardsubbed masters from Toei because that's all they asked for, and they never even considered going to the trouble of using clean video with softsubs. After the Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo debacle, it was widely predicted that they would take this exact path with their Galaxy Express 999 release.
In retrospect, I think the highlighted portion of Mike's quote above should have switched on some warning lights as to S'more's attempts at releasing anime. Rhino's botching of the original Transformers series on DVD is legendary. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2761 Location: Toronto |
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They weren't really niche (at one point they were doing tens of millions in revenue), but Imavision is an interesting one. They made a business out of producing releases pretty much exclusively for French Canada. That included anime like Goldarak (Grendizer), Albator (Harlock), Galaxy Express 999, Rose of Versailles and a few others. They shutdown in 2014, but the company that bought their assets actually produced a Canada-specific release of Aramaki's CG Harlock before Twilight Time.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13555 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Oh, how some USA fans should envy Canada. Mecha titles like "Goldorak" are a hit in the Middle East. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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Mill Creek is a pretty legit company (they're like a poor man's Shout! Factory). They just put out one anime (Astro Boy '03) because it was included in their deal with Sony.
Twilight Time is a very small company that only prints like 3k-5k of each of their Blu-rays. It's actually very annoying, even when their releases are nice. They did a good job with Harlock, even if the film itself was just a beautiful boring mess. |
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Kirben
Posts: 53 Location: Australia |
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Tokyo Night Train was just a label from Magna Pacific, which were later taken over by Beyond Home Entertainment.
Many of the early DVD releases from Siren Visual Entertainment were a disaster, offering Japanese versions without English subtitles, and other various errors (i.e. missing subtitles). Unfortunately even the re-releases of their older anime titles still suffer major problems. For example: Vandread was re-released on DVD in anamorphic widescreen, but they failed to fix the numerous missing English subtitles. |
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13555 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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While the original NotLD is public domain and some of those Fleishcher cartoons maybe, I am wondering how Mike has determined that some of those anime mentioned are public domain. Even the licenses expired, a company would have to essentially re-license to get DVD/BD rights.
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FLCLGainax
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I suspect some of them may not technically be public domain, but if the contracts expired so long ago it's possible the Japanese rights holders lost track of these English versions. |
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13555 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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It will be decades before they are actually public domain here or in Japan. Heck, just with current copyrights for American works, you could expect a movie or book to become public domain here when your great-grand-kids are still young.
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