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Answerman - Why Do Colors In Blu-ray Re-Releases Of Classic Anime Look Different?


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Halko



Joined: 27 Apr 2015
Posts: 107
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 11:21 am Reply with quote
Quote:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "CORRECT."


If only everyone would realize that this applies to anything that is even somewhat subjective. Far too often people go off the handle and start screaming at everyone else because their opinion does not match who they are talking to. Many people find it so hard to acknowledge that different opinions are a thing and just attack.
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FloozyGod





PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 11:49 am Reply with quote
"There is no reason an imitation cannot surpass the original." -Shirou Emiya
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pachy_boy



Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 1323
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 12:18 pm Reply with quote
I do notice that colors seem to pop out more on classic Anime blu-rays, which I find appealing because it looks cleaned-up and helps provide a new viewing experience.
Quote:
No two people are going to have had exactly the same experiences with a single piece of film, and so while one engineer might remember vivid colors in a movie theater, another might remember the grain of a beat-up copy he or she saw on television as a kid. Neither one is right. The detail, contrast and color reproduction of the blu-rays we get today are so much better than we ever got before, and so much time has passed since those films were made, that we can only do the best we can to reproduce those images the way we think they should be.

As I read this I can't help but think of one movie serving as a prime example that makes it not always true.

When the James and the Giant Peach movie came out on blu-ray, it left me wondering, "What the hell happened?" Someone screwed around with the contrast in that nearly every single live-action scene seemed to always take place at nighttime--even though when you watch it on the original DVD release (which I still have and thankfully didn't get rid of before getting the blu-ray) those same scenes are in clear daylight or twilight--"night and day" differences indeed. It's one of those "rare" cases where the original DVD release is sadly better than the blu-ray, because what I watch on that DVD is what I saw in theaters, and anyone who says this movie looks good on blu-ray in all likelihood never saw it in theaters.


Last edited by pachy_boy on Wed May 24, 2017 12:21 pm; edited 2 times in total
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5286
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 12:19 pm Reply with quote
Really is this not just a simple thing of 2 different copies from the same source. The first being the analogue recording for VHS and then transferred to DVD, with the second being HD which captures more detail from the film print. When I saw Outlaw Stars HD opening, the colours were soo much brighter, and it seems obvious that the original shot would look like that.
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chronos02



Joined: 25 Feb 2009
Posts: 265
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 12:39 pm Reply with quote
I'm not too versed on these things, but I do remember that the US has a different color and contrast setting compared to the rest of the world, or used to, and the DVD copies of many anime and movies were touched up so the colors would fit correctly on US displays. Nowadays, I believe the practice of having higher contrast and whatnot on US TVs/Screens has been lost and they have adopted the international settings, so when one gets a DVD and a Blu-ray, those touches they did to the DVDs are very noticeable when compared to the Blu-rays on new screens and monitors. I can testify for this with a few copies of US DVDs compared to European and Japanese DVDs and US/EU/JP Blu-rays, the colors and contrast are off on the US DVDs (this happens for my .hack//SIGN copies of the US DVD compared to the EU and JP release on DVD, I don't have a Blu-ray of that so I can't be sure, but it's very noticeable on my GITS copies)

If there's anyone that can explain why they did this, I've always been very curious about the reason.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 12:48 pm Reply with quote
Oh, Justin had to go all snooty and abstract-- Razz

I'd thought I wouldn't have to be the one to point out how everyone who rushed out and bought the early import Studio Ghibli disks (back when a certain US company wouldn't release them) complained that the color balance on Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, etc., looked as if they had been deliberately filtered with too red/green a "warmth", which threw off the color balance.
Some Japanese companies responded that the problem was that most Japanese viewers were watching them on their laptops, which screens had a different color balance than living-room players, and the disks had been mastered to compensate.

I wasn't as much of a nitpicking techie for home-theater back then, so some other survivor who remembers the historical details will have to fill in here.
But just shows to go ya, the Japanese master of the print can not always be counted on to be the One True Master, just because it might seem to come from the source.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5400
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 1:22 pm Reply with quote
Answerman wrote:
No two people are going to have had exactly the same experiences with a single piece of film, and so while one engineer might remember vivid colors in a movie theater, another might remember the grain of a beat-up copy he or she saw on television as a kid.

Neither one is right.

Still, I want to believe that the people remastering old anime have a general consensus of what can be accepted as quality visuals. If the people who remastered Cowboy Bebop remembered watching the show in horrible quality in a VHS tape and decided that the remaster version should look similar to that, everyone else should have been mad about it.
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FLCLGainax





PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 1:29 pm Reply with quote
chronos02 wrote:
I'm not too versed on these things, but I do remember that the US has a different color and contrast setting compared to the rest of the world, or used to, and the DVD copies of many anime and movies were touched up so the colors would fit correctly on US displays. Nowadays, I believe the practice of having higher contrast and whatnot on US TVs/Screens has been lost and they have adopted the international settings, so when one gets a DVD and a Blu-ray, those touches they did to the DVDs are very noticeable when compared to the Blu-rays on new screens and monitors. I can testify for this with a few copies of US DVDs compared to European and Japanese DVDs and US/EU/JP Blu-rays, the colors and contrast are off on the US DVDs (this happens for my .hack//SIGN copies of the US DVD compared to the EU and JP release on DVD, I don't have a Blu-ray of that so I can't be sure, but it's very noticeable on my GITS copies)

If there's anyone that can explain why they did this, I've always been very curious about the reason.
Back in the analog days, Japanese NTSC used a different black level from American NTSC. Engineers in Japan tweaked the IRE level to mimic that of Europe's PAL standard. That's why imported VHS tapes from Japan could look slightly dark on American setups.

It doesn't seem to affect imported digital media (DVDs) as much. However, sometimes a Blu-ray release of the same movie can have the brightness settings turned way up by the American distributor or adjusted totally differently by a Japanese distributor.


Last edited by FLCLGainax on Wed May 24, 2017 1:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 1:35 pm Reply with quote
I'll think about this the next time I spend half an hour trying to get the color balance on my television "just right".
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Scalfin



Joined: 18 May 2008
Posts: 249
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 1:58 pm Reply with quote
This is, of course, most noticeable in longrunning or revived series that use old footage for flashbacks. The episode of Dragonball Super featured some very early Z footage that had much lower/lighter different color saturation, so that it was quite obvious that the people putting it together had used a scan of the original cells without taking the fact that the original animators would have been accounting for the contrast-boosting effects of the process to get the cells to broadcast. I'm pretty sure the recycling of old footage would have been unnoticeable (or at least better looking) if someone had taken the time to match the color mixing to the style guide of the new animation.

Saying that everyone experienced animation a bit differently is a bit of a cheat/excuse, as we all know there's a correct region/range. It's like saying that everyone makes chicken kneidle soup a bit differently before handing over what is obviously beef pho.
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FLCLGainax





PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 2:01 pm Reply with quote
This discussion reminds me of the color difference between the BD of Tenchi Muyo: In Love and its old DVD. It's unknown which release resembles the intended color scheme.
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SrkSano



Joined: 05 Oct 2008
Posts: 205
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 3:38 pm Reply with quote
FloozyGod wrote:
"There is no reason an imitation cannot surpass the original." -Shirou Emiya


OMG I actually laughed out loud ha ha! Good one! Very Happy
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NLScavenger



Joined: 02 Mar 2017
Posts: 13
Location: Netherlands
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 3:48 pm Reply with quote
Sometimes directors are not satisfied with the original result and decide to revise the color grading, which is what happened with the 2012 negative restoration of Macross Do You Remember Love? (See interview with the Blu-ray producer HERE). Besides the censorship, the 2012 Blu-ray had all sorts of picture quality problems partially caused by the regrading. The contrast and saturation have been boosted, which introduced exaggerated picture noise (not to be confused with grain). For more on the picture quality problems see Kentai’s write-up HERE.

Attempts were made to alleviate some of these problems on the uncensored 2016 re-release, but there's only so much that can be done with the master. The contrast and saturation were dialed down and DVNR has been used on some scenes to reduce the noise, but the use of DVNR of course also affects the grain. Some scenes have also unfortunately been sharpened, possibly in response to complaints about some scenes being too blurry.
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5516
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 4:22 pm Reply with quote
Halko wrote:
Quote:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "CORRECT."


If only everyone would realize that this applies to anything that is even somewhat subjective. Far too often people go off the handle and start screaming at everyone else because their opinion does not match who they are talking to. Many people find it so hard to acknowledge that different opinions are a thing and just attack.




That statement is outright false, though. There is a such thing as "CORRECT". "CORRECT" is what the original artists decide is "CORRECT". Does it look bad to you? Maybe. But if that's how the person that created it wants it, then it's correct.

However, as this article states, the picture in the released version is often much different than intended. So if ya'll mean "what we see is never correct", then that's mostly true, yes. With more modern products though, on a TV/monitor properly calibrated and such, the images done digitally, should very close to what the artists intend.
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2398
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 4:40 pm Reply with quote
Spontification - Why Do Your Favorite Films Look Different?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLZHj4WLieo&t=311s

A related explanation of this phenomenon, just with life action films. Most (proper) remasters tend to look better, especially with genre productions, and that´s anime down to a T.
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