[Starscream Gaga]

I agree that they've been improving on the manga, but not nearly enough. Having shocking continuity errors 20 years later is just... Ugh.


Anyway, important read and images for those considering the Sailor Moon "Re-Mastered" Blu-Rays:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amazon Reviewer

This review will only address video quality issues on the new Blu-ray and DVD releases. There has been a lot said here and on various forums about the issues with these discs, and this review will address and explain concisely exactly what the problems are and why not only is this set a complete and utter disaster, but that there are very good grounds for a recall and replacement program. In other words, not only are there serious image quality problems, there are also image quality mistakes that should never have gotten past the QC stage and need rectifying.

When Viz announced they were releasing Sailor Moon this year, they took part in an interview with ANN and it was made clear that they would be using Toei's old standard definition masters for the basis of their release. This was disappointing considering they had announced Blu-rays, but let me be clear that none of the issues with these sets have anything to do with them being in standard definition. We knew that going in and were prepared for it. You can read the full interview here:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/inte...on-sailor-moon

The real problem lies in Viz's announcement that they were going to “remaster” these SD files to make them look HD. Alarm bells went off in every videophiles head when reading this, as what Viz was describing was simply not possible. Remastering in this sense means to post process to try and remove the inadequacies of the SD source, and to then smooth everything over to make it “look HD”. On top of this, the comparison picture Viz used in the interview to show how their release was going to be so much better than the most recent Japanese version turned out to be doctored:

How Viz said the Japanese DVDs looked: http://i.imgur.com/7n6t4KF.jpg
How the Japanese DVDs actually look: http://i.imgur.com/jFoolUH.jpg

Videophiles were rightly very worried, but they had to wait to see the discs themselves and now that they have, they are in uproar, and rightly so. So, onto the image problems:

1) The little detail that was in the SD source has been wiped away by aggressive filtering techniques, in an attempt to make everything look bright, clean and glossy. Below is a comparison with the Japanese SD master (used on the Japanese DVDs, and recent Italian and German DVDs):

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=98804

The DVD is first, and when you mouse over the Viz Blu-ray is revealed. At first it may seem like the the Viz image is better and more “HD like” but this is exactly what Viz are going for. If you look closer you'll see that there is no longer any fine detail in the image. The lines on the garden wall and road are gone, the tiles on the roof are gone, the markings on the car tyres are gone, the trees and their leaves are heavily blurred, along with everything else.

2) There is severe split second ghosting noticeable whenever there is fast movement within the frame, likely due to poor inverse telecine (the one worthwhile thing Viz attempted for their remaster; sadly, they totally botched it).

Basically, whenever something moves fast it leaves behind a “ghost” image of itself in the next frame. This will be more noticeable to some, but crucially it was not something present on the Japanese or Italian DVDs. There are many comparisons and examples available:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=98564
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=99039
http://i.imgur.com/Qv1nENq.png
http://i.imgur.com/Snnd8OA.png
http://i.imgur.com/k6JlWR5.png
http://i.imgur.com/je4X4f0.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZC4oqek.png

Combine these two issues together and you have a very poor looking release indeed, one that falls far short of what was released in Japan and Italy and Germany, despite Viz saying in the aforementioned interview that “It looks significantly better than any other DVD that's come out, lots of care was put into it”.

I don't doubt Viz's sincerity. They may believe, like many people who have bought this set, that it looks great and better than anything that has come before. No videophile would ever agree with that since it is simply a fact that there are filtering and ghosting problems with the release, but Viz and others are welcome to feel that they genuinely improve on the image. Which release is best is down to personal opinion.

What is not a matter of opinion is the very unfortunate encoding mistake that Viz have made with this set. It is a mistake that only affects the DVDs, but one should keep in mind that most people are still not Blu-ray compatible, that many people will be buying the DVDs alone because of this, and that they deserve a high quality release as well. Even people who can play Blu-rays may be opting for the much cheaper DVD only release because as the below image shows, there is very little difference between the Blu-rays and the DVDs in these sets. Keep in mind that the source for all of these discs was standard definition, so this shouldn't be a surprise:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=98937

As you can see, there is no more detail or sharpness on the Blu-rays compared to the DVDs, though the Blu-rays are a little brighter.

The DVDs that Viz have released have been encoded in anamorphic 16x9 widescreen, despite Sailor Moon being a 4x3 show. When Viz received the 4x3 masters from Toei, they had to add large black pillar bars to the side of the image so that it conformed to the 16x9 HD standard. This was absolutely fine and is necessary with all 4x3 titles that receive a Blu-ray release.

But because DVD is a 4x3 format, one must remember to remove these pillar bars before authoring the DVDs. In its “HD” form, Sailor Moon is 16x9, and because Viz have kept this form for the DVD, the DVDs interpret the files to be in widescreen. What this means is that the large black pillar bars remain on the DVDs, burnt into the image, and an anamorphic flag is present to stretch the image to its proper proportions on playback.

This affects the image in two ways. First, instead of using the entire 720x480 resolution that the Japanese and Italian DVDs did, the Viz DVDs instead only use 540x480. They are thus of lower resolution, and lose sharpness and detail on top of all the detail already removed by the filtering.

Second, anyone who is watching the DVDs on a 4x3 shaped screen (a CRT for example) is going to be forced to see these black bars, even though they shouldn't have to. If they were watching the Japanese or Italian DVDs, the image would appear like this on their 4x3 TV:

http://i.imgur.com/xiD0s3J.png

But when they watch the Viz DVDs, they'll see the black bars:

http://i.imgur.com/H99p9Ys.png (incidentally, one can see more ghosting here!)

But it gets worse, as they won't just see those black bars. The anamorphic flag will first stretch the image to 16x9, and more black bars will appear on the top and bottom of the screen to maintain the proper image dimensions. What viewers will actually see is this:

http://i.imgur.com/QZKyeTr.png

A small image surrounded by thick black bars on all 4 sides.

As I've said before, unlike the filtering and ghosting of these releases, this encoding issue is not a by-product of Viz's “remaster”. It is completely unintentional and somehow Viz have let it slip through QC. It is a simple, standard practice to remove black bars from 4x3 HD masters when authoring DVDs.

On this issue at least, Viz owe their customers a recall and replacement program. So far they have been completely silent on the issue and as far as we know have no intention of doing anything. Regarding the remastering issues this is to be expected (all this “work” didn't come cheap after all!), but it would be unprofessional in the extreme to not do anything about the DVDs.

What I would like to see is instead of Viz going back and manually removing the black bars from their new remaster, they would be better off taking the original Japanese master that they had before they tinkered with it, and put that on the DVDs instead. This would fix the black bar problem as there are no black bars on the Japanese master, and on top of that there would be a general improvement in the image. There would be no more ghosting, and all the detail would come back. This way consumers would get a choice: if they want to watch the smooth, ghosty HD versions they can do so by watching the Blu-rays (and Viz will not feel the whole thing was a waste of time and money), or they can watch the DVDs and have something on par with the Japanese and Italian discs. Viz would then just need to follow this style of releasing for their future sets (and to keep a sharper eye on QC!)

Doing this would solve every single problem I've mentioned in this review, and everyone could be happy. I hope Viz will give it serious consideration.

Much disappointment. Pre-Order cancelled...