"it becomes super-easy to pick out the jet engine roar blended with Harley Davidson"
Not sure this is a good thing - isn't it akin to being able to spot the wires used for wire-fu?
Akira Blu-ray remastered disc set
It’s been hailed as the greatest anime ever. While I think you have to go some before you can top Pokémon 4Ever, (no seriously, I prefer My Neighbour Totoro) there’s no denying Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is a milestone of a movie. Akira Blu-ray remastered edition Akira: worth another spin in this UK Blu-ray remaster release …
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Monday 4th July 2011 12:44 GMT Suburban Inmate
I'd say it is a good thing.
The best cider I ever tasted was a Dabinett Apple cider, the apple skin and flesh were clearly distinguishable, which made it such an interesting and enjoyable tipple.
In a high performance car the turbo whine and dump valve hiss hardly spoil the exhaust note, but (hopefully) complement it.
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Friday 1st July 2011 12:43 GMT Southern
most interesting...
I haven't watched Akira in over ten years, reason being that the film gets Very Weird towards the end, but I can't deny the film's impact. I'm intrigued about the reproduced sound to hear exactly how good it is vs the old, as it seems in vogue to do this with old films but with wildly differing results.
It might be time to get a Blu Ray player after all...(shock horror!)
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Friday 1st July 2011 13:06 GMT Leeroy
Love the film,
but i am still not sure if it is worth the upgrade over my DVD version and my "all in one" surround sound.
If you like Akira you should also watch "Cyber City Oedo 808", i did an art project based on the car in the opening episode it is that good.
Also "Ghost In The Shell" and "Dominion Tank Police" need a mention.
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Sunday 3rd July 2011 00:25 GMT sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
Knight Sabers anyone?
Bubblegum crisis (BGC) 2033 (done in the 80's).
Firslty I'll admit, the only tenous semblance to Akira is that this is post apocalyptic Tokyo and there are bikes.
But ... If you were an 80's kid, you''ll *LOVE* this. Bit like an anime with music videos in them. The soundtrack(music) is *phenomenal* in that nostalgic 80's way. Seriously, I wish I had the kind of kit they had in that anime. This series is your basic tank-and-spank anime type job, lots of music, bikes, cars, powered armour, gratuitous violence and gore, with some intrigue (but not in the league of the other animes). Oh and girls.. (Who is hotter, Priss or Sylia? Discuss...)
In other words, watchable, over and over and over and over and over again.
Youtube 'victory' and 'bubblegum crisis.' Both the original Japanese dubbed English/Engrish renditions of the music videos are really quite good.
The redone Bubblegum Crisis 2040, or the other one Bubblegum Crash ain't as good but probably worth watching if you like the franchise. Watch 2033 first. If you don't watch the rest you're not missing anything - they're sort of like Matrix II and III. There are also other AD police spin offs, I think like parasite dolls etc.
If you were to ask me which anime series is tops, I'd probably choose BGC 2033, as dated as it is, but that's because I've always kind of liked close-in hand to hand fighting, bikes, powered armour and girls. And the music is really quite good in this. Yes, I prefer this even to the Macrosses.
Fantastic.
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Friday 1st July 2011 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Defaults to the English dub? God help us.
The English voice acting used on that dub is hideous. I recently saw it on one of the satellite channels and couldn't believe such stilted over-acting had made it onto this movie.
I still have a VHS recording of when Jonaffon Woss introduced it on BBC2, with it's high-frame widescreen, Japanese language and subtitles in the border at the bottom - brilliant. Ghibli's English dubs are excellent - isn't it about time Akira had a better one? Or just bury it and stick to the Japanese...
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Friday 1st July 2011 14:22 GMT Kristian Walsh
sometimes....
"Ghibli's English dubs are excellent"
Ah now, some of them are pretty awful. They may be well acted, but they don't follow the original script. As an example, Spirited Away's closing scenes are marred by inane chit-chat on the US dub, where the Japanese version simply falls silent and lets the director's choice of imagery tell the story. My Neigbour Totoro is also afflicted by the American "Can't-stop-talking-the-kids-will-lose-interest" disease.
For readers who haven't seen either film (and you should, especially Totoro, which a friend of mine justifiably introduced to me as "The best film ever made"), just imagine watching the start sequence of Lawrence of Arabia with some voice off-screen saying crap like "what's that?" "ooh, looks like a man", "ooh, he's on horseback", "coming here." "wonder what he wants", and you'll get an idea.
Still, I've seen much worse butchery of films when they get dubbed into English.
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Friday 1st July 2011 21:14 GMT Si 1
Silence
Yes my one gripe with quite a few Ghibli dubs is where the original soundtrack has total silence, the English dub fills that silence with talking or music or both. The silence is one of the biggest charms of the originals and brilliantly adds tension or relaxation depending on the situation, so I really wish Disney wouldn't change them in such a fundamental way when they do their dubs.
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Friday 1st July 2011 13:34 GMT graeme leggett
Definitely a milestone for the UK
I think I can say that this is the film that brought anime to prominence in the UK. Off the success of the VHS a whole line of anime were released on tape in the UK and you could find a whole section in Virgin Megastores. Dominion Tank Police (mentioned above) being one of the first releases of Manga Entertainment.
I think I bought my first issue of Anime UK magazine (very high production values) on the basis of spotting Akira on the front of it. And then I discovered that Marine Boy was all part of it...and so it began..
Now if i hadn't spent my money on laserdiscs and Bandai mecha plastic kits back then, I could afford to buy a Blueray player and this disc. ...
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Friday 1st July 2011 14:56 GMT Adam T
Audio bliss
I think I need to get into proper audio kit, because I think it sounds fantastic even on a cheapo cinema system.
A real shame that the source art wasn't higher resolution, but the improved colour fidelity alone is so much better that I can't complain; even the DVD version appears a little washed out and suffering from bad contrast in comparison. Good purchase.
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Monday 4th July 2011 09:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cyber city Oedo 808
Easily one the most classic animes of the 90's.
Sadly the soudtrack you'll want is the British version, the music on the international version was a wierd pop / Jazz number that doesn't really match the the cyber punk and gore.
Unfortunately Manga UK lost the licence for the the thrash metal version and the transition to DVD was never made.
If you look in some dark corners of the internet you can find a version that has the british soundtrack over the DVD video though I had to tweek the audio settings in VLC to make to sync up, its worth it if you can find it.
Its a forgotton classic, definatetley worth a watch for any fans of sci fi action flicks. The only downside is they never made any more or transfered this version to DVD :(
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Friday 1st July 2011 16:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Another version???
I own four different versions (original Jp dvd, two U.S. dvds and the U.S. BD) right now and not a single one has the original English dialogue (being the only Anime I own where I prefer the English dub). Unless I hear different, then my current Blu-Ray isn't going to be replaced because each one failed to mention that they didn't contain the original dub (remastering is not the same thing as re-dubbing).
I ended up downloading an online version with the original dub because the re-dub is horrid and I paid for it multiple times over. Those 'actors' really should be ashamed of themselves. The worst dub I've heard was for 'Hard Boiled', because my friend thought it was funny.
I remember seeing this in the theatre and was completely blown away with the visuals and the story. Not quite the same as the comic, but this was a stand alone film.
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Saturday 2nd July 2011 00:00 GMT Michael Habel
I never understood the hype of this Film
Personally I find this move to be VERY OVER RATED. + an age old adage of rather reading the Manga (Comic Book version), of Akria instead.
It's kinda like those Lord of the Rings Movies from a while back, they are ~ok~ at best, but in no way a proper substitute for the real thing (i.e. Printed Material)....
And the Film wasn't even that good, when taken into account with its source material.
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Saturday 2nd July 2011 01:17 GMT Tensigh
It sucked back then, it still sucks now
Akira was an acheivment in affects, sure. The animation quality was amazing, even though every character looked the same.
But the story really left much to be desired. The plot was basic, there was a lot of sub plots that went nowhere, and the story climaxed about 20 minutes before the end of the film.
Much like Avatar, it had great visuals, but not much for a story. I agree, the movie was highly overrated.
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Monday 4th July 2011 09:21 GMT Graham Bartlett
Ooh, big numbers - must be good! what do they mean again?
Amongst people who record, mix and master this stuff for a living, opinion is divided as to whether anything over 44/48kHz is worth having for recording with, and a definite majority in the "no" camp. Even those who use 96kHz would generally regard 192kHz as being excessive.
"Rebuilt from original elements" equals "remixed", not "remastered", doesn't it? You mix something, then you master it for distribution on various media. If you really cared, you'd master something once for distribution on vinyl, then master again for CD, and then again for DVD. This also covers getting mixes that'll sound decent on representative systems - so DVD sound needs to work OK on the mono speaker in a cheap TV, as well as in your multi-thousand-quid surround-sound setup.
And the reason old CDs (and your original Japanese PCM track) could sound bad is quite simply that we have better gear available today and the people using it have the experience to use it effectively. So remastering old digital recordings (taking the original analogue and converting to digital using modern equipment) is quite sensible. The problem with 44/48kHz isn't the frequency per se, it's whether all the associated circuit is doing its job properly - and whether the person using it is doing it right. We've got better gear today, and the people using it now have 20-30 years of experience to call on.
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Tuesday 5th July 2011 20:07 GMT Charles King
Bat-repellent
"Not only does the extended frequency response make Ohashi’s memorable, pounding score richer than Kobe beef"
HAHAHA pull the other one. I assume your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you wrote that. Whatever excuses might be made to justify 96kHz (poor brickwall filters, perhaps) completely fail to have relevance for anything over that. Any mastering gear that isn't 24bit these days is bargain-basement, but 16bit/48kHz is all you need for delivery to the consumer.
G. Bartlett's right - digital mastering gear was pretty ropey until well into the 90s, so there is a reason to go back to the original analog tapes and re-digitise them. But it's got nothing to do with throwing fancy numbers at it, unless yuou;re the sort of clueless nerd who gets impressed by such things.
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Thursday 7th July 2011 13:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tosh...
"But where do we go to buy "audiophile-grade" HDMI "interconnects"? From what you're saying, we will need them in order to really appreciate the full color gamut, without the usual black-level distortion and static produced by ordinary consumer-grade HDMI cables."
It's a digital signal - it's there or no - unless it's a very cheap / nastly or excessively long cable it's unlikely to be an issue.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
