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sol_bad
Member
I still remember my mum letting me rent one of the Urotsukidoji films. Yeah, it was an edited down version but it still had sex scenes.
She had no idea what I was watching.
*EDIT*
BTW, if anyone can help me with what this anime is?
This cartoon show we had in the morning, Agros's Cartoon Connection, once played an anime movie, very out of the norm for them. All I can remember though is that the eneimes were these cylindrical looking robots and they got bigger and bigger as the movie went on, they were blue or teal in colour. That's literally all I can remember about it.
She had no idea what I was watching.
*EDIT*
BTW, if anyone can help me with what this anime is?
This cartoon show we had in the morning, Agros's Cartoon Connection, once played an anime movie, very out of the norm for them. All I can remember though is that the eneimes were these cylindrical looking robots and they got bigger and bigger as the movie went on, they were blue or teal in colour. That's literally all I can remember about it.
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Happosai
Member
I bought Urotsukidoji on blu-ray and watched it long after I had started watching anime. It's an anime with adult scene which although intended to be adults only...it's not too much more extreme than Madbull 34. I remember reading reviews about Wicked City (after buying it) in the 90's and Westerners just didn't get it. People still sh** on Wicked City when it's brought up. Basically, the talk was that it was "almost hentai." So, people hated it for that. My simple mind always sums up Wicked City like this: It's a war between humans and an overworld which seeks to destroy a century year long peace treaty. The eve of designing the peace treaty, an agent for the human delegates is marked for death by overworld rebels. He is teamed with an agent from the other side who is abused in nearly every way because her race sees her as a traitor. Ultimately, the relationship between the overworld agent and the human agent becomes personal and more like a romantic courtship. Yoshiaki Kawajiri made it the first time an enemy could be destroyed by the merging of two races (of course they had to exchange DNA to merge...ahem). If Kawajiri wanted it to be a hentai - he would have just made it a peace movie where both races have sex and there's no plot or context. I think 3/4 of those who hate it haven't even watched it but they heard "bad stuff" from friends. SMH...
The anime movie you're describing (the robots anyway) resemble those of Giant Robo. It was an OVA and some OVAs are shown like movies. I can dig deeper, though.
Happosai
Member
Anime soundtracks to me have always been inspiring. Not just the older ones but newer, too. Japan has some amazing composers and musicians. Thanks for sharing these. I'll take advantage of this to share some of mine. I played instrumental covers of "Washu's Heartache" from the second Tenchi OVA and the ending theme for Harlock Saga. They're free to listen to.
Aurifera (Harlock Saga ending OST) cover
cover
Washu's Heartache cover (Tenchi OVA 2)
Shortage of musicians when I went to studio to record these in 2018...so I played all.instruments.
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Happosai
Member
Pejo
Member
Yea that was it. So many good movies that I never would have seen otherwise.
ValiantTraveler
Member
I rewatched Escaflowne last year and was blown away by how majestic it looks and sounds. The world is so rich that you only see snippets of it throughout the 26 episodes. It's in the top 5 mecha shows for me.
I watched this video this morning, it sums up the 90s trends pretty well, there are so many shows I'd love to watch:
Macross movies were good. I think I have a bootleg of that ninja scroll ( I was uneducated on bootlegs at the time, seem to have bought nearly a dozen dvds during that time on ebay). I see the Crying Freeman collection on the shelf but still sealed. Could never really get interested in watching a guy fight people naked. The irresponsible captain taylor was enjoyable. I liked Photon and I'm also a fan of tenchi. I also enjoyed salary man kintaro. Loved slam dunk.
I haven't seen that in such a long time I've forgotten what it was about.
I haven't seen that in such a long time I've forgotten what it was about.
Happosai
Member
Demon City Shinjuku is one of my favorite Kawajiri films.
Happosai
Member
I left the U.S. and only took 1/4 of possessions with me. Well, they were shipped to Mexico via DHL. I hope it's not a large collection. I have a medium sized collection of about 120 titles and 90 got here but it was expensive. 1-2 years is a long time to plan and figure things out. I had about 3-months.I just realized. I plan on leaving the U.S. in a year or 2 (hopefully covid is dealt with by then) and I have a massive anime collection I'm not going to be taking with me.
edit: maybe I'll have it shipped after I finally figure out where I make home base.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
My older brother had a VHS copy of Wicked City and similarly got in trouble for having it. Me and my friends found it (a few years later, when we were young teens) and watched it. Awesome stuff.
lachesis
Member
I remember SF Saiyuki Star-Zinger (Force Five) and also Space Battle Ship Yamato (Starblazers)
Not sure how the localization was - but that Princess Aurora's bikini and shower scenes were.. (ho-hum)
Used to buy pla-models of the mainship as well as action figure toys of the three main characters as well. Fond memories.
Space Battle Ship Yamato, I also enjoyed the TV one, and vaguely followed the movie versions, and also enjoyed the recent re-make.
I'm guessing around 400 titles. I do plan on selling just about everything else before I leave except for the anime. I can't get myself to sell it.
edit: probably just end up leaving it with family. Thankfully these aren't vhs tapes I'm leaving with them. Those had mold on them somehow when I got them back a couple years later.
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#Phonepunk#
Banned
Love me some retro anime. Feel like there is so much good stuff to discover.
“Fist of the North Star” was the last series I got into. Great stuff! Each episode is like a mini Mad Max but with martial arts instead of cars.
“Dirty Pair” is my favorite 80s fun time anime to just throw on tv. Love that opening and closing theme.
“Fist of the North Star” was the last series I got into. Great stuff! Each episode is like a mini Mad Max but with martial arts instead of cars.
“Dirty Pair” is my favorite 80s fun time anime to just throw on tv. Love that opening and closing theme.
DragoonWalker
Member
Modern Sakuga raises an interesting point I want to talk about. And that is the huge gulf of quality today between the best animation and the worst, often in the same show, hell sometimes the same episode. In the old days, there wasn't really such a thing as Sakuga. Most shows were consistent throughout, you had great scenes but even the rest were pretty good looking. Either the whole thing looked great most of the time or it didn't. Today, the highs are highest they've ever been, but the lows are abysmal. Very few shows look good from start to finish. Consistency is no longer a priority. Low wages + 200 shows a season don't help.
Something like Fire Force has some of greatest action scenes I've ever seen, but everything outside of those ranges from acceptable to the worst. Characters are off model,you have long periods of shots are barely animated, corner cutting everywhere, and just mediocre animation in general. New FLCL has scenes like this, vs the rest of it... So much of modern anime is like this, they make it up with beautiful bgs and bright colors but they can't fool me. But there are some all around great looking shows, tbf, like Flip Flappers, Kabaneri, Mob Psycho... that give me the feeling of watching old anime like the ones found in this thread.
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Happosai
Member
Before
O-N-E
"attempted" to troll my thread with a million gifs of one select modern anime series; I mentioned in the OP...I'm not here to argue which anime generation was greater. True, modern anime fans have a select handful of well animated titles, but the vast majority are proxy, rushed, low-budget, and use cheap computer glow of rendering to substitute for where animators used to work with hands. I don't like the overall argument. I started watching anime in the 90's and there was some terrible crap produced and forgotten in the 90's. During that time, many were still airing 70's and 80's anime so it seemed we had more to see and choose from. It's not fair to dislike that someone likes the style of their generation more than those of their parents. My parents loved cartoons like Tennessee Tuxedo and Rocky and Bullwinkle. I still can't find humor in the shows because the animation was terrible. If you don't have the budget to produce something decent...it's better to leave it as something simple like a comic book. Anyway, if anyone does want a great thread which discusses the modern side of anime and manga....there's a great thread on that. 
Anime/Manga Community
It seems we don't have a thread for this and since JoJo is back I figured anime is saved. /s https://animeuknews.net/2018/06/jojos-bizarre-adventure-part-5-golden-wind-vento-aureo-anime-adaptation-officially-announced/ http://anichart.net/Summer-2018 (However if we already have one pls delete...
I created this thread because there hasn't been a retro anime thread in over 5-years and I think GAF needs one (especially given the age demographic).
Happosai
Member
What I did was difficult if you like your anime. I picked 100 of my best titles, arranged using a computer graphic how I wanted them organized, and then UPS shipped them to a family member who was visiting. That was 1/4 of my titles. I got another half my titles boxed up (by a family member) last September and they shipped out in early January. That's 4-years and still more than half the titles left in my old residence. You could always pack your luggage carrier to the brim with anime and take one pair of clothes.
I considered it.
Happosai
Member
Did you have watch the Dirty Pair OVA? I missed out on getting FotNS the collection from Discotek while it was still affordable. I checked for it this last Spring and it's in their out-of-print lot now.
Paltheos
Member
That's not true. There are still some very good shows produced, from time to time.
Gurren Lagann (2007) might be the ultimate super robot show - I don't think the concept can be topped and it's really something when it's operating at peak capacity. No show has ever gotten me as pumped up as Gurren Lagann.
Gundam Thunderbolt (2016) might be the best Gundam has ever been, and this is coming from someone who's a fan of the OG 1979 show. It takes the gritty realism that UC Gundam was most originally loved for and turned out a tight, beautiful, terrible story, and all without consuming itself over fetishism for internal politics that's hung over recent productions like Unicorn. ... The first season of Thunderbolt anyway. The second is more standard UC fare - i.e. boring. Thankfully the first functions entirely fine as a standalone story.
Macross Frontier (2008-2011) is good fun, if a little basically repetitive in its ideas from older Macross (and with a leading man who is often insufferable). It is an interesting, lively world to look at though, with a soundtrack from the legendary Yoko Kanno, and some of the sequences are just a delight to watch. Like, look at this concert scene from the 2nd movie:
Overflowing with happy, bouncy energy! When I watched this movie 10 years ago I was in awe... at the amount of money that must have been spent to bring this one concert to life. The ridiculous amount of CG matched with dynamic camera movements, individual art designs for every member of the audience the camera lingered on along with their own animations for waving batons when the camera was positioned behind the audience.
Aldnoah Zero (2014-2015) is an exciting episode-to-episode romp for wondering how the heroes will deal with whatever ridiculous power this week's villains' mechs will have. The odds feel stacked allot of the times and I enjoyed most of the twists and turns along the way. There are allot of criticisms mounted against this show that I can't get into without going into spoiler territory and others of my own that I don't see brought up as often (that the background of the show seems to follow a cheap template for mecha shows following Code Geass - 'that teenagers totally unaccustomed to war can casually ride through an active warzone and complain about innane shit like this is everyday shit' and 'enormous casts all with their own problems that I don't have a reason to all give a shit about are good' are 2 of my big problems but I kinda just rolled with it), but it wasn't a bad show. I had fun.
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Sakura
Member
That's what, 4 shows in the last 20 years?
Gurren Lagann was cool, but it was 13 years ago, and it's still worse than any of the classics.
Macross Frontier was enjoyable sure, but is it as good as series like Macross 7? I don't think so. I honestly liked Delta more.
Thunderbolt was good. But it was 8 short episodes once again set during the one year war, and that was it. Retro Gundam gave us the OG series, Zeta, ZZ, Victory, Wing, Turn A, not to mention the OVAs. Sure opinion is divided on some of these series, but I'd take any of them over shit like Age or IBO. When is the last time we actually had a good Gundam TV series?
Aldnoah Zero, I dunno what you are talking about here. That show was terrible. The story and setting made no sense, it's villain of the week as you say, and every time the new villain would show up with his new power or super mech or whatever, Keep on Keepin on would play and the protag would miraculously save the day because he is so amazing.
Sure look, there are enjoyable series from time to time, but the quality and quantity is lower than what it used to be, in my opinion.
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Happosai
Member
The quality has gone lower and that has a small part to do with studios pushing out a larger quantity of shows on a much lower budget. The CG used is not the same use in North American animation. It's lower grade and is mostly used to polish or compensate for where the artists are not enhancing cels themselves. However, about the big picture. Anime will never go back to what it was 35-years ago let alone 5-years ago. I'm the GAF community, good criticism is always welcome but let's try not to get personal. My estimate (by the enormous size of the official GAF anime community thread) is that most here prefer or are now watching what's new. So, we need to be polite to them.
Paltheos
politely have rebuttal for some newer series which have their own contributions to what anime is today. I'm happy there is modern anime as it is the basis for modern JRPGs and visual novels. If anime just stopped after 2000...there wouldn't be a standard to build on today.Note: I think it would help modern Japanese animators seeking for high-quality cuts to stop making series that span 26-100+ episodes (this cuts quality down big time) and try making shorts OVAs and movies again. In the 70's-90's the short series', OVAs, and movies usually were the best animated. Whereas, even back-in-the-day series that would amass 50 or more episodes tended to be stiff and lack quality work (also, the turnover rate of employees in an animation studio tends to be higher when they're pushing over 20 episodes and you end up with various director changes, VA replacements, and rotation of many animators).
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What I did was difficult if you like your anime. I picked 100 of my best titles, arranged using a computer graphic how I wanted them organized, and then UPS shipped them to a family member who was visiting. That was 1/4 of my titles. I got another half my titles boxed up (by a family member) last September and they shipped out in early January. That's 4-years and still more than half the titles left in my old residence. You could always pack your luggage carrier to the brim with anime and take one pair of clothes.
I did consider just taking the discs with me but decided against it. I might just bring my top ten anime with me(whatever that might be at the time). I'll probably have it shipped when I finally decide where I'll end up living. Man, that shipping cost is going to hurt!
edit: the luggage will probably be packed mostly with laptops, consoles, and camera stuff.
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Starlight Lotice
Member
Latest one I watched is Martian Successor Nadescio.
The dub is pretty bad but I enjoy the silliness of it.
I really wanna watch Magic Knight Rayerath and Revolutionary Girl Utena, but they are so expensive in the UK to buy!
I also need to finish Nadia of the Blue Water.
The dub is pretty bad but I enjoy the silliness of it.
I really wanna watch Magic Knight Rayerath and Revolutionary Girl Utena, but they are so expensive in the UK to buy!
I also need to finish Nadia of the Blue Water.
Aggressive Carrot
Member
Good anime. I liked Martian Successor Nadescio too. Most English dubs were bad back in the day. Good theme song too.
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Space Runaway
Member
Back in the late 80s, Salamander/Life Force and Gradius managed to get their own OVA series. A 3-part series which each OVA covering a different game in the series (In this case Salamander, Gradius and Gradius 2).
Well, they're not great and fairly story heavy considering the subject matter. Really mostly a novelty as the main draw are the ending sequences of each OVA, where the leads fly around in Vic Vipers while blowing up enemies and bosses from the games. Having them attempt to recreate game sequences can also be pretty amusing and fun.
Not really recommended but if you're ever curious or bored you can catch all 3 on youtube. =P
Well, they're not great and fairly story heavy considering the subject matter. Really mostly a novelty as the main draw are the ending sequences of each OVA, where the leads fly around in Vic Vipers while blowing up enemies and bosses from the games. Having them attempt to recreate game sequences can also be pretty amusing and fun.
Not really recommended but if you're ever curious or bored you can catch all 3 on youtube. =P
ValiantTraveler
Member
I love how these sound effects get reused in Super Robot Wars for non-Gundam units. And allow me to add these two:
You need to finish Nadia! The last few episodes are the best imo, both in terms of lore and action.
Happosai
Member
With Martian Successor Nadesico...I actually stopped watching because in the late-90's all I had was the dubbed VHS. I should have bought it back on DVD and just watched the subbed version. I recall my reason for not liking the dub was the actors speed-reading their lines and it just being a hot mess.
Nadia the Secret of Blue Water is actually cheaper on Region B (Europe, I believe) blu-ray than the Region A set. It's the same set, too. You'd have to pay for shipping from the U.S. but if you really like it -- buy it before it goes out-of-print. All older anime that was not super popular tends to only stay in-stock about 3-years after release before printing gets scarce or the publishers simply inflate the price.
Happosai
Member
You've mentioned the sound-effects. Japan was producing most of the industrial synthesizers in the 70's and 80's (aside from Moog, Sequential Circuits, and Fairlight). Therefore, you get a lot of modular synth sounds, analog mono or polyphonic, and arpeggios were looped to signal action sequences. As someone who used to record a tone of sound tracks; I can say that there's pretty much no sound the older synthesizers couldn't make. Yeah, synthesizers today can do a lot with software but that's mostly patching and basic sampling.
This guy is using drone synths patched to effects pedals to get the sounds they used to use in Japan from the larger modular synthesizers.
Ballthyrm
Member
No one has mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes yet.
So i guess i have to do it.
It's probably the best space opera ever written.
The side characters side kicks have more characterization than the main characters in the new Star Wars trilogy.
If you think game of thrones has a large cast, just you wait !
It's smart, it doesn't do black and white, it takes time when it needs to.
It explores humanity in all its flaws.
It's in every sense Epic and Goddamn i wished we made anime like this nowadays.
So i guess i have to do it.
It's probably the best space opera ever written.
The side characters side kicks have more characterization than the main characters in the new Star Wars trilogy.
If you think game of thrones has a large cast, just you wait !
It's smart, it doesn't do black and white, it takes time when it needs to.
It explores humanity in all its flaws.
It's in every sense Epic and Goddamn i wished we made anime like this nowadays.
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ValiantTraveler
Member
I didn’t bring it up, but it’s my favorite anime of all time. It’s so grand and classy and thought-provoking. So many memorable characters and dialogues and battles and deaths (the most devastating I saw in all of anime). There’s nothing quite like it and there probably never will be. I can’t do this anime justice in this post. I’ll just say I’m glad to have been born in an era where it exists.No one has mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes yet.
So i guess i have to do it.
It's probably the best space opera ever written.
The side characters side kicks have more characterization than the main characters in the new Star Wars trilogy.
If you think game of thrones has a large cast, just you wait !
It's smart, it doesn't do black and white, it takes time when it needs to.
It explores humanity in all its flaws.
It's in every sense Epic and Goddamn i wished we made anime like this nowadays.
lachesis
Member
No one has mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes yet.
So i guess i have to do it.
It's probably the best space opera ever written.
The side characters side kicks have more characterization than the main characters in the new Star Wars trilogy.
If you think game of thrones has a large cast, just you wait !
It's smart, it doesn't do black and white, it takes time when it needs to.
It explores humanity in all its flaws.
It's in every sense Epic and Goddamn i wished we made anime like this nowadays.
Well, I also didn't bring this up because I guess in my mind, this is a novel first and foremost... and I went into watching the OVAs later on. I read the novel about 3-4 times the entire thing, including the gaidens, and it made a deep impact on my politics too. Star-wars esque space opera + hint of SF + political drama + romance of three kingdoms with hundreds of interesting characters, what not to love!
The OVAs were great - and it's a miracle that they were able to finish the entire storyline that's over 100 episodes, which is practically unthinkable in today's standard - it was truly a result of the passion. Currently re-watching it again (my 2nd run) - upto about ep. 90 now.
Having said so, OVA version lost a lot of subtle details. I mean, there are only certain things that could be carried over with words, much cheaper, by just few strokes of pen. Scale of space fights were much more epic, more vivid and even more violent than what was shown on OVA. It was a great representation of the storyline - but I think it fell a bit short on many fronts... so I normally offer others to read the novel first.
Come to think of it, this was Yoshiki Tanaka's part-time novel job for a newspaper to come up with college tuition (or sort, iirc) - it was amazing feat. I do love to read his other works including Heroic Legend of Arslan which was recently wrapped up. He, as a writer, is known to go sideways and never end up finishing his work properly - so I was little hesistant of starting up, to be honest. The Legend of Galactic Heroes is an exception though - that it's all wrapped up pretty well. Especially loved the gaiden series, including the Yulian's diary.
I watched the new thesis that's being made on Funimation, but as pretty as it looks... I'm afraid it skipped even more stuff than OVAs. Still enjoyed it, and looking forward next season if there would be.
Happosai
Member
seems like it's quite hard to come across the anime or the OVA nowadays. I was doing a search on "Macross: Do you remember love?" and this popped up
Dave_at_Home
Member
I've never been into anime much, but I did enjoy Toonami. I've seen many of the important Anime films, and I certainly agree that the older hand drawn look vastly better. There's so much depth to the image it's almost as if everything was drawn on black paper.
Space Runaway
Member
In the world of lost footage, I still yearn to see the Fist of the North Star movie fully uncut. Supposedly all the original negatives were lost in a fire though with the censor edits done on video, I always hope someone might unexpectedly stumble upon a degraded master cassette of the unedited version. Seems unlikely though.... I do also wonder if the unedited version has any lost footage. Like Galf squashing that guys head in the uncut footage was long missing as they used a cutaway for censorship and it makes me wonder if parts like the Fang Clan leader's death also had excised footage.
Happosai
Member
In the world of lost footage, I still yearn to see the Fist of the North Star movie fully uncut. Supposedly all the original negatives were lost in a fire though with the censor edits done on video, I always hope someone might unexpectedly stumble upon a degraded master cassette of the unedited version. Seems unlikely though.... I do also wonder if the unedited version has any lost footage. Like Galf squashing that guys head in the uncut footage was long missing as they used a cutaway for censorship and it makes me wonder if parts like the Fang Clan leader's death
In the world of lost footage, I still yearn to see the Fist of the North Star movie fully uncut. Supposedly all the original negatives were lost in a fire though with the censor edits done on video, I always hope someone might unexpectedly stumble upon a degraded master cassette of the unedited version. Seems unlikely though.... I do also wonder if the unedited version has any lost footage. Like Galf squashing that guys head in the uncut footage was long missing as they used a cutaway for censorship and it makes me wonder if parts like the Fang Clan leader's death also had excised footage.
There is no explanation from Japan or the first U.S. distributor (Streamline) as to why select scenes were censored or edited. Discotek holds rights to the TV series and may have tried for rights to the movie as well. There would need to be a demand for the uncut version in order to fund it's release. Discotek would likely have to pay big to get the original negatives to work with. It's possible. They've done it before with select releases and there is no record of the negatives ever having been destroyed. I blame a majority of the censorship on Streamline. Japan cut a few things but it was still mostly intact. Streamline had a reputation for screwing with older anime. The Italian version was likely a direct transfer from Japan to VHS and they left it mostly as is.
Happosai
Member
In early 2000 when I bought Wicked City on VHS, I was also searching for similar titles. My copy was published under the now defunct Urban Vision. Urban Visions trailers introduced a younger me to many of the more mature anime that were out there. They were a U.S. publisher managed by a Japanese guy and a few of their titles have yet to be renewed under newer distributors. Check out their trailers. I had: Psycho Diver (never released on DVD), FF Legend of Crystals???, Dragon Slayer (awesome OVA based on the Legend of Heroes games), Twilight of the Dark Master, and BioHunter.
I still have Wicked City on DVD but the Urban Vision release.
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Space Runaway
Member
Actually the censorship is entirely due to Toei, who backpedaled after getting serious pushback from parent groups over the violence (HnK was a mainstream anime watched by children afterall) during the movies roadshow release. After that information becomes really wish-washy on the state of the movie during it's full theatrical run but once it hit home video in Japan it was completely censored into the version we now know (And with a new ending where Ken and Raoh fight to a draw). Every "complete" version has the same edits, except that Italian VHS release which had those handful of unique uncensored scenes. Titles and dub aside, the only changes Streamline made were with the audio - muting or lowering the volume on certain tracks, increasing the audio of sfx and changing the ending theme to an instrumental version.
I don't know if there's any truth to the negatives being lost in a fire, though that reason is the most commonly cited whenever the original footage is discussed. I do feel the that if the uncut footage was readily available Toei would have released a restored version by now though...
Edit: Typos
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Happosai
Member
My story was half speculation. I was unaware that Toei started all this. This is why creators need to be careful who they sell rights of production to. This brings up more questions. Japan used to be touchy about certain parts shown in terms of nudity and would half-censor things like that in the 80's (non-hentai); but, why the world was violence being censored? Look at M.D. Geist, Devilman the OVA, or Violence Jack. All were made before or shortly after FotNS the movie and little or nothing was censored (even if they were different studios).Actually the censorship is entirely due to Toei, who backpedaled after getting serious pushback from parent groups over the violence (HnK was a mainstream anime watched by children afterall) during the movies roadshow release. After that information becomes really wish-washy on the state of the movie during it's full theatrical run but once it hit home video in Japan it was completely censored into the version we now know (And with a new ending where Ken and Raoh fight to a draw). Every "complete" version has the same edits, except that Italian VHS release which had those handful of unique uncensored scenes. Titles and dub aside, the only changes Streamline made were with the audio - muting or lowering the volume on certain tracks, increasing the audio of sfx and changing the ending theme to an instrumental version.
I don't know if there's any truth to the negatives being lost in a fire, though that reason is the most commonly cited whenever the original footage is discussed. I do feel the that if the uncut footage was readily available Toei would have released a restored version by now though...
Edit: Typos
I wish some big money production company would just insist for the negatives. I'm sure they didn't burn up. I know negatives are fragile and flammable but I've heard the same story for nearly every film with missing scenes. If anyone can get them, it'll be Discotek.
How exactly did Italy get the version they did? Sounds like the Italian version is less censored than the original Japan release.
Space Runaway
Member
In this case it was seemingly due to it being a large theatrical release of a hit tv show (And supposedly there was a lot of pre-release hype about the gore and work they put into it). so it was a visible target. Even the show itself came under fire toward the end. As for OVAs, like most straight to video stuff even today, they're not really subject to the same scrutiny.
If they still exist I hope it's released sooner than later as they can't survive in storage forever. =/
As far as I'm aware nobody knows. In fact for a good while that version was considered something of a myth as you'd hear about it but as with so many other rumours there was never any visual proof for the longest time.
Happosai
Member
So, the TV show (which I haven't seen in ages) was likely toned down for a broader audience but the movie was subject to censoring it it surpassed the series in violence? Sounds like the same happened on a smaller scale with the Street Fighter 2 V series when they made the movie. I don't recall the series having anything censored but it took years and many releases before they released a mostly uncensored cut of the movie. All because of the shower scene with Chun Li.
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Space Runaway
Member
Yeah gore in the Fist tv series was usually depicted with silver or black blood, while exploding or sliced up bodies would be in silhouette. Occasionally they pushed the boundaries but ultimately they made the concept as broadcast friendly (By 80s JP standards) as possible. The movie was to be like the comic and fully show all the guts and brutal violence and it's still extremely gorey even in it's censored form.
With SF, at least the SF2 movie always uncut in Japan. Though yeah, in the US it took like 15 years to get a completely uncut version with the original soundtrack. Though on that subject, the bluray is great.
Happosai
Member
It was funny reading Amazon reviews for the first NTSC DVD printings of SF2 the movie. So many flipped when the Chun Li scene was cut. It's like 10-seconds long and made me wonder...if they wanted T & A anime that bad...there is a genre for that. Speaking of soundtracks, that's another mystery I never read much into. During the 70's-80's, many Americans were cutting the stereo mix down to run English lyrics into opens/closings or in the case with either Harmony Gold or Streamline; they would remove the entire soundtrack and replace it with something American made. Was that even necessary? The GoShogūn TV series opening in English makes me cringe (they called it something like Macron 5). Yet, the American synthesizer soundtrack added into Lensman was awesome.Yeah gore in the Fist tv series was usually depicted with silver or black blood, while exploding or sliced up bodies would be in silhouette. Occasionally they pushed the boundaries but ultimately they made the concept as broadcast friendly (By 80s JP standards) as possible. The movie was to be like the comic and fully show all the guts and brutal violence and it's still extremely gorey even in it's censored form.
With SF, at least the SF2 movie always uncut in Japan. Though yeah, in the US it took like 15 years to get a completely uncut version with the original soundtrack. Though on that subject, the bluray is great.