Animeigo DVD preview

Special thanks to Animeigo, Harmony Gold and Steve Yun(Robotech.com) for arranging this MW special preview

In the year 1999...

Macross fans rejoiced when Animeigo first announced they had secured the rights to our favorite Valkyrie enriched pastime-The Super Dimension Fortress Macross television series. Finally, those of us who were not Japanese language enabled, would be able to enjoy one of Japan's most popular 1980's animated dramas. Its been a long wait, and the project release has been pushed out more times than we want to remember, but the time has arrived.

Was it worth the wait? Absolutely.

Animeigo was intially going to do a simple english translation and minor audio cleanup of the series, but once their resident Macross fanatic Shin Kurokawa took on the project, everything changed. I can only imagine the discussions between Shin and Animeigo CEO Robert Woodhead.... "You want how much money to do what?"

Macross has undergone a complete restoration. Film splices and dropouts are history. No more poorly interlaced video on your TV. No compression pixellation. Its quite ironic that the best presentation ever of the Macross TV series is coming from a foreign country.

Macross World was invited for a special screening this last weekend (12/08/01) and there was no way we would say no. We watched the first 4 episodes, along with Pineapple Salad(Focker getting blasted), and Goodbye Girl(one of my favorite episodes). On with the details...

Video quality is top notch. There were moments when we all let out a collective 'WOW' at the screen because the image was so sharp. I have included screen captures below, but they really don't do the video justice at all. Some of the restoration work performed was:
1) Digitally color correct the film(although there are times when there seems to be too much)
2) Physically recreate sections where the film was spliced or simply missing
3) Remove vast amounts of hair,dirt, and film grain(The Emotion version shows much of these foreign objects)

Two things clearly missing from the 6 episodes we watched, were Screen Interlacing(those ugly horizontal lines) and Video Compression artifacting(the blockiness sometimes present in high action scenes). The image quality was excellent for the 3 hours we viewed. Some scenes were a little too 'color saturated' for my own personal tastes-particularly some initial scenes inside the Zentradi ships, but other than that there were no complaints.

The english translations were notably clear and coherent. If you have been unfortunate to pickup the recently released Hong Kong bootleg DVDs, your know how bad a translation can be(there are times in that DVD set, where you simply wait a couple minutes until the conversation changes because the current one makes no sense at all). The Animeigo set brought much more personality into the characters than I ever imagined. The interactions between Roy and Hikaru are not what most will be expecting-very suprising.

Audio has a special feature-where you can actually turn off the Japanese voices. You still get all the music and sound effects though, so perhaps one day we'll see some enterprising fandubs. By the way, the English Subtitles can be turned off if you understand Japanese, and simply want to watch without the help.

I asked about the orders, and was told that pre-orders have already closed for the set-so if you did not sign up, unfortunately you are going to need to wait until the official retail release in Summer 2002. There will be no box set in Summer 2002-the DVDs will be released individually (pre-orderers received a $110 discount AND the collectors box!). But there is a small ray of hope for those who just learned of this project-some fans did cancel their orders to buy an X-Box, or GameCube, or simply because the economy has taken a slight downfall these last few months. This means that there may be a small chance that a few box sets (not confirmed!!) could be available after all the normal preorder DVDs are shipped out this month. Animeigo is going to hold these cancelled sets for bit, giving the Orderers a chance to reverse and restore their sets. If you did cancel, there is still a chance you can get back on the list-but you need to do this asap.

I have quite a few screen shots for your personal review-they are included below. Inside each link are three pictures-one from the Anime Cartoon HK Bootleg, one from the Emotion 2001 release, and of course the Animeigo set. Hope you enjoy the comparisons!

Macross World gives this set our highest recommendation!

title	island	defold 01	defold 02	defold 03

coming in hot	entry	buildings	mountain	explosion

island	wreck 01	wreck 02	history	restoration

rising	hikaru	lasers	macross!	flying low

gerwalk	battroid	explosion	fire!	hit

bridge	looming	chat	argue	airshow

focker	crowd	defold	the fleet	earth

priming	ocean	fire	hit!	britai

britai	armd 01 (01)	armd 01 (02)	lancer	point

explosions	fire!	dodge	britai