Artifact from the Future
Dec. 23rd, 2009 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAfter close to a month of waiting, a package of anime DVDs I had wound up checking my post office box for every few days made it through the holiday crush at customs at last. It may, I suppose, have been built up to the free-shipping threshold through the ordering of things I seemed interested in seeing but hadn't ever felt compelled to get before, but at the core of the order was a title my thoughts on which amounted to "the copies they just found are discounted now, so get it when you can, or you might not have a chance to get a legitimate on-disc copy for a long time"... and packed in with the DVD, I now have my very first Blu-Ray disc, of "The Wings of Honneamise."
As much as thoughts of making my first entry into the high-definition age have spun through my mind, though, I don't have a Blu-Ray player or even a high-definition TV. My respectable excuse is that I haven't seen the need to spend the money, but perhaps it's also a matter of there being so many choices in brand, technology, and size that the thought of just how much might have to be done to sift through the options and make sure I don't make the "wrong" choice paralyzes me. As I'd said, though, there was a DVD of the movie included with the Blu-Ray disc... although that may be focusing on the "wrong" part of the bundle.
I had first seen the anime movie about a different first flight into space on videotape back in university, and thought it interesting. When I was able to start putting a DVD collection of my own together, though, the consensus was that Manga Entertainment had made some horrific errors in authoring the disc so that the picture looked pretty awful. On first hearing that, it might have fit into an early prejudice of mine that, since all the comments I ever heard about anime DVDs seemed complaints about problems with them, the format was just on the bare edge of practicality anyway and it was more or less impossible to encode a good-looking disc... That thought went away with time, but Manga Entertainment, even as it was fading in importance (although that only let other companies fall into the unfortunate role of "the company that always finds a way to mess up its anticipated releases"), never got around to making a new DVD of a title at least a few people still seemed interested in being "done right," and I just kept waiting to get a copy and see the movie again.
Then, there were declarations that the Japanese company Bandai Visual was going to start releasing directly to the North American market, "showing everyone how it ought to be done," and lots of speculation that they would be sure to have a release of "The Wings of Honneamise" be a prime title... the only flaw seemed to be that their releases wound up being priced at twice the cost of an "ordinary" anime DVD for half the content, just like they were in Japan. With a sort of private flagellation, I resolved to myself that I wouldn't buy any of their titles, telling myself as well that if others said "at least the video quality's top-notch," that actually paying for that (instead of the prices being set to try and discourage "reverse importation") wasn't so much raising the bar for all the other North American anime companies as giving them a perfect excuse to just keep doing whatever they were doing. It was, I suppose, at least possible that the Bandai Visual USA release of "The Wings of Honneamise" had been intended as a high-definition release with the DVD included just an "extra," but even then it still seemed ridiculously expensive.
In the end, though, whatever discs Bandai Visual USA seemed able to sell to the "price is no object" crowd didn't seem enough to keep their operation running, and I suppose all my righteous indignation was meaningless self-puffery in the end. That still left me without a legitimate copy of "The Wings of Honneamise," though, even if I'd managed to find another one of their releases in a story for a really excellent discount... and then, an online store managed to find some copies of the movie to be sold at half price. That was still pretty pricy, but I told myself what I'd mentioned before and ordered the movie... Sooner or later, I'll at least be able to watch the DVD. Among the thoughts that others have had about the movie, though, is one of my own, that the production staff went to obvious great lengths to create an "alternative reality," but the actual rocket and capsule is just as obviously a Vostok system with a lick of paint...
As much as thoughts of making my first entry into the high-definition age have spun through my mind, though, I don't have a Blu-Ray player or even a high-definition TV. My respectable excuse is that I haven't seen the need to spend the money, but perhaps it's also a matter of there being so many choices in brand, technology, and size that the thought of just how much might have to be done to sift through the options and make sure I don't make the "wrong" choice paralyzes me. As I'd said, though, there was a DVD of the movie included with the Blu-Ray disc... although that may be focusing on the "wrong" part of the bundle.
I had first seen the anime movie about a different first flight into space on videotape back in university, and thought it interesting. When I was able to start putting a DVD collection of my own together, though, the consensus was that Manga Entertainment had made some horrific errors in authoring the disc so that the picture looked pretty awful. On first hearing that, it might have fit into an early prejudice of mine that, since all the comments I ever heard about anime DVDs seemed complaints about problems with them, the format was just on the bare edge of practicality anyway and it was more or less impossible to encode a good-looking disc... That thought went away with time, but Manga Entertainment, even as it was fading in importance (although that only let other companies fall into the unfortunate role of "the company that always finds a way to mess up its anticipated releases"), never got around to making a new DVD of a title at least a few people still seemed interested in being "done right," and I just kept waiting to get a copy and see the movie again.
Then, there were declarations that the Japanese company Bandai Visual was going to start releasing directly to the North American market, "showing everyone how it ought to be done," and lots of speculation that they would be sure to have a release of "The Wings of Honneamise" be a prime title... the only flaw seemed to be that their releases wound up being priced at twice the cost of an "ordinary" anime DVD for half the content, just like they were in Japan. With a sort of private flagellation, I resolved to myself that I wouldn't buy any of their titles, telling myself as well that if others said "at least the video quality's top-notch," that actually paying for that (instead of the prices being set to try and discourage "reverse importation") wasn't so much raising the bar for all the other North American anime companies as giving them a perfect excuse to just keep doing whatever they were doing. It was, I suppose, at least possible that the Bandai Visual USA release of "The Wings of Honneamise" had been intended as a high-definition release with the DVD included just an "extra," but even then it still seemed ridiculously expensive.
In the end, though, whatever discs Bandai Visual USA seemed able to sell to the "price is no object" crowd didn't seem enough to keep their operation running, and I suppose all my righteous indignation was meaningless self-puffery in the end. That still left me without a legitimate copy of "The Wings of Honneamise," though, even if I'd managed to find another one of their releases in a story for a really excellent discount... and then, an online store managed to find some copies of the movie to be sold at half price. That was still pretty pricy, but I told myself what I'd mentioned before and ordered the movie... Sooner or later, I'll at least be able to watch the DVD. Among the thoughts that others have had about the movie, though, is one of my own, that the production staff went to obvious great lengths to create an "alternative reality," but the actual rocket and capsule is just as obviously a Vostok system with a lick of paint...