Legitimately Remembered Love at last
Feb. 3rd, 2025 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAdvance reports the latest release over in Japan of “the Macross movie” Do You Remember Love? would have English subtitles got my attention. That particular piece of the Macross franchise hadn’t been included in the recent rollout to streaming services outside Japan I don’t have a subscription to. While I am quite aware a good number of other fans assign all the blame for that continued absence to Harmony Gold, I have to admit to being willing to wonder if there might be something to the occasional counterarguments the number of entities involved in the production of the movie four decades ago could have something to do with particular problems with its overseas rights. (I also understand that when the English dub of uncertain provenance was released on videotape years and years ago, Harmony Gold didn’t appear to have been involved...) In any case, I did start contemplating taking a rare step indeed for me.
Before the Macross logjam broke up to the extent it did English subtitles had begun appearing on Japanese Blu-Rays of some other parts of the franchise. While I have to admit the big deal some people made of importing DVDs from Japan “because the audiovisual quality’s so much better” didn’t do much to convince me to join them (leaving open the possibility I might only be revealing myself as trying to excuse the personal mediocrity of “not pushing myself to learn Japanese and do without middlemen”), when the Macross Frontier movies got subtitles I did muster the effort to import them as if that would even begin to make up for having watched so many “fansubs.” That was a bit over a decade ago now, though, and when it was announced the Blu-Rays for the next series Macross Delta would also have English subtitles, I took the easy way out and didn’t start watching it through dodgy methods to avoid the thought of having to spend lots of money making up for that. When general opinions of that series turned sour, even if I had my usual gloomy thoughts about recent mecha series somehow suffering from especially negative fan judgments I suppose it was one more excuse to avoid spending money.
Do You Remember Love?, though, would be a one-time purchase. I wasn’t as quick as some to preorder it; I was waiting for uncertainties to clear up about whether the subtitles would also be on the less exalted mere Blu-Ray in the release. While I got around to moving up to “high definition” when the Star Wars movies were released that way, continuing on to “4K” has never managed to feel compelling. Sitting some way back from my TV (as opposed to the “retina displays” of computers) seems to have something to do with that. This did, of course, mean part of the extravagant price I was paying was for a disc I wouldn’t be watching. The price, however, still wasn’t as high as for the domestic Macross Plus set now available, a set I have to admit I haven’t ordered; other “take it or leave it” high-priced anime releases over here have pretty much burned out my interest in that particular kind of conspicuous consumption.
So far as I can tell my own set didn’t ship quite as fast as from some other online stores, but it wound up on my doorstep with altogether surprising speed after that. Hearing the case slide around inside the oversized carton as I picked it up was a suggestion to order from different places, though. The set didn’t seem damaged, anyway, and I took a picture of it in the same place I’d taken a picture of the larger Macross Frontier set for the sake of some minimal evidence I wasn’t trying to pass off someone else’s picture as my own.
I had wondered about the subtitles in advance after certain complaints a Macross Plus release hadn’t had as good a translation as those preceding it, and also grappled with the feeling the second of two unofficial streamings of the movie last year might have spoiled me for any other translation. Still, I seemed able to cope and wind up thinking this translation was decent enough. The streamings just might have somewhat relaxed how my impressions of the movie mix in a bit of objection to the extensive redesigns of just about everything from the original TV series. (I suppose this could have something to do with an effort at a “personal” objection at Macross 7 being that most of its outfits and many of its mechanical designs didn’t appeal to me...) In the very last days before my set arrived I’d seen people beginning to complain the “4K” picture had been overprocessed; maybe only watching the Blu-Ray and sitting some way back from my TV could have helped add to a general feeling that there’s such a thing as being too picky about visual quality. I’d had the uncertain feeling of starting to think bits of the movie hadn’t been photographed quite in focus four decades ago while watching the second streaming last year, but again I might have managed to relax somewhat this time around.
The total experience was a bit different from watching on a closeup computer screen or even hooking a computer up to my TV, bringing Do You Remember Love? a bit closer to other “big anime movies of the 1980s” that have been released over here. I suppose it does remain more of an “anime fan’s experience” than Akira or the first Studio Ghibli movies. (The thought even swam through my mind about never having watched Transformers: The Movie start-to-finish, regardless of whether or not the death of Optimus Prime would be less appealing to see than some of the deaths here...) Maybe I’m still inclined to think I didn’t first see Do You Remember Love? in quite the same personal context as for those people over here who’d seen it in the 1980s while “moving up from Robotech,” regardless of my own improvements in picture and perhaps even translation quality since then. However, even another step in this singular journey has amounted to something.
Before the Macross logjam broke up to the extent it did English subtitles had begun appearing on Japanese Blu-Rays of some other parts of the franchise. While I have to admit the big deal some people made of importing DVDs from Japan “because the audiovisual quality’s so much better” didn’t do much to convince me to join them (leaving open the possibility I might only be revealing myself as trying to excuse the personal mediocrity of “not pushing myself to learn Japanese and do without middlemen”), when the Macross Frontier movies got subtitles I did muster the effort to import them as if that would even begin to make up for having watched so many “fansubs.” That was a bit over a decade ago now, though, and when it was announced the Blu-Rays for the next series Macross Delta would also have English subtitles, I took the easy way out and didn’t start watching it through dodgy methods to avoid the thought of having to spend lots of money making up for that. When general opinions of that series turned sour, even if I had my usual gloomy thoughts about recent mecha series somehow suffering from especially negative fan judgments I suppose it was one more excuse to avoid spending money.
Do You Remember Love?, though, would be a one-time purchase. I wasn’t as quick as some to preorder it; I was waiting for uncertainties to clear up about whether the subtitles would also be on the less exalted mere Blu-Ray in the release. While I got around to moving up to “high definition” when the Star Wars movies were released that way, continuing on to “4K” has never managed to feel compelling. Sitting some way back from my TV (as opposed to the “retina displays” of computers) seems to have something to do with that. This did, of course, mean part of the extravagant price I was paying was for a disc I wouldn’t be watching. The price, however, still wasn’t as high as for the domestic Macross Plus set now available, a set I have to admit I haven’t ordered; other “take it or leave it” high-priced anime releases over here have pretty much burned out my interest in that particular kind of conspicuous consumption.
So far as I can tell my own set didn’t ship quite as fast as from some other online stores, but it wound up on my doorstep with altogether surprising speed after that. Hearing the case slide around inside the oversized carton as I picked it up was a suggestion to order from different places, though. The set didn’t seem damaged, anyway, and I took a picture of it in the same place I’d taken a picture of the larger Macross Frontier set for the sake of some minimal evidence I wasn’t trying to pass off someone else’s picture as my own.
I had wondered about the subtitles in advance after certain complaints a Macross Plus release hadn’t had as good a translation as those preceding it, and also grappled with the feeling the second of two unofficial streamings of the movie last year might have spoiled me for any other translation. Still, I seemed able to cope and wind up thinking this translation was decent enough. The streamings just might have somewhat relaxed how my impressions of the movie mix in a bit of objection to the extensive redesigns of just about everything from the original TV series. (I suppose this could have something to do with an effort at a “personal” objection at Macross 7 being that most of its outfits and many of its mechanical designs didn’t appeal to me...) In the very last days before my set arrived I’d seen people beginning to complain the “4K” picture had been overprocessed; maybe only watching the Blu-Ray and sitting some way back from my TV could have helped add to a general feeling that there’s such a thing as being too picky about visual quality. I’d had the uncertain feeling of starting to think bits of the movie hadn’t been photographed quite in focus four decades ago while watching the second streaming last year, but again I might have managed to relax somewhat this time around.
The total experience was a bit different from watching on a closeup computer screen or even hooking a computer up to my TV, bringing Do You Remember Love? a bit closer to other “big anime movies of the 1980s” that have been released over here. I suppose it does remain more of an “anime fan’s experience” than Akira or the first Studio Ghibli movies. (The thought even swam through my mind about never having watched Transformers: The Movie start-to-finish, regardless of whether or not the death of Optimus Prime would be less appealing to see than some of the deaths here...) Maybe I’m still inclined to think I didn’t first see Do You Remember Love? in quite the same personal context as for those people over here who’d seen it in the 1980s while “moving up from Robotech,” regardless of my own improvements in picture and perhaps even translation quality since then. However, even another step in this singular journey has amounted to something.