TONY: Perhaps you've noticed while watching anime on Blu-ray that it could look quite a bit different than it looked when it first aired?
Well, that's because a lot of animation production houses worked on super-crunch timelines.
They have to cut corners to get things to air on time.
But rather than let those sloppy drawings, errors, and dubious style guide interpretations live on in perpetuity,
some studios elect to redraw entire segments for home video release.
JARED: Ahh?! Are you talking about anime? I have a Google Alert set up, so I know when anyone's talking about anime.
TONY: Yeah, um... we are, but we're taping this now and we're not live on the Internet,
so how would you even get a Google Alert?
JARED: I overclocked my graphics cards so high, that my frame rate actually lets me see the future, Tony.
But if we're talking about cheaply-made anime,
I have hours of this stuff that I've conveniently catalogued just to prove this very point.
Even big-name shows, with huge audiences like Dragon Ball Super,
disappointed fans because it would randomly start looking even worse than the original series!
Which is from the past! When everything was bad!
Take this scene for example: while dorky-looking purple space-furry Beerus looks okay,
Goku looks like the fifth grade OC Saiyan I drew whenever I was mad at my mom!
Which was a lot! These aren't even key frames obviously,
but take a good look at his hands! This is one of the greatest fictional heroes in the entire world!
Why does he have fused turds for fingers? Is this some new form of Super Saiyan nobody told me about?
Super Saiyan level... crap!
TONY: But in home video, this ugly duckling became a beautiful anime swan
or at least the duckling turned into what a duck should actually look like, instead of like a weird backwards
inside out, ass-duck.
And frankly, these changes are pretty minor, compared to other shows.
I mean, you could at least recognize that each drawing is supposed to be Goku.
JARED: The same can't be said for Mekakucity Actors.
Check out the original scene, compared to this animation from the re-release.
Not only are the character designs entirely different,
but they're wearing different clothes, and oh yeah,
it doesn't remind me of a bad Machinima from 2003 for no goddamn reason!
It makes sense that they decided to redraw the entire sequence by hand.
TONY: Hey, to be entirely fair to the show,
this is just one scene. The rest of the series doesn't look like a long-lost
Dreamcast launch title.
JARED: Other shows, like the recent Berserk revival, were done almost entirely in CG
so they can't just scrap the whole show and draw it all over again.
As much as true Beserk fans wish they had. [ominous air]
But that doesn't mean they didn't try to fix things up as best they could for the Blu-ray.
Look at this shot. The creepy dead-eyed plastic
doll-stare of this girl is so confusing!
I feel like I just got one of those weird face blindness disorders.
The higher-ups knew that this was a cursed image,
so it was wisely redone.
TONY: It's worth reasserting at this point that this is such a common practice that some publishers advertise their Blu-ray releases by saying:
"Not as shitty as the TV version." I'm paraphrasing, but it's kind of upsetting that people go for this too.
I mean, could you imagine having to wait for the Blu-ray release of
Guardians of the Galaxy to see Chris Pratt,
but if you go to see him the theater you get like,
Chris O'Donnell?
Does anyone know who that is?
JARED: Nobody knows who Chris O'Donnell is! Our average viewers are infants
accidentally tapping the videos, while chewing on an iPad mini.
Maybe not you personally watching this, but we have the numbers.
Statistically, that's who you are. You want some of that upper-class
Daily Motion bullshit? Go somewhere else.
TONY: Point remains, you have to wonder why some studios bother to animate this at all if they're just going to have to
pay to completely redraw it later.
JARED: Another example is from Ore, Tsuintēru ni Narimasu (Gonna be the Twin-Tail!!).
Now, I watch this show strictly for the plot, and not because I yearn for an easily digestible
form of female intimacy that doesn't trigger my social anxiety. [ominous air]
[ominous air]
Anyway, check out this clip! Watch how they re-did
everything in the shot, except for the background.
In Japan, series like these are always done by animators whose pay rate can go up and down depending
on how good they are. So when they try to cheap out when someone's new, or rushed, or just using someone who sucks,
it's always a risk to the final product!
TONY: Let's not get hung up on just animation because it's not the only way that things change when they come to Blu-ray.
As we've explored in earlier videos, super violent shows like
Terra Formars were rife with lazily placed black smudges to censor out ultraviolence and severed heads.
There comes a point where so much is obscured by the censorship, that it's difficult to parse what's actually
happening in the scene.
If it's so covered in black bars that you can't even parse what's supposed to be happening in the scene,
why even make this a scene at all!?
JARED: It makes sense if you just view those black bars as little ads
to buy the Blu-ray instead. The action may not be clear,
but it is clear that the censorship is done in a way to make the viewer feel like they're missing out on some real cool
neck stumps.
TONY: Keeping that in mind, the Blu-ray release of Nisekoi flies in the face of everything that we talked about up until this point.
Here's the original TV version overflowing with hot spring fan service:
and here, is the Blu-ray:
The TV version.
Blu-ray version.
TV version.
Blu-ray version.
TV version.
Blu-ray version.
JARED: Oh, man! What a ripoff! Where am I supposed to see anime boobs now? The Internet?
Basic cable? The entire nation of Japan? I don't got time for that!
TONY: The production house responsible for this dubious boner material
appropriately named "Shaft",
made their release far less racy for home video.
JARED: I'm more concerned about the safety of those poor hairless naked teens.
If the baths are hot enough to produce that much steam, then the water should be
scalding the flesh right off of their kawaii bones.
TONY: Is this is subtle commentary on the sorry state of anime? And the near toxic cycle of
broadcast to home video release?
Or is this a clever way of punishing pirates who steal Blu-ray rips of episodes, instead of watching them legally
on TV? Or is this all just one big joke?
I'm gonna go with one big joke, I guess?
Who knows?! Let me know in the comments. Bye!
JARED: S-Should I hang up or s-should you?
W-Who's hosting the Skype call?
I... wait. I'm hitting. I'm hitting... Wait, wait. No wait, wait. I got it.
I-I got it.