Want to hear people yelling each other's names in True-HD? Well, from February 2009 onward you'll be able to, both in Japan and the US-of-A!
The Akira BluRay has been on many a person's wish-list, me being one of them, but previous attemps all failed for one reason or another. Bandai Visual announced and cancelled a United States release last year, and the planned Japanese release three months back was postponed to fix some quality issues. A practice I applaud, by the way: better a few more months of waiting than having a bad version out with a double-dip years later.
Now, finally, there are actual dates announced: 20th of February for Japan, and the 24th of February for the US.
Fingers crossed...
Confirmed are both Japanese and English soundtracks, a variety of subtitles, and some extras.
A shout-out to AnimeNewsNetwork who had the news.
do you know if its the original english dubb?
its kind of the only way i can watch it
lol. That's exactly what I want to know. Isn't that everyone's question?
No.... I actually prefer the subtitling with the original japanese voices. Dubs are very annoying and all around a disaster. But anyway. Are there going to be extra extras? I have the original DVD and I don't remember if there were extras on that DVD but.... yeah. I love this movie but I don't think I'm going to invest in a Blu-ray player just for this movie when I have a completely decent copy at home... yes... lol
There's no reason not to have both English dubs with the capacity of Blu-ray. I figure Japanese goes without saying.
Exciting news, but I was just wondering what the blu-ray version can offer in terms of picture quality improvement, especially when Akira was made in the 80s and cells were not digitally painted. ( ie we'll just get to see the imperfections in HD resolution, unless they've actually cleaned it up )
I guess we'll have to wait till February to find out.
I think we'd all like to know about the BluRay picture improvement, but the fact that Akira didn't have digitally painted cells doesn't mean a huge leap in quality isn't possible.
All you need is a pristine print and the right crew to create a stunning HD transfer, as can be seen by HD releases of some films from even the sixties.
Will this be as stunning? Don't know, but I cannot rule it out at the moment...
Being that Akira was one of the few animated films that was actually photographed on 70mm film as opposed the traditional 35mm to accommodate the level of details the makers wanted(according to the old Akira-behind the scenes video) I have no doubt that the image will be pristine if right care is taken.
As for the audio, I'm a bit purist on that, it needs the japanese audio and if any dub is to be included I want the old one. The new just made me cringe when I tried listening to it.
But since I cannot play BD's yet I'll have to wait on this one too. But if only for the visuals, I think this movie will deliver on full HD...;)
This and Ghost in the Shell are on my must list for Blu-rays, can't fucking wait.