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Info Wanted: DAICON III and IV Opening Animations (early Gainax anime) - has anyone done a preservation?

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 (Edited)

Has anyone considered doing a proper preservation of these rare anime short films the people behind Evangelion and FLCL did in the very early 1980’s?

These were fan films by the animation team that later went on to become Gainax. They were only intended for showing at a sci-fi convention in Japan in 1981 and 1983. A legimate commercial release of the films could never happen, because of too many copyrighted characters being used (like those from Marvel/DC comics, Star Wars, Godzilla, Alien, etc). Apart from the breathtaking animation in IV, these films now play a part of anime history because this is where Gainax got their start. May also be considered a part of sci-fi fandom history because of the numerous Star Trek and Star Wars shout-outs. The films were only given obscure LD and betamax releases as a supplement to an artbook. Some people have uploaded “restored” versions to Youtube, but has there been efforts to make a DVD-quality version?

I once made my own custom DVD using a good quality VHS source (Betamax origin), but a cleaned up DVD version from a LD source would yield much better results.

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I wish someone could get a hold of the 8mm film and do a scan of it, even if you have the LD it's reportedly very prone to laser rot.

The entirety of the 2 films were part of the Little Boy exhibit at the Japan Society back in 2005, but they were only running a digitized file (of course).  They did have a bunch of cels from it on display, though, which looked awesome.

http://www.japansociety.org/little_boy_the_arts_of_japans_exploding_subculture

A pity that 8mm is the highest resolution it will ever exist at (since I seriously doubt they kept all the cels and backgrounds, and even if they did many would likely be stuck together), and even the 8mm source will possibly never be seen again...

 

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I think you may have misread my original post. My question was about whether a DVD transfer is out there which used the LD as a source? I do not own the LD myself, only a lower resolution VHS copy. A high quality rip of the LD is what I'm looking for.