Sailor Moon on the other hand one imperfect DNR ridden fest, or at best decent upgrade over old video master material. I don’t have those blu-rays.
The original laserdisc have their drawbacks of course but no DNR applied. But poor telecine and some color issues. I wonder if some fan tried to upscale the laserdiscs.
And of course there is no 4:3 version of Beautiful Dreamer from Urusei Yatsura at all in the realm of HD. The last video master was on laserdisc. Which CPM cleaned up for DVD with its own associated frame blending and cadence issues. And English titles superimposed over Japanese ones. the 16:9 on the blu-ray as well is an ancient DVD master which was HD remastered but for DVD. Toho was going to do a new scan and had even pulled the Blu-Ray release for some years due to not even being up to a standard of quality, and then they release it as is anyway. The other ones were brand new scans but film 1 was not uncut like the DVD aka Only You. I have no idea who owns the rights to the tv series currently and the films except for film 2 being owned by Toho Co.
I mean because Kitty films is defunct, Pony Canyon obviously does not own the rights. Its likely Bandai or Warner Bros or some damn holdings group.
I did not want to double post but i just had quite a bit to say.
I’d be lying if i said DNR, Color correction and upscaling does not have their uses. But i dislike DNR intensely. The only cases i can think of where it may be necessary is where a damaged film source, or very dirty piece of film is scanned and limitedly applied as grain management and not global DNR. Also Q-Tec has their own upscale, and you have AstroRes.
As for AI like in the way Peter Jackson’s company uses it i don’t know if it would be a good use for anime. The type of image stacking, sharpening and manipulation.
And for computer cgi animation i did see Lord of the Rings from Sola Digital and some of the flying camera shots were very impressive.
The biggest use again of these oldest and newest tools in the video restoration toolbox is for old as hell composite video masters or 1 inch tape or digi-beta. Lots of shows, lots of OVA. That can’t be afforded a new film scan or the film may be lost, or it was animated on cel but finished on videotape and few such shows can warrant an expensive redo.
One of my favorites and a friend of mine’s favorites was his and her circumstances, well that does appear in not a so good place for a remaster. Or as its called in Japan Kare Kano. Anno.