I stumbled upon this forum today and, from what I’ve seen so far, the posters here are incredibly resourceful, so I figured I’d give this a shot.
Does anyone here know of a store that deals in obscure old Japanese VHS videocassettes and VHDs? I’m trying to locate an extremely hard-to-find title and have exhausted every solid lead I have, so any ideas or suggestions would be extremely welcome.
Thanks in advance for any help! 😃
I'm in the UK, but have a friend in Japan I order stuff through from time to time. Many people don't ship internationally, quite apart from the language barrier. Laserdiscs & VHS tapes are far more common than VHDs. You're far more likely to find a really decent quality Laserdisc out of the three. Most older VHS tapes you'll find have been around a bit and show it.
PM me with what you want and I'll see what I can do?
PM sent. :)
As for the points you mentioned, the reason I didn't ask for laserdiscs of the series is because they don't exist. The series was only ever released on VHS and VHD in Japan in its entirety in the mid to late 1980s and that's it. It's never been released on DVD anywhere, let alone Blu-Ray. Only the first six episodes ever made it to home video in North America on VHS and Betamax.
To make matters worse, the only currently publicly available copies of the last seven episodes of this thirteen episode series are third or fourth generation VHS copies taped off of television three decades ago, and they look every bit as horrible as that description makes them sound. Here's a comparison image of the one's that been making the rounds on the Internet for the last few years (top) and the one I've managed to rip using a Super VHS machine and S-Video cable (bottom):
I haven't any experience of this myself, but I've seen several redirection services that you can use to purchase items from Yahoo auctions in Japan.
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Thanks for the suggestion Moth3r. :)
Unfortunately, the problem in this case really boils down to finding the blasted things. I believe that the last time that it showed up for sale on Yahoo! Auction Japan was seven or eight years ago and it's taken me nearly a year of searching to even find pictures of the videocassette covers.
With the help of two librarians on opposite coasts and separate countries, I've searched every single database in Japan, the U.S., and Canada, and no one has it in English. Two American libraries, one in New York state and another in Minnesota, supposedly did, but have since disposed of them. A chain of rental stores in Japan known as Tsutaya allegedly has the Japanese ones for rent, but their lack of a central database means that they can't tell me which one, if any of their nearly 1400 stores it's available in. Add to this the fact that people who actually live in Japan have told me they've never seen VHS videocassettes for rent in any of those stores for years anyway...
So yes, it's been immensely frustrating to say the least. :(
I would have recommended recobanchou but they are closed at the moment i think and don't have that many vhs or vhd tapes listed.
I myself have looked for an obscure tape final yamato 35mm first version on VHS or beta but don't want to pay upwards of seventy dollars for it.
and nine times out of ten people claiming they have it turns out to be the regular final 70mm version.
Even the studio could not find a good copy and left it off the blu ray. Sure they could have just used the first issue vhs but that would not look so good, i just wish they had included it as a bonus.
“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.
skyjedi2005 said:
I would have recommended recobanchou but they are closed at the moment i think and don't have that many vhs or vhd tapes listed.
I myself have looked for an obscure tape final yamato 35mm first version on VHS or beta but don't want to pay upwards of seventy dollars for it.
and nine times out of ten people claiming they have it turns out to be the regular final 70mm version.
Even the studio could not find a good copy and left it off the blu ray. Sure they could have just used the first issue vhs but that would not look so good, i just wish they had included it as a bonus.
What's Recobanchou and why is it closed?
Have you ever considered putting your name on the Otokichi Premium wait list? They might be able to help you find it:
http://www.otokichi.com/main/newotokichien/engtop.htm
http://homepage3.nifty.com/otokichi/wantsformen.htm
On a related note, a weird new wrinkle has popped up in my search that could expand my search to the United Kingdom.
So, to expand upon my original request, does anyone on this board know where to find obscure old VHS and Betamax releases from the UK?
For videotape and laserdisc releases in Japan, your best bet is to have a friend over there that can search for you. Used LD and VHS don't show up as much online.
If you're planning on ripping the Japanese tapes for Mighty Orbots, I'd love to see that completed. There's a complete set of episodes on the spleen that look really good compared to other sources I've found but your screen cap looks like it might be even better.
Thanks for the information, Space Kaijuu. I have recruited the help of someone in Tokyo right now (and of a friend who's frequently there on business trips) to help me look, but it's a slow process.
As for ripping the Japanese tapes, that's definitely on the "to do" list. I'd love to rip the Japanese VHDs at some point since that would give us something as close to DVD quality video-wise as we're ever going to get (barring an official release), but that would be too problematic since I'd have to find a VHD player to do that...and those things cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
I have seen the complete set of episodes that you mentioned on the Spleen, but the last seven episodes especially are in extremely lousy shape and come from a second or third generation copy of fan-distributed bootlegs that were making the rounds as early as 16 years ago. I remember picking a copy of one volume up when I was at San Diego Comic Con way back in 1998.
Right now, the plan (such as it is) is to take the Japanese video and combine it with the English audio from a first generation TV recording that a casual acquaintance of mine, a seasoned professional from the North American animation industry, received from a friend back in the 1980s (provided he can find it). Granted, this will still leave us with a few burned-in subtitles from the Japanese version, but I think the dramatic increase in quality will be worth the trade-off.
One extremely frustrating thing, though, is how massive a financial drain this project has become. I've already spent at least 150 bucks out of my own pocket tracking down multiple versions of all six North American home video releases and purchasing two working JVC Super VHS VCRs to squeeze every last ounce of quality I can from the old tapes, to say nothing of the dozens of hours I've spent ripping the cassettes using a Dazzle video capture device, editing the footage together, and scanning and photoshopping the old inserts.
It's really a shame that this forum frowns upon selling fan restoration/preservation projects. Considering that one eBay seller has already sold several copies of his crappy torrent download version of the show for 26 bucks a pop, it would've been nice to at least have broken even on the one I'm assembling, especially considering that TMS and MGM have no plans to ever release it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
I feel your pain. I've spent more than than on Transformers: The Movie related materials to use for the Blu-ray project I'm doing. I wouldn't want to sell the final product but it does bother me to know there's a good chance that if it gets distributed, there could be Chinese bootlegs of the bluray being sold all over the place, should it become popular.
Space Kaijuu said:
I feel your pain. I've spent more than than on Transformers: The Movie related materials to use for the Blu-ray project I'm doing. I wouldn't want to sell the final product but it does bother me to know there's a good chance that if it gets distributed, there could be Chinese bootlegs of the bluray being sold all over the place, should it become popular.
Tell me about it. As I said, I would be happy to just make my money back from this, and it wouldn't even take that much. Ten or twenty sales and I'd be in the green again.
Not to sound like I'm trivializing your own project - which, I must admit, I'm very interested in seeing the final result of! - but I think that my own is a lot tougher, at least when it comes to the legwork. Transformers: The Movie is a relatively mainstream release and extremely popular. What you're looking for might be hard to find, but at least it's out there. Mighty Orbots is more of a forgotten classic and it's hard to find anyone who even heard of the damn thing. Hell, it took me two years to even find pictures of the Japanese videocassette boxes. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to track down Bigfoot or a pink unicorn. :P
Yeah, the Orbots stuff is a lot harder to find. The Transformers stuff is just costly due to the collector's market.
Well, as mentioned three posts ago, there's been a new development...kind of. I discovered yesterday that more episodes of the series may have been released in the United Kingdom than ever saw the light of day in North America. I don't suppose there're any British/Irish/Scottish/Welsh board members who might have happened upon these videocassettes or know where I might be able to find them...?
Keep in mind that the UK videotapes will be in PAL format, so you will need a PAL VCR and probably some additional adapters to make it work with NTSC equipment. Also, there's no telling what they might have done to adjust the framerate, from speedup to frame blending. Still, they might provide a better source for the audio.
Yeah, the NTSC/PAL thing is definitely a problem.
The advantages are that getting my hands on the UK releases would save me the problem of syncing the Japanese video with the English audio from the television recordings, offer better quality audio, and lack the unsightly Japanese subtitles.
The downsides, of course, are that I'd have to buy more equipment and the video quality would be ever so slightly worse since I'm not sure there's such a thing as a multi-region Super VHS machine (or at least not one that isn't insanely expensive).
Still, the possibility that the series was released in another country in English in its entirety does increase the odds that I'll be able to track it down. Either way, it's going to be a pain in the butt to assemble this series...just a different kind of pain depending on which route I end up going. -_-;
Lunar Archivist said:
Tell me about it. As I said, I would be happy to just make my money back from this, and it wouldn't even take that much. Ten or twenty sales and I'd be in the green again.
Just a heads up ..... the sale of such items as a member of this board is prohibited and talk of it openly as this statement suggests can get you banned.
You may want to re-read the rules .....
http://originaltrilogy.com/terms-of-service.cfm
A polite reminder.
I did read those rules. Thanks for the polite reminder.
If you read them as you said then it seems you openly violated them as well.
Jetrell Fo said:
If you read them as you said then it seems you openly violated them as well.
Not as far as I'm aware. The following rules are the relevant ones:
No discussions about financial transactions except for the buying, selling, or trading of official retail media. All For Sale/For Trade/Wanting To Buy posts belong in the buying/selling/trading forum.
No profiting from any activities related to fan edits or preservation efforts. Those found selling their fan edits or preservation projects here or elsewhere will be banned.
Use of the Service. [...] For example, you may not do any of the following: use the Service to sell a product or service; [...]
There is to be no profiting from any activities related to fan edits or preservation efforts. Those found selling their fan edits or preservation projects here or elsewhere will be banned - no exceptions, no excuses.
I've made no attempt to profit from my preservation project. In my previous posts, I whimsically joked about how nice it would be if I could, but that's as far as it went. What's more, my preservation project is nonexistent as of this writing. I haven't even found everything I need to get it off the ground.
I'm really not sure why you're picking on the new guy and seem to lack a sense of humor, but if I've really violated any forum rules, then the powers that be are free to give me a warning or edit my previous comments. I don't think they really need someone acting as a backseat moderator.
Lunar Archivist said:
Jetrell Fo said:
If you read them as you said then it seems you openly violated them as well.
Not as far as I'm aware. The following rules are the relevant ones:
No discussions about financial transactions except for the buying, selling, or trading of official retail media. All For Sale/For Trade/Wanting To Buy posts belong in the buying/selling/trading forum.
No profiting from any activities related to fan edits or preservation efforts. Those found selling their fan edits or preservation projects here or elsewhere will be banned.
Use of the Service. [...] For example, you may not do any of the following: use the Service to sell a product or service; [...]
There is to be no profiting from any activities related to fan edits or preservation efforts. Those found selling their fan edits or preservation projects here or elsewhere will be banned - no exceptions, no excuses.
I've made no attempt to profit from my preservation project. In my previous posts, I whimsically joked about how nice it would be if I could, but that's as far as it went. What's more, my preservation project is nonexistent as of this writing. I haven't even found everything I need to get it off the ground.
I'm really not sure why you're picking on the new guy and seem to lack a sense of humor, but if I've really violated any forum rules, then the powers that be are free to give me a warning or edit my previous comments. I don't think they really need someone acting as a backseat moderator.
It is not a laughing matter and I am picking on no-one. As for your "back seat moderator" attempt at humor, ALL members are encouraged to report such things, this could affect all of us not just you.
Do try to remember that when "joking" about such things.
Jetrell, I think you misunderstood or misread Lunar Archivists original comments. I never read anything that indicated that he intends to sell the finished product, just a comment on how much it's going to cost and musing on how nice it would be to be able to sell the end product to recoup all the costs. Just like the projects almost everyone else here is working on, it's obviously a labor of love, but I don't think anyone here hasn't thought about how nice it would be to be able to sell off their finished product, be it preservation, fan-edit, or reconstruction if just to make back some of the money that was put into it. Saying "I wish I could" isn't the same as saying "I am going to do it".
Now, please, can we back down from this before it turns into a mess that it didn't need to be just because one person misunderstood what was being said and the other person got overly defensive?
Space Kaijuu said:
Now, please, can we back down from this before it turns into a mess that it didn't need to be just because one person misunderstood what was being said and the other person got overly defensive?
Thanks, Space Kaijuu. :)
Okay, now to get things back on track, let's summarize the three big, important questions that have been asked so far:
In answer to your last question .....
Toshiba VCP-C10, Panasonic AG-W1, Panasonic NG-V50, Hitachi VT-F99EM ...
just to name a few. Finding S-VHS machines in particular for this might be a difficult/expensive task. A UK Panasonic S-VHS might be the way to go.
Jetrell Fo said:
In answer to your last question .....
Toshiba VCP-C10, Panasonic AG-W1, Panasonic NG-V50, Hitachi VT-F99EM ...
just to name a few.
Thanks for the list.
Hmm...how much does something like that go for? And is there a good one from JVC? I'm really pleased with the results from the VCRs they've made.
The UK JVC's aren't made as well as the UK Panasonics. Prices may very depending on where you live as shipping can get expensive.
I have a Panasonic AG-1980 myself. It might be able to do PAL/NTSC. I'll have to check.