No you aren’t wrong the color cast on the star wars videodiscs the orange and pink tints was a product of the telecine.
16mm is completely possible in 1080p with no loss in quality a 2k scan is usual. You can scan 4k but most of the time they haven’t. 16mm negative and having to fall back on 16mm tv prints is a separate thing.
A show done in 35mm but with a missing negative and all they have left is a 16mm dupe or at best a master tape far away from the negative things can be dicey.
Most anime being 16mm or tape where no 35mm film source or negative does exist, you have the option to upscale or just do standard def Blu-ray. The remastering of tape sources using some form of dnr is quite common. And its the colorists job to grade the image, in the days of dvd it was generally what looked good or was done on the fly with little regard to historical accuracy.
On films where they believed the negative was lost in some cases they even used a laserdisc as their master. Anime i mean, no Hollywood film would ever rely on a laserdisc, i’m speaking of Project A-ko. Eventually the negative was found. But was lost for decades. The negative episode 16 of Eva has never turned up.
There are proper real HD masters of anime that happen in Japan and never get a US release. Like Devil Hunter Yohko, and i just found that in 2022 the Ova series for Armitige III and the films got an HD upgrade with the English dialog even.
No North American release of course.
And Space Battleship Yamato the films on blu-ray and 4k and the first season have been done, will never see the light of day here. The films for Galaxy Express getting new scans from film and not an upscale is a good thing, now do the tv series and both Harlock series from film and not video.
I hope seasons 2 and 3 eventually get better than DVD releases but highly unlikely due to their 16mm negative status.
Even something like the Nozomi Dirty Pair Blu-Rays went up like a puff of smoke since Crunchyroll took over, I don’t even think the Kickstarter backers got them. They are supposed to be replicated and on their way soon. Its only taken some years. No word on a mainstream release which I want, I have the Japanese Blu-Ray set.