Well yeah but I always got the idea that the Preservation forum was a place to announce our own preservation projects, not to ask someone else to do it for us.
Just wanted to say I looked a bit into this.
Unfortunately the results are not promising: The UK DVDs are also handled by Warner, so they probably also have the changed ending narration.
It seems like the only way to see this movie on DVD with the originl "so ends the first part..." ending is to takethe audio from a VHS tape and splice it. I have both the R1 DVD and a VHS Tape that contains the original audio. Unfortunately I don't have the hardware or technical knowhow to do the splicing. I'd be willing to send both though to someone who would like to do it.
I actually agree on the Golden Age point. Writers today have forgotten that on a fundamental level, the appeal of a superhero is the power/wish-fulfillment fantasy.
I mean, when I read a superhero, yeah I enjoy the story and all... but the thing that sticks with me at the end is "man, wouldn't it be cool if I had this guy's power?"
I think stuff like this is why manga such as Dragonball Z are so popular--many of them are fairly Golden Age or early Silver Age in terms of morals. There may be inner conflicts but you usually still know who to root for.
And their powers are still cool, too.
Johnboy3434 said:What differentiates one age from another? Also, I've read up about how the DC authorities devised the Multiverse system in an attempt to keep the core superheroes young, and the deal with moving the "main" continuity from Earth-Two to Earth-One during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But, I'm not entirely sure when this big shift is supposed to take place as I read the Batman and Superman comics. At what point do I suddenly clear my mind of what happened prior and begin with a new slate? Will they announce it in the comics, or will I need to know ahead of time?
Okay, first of all you've got to understand a few things:
The various "Ages" are terms which were retroactively applied. As was the whole "Earth-1/Earth-2" thing. I doubt either term will ever pop up in the actual body of a story before the Crisis storyline.
Its really all a shill, because the bottom line is you don't need to care. The whole Earth-1/Earth-2 thing happened because the writers at DC were geeks and they realized there were inconsistencies in their stories. For some stupid reason comic authors have this idea that their universes must be one big, internally consistent tapestry, so they decided that--rather than just admitting they were goofs and finalizing a truth later (which would be the SMART thing)--they would come up with this convoluted "there's two Earths" theory and try to shoehorn everything into one or the other (for comparisons sake, it would be like trying to explain away Artoo-Detoo's powers of flight by claiming Attack of the Clones took place on Earth-2). It's worth noting that no other type of writer thinks like a comic book writer (thank god!)
As for the whole "Ages" thing, there actually is some legitimacy to that. The term refers both to the state of the industry financially and in general to sweeping periods of change in content and approaches. There was a Superman article I read once that had a great breakdown, but I don't think its online anymore.
Basically, as far as superheroes were concerned, the gist was this: Golden Age stories tended to have very straightforward, black and white morality. The hero is right, the villain is an evil jerk who deserves to have a house fall on him, and no questions asked. Starting with the silver age things got more complex--you could agree with the villain, and even if you didn't you could sometimes still question the hero's actions. Things were becoming less back and white. By the bronze age the trend had gone so far that sometimes black WAS white.
The bottom line is that the terminology is fun to know, but not at all essential to reading and enjoying the comics.
I've read the Flyingmoose.org list before. I agree with a lot of points, but I still like the movie overall.
I composed a similar list for Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring (posted on IMDb's board for said movie), but its nowhere near as good as O. Sharpe's list.
Well whatever the case, the current rights owners flubbed Cyborg 009 and its unlikely we'll ever see any more of it.
I really loved that show too. If I ever have enough money I might just buy the Japanese discs and fansub them. The subs on that eight-episode DVD leave something to be desired (the way they don't translate the opening or ending themes or that text that displays just before the Avex Mode logo, for starters).
Eh? Where in my post did I indicate the only problem was bad english dubbing?
Fansubbing isn't much better. Used to be, people would fansub any show they liked. Now everyone does it for money or popularity, so we see a lot of fansubs for shows that are likely to be licensed anyway (I still remember when there were five different groups fansubbing Naruto).
The bottom line is, we need more "non-typical" anime.
Or somebody needs to fansub Cyborg 009.
Oh well.
I still think there's an anime out there for everyone. The problem is diversity--unless you know Japanese, there's not a wide selection. American distros kicked themselves in the shins by marketting anime exclusively to nerds and thus pandering to the genres they're likely to enjoy (giant robots, battle shows with lots of fighting, etc.) and also by trying to market anime as something that was "extreme," at times even intentionally adding crude language to the English dubs to further that agenda.
In fact here's a Youtube video showcasing a particulary egregarious example of that "trumping up the edge":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpwJbLLivU
Back in the VHS days, we got a much wider overall variety of anime. Now the market has sort of homogenized, and I don't blame anyone who "can't get into it."
Fricking North American distros and their forcing of their own tastes on the market...
I liked the first Budokai game. Never did play the second though. The first was generally a good summary/condensation of the storyline.
Personally I would recommend getting into Dragonball more through the manga, which is available in English and should be carried by any bookstore--sometimes its located in the Teen isle rather than in the manga section (start with the first volume of DB, rather than the first volume of DBZ).
Even in its original Japanese, DBZ has a sort of dragged-out quality to it (the whole "one fight can take twenty episodes" thing), which I personally like, but its one of the chief reasons most people don't care much for it. The original DB, too, has a similar issue though not taken to the same extremes. The manga, however, generally lacks this. And reading a comic is easily far quicker than watching a show.
When it comes to the dub, honestly I think the worst thing about it is the music. A few censorship cuts won't kill a show, but music will make or break good entertainment (just imagine if the entire soundtrack of Star Wars consisted of music from Barney the Dinosaur). There's nothing wrong with the US music for DBZ, it just doesn't stand out, and it gets monotonous. the Japanese music doesn't, and I garuntee nobody who hears Cha-La-Head-Cha-La, Bokutachi Wa Tenshi Datta ("We Were Angels") or DBGT's Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku will ever forget them.
(The music, in fact, is one of the main things I like about anime).
EDIT: By the way, I'm not totally convinced that all the points that video brings up are edits. Goku's father being a scientist for example... remember that when they made that episode, the Bardock special hadn't been made yet, and probably Toriyama didn't even have an inkling of an idea that he'd eventually do a story about Goku's dad. So they could say whatever they wanted about him and it would stick.
It's as I said before though: Even someone who hates everything has something they like.
I have a friend who hates anime, but he loves Howl's Moving Castle.
(though, then again, Miyazaki anime tends to have a far more universal appeal than most).
C3PX said:
"Well, you don't like anime because you haven't seen this!"
No offense to your friends, but anytime I hear someone say "you don't like X because you haven't seen/read/whatevered this!" its a sign that I'm in for a world of pain. People like that, simply put, are always into something stupid.
Suggestions suck (despite that I offered a few some posts ago). The best option, if you're going to take any at all, is to find a rental that has anime, and look for something that sounds interesting.
That works for me a lot of times, though there are instances where you get shortchanged because the distributors give trumped-up box descriptions that are nothing like what the show is actually about. Example:
Saint Seiya -- Boxes describe it as an angsty superhero show akin to Marvel Comics. In reality its a very upbeat adventure series with a lot of asskicking.
Crying Freeman -- Box describes it as being about a brainwashed assassin who is on the run from the police as well as the Chinese gang that took his life away. In Reality, it's actually more like an anime version of The Godfather with the occassional fight scene.
Ranma 1/2 -- Is constantly described as a "sex comedy." The reality: There is no sex. There is some suggestive humor but that's about it.
However, misleading descriptions usually turn out to be for the better more often than not, since you often go in thinking "this is gonna be the suck" then its surprisingly good.
Or maybe its just me.
What's 4chan?
Seriously, I hear references to it all over the place--it seems like you can't bring up anime without someone mentioning it anymore--but the one time i went to it, it seemed to be just some lame forum. What the heck is so special about it that "4chan types" even warrant a designation?
Style, medium, well whatever. The point is, as C3PX acknowledged, anime can encompass any number of stories and genres. There is no limit. I simply can't see saying you dislike all of it.
Even if someone hates everything, there is bound to be something that they like.
Like, for example, I tend to dislike comic books and normally avoid the medium, but there are still some I like.
There is A VHS with the original narration. I have it (I think the one I have was released before WB got the rights to the film). I just want to have it on DVD with the same quality video transfer as WB's DVD.
I don't think the UK DVDs are by WB, and also I remember seeing a "Special Edition" one that came in a humongous box or something. But I didn't want to take a financial chance on something that might not be what I want.
Someone on an anime newsgroup I go to hated Strike Witches for that exact reason. Personally I've never seen it and don't really want to.
I don't think the issue is that "anime today sucks," but rather the gears have shifted. When I first got into anime, we tended to get OVAs (direct-to-video anime), movies, and only short-run TV series (like Louie the Rune Soldier--26 episodes), unless we got them edited up the wazoo like DBZ and Sailor Moon.
Nowadays, we're getting more of the hyper-long TV series, like Bleach (still getting new eps in Japan), Inu-Yasha (160+ episodes, currently ended but there's talks that the series might restart to account for the newer manga), the rest of Dragonball (531 episodes altogether), Yuyu Hakusho (108 eps), Yu-Gi-Oh (224 eps and still getting sequels), Pokemon (still getting new eps) etc.
Personally I like that stuff, but I can see how it gets boring, since its drawn out and often quite repetitive. I tend to try and not get caught up in it, since I don't have the shelf space and would rather have hundreds of short-run shows instead of five long-running ones. My taste in anime tends to skew more towards the short-run and direct-to-video stuff I mentioned earlier, which I recommend checking out. Try some ofthese, all of which are available on DVD in R1:
-Iria: Zeiram the Animation (six episodes)
-Slayers (24 episodes a season, of which there are only three. Each season is self-contained, as are most of the episodes.)
-Gall Force: Eternal Story (single movie, though it did have sequels. I haven't seen the sequels so I don't know if they're worth it)
-Macross (36 episodes)
-Genesis Climber Mospeada (25? episodes)
-Crying Freeman (I think it only had six episodes)
-3x3 Eyes (seven episodes)
-Doomed Megalopolis (four episodes).
...And I think I'm done recommending things for now.
Nanner Split said:
Anime doesn't translate into worthwhile entertainment at all. It blows. All of it.
That's what I think.
Maybe I'm just a major fanboy but it irritates me when people say things like that. The problem is your thinking of anime as a genre, when its really a medium that can (and does) tell any type of story. There isn't just one kind. So saying "all anime blows" is like saying all books blow, or all movies blow, or all black people blow.
I dunno, just something to think about.
....
On the topic of Dragonball Z, personally I have the exact opposite experience of most people here. When I was a kid I liked it just because it was anime and I liked anything anime. As I grew older though the whole DB saga (all-inclusive--I don't differentiate between DB, Z, and GT) started to take a special place in my heart.
And yes the shows ARE better in their original Japanese, especially GT.
Okay this requires a bit of explanation.
I have the R1 DVD of Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. It's a good DVD, but there is one thing I don't like:
They change the ending narration. The film originally ended with a narrator saying "so ends the first part of the War of the One Ring." The DVD ends with a new narration (that occurs slightly earlier) which says "the forces of darkness were driven back by the valiant effort of Frodo's friends [more I can't remember] thus ends the first great tale of The Lord of the Rings."
There's nothing wrong with the new ending, I just want the old one for nostalgia's sake.
Does anyone know if the various R2 releases use the original narration, or if any of the R1 rereleases do?
Thanks.
For starters, what program are you using? So I was cleaning out my basement, which so far is a task that consists of moving a bunch of Rubbermaid containers around. Now, I love looking through old junk, so at one point I found a Wal-Mart bag that seemed to contain some of my old stuff.
I open it up and inside is a bunch of old comics, mostly either Marvel or Scooby Doo, but precisely one of them is part six of Shadows of the Empire.
Oh man, that brought back memories. I’ve only ever owned four Star Wars comics, and I can’t remember what the other ones were, save that one of them had a story involving R2D2 and C-3PO being chased to a planet of trash, trash which came to life and killed all the stormtroopers that followed. All I know is that I got them all on the same day, during my first Star Wars craze. As I’ve said before, unlike most here I didn’t grow up with Star Wars–in fact, the most Star Wars my life had up until about 1995 was the Atari 2600 game and this Yoda puppet my parents had which me and my sis sometimes played with (and I didn’t even know who Yoda freaking <span class=“Italics”>was</span>). I was first exposed to Star Wars through a television airing of the trilogy (before the Special Editions), later bought the “Faces” VHS tapes. I guess my fandom must not have really taken off until the release of the Nintendo 64 and the Shadows of the Empire video game, which was not only excellent but at the time, I had a friend who was obsessed with Star Wars and his obsession kinda rubbed off on me. Didn’t last long though.
Still, looking through Shadows of the Empire, I can safely say that the art makes me feel more confident about my own pithy attempts to make comics–I love how Dash Rendar is blonde in one panel yet has dark gray hair in another–but even though I’m jumping in at what I think is the final issue, it’s a thrilling read (and to be fair, I remember the video game enough to know what the general plotline is).
In all honesty, just reading this makes me wish I could find the rest of my old Star Wars comic collection.
Ahh, memories.
I suppose I should top this off with a question. I was wondering if any of these older Dark Horse comics had been collected in trade paperback form? The Shadows of the Empire comic has a timeline and a few titles mentioned there interest me. Here’s the titles listed in that timeline:
TALES OF THE JEDI series:
The Golden Age of the Sith
The Fall of the Sith Empire
Ulic Qel-Droma & The Beast Wars of Onderon
The Saga of Nomi Sunrider
Thre Freedon Nadd Uprising
Dark Lords of the Sith
The Sith War
DROIDS
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures
River of Chaos
Classic Star Wars
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Shadows of the Empire
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Classic Star Wars: The Vandelhelm Mission
X-Wing Rogue Squadron
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
Dark Empire
Dark Empire II
Boba Fett
Empire’s End
[Umm… I thought the empire ended when Palpatine died in Return of the Jedi?]