Castle of Cagliostro not-so-special edition

[robotech_master]

Well, I received my copy of the much-awaited Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro special-edition movie (or "Lupin the III" if you believe the cover) yesterday; looked it over and was more or less satisfied with it—it had a decent amount of extras and a very nice anamorphic transfer. And then someone asked a question about how the title card had been treated in the opening credits. I hadn't watched those yet, so I went back to the disc and loaded it up, prepared to watch the beautiful, dream-like opening credit sequence, one of my favorite parts of the movie, in anamorphic quality for the first time ever.

And then I watched in ever-growing horror as it became clear that I wasn't going to see that sequence after all. Manga Video replaced the animation, which was overlaid with the Japanese credits for director, producer, etc., with a series of clean stills from that sequence with English-language credits superimposed over them.

I'm left puzzled by why they felt the need to do this. Their old, non-anamorphic version keeps the original credits and just rolls English credits at the end. For that matter, the new DVD also rolls the English credits at the end. Why, then, mangle the movie like that?

Sigh. Anyway, I've updated my Cagliostro fan commentary track to take note of these new changes, and a couple other little things I discovered. For Windows computers, I advise using the ShareCrow player to watch it in sync with a DVD.

EDIT: If anyone does want to purchase either one or both of the Cagliostro DVDs, now's the time to do it—RightStuf is running a sale on all Manga Video titles until August 27; use the coupon code supernatural to reduce the old Cagliostro to $11.99 and the new Spec-Ed to $14.99.

Comments

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

Lupin III has been on my list for a while. Since you've seen both, any comment on which version I should get?

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

Well, the old Manga Video version of Cagliostro (with the climbing Lupin on the cover) should be pretty widely/cheaply available now, if only from people (misguidedly) selling it to upgrade to the new Spec Ed version, so you might as well pick that one up. It's decently done; its only major flaw is that it's not anamorphic, and if you don't have an HD or anamorphic-compatible TV set, that won't matter as much to you.

The spec-ed version, well, apart from the "duh" with the title sequence, it's really pretty good. It's just that the title sequence thing is a bad enough flaw that if I hadn't already bought the thing, I wouldn't be buying it.

There are some non-R1 DVD versions that might be more worth getting; the R2 Japanese version even has the old Streamline Cagliostro dub on it, which some people prefer to the new Manga Video one. However, its only English subtitles are "dubtitles" that go with the Streamline dub, rather than a literal translation of the Japanese dialogue. I gather that a UK PAL version has proper subtitling and everything—but being PAL, it would run 6% faster and you would need a PAL-capable as well as multi-region capable player.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

So, return it as defective, citing the replacement of the good title sequence with an amateurish and fugly sequence of pure kraptocity.

With that, and your recommendations online, they might find it worthwhile to stop 'fixing' what isn't broken.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

By the way, if you do want to purchase one or both versions of Cagliostro, now's a good time. See the edit I just made to the post to which this is a reply.

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Good offer, but I'm stone cold broke until the end of the month.

[strix-an-stones.livejournal.com]

Bummer. I'll pass along your comments to my son. He has Castle of Cagliostro on VHS and was going to upgrade to DVD by getting the special edition. He may want to rethink.

[wednesday]

I'm left puzzled by why they felt the need to do this.

I suspect the answer is something like "those materials weren't available and we had to improvise."

Anime (and Japanese film in general) has a horrible archival track record, even for beloved titles like these, so decay might have been a factor. Alternatively: is there a decent anamorphic R2/Jp release of this with the credits sequence intact? Will there be in six months? R1 licencees have often received substandard or incomplete materials if the R2 release was still pending.

[wednesday]

(Case in point: Sailor Moon. R1: first to market,; TV-version masters with tinny mono sound, unified credits, and grainy footage; 4:3 versions of the [admittedly open-matte] films. Japan: long-delayed release; remastered footage and clean stereo sound from the LD-version masters; shiny anamorphic versions of the movies.)

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a question of the materials not being available. Not only did Manga's earlier, non-anamorphic release of Cagliostro several years ago have the opening credits in their complete kanji-covered glory, there's been a Japanese R2 anamorphic version that had them since around the same time. (The only reason the original Manga Cagliostro release wasn't anamorphic is that Manga was basically lazy about it back then, and didn't put out any anamorphic discs unless an anamorphic transfer was dropped in their laps, as with the original Ghost in the Shell.) There was nothing stopping them from including it if they'd wanted to.

I expect that what "wasn't available" was a clean, kanjiless version of the opening credits, it's been so long since the movie was made—so rather than go with the existing ones, they decided to go with screenshots instead. (Some discussion elsewhere suggests that Tokyo Movie Shinsha, the Japanese studio that made it, insisted on having English-language credits at the front. Still, Manga could have overlaid them over the existing ones with subtitles, or put the existing ones in an alternate angle. Bah.)

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

They could have included the original opening credits as an extra if they felt the need to replace them.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

They could also have added a minute of English Language credits without vandalizing and graffittiing the proper credits.