Yes, I know Shogun Assassin is put together from the first two Lone Wolf and Cub movies, but I'd like to find a good release of it anyway. I also want the 6 original LWaC as well.

Currently I own a UK release of Shogun Assassin on DVD from Vipco, as well as the DiscoVision release. The DVD claims to be widescreen, but it isn't anamorphic. To top it off, you already see from the first second that the picture is cropped. Half of the names in the opening credits are missing. Picture at the bottom of this post. Have this movie gotten a proper release from someone else on DVD or Blu-Ray?

I also own all 6 Lone Wolf and Cub movies on laserdisc, AnimEigo releases. I also own the movies on blu-ray from AnimEigo. These, however, seem to have some excessive filtering applied. The sound is the biggest let-down. The audio is actually distorted. I'm not talking about analog worn out distorted, I'm talking about digital corruption. Sounds very metallic.
Are the LDs the best releases available, still?

Hope someone more into movie releases can shed some light on this for me. Really sad to see these movies seem to only have gotten broken releases for the most part...

The DiscoVision edition of "Shogun Assassin" is the only "English" version and is ... well ... DiscoVision. Pan & Scan, overly dark transfer, typical DiscoVision replication. The 6 other films on LD are all in Japanese with English subtitles. I can't speak to their quality. The replication should be fine - they are all 3M.

Lone Wolf and Cub on laserdisc looks fine from what I remember. Been a while since I watched them. The first two movies have some production defects, I get "laser lock" towards the end of the disc. Were hoping these movies have gotten a DVD or preferably a blu-ray release in more recent years. Best I've found are those AnimEigo discs that are broken. Can't believe they were allowed to distribute and sell those blu-rays.

With regards to Shogun Assassin, I know the DiscoVision is poor. At least on the laserdisc they squeezed the picture to fit everything in the opening titles, which they didn't even bother with on the DVD as you can see. Were hoping it has a better release from another company, perferably on blu-ray.

Maybe Criterion have released these movies at some point? They're the sort of films you'd expect find from them since they've released so many other cult classics. Ask anyone that grew up with video rentals in the 1980s, Shogun Assassin is a movie everyone knows, but haven't seen since.

my animego discs are perfect with no laserlock.

I've noticed over the years any issues are due to players and discs reacting, trying on another player will be fine.
so its something like weakening lasers or???

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the rein-o official signature:

Certainly not anything wrong with my player. The discs have done this in four players now. My X9 can play them somewhat, but get a lot of "skipping" in the picture, distortion, which also affects the sound. Regular LD players get a rather brutal stop with black picture and no sound. I've been told it's disc warping, but when placed on a flat surface the disc is straigt. Opened a player and visually inspected it when it spun up, and can't see any warping.

There's some Japanese DVD releases, but can't tell if they have English subs or not . . .

http://auctions.search.yahoo.co.jp/sear ... 8&slider=0

Most likely they will not have subtitles. At least my experience with Japanese releases with native Japanese content. Doubt they would license the subtitles from AnimEigo nor make new ones. There are exceptions to that rule, but most likely this isn't one of them. There have been made several movies and television series after these 6 movies. Probably not easy to filter out the correct DVDs since my Japanese is very limited.

I did have some success. Found out that Shogun Assassin have been treated with a blu-ray release! Found a 30th anniversary edition from AnimEigo, hopefully this one isn't filtered badly or have corrupted audio like Lone Wolf and Cub does.

whatever, the discs I own are fine so if you think they are warped you will need to get some flat ones for your X9 to play.

no issues on my 3070 or S1 or when I had it the R7G.
all 3 played fine.

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the rein-o official signature:

They aren't warped. Most likely a classic case of production defects. Does happen. The lockup happens at the very end of the movie, so don't really miss anything, thankfully!

Lone wolf and the cub will be coming out on bluray from criterion later this year.

Fantastic news! Hopefully they'll get a great release. Criterion does make some nice releases.

Nope. There is also dutch Shogun Assassin LD from VideoScreen that is english dubbed with dutch subs and widescreen although still cropped to somewhere near 1:1.85 instead of having original aspect ratio, it looks much better than Discovision version (I have both plus Lone Wolf discs) but obviously you need PAL-capable player to watch it.

no official announcement yet but confirmed by internal sources. once they master is created, I am sure they will share it with other studios in other regions.

Really? Guess I'll have to track down that LD. I do own a CLD-2950, so PAL discs isn't a problem for me.


Guess I'll just have to wait and hope!