I have Oneamisu no Tsubasa (Wings of Honneamise): Memorial Box (1987) [BEAL-367] and I love it. The only problem I have is that its so heavily matted, horizontally and vertically, that its like watching the movie through a paper towel roll or something. The literature seems to make a big deal out of this as actually being a good thing. "No Trimming" is their term, not mine.

So what is the deal here? My theory is that it was made for people with wide TVs and since the movie isn't as wide as 16:9 (I think its Vistascope) they wanted to make sure nothing was cut when you switched the TV to "zoom" mode, or whatever. Maybe early 90s wide TVs didn't have as many zoom options as later TVs did.

Anyway, its pretty ridiculous. What's funny is that they kind of overcompensated a year later with a P&S version Oneamisu no Tsubasa (Wings of Honneamise) (1987) [BELL-460] where they actually talk up the advantages of P&S by mentioning how much more detail you can see in any given frame. Comparison pics are even shown on the jacket. It does make a HUGE difference in what you can see, but it really messes up some scenes that were composed with a wider frame in mind. Its odd to see P&S marketed as a feature. I guess in Japan, where P&S was much less common than it was in the US, they had a different take on it. (i.e.: not just for idiots). They call it "TV Size".

So now I'm wondering about Oneamisu no Tsubasa (Wings of Honneamise): Memorial Box (1987) [BEAL-1142] and Oneamisu no Tsubasa (Wings of Honneamise) (1987) [BELL-1141]. These came out several years later and cost a fair amount more on today's market because of the AC-3 sound. Did they eventually give up on the stupid "No Trimming" nonsense and use a regular matte? Also, unrelated, do these final two LDs finally have chapter stops? I've seen three versions of this movie (the two JP versions I have and the US one) and none of them have chapter stops which is just weird...

This has been happening a lot lately with DVDs, especially music ones. The most famous one I can think of is Queen's Greatest Video Hits I where all of the videos are cropped to 16:9 rather than being shown in their original fullscreen even though the default setting for most TVs is to zoom fullscreen content anyway. I've also heard a lot of talk of a Peter Gabriel concert that suffered the same fate on DVD. I've so far not come across this on laserdisc though.

Seems odd that anime would be matted at all. Why would anyone animate additional details outside of the frame?

Maybe I'm not using the correct terms here. I'm not saying the image is missing info, I'm saying its both letterboxed and pillow barred to the point where I'm only seeing about %40 of what NTSC can deliver. The entire movie is there, its just smaaaaaallll....

so are you saying that the film has the black bars on the top, bottom and sides?
more like a window box.
that would have been so that you don't lose on 4.3 sets, sometimes you would lose about 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch if your television wasn't calibrated "inside" with the horizontal and verticle hold.

if the film is window boxed and you have a newer TV then you just have to zoom in, you will lose the bars on the top but will have them on the sides.

OK then, yeah, window boxed. Black all around. Way way too much of it.

At the moment I'm using a 27" Samsung pro monitor, 4:3, with no real special modes. I could make it fit from the service menu, but that wouldn't be worth the effort. I'd rather just buy the AC-3 version, assuming it doesn't have this stupid flaw/feature.

Maybe I'll take a picture of it tonight.

window boxed was a thing they were trying to do, but luckly it never really caught on.

the only thing i notice it on that i have is instant watch netflx, some of the older shows like mission impossible or newer like family guy are window boxed, i guess now it's just a feature so you can adjust your sets and have the bars on the sides since it's a 4.3 program on the wide TV.

"No trimming" normally means "uncut from the theatrical runtime", not anything to do with the aspect ratio. Beyond that, I have the reissue memorial box, & it's beautiful. There's no windowboxing, except I think on the pilot film, which runs before the feature.

Here's a capture (CLD-D704, ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 9600 via S-Video, VLC)

Ah, good to know that the later version is fixed. I'll be hunting that one down now.

And yes, my Macross LD also says "no trimming" but is a regular letterbox.

For the sake of future generations, here is a comparison of how ridiculous this is:

Here is a regular 4:3 on this monitor:



Here is a normal letterboxed movie:



And here is the Royal Space Force Memorial Sound Box:



I suppose it probably made sense to people and their TVs at the time, but now its just kind of a bummer. The anti-Squeeze!

For what its worth, this disc also has the OST with really cool still photos slide showing over the top of it. That part is full 4:3 and basically perfect.

OK, that's not right at all. In fact it's so wrong it looks like a display/video aspect ratio mismatch! Actually, what is looks like is that they took the film at 1.66:1 ratio, set it into a 16:9 frame (1.78:1), & then letterboxed that frame to get a 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio. That is the way to "zoom" 1.66 material for wide-screen TVs without cutting the top & bottom off, but it's still more than odd.

My only explanation is that maybe there was a period where wide TVs only had one setting for scaling, lets say something that matched 16:9 LDs perfectly, for example. If such a setting were used on an LD that was less wide (i.e. virtually everything Japanese) it would crop off the upper and lower parts of the picture. If this RSF LD was played on this theoretical TV it would fit fine since the horizontal bars are pretty close to where they would be on a movie like Manhattan or Far and Away. It would have pillow bars, but there would be "no trimming". The F91 LD I showed up there when viewed on the same TV would be missing the upper and lower sections and would be best viewed in 4:3 mode. Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa (Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind) (1984) [98LX-1] would be missing even more image since that movie has an extremely minor letterbox.

Aspect ratios on home video from the 80s were almost random. This may have been a failed attempt to standardize things.

I've personally never seen a wide TV from 1992, so I have no idea what they were like. I've also never seen an LD framed like this, although my collection isn't huge.

The back of the jacket for disc 2 seems to corroborate my theory. It says that there will be black bars on the left and right of the screen. I don't know enough kanji to really understand it though. I could post a photo of that if anyone here can read it better than me.

The early ones did behave that way, if the documentation I have is any guide. You had "Full" mode (16:9), "Zoom" mode (full width, top & bottom chopped off), & one other for displaying 4:3 material at full height, & that was it.

But I've never seen another LD mastered like that.

do you have your LD player running into the TV?
what else do you have between them?

i've never seen the windowbox on a widescreen film.

The only thing between my TV and the player is an Onkyo TX DS-656. As far as an I know there is nothing in in that could possibly affect any sort of zooming or anti-zooming.

These photos were all taken in sequence with nothing changed other than the discs themselves. I haven't actually played this LD on another player/monitor, but I'm positive this is the way the disc was made and that it was intentional.

Later tonight I'll post a pic of the blurb on the back of LD2 that seems to be explaining their decision.

OK, here is the explanation for this weirdness from the back of disc 2:

Any translation? Now you've got me curious

A Dutch friend of mine on another forum even more obscure than this one says,

"Rough interpretation:
 
Screen size: “Ouritsu Uchuugun” was shot in VistaVision (similar to widescreen). This version has been mastered with absolutely no trimming, in order to present the minute details on screen in the same size as during its theatrical release, resulting in a screen size that is longer than previous versions. (Because of this black bars appears on the left and right. Depending on your type of display the screen might be slightly off-center, this isn’t a sign of defect.)
 
＜画面サイズ＞「王立宇宙軍」はビスタサイズ（ワイドスクリーンぎみ）で製作されている。今回のディスク化にあたっては、緻密に設計された画面を、劇場公開時と同様のサイズでご覧いただくため、完全ノートリミングの形でマスタリング、従来版より横長のスクリーンサイズとなっている。（このため、左右に黒い帯が出ます。また、モニターの特性により、画面が左右いずれかにずれる場合がありますが不良ではありません。） "

So in other words, I think my initial theory was correct. It's a wide movie, but not wide enough to fit with primitive wide TVs with only one zoom setting. It was window boxed to avoid losing image from the top and bottom. I'm very glad this never caught on.

well, if you had a projector with zoom OR could just adjust the image so it would fit onto the screen then there would be no issue.

but it is a slight problem, i'm suprised that nobody else has the disc or mentions the process.

You mean aside from the significant and needless waste of resolution. I have the TV Size version of this movie as well and the difference in detail is HUGE.



Yeah, that does kind of puzzle me. For a while I was wondering if maybe I had a rare defective pressing, but then I noticed the write-up on the back of the jacket for disc 2 that shows they knew all about it.

I knew a guy who knew a guy who had this box back in the day. At the time we mainly thought it was great because of the Pilot Film, which was (AFAIK) totally unavailable until this LD came out. That was the only part of it I watched until I got this copy recently so I didn't know anything about it. Maybe there is some mention of it on the rec.arts.anime archives.

well no, you wouldn't lose any rez.
i have films that i watch, my projector is on a stool and i have my screen up.
if i want to remove the black bars i will make the screen the correct size like a theatre, then i will move the projector forward or backward from the screen and get the full image without zoom and lose the black bars.

BUT that means you will have to get a projector.
still not cool what they did on that one, i would love to see how the disc would look on a television that they were trying to accommodate, off to one side etc.