Not sure how I missed this, but the fella who runs Animeigo stumbled upon a treasure trove of original camera negatives for a whole bunch of anime that were presumed lost forever (I remember them from the Sheffield Space Centre small ads in Manga Mania in the early 1990's when Bubblegum Crisis was £25 per episode on VHS!). (source: https://normanicgrav.co.uk/2023/02/25/c ... -unboxing/)

He stumbled upon them in a vault in Japan when looking for resources for a Madox-01 project he was working on. So thanks to this lost treasure being rediscovered it would appear that original camera negative scans of things like Madox-01, Angel Cop (YES!!! ), Appleseed. Megazone 23 and Cyber City Oedo 808 plus other titles could now be transferred and restored in glorious HD. This vault is where Project A-Ko was discovered too I think.

Anyway, out of all of this, I finally received the 'new' Blu Ray of Cyber City Oedo 808 this week which replaces the old SDBD released a year ago from Anime Limited. I say 'new' as just after the previous SDBD was released was when the camera negatives were discovered. Diskotek put them out in the USA as a Cyber City Oedo 808 steelbook though it didn't have all the fancy extras the UK SDBD had (e.g. the wonderful Rory McFarlane soundtrack CD and booklet) it was the lustful new scans everyone wanted.

Anime Limited put out the Discotek version this month in a more toned down set. You only get the Blu Ray disc and some art cards as opposed to the more deluxe SDBD set. I don't mind as I own both, but it's a shame they didn't include the other extras in the new updated version.

To eventually get to the point I watched the first episode (my favourite of the three) yesterday for the first time as it was originally shot from the camera negative and of course I watched it with the profanity-riddled UK dub track and the infinitely superior UK Rory McFarlane soundtrack (the proper and best way to watch Cyber City Oedo 808 imho, like watching Akira with the USA 'cowabunga dub', I can't watch Akira any other way. ).

It blew my mind how utterly wonderful it looked. The trademark Kawajiri blue and red tones looked even better as they lit up the bleak cyber distopia of the future megacity of Oedo. The dub is as crass as ever (and just as great. I'm 99.9% of the time anti-dubbing but make rare exceptions e.g Akira and Oedo) plus the UK soundtrack still kicks ferocious amounts of buttocks!

This is how Cyber City Oedo 808 was meant to be seen and what a treat it is for anime fans and just fans of quality entertainment that those camera negatives that were presumed lost for all those years finally showed up. Brilliant stuff and this UK disc (or the USA steelbook, whatever works best for you) is not to be missed. Brilliant stuff. Hoping to get more from this haul as it's released. Especially Appleseed and Angel Cop from the original camera negatives, wow!

It’s truly amazing how much detail and texture Blu-Ray can extract from even average anime. Shows like ZZ Gundam have *way* more beautiful line work than I realized and backgrounds have so much better color on BR than SD video or DVD.

Don’t even get me started on Angel’s Egg. It’s almost as if it wasn’t really released until the BR came out. Outside of a theatrical screening nobody ever *really* saw it until the BR came out. A quality 1080p scan of that movie made me love it even more than I did.

Discotek did release all 4 A-Ko films/OVA from fresh scans. They didn't do Uncivil Wars. Which i don't even have the DVD for. I have like half of it on laserdisc and it was crap. Worse than the remake of Bubblegum Crisis and Dirty Pair, and as a rule except for Yamato 2199 remakes are terrible.

Bubblegum Crash is getting a Blu-Ray release. They only found one of the OVA film reels for an HD scan, the other two unfortunately will be Astrores upscales. Up until now the best release was the Japanese laserdisc.

Who care about Bubblegum Crash when they are doing Dagger of Kamui? I’m totally pumped for gunfighting ninjas on the high sees and hanging out with Mark Twain and whatever. I friggn love this movie and the soundtrack rules.

I'm aware it was disappointing, or it sucks. I still want to get it. Yes, I wish the original OVA series was concluded and Priss actress was not replaced. Or Artmic which I deeply love didn't die.

I prefer a good conclusion to the original and that the remake hadn't been made but we can't always get what we want.

Yes. You’re very well adjusted. So is Sonoda. I saw him at a panel once and he was basically like, “It didn’t end up like we wanted. Oh well. I have new stuff coming out now…” which is all the maturity we can ask from anyone. This was soon after the TV series began which was even more controversial in some ways as far as who got paid and also of course lame but he was cool with it all. Not in a “I’m Japanese so I never complain.” kinda way, he seemed genuinely over it.

There are a lot of flawed OVAs, and ones that either didn’t get finished or run as long as they were supposed to. I don’t often care about any of that. The OVA era was magical because it was allowed to be whatever it would be.

My point in bringing up Kamui is…don’t be disappointed because you can’t find the perfect version of something that isn’t very good to begin with when you can have an all new 1080p scan of a masterpiece. Don’t complain that the food is terrible and also the portions are small. Dig into Dagger of Kamui!

I've dealt with Robert personally on all my orders, I have no idea about MediaOCD. I've dealt with AnimEigo alone supported their Kickstarter from Robert's website.


Probably will get the reissues of Bubblegum Crisis, Megazone, and also the new Blu for Crash but the fact it's upscaled, they didn't actually find a film master for any of the episodes is disconcerting. They found a filmstrip that was meant to be cut up for sale with no audio on it 35mm it's not even complete.

For those who care about such things including the UK dub of the third Megazone OVA on the reissue, and the UK dub for Crash makes them instant purchases for me. Now I don't have to go on archive website to look for an old dub from someone who copied a VHS, only for them to be pulled off the site for copyright.

MediaOCD produces Discotek's blu-rays. It's Justin Sevakis's company, if you recognize him from the "Discotek Day" streams. Absolutely a company a gives a damn—hard to think of better hands for Robert to put AnimEigo in as he approaches retirement.

I know Justin did the Project A-KO blu, and i know his name from Anime News Network and Protoculture addicts Magazine. And that he supposedly encodes and compresses stuff for releases for companies.

Discotek i do know, i dropped a bit of change buying all the Urusei Yatsura sets and A-Ko films/OVAS. UY movies. The A-KO Blu is one of the best releases ever its like someone faithfully recreated the Perfect Edition laserdisc. Me and my buddy were the biggest fans of that movie back in the day, I haven't spoken to him since 2011 but I'm sure he is out there somewhere and really was over the moon over that release. I know I was, I watched both the widescreen and Fullscreen versions.

So Project Ako is finally being prepped for 4K. I think that should be out by next year.

First film in 4K. The other films/ OVA in 1080P SDR as bonus features on the same disc.

It's a bargain at 40 dollars for those who didn't buy any of the other 4 blu-rays. Of course, they never licensed uncivil wars but no one seems to care.

I wish someone would do Gall Force for blu-ray. I do wonder if any of the film materials survived.