Extras |
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Captures |
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Review |
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Anthony Romero |
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Easily Discotek's best Toho DVD to date, Sayonara
Jupiter is an excellent release across
the board, featuring superb video and audio
quality while also being stocked with a ton
of extras. To be fair, though, this release
isn't quite as grand as the Pioneer two disc
set that was released in Japan, but given
that the region 2 set is now long out of print,
sold for more than three times the cost of
this one, and lacks English viewing options,
the choice between the two should be easy
for most. |
Video: |
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The disc is complemented with an excellent
video presentation. Overt digital inconsistencies
are nonexistent here, and while the movie could
have looked sharper the detail visible is still
rich. The colors are also nice and distinct on
this release, not as vibrant as is possible on
the format but the deep reds and yellows still
look fantastic. The print used for the transfer,
outside of a few scratches, is also in amazing
shape. As for noise levels, it has very low level of visible grain.
Bye-Bye Jupiter is presented in its
original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is Anamorphic
for widescreen TVs. Sadly, the video track has
been heavily window boxed (a black border around
the image). This will allow the DVD to play without
a hitch on older sets, which sometimes crop the
edges, but also causes for the video, from the
perspective of newer sets, to be needlessly compressed. |
Audio: |
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This disc contains two audio tracks, one
presented in 5.1 surround and the other in 2.0 stereo. The first is the original
Japanese track in surround, while the second is Toho's international
English dubbing for the production, which redubs
dialogue even for the numerous English speaking
parts in the film. In terms of audio quality,
both are excellent, featuring no inconsistencies
while the added speaker distinction works well
for the surround presentation. Overall, the Japanese
track fares better, with a much more rich sound
to both the dialogue (naturally) and sound effects,
but both are still solid audio presentations.
As for the performances in the stereo dub, it's bad
even by Toho's standards for these tracks, while
a lot of the dialogue readers should be familiar
to viewers as they have been doing these tracks
since the 1970's while a few of them would continue
on dubbing into the next decade for the firm.
The audio can be accompanied with, removable,
English subtitles. The subtitles only appear for
the non-English speaking parts in the film, though.
For those interested in the pricey region 2 set,
it's worth mentioning that this release lacks
the original 2.0 audio track and the 5.1 DTS track
of the movie that are located there.
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Extras: |
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For a single disc release, Sayonara
Jupiter is packed with extra content.
The star attraction here is a half hour "Making
of Special", covering mostly the special
effects that went into the production. Unfortunately,
the video quality is a little iffy, as seen
here,
but the reason for this is because Pioneer
(the company in Japan which put out the R2
DVD, and the same DVD Discotek is using for
their release), decided to transfer the original
VHS tape of this "Making Of" special
directly to DVD. As a matter of fact, the
very beginning of the special starts off by
saying Toho Video. So, what we are watching
essentially is a copy of the original VHS
cassette, which is kind of nostalgic in a
way, but also makes one wish that the original
source could have been found. The feature
is still very informative and in depth on
how a lot of the sequences were created, making
for an excellent inclusion regardless.
Next up is a menu based feature called "About
the Film". Now I have never been a fan
of these types of features, such as the boring
"by the book" ones that AnimEigo
does. However, this one is really superb,
featuring a huge amount of reports on the
film, informative bios on the cast and crew,
tons of production stills and concept art
which can be clicked on to fit the whole screen.
It might be a little overwhelming though,
as there are tons and tons of pages to sift
through while a couple of their translations
also go astray (Godzilla vs. Mega-Girath
G and Godzilla vs. Mega-Godzilla),
but the information contained within is incredibly
in depth. There are also four trailers, including
one for this film, of Discotek's four Toho
titles.
Rounding out the disc are two more features,
one a short bio on a play version done of
the concept for Bye-Bye Jupiter called
"Another Sayonara Jupiter", which
is the least interesting of the extras but
is exclusive to this release, and another
which is a very thorough Photo Gallery. The
gallery features background text, with Japanese
from the region 2 being seen while Discotek
overlapped English translations on top of
most of these. The galleries cover the ships,
the tons of merchandise released with the
film, and stills for the IO production company
that was created specifically for this film.
Despite the breadth of supplemental content
available here, there are still a number of
things missing compared to the Pioneer two
disc set that was released in region 2. These
include three additional making of features
that consists of a 46 minute behind the scenes
video (showing the cast and crew at a press
conference among other things), a 22 minute
"TV Clip" segment (which shows Sakyo
Komatsu, Koichi
Kawakita and his staff discussing the
film) and a 45 minute video called "Continuity"
(which is a long segment showing all 850 storyboards
on a projector). There is also some additional
concept art, a commentary track and a "SFX
Selection" feature that showcases the
scenes of the ships from the movie. |
Overview: |
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Bottom
line, if anyone has an interest in the movie,
and hasn't already helped themselves to the region
2 set, then Discotek's offering is a must for
its English options and easy to swallow asking
price. |
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