Forum - View topicExclusive Interview: Viz Media's Charlene Ingram and Josh Lopez on Sailor Moon
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Phibby
Posts: 87 Location: MS, US |
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My mistake, then. Though it's interesting that you say that considering PurpleWarrior13's thoughts at the top of page 6:
I actually think of both Terri Hawkes and Tracey Moore when I think of Usagi (after Mitsuishi Kotono, of course). Terri just because she dubbed the majority of the first two seasons, and Tracey because she dubbed the individual dub episodes I've seen the most: the first episode and the cruise ship episode that was on the one SM tape my 10-year-old self owned before Pioneer released the movies subbed, haha. I'm surprised that thing made it through my childhood in one piece. Although I don't dislike Terri Hawkes' performance, I also think that she sounded a bit too mature for the part, and for that reason I prefer Tracey Moore, who nailed the ditzy teenage pitch first season Usagi should have. I can't speak to Linda Ballantyne since I never watched S or SuperS dubbed. I'll grant that the fanbase as a whole would name Terri Hawkes as the "one" Sailor Moon, but that doesn't mean that inconsistent casting is an unreasonable criticism of the first English dub. I'm honestly fine with none of the original English VAs returning, though I also would not mind it if some did (I'll always love Katie Griffin as Mars, I gotta say). I'm certainly not expecting any of them to, considering it's been almost 20(!) years since the DiC dub and I'm sure most of the VAs have moved on or retired since then. I'm not really planning on watching the new dub myself, though I'm sure I'll watch an episode or two just to hear the new VAs. I'm just glad a dub will exist that I can purchase outside of eBay or Amazon Marketplace. I don't have any children of my own, but I have two coworkers with 7-year-old daughters that I would love to introduce to the show. |
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Sevenfeet
Posts: 13 |
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I think most of the principal voice actors for this show are in the 50's or late 40's. All of them seem to still be working in the business. The issue comes down to being able to produce a credible voice of a teenager when you are firmly in middle age. But I've seen recent interviews with both Katie Griffin and Susan Roman and it sounds like they both still have "it", as it were. As many know, the VA business is pretty tough to make a living on, so the one's who have done it for a long time are generally pretty well respected. Most of the principals for Sailor Moon live and work in Canada, but with modern recording techniques, location for this kind of work is less of an issue these days. Most of the time it centers on money and other commitments. I think few would just say, "You know, I'm over doing that" since it's, after all, income. The one VA I can think of who actually retired from a role rather than reprise it was Petrea Burchard who declined reprising Ryoko in the third Tenchi Muyo OVA. |
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Cutiebunny
Posts: 1748 |
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It depends on the production and studio. There was a lot of "dumpter diving" back in the 1990s, which is how a large portion of the cels survived. A lot of artwork was, and still largely is, smuggled out of the studio. I can think of several sellers on Yahoo Japan that earn quite a bit of cash selling "smuggled" artwork. Though, the current trend seems to be that studios are burning the artwork now. In Sailor Moon and Dragonball's case, Toei did sell some of the artwork. The earliest "officially" sold Toei Sailor Moon cels came in a Toei envelope, while the later ones were just packaged in plastic bags and sealed with a Toei sticker. The majority of cels that exist in collections today were never "officially" sold, so while they are legitimate items, they made it out of the studio by non-official channels. Regarding Sailor Moon being transferred to film - During the Sailor Moon R season (1993), a popular item released by Toei were bookmarks featuring clips from the 16mm film reels. When I went to the Toei museum in 2008, they gave these things out with your ticket. |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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They're included in the Hulu stream, so good to go there it seems. |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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They are there, but they are after the opening. |
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Blanchimont
Posts: 3456 Location: Finland |
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... ... Please tell me that degrained one is from the old DVD release, and not the new. Pretty please? |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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It's from the Hulu stream (Neon Alley logo is there at the bottom left). |
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Sevenfeet
Posts: 13 |
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I know we're being all happy about Sailor Moon coming back and being uncut and uncensored, but if I may say something heretical here, there is one thing I didn't mind getting ditched by DiC.
Let's face it, transformation scenes are goofy, and for the most part, it's the same scene over and over. "I am Sailor Moon, champion of stock footage!" You hold up a pretty stick/brooch and say "Moon Prism Power" or something and then say "Make Up!" Really? "Make Up"??? Yeah I know, the target demo for this cartoon was originally 8-14 year old girls. Yes, teenaged girls are starting to care about such stuff like makeup. But still, as a part of a super powered transformation sequence, its still pretty silly and sexist (and that's on top of the actual sailor fuku costume). And it makes even less sense when you get the older Sensei like Uranus and Neptune doing it (*especially* the very butch Uranus) or Pluto, who's a grownup for goodness sake. OK, flame off. Had to get that off my chest. |
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Ojamajo LimePie
Posts: 766 |
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Oh, they must have just removed the "new series" preview from episode 1. Would it kill Viz to switch things around to the proper order? |
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Sevenfeet
Posts: 13 |
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Despite a show being popular and iconic, sometimes the original source materials were treated poorly or they were mastered on media that doesn't age well. This is not just a problem with TV based anime...it happens a lot for sometimes very popular works. When George Lucas wanted to do a special edition of the original Star Wars, they discovered that all of the film copies that they had on hand had been played so many times that their quality was awful. They got lucky in that they managed to find one copy at Lucasfilm that had barely been played since the premiere in 1977. It's that copy that became the new "master" and the one that is being actively preserved now. But then there's the issue of how shows were being produced in that era. mid-80's to early 90's TV was often produced and distributed on video...3/4" Betacam tapes. Some of the most well known expensive TV shows in Hollywood were actually shot on video like this. If you ever see clips of the Cosby Show, it all looks like crap since the show was produced on 480p video, not film (which can be restored and digitally scanned up to 4K). Star Trek: The Original Series from the 1960s looks great on Blu-Ray mainly because they had the original 35mm film stock from Desilu to work with. On the other hand, Star Trek: The Next Generation from the 1980s had to deal with the fact that the show was on video which made cleanup and upscaling harder and special effects downright crappy (the effects were reshot for the Blu-Ray release). I'd be real surprised if there was a quality surviving 16mm film stock of this series that could be properly restored. On the other hand, cleanup of old video stock is a lot better now than a decade ago (again, refer to ST:TNG's Blu-Ray release). So I'm sure that while we're probably not going to get the quality of film restoration of a cartoon say from the 50's-70's, it will be better on a variety of levels from the DVD releases of a decade ago. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Have you really created an account specifically to post images of Schwarzenegger?
Well there you go. Unless those were internegatives rather than the original film masters, that would definitely make doing a HD remaster from film a difficult prospect... |
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Sevenfeet
Posts: 13 |
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I just sat and watched Episode 1 over lunch on Hulu. It looks like exactly what we thought....an upscaled, digitally cleaned, color balanced version of the old Betacam videotapes. Whatever 16mm film that existed was either unavailable, lost or too damaged to use. It's impossible to bring out detail in an upscale and you can tell the places on line curves when upscales happen. Upscaling plus compression artifacts are a bit annoying to watch, but I'm thinking the Blu-Ray release will suffer from fewer artifacts vs. Hulu. Having said that, the video is probably the best I've seen of it since the original syndication run. I'm comparing the video versus the a torrent copy I have (hey, this show has been out of print for a decade) and the big difference is the colors. NTSC video has a limited amount of colors and it's likely the originally painted colors never translated that well to NTSC video. HD has a far broader palette, so if Viz had access to the original color palette information, they can make something a lot truer to what the animators intended. One complaint is that in some scenes the color saturations goes overboard to the point of bleeding. I might have dialed it back just a bit from what they did in certain places. I imagine that since they probably produced the shows in order that the later episodes will look better than Episode 1. The one thing about this cleaned up Sailor Moon is that loads better is the soundtrack. The copy I have is a highly compressed, extremely tinny soundtrack that is awful to listen to. This one, while still likely a studio mono is still heads and shoulders up what has been out there (I don't have the ADV version to compare to). |
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Anton Chigurh
Posts: 257 Location: Guam |
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The scene in the third (?) season with Usagi crawling into a phone booth after a particularly traumatic incident and crying - not her usual bawling, genuinely crying - has remained with me since.
I think I will get the Limited Edition. On the softer side of things, no series I know has let the audience take a peek at the future queen of the Earth's underwear drawer. That counts for something too. |
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DavidShallcross
Posts: 1008 |
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Are you saying that they are taking the original 480-line 4:3 aspect ratio image, digitized as a 720 x 480 image (with skinny pixels), squashing it down to 540 x 480, and adding black side pillars to fill up the 720 x 480 standard DVD image, so that when displayed as anamorphic widescreen (with wide pixels), it appears at the 4:3 aspect ratio, but less horizontal resolution that it would have if it were displayed as the 720 x 480 non-anamorphic image? That's almost hard to believe. I would want verification from somebody with a 4:3 television. I suppose it makes some kind of economic sense. If the DVD version is a downconversion from the Blu-Ray version, it saves them some duplicated effort. Otherwise, 4:3 ratio material should be watched in 4:3, and not stretched or chopped to fit 16:9, in my opinion. edit I had assumed square pixels for standard def NTSC digital video, but now see that they use rectangular pixels, taller than wide. Last edited by DavidShallcross on Mon May 19, 2014 3:43 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1873 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Keeping tabs with this news and interview. Will follow.
Here's a bit of advice for you: Go watch the ADV and Geneon DVD releases of the DiC and Cloverway show. THERE IS YOUR NOSTALGIA! We honestly don't need these ridiculous essays by nostalgiasts who want to cry about how things "just won't be the same" if such and such doesn't happen to their favorite show. It's bullshit because what happened then is not the same as what is happening now. The new Sailor Moon release is designed to correct the mistakes of the past, not carry them over into the future. If you can't understand this, then bugger off. Last edited by KabaKabaFruit on Sat May 24, 2014 4:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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