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NEWS: Tokyo Laboratory Shuts Down in November, Works to Return Film Originals


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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5576
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 4:44 am Reply with quote
this is possibly the biggest disaster for anime culture ever
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Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2480
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 5:36 am Reply with quote
Worrying. I wonder if there’s any prospect for a third party to step in and save the remaining films, at least in the short term? A charitable/humanitarian foundation, the government, crowdfunding… something like that.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11583
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:03 am Reply with quote
This sounds like a job for the government (does Japan have a National Library?) to archive the unclaimed films and see what's there. Destroying them seems incredibly short-sighted, but I can see that the company itself has no duty to spend its money to maintain them. Given the government is spending money to promote anime internationally, this sounds like something that might fall under that project.
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kakashi12210



Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 19
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:24 am Reply with quote
I hope someone saves the unclaimed stuff. This is where Discotek found the masters for their A-Ko remaster they did among many many others things. It would be a shame to lose all the stuff left unclaimed there.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
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Location: Finland
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 8:21 am Reply with quote
That's the problem with private initiatives of this type, longevity simply isn't guaranteed. Will same happen to this years from now?;
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-08-27/manga-archive-organization-dedicated-to-archiving-manga-materials-founded/.201487
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2656
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 9:38 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
This sounds like a job for the government (does Japan have a National Library?) to archive the unclaimed films and see what's there. Destroying them seems incredibly short-sighted, but I can see that the company itself has no duty to spend its money to maintain them. Given the government is spending money to promote anime internationally, this sounds like something that might fall under that project.

I was thinking the same. The Diet has been all about cultural preservation in recent years and allocates millions USD per year for a variety of programs, this should definitely be part. Speaking of the Diet, yes Miss Readman, there really is a National Diet Library that archives all Japanese written material https://www.ndl.go.jp/en/ though they might be more involved with digital cataloging and search database management if an anime film preservation project were established. Write your Diet member!...Oh wait... Crying or Very sad
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 12:13 pm Reply with quote
You know all those people who go looking for lost commercials and pilot cartoons of whatever?

It should be the IMPERATIVE of groups like that to preserve art. Think of how many works may have been lost forever if archivists didn't dig into dark corners of archives like this one, or someone's lost closet. The world is still mourning all those Doctor Who episodes the BBC taped over.
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ZelosZoidberg



Joined: 23 May 2018
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 1:11 pm Reply with quote
Well this is deeply concerning. I bet Discotek is watching this with a hawkeye and maybe making a few calls as we speak!
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moozooh



Joined: 30 Sep 2022
Posts: 151
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 3:30 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
Destroying them seems incredibly short-sighted, but I can see that the company itself has no duty to spend its money to maintain them.

It's not that the company has no duty maintaining them. It's that they legally cannot maintain them if they close down. They were given the masters under the contractual obligation; they can't give them away without breaching the contract.

Which in no way makes this better, of course. This something that only the government can salvage, at least hypothetically, by taking those obligations onto itself or ruling them void.
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ranran-001



Joined: 25 Oct 2018
Posts: 543
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 8:07 pm Reply with quote
A horrible loss for film preservation. Giving away the films is one thing, but they will be losing experts in film processing, film preservation, as well as archivists who know the film catalog and can identify film reels and their contents. Does Japan have an equivalent to a Library of Congress?
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FlamingFirewire



Joined: 03 Jun 2013
Posts: 467
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 8:47 pm Reply with quote
ZelosZoidberg wrote:
Well this is deeply concerning. I bet Discotek is watching this with a hawkeye and maybe making a few calls as we speak!


I sure hope groups like Discotek & AnimEigo who have been instrumental to a lot of re-releases & HD scans of classic anime content can do something to preserve these original film elements. There is such a long list of classics at Tokyo Labratory - it'll be a devastating loss if they destroy all unclaimed elements if they can't get in touch with their current owners...

As a reminder, these are all the titles ANN lists, and based on past interviews out there, there could very well be other titles in their archives we aren't aware of...

company#186
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 9:32 pm Reply with quote
FlamingFirewire wrote:
ZelosZoidberg wrote:
Well this is deeply concerning. I bet Discotek is watching this with a hawkeye and maybe making a few calls as we speak!


I sure hope groups like Discotek & AnimEigo who have been instrumental to a lot of re-releases & HD scans of classic anime content can do something to preserve these original film elements.


There's literally nothing companies here in North America can do about this situation, since they're just licensing companies &, therefore, can only work with materials that they have currently licensed.

Also, Justin Sevakis has already mentioned that, overall, the only titles that this situation will really effect are "orphaned works", i.e. titles that are already in licensing hell for a variety of reasons, most often simply because one or more of the companies that had the rights have since gone out of business, & it's not really known who exactly owns the rights now.

Tokyo Lab has already sent out notices to all of the companies that it knows the rights situations for, and has also apparently sent out attempts at their best guesses for the more nebulous situations. The companies that have the rights will more than likely be getting their materials back, upon which it's up to them to find a way to properly maintain them, so it's the stuff that literally can't even be licensed (even in Japan) that are going to get screwed over, which still sucks.
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NJ_



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 3101
Location: Wallington, NJ
PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:59 am Reply with quote
Kinda wonder where Discotek goes for some of their remasters after this.

For example, the 4K remaster of Street Fighter II was done at Tokyo Laboratory.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=21338254

dubudavid wrote:
JoeKilledKenney2020 wrote:
How did Street Fighter II The Movie get a new 4K scan? Was it from the original camera negatives?

I cannot wait to get this again in 4K HDR, along with Midnight Eye Goku, and Crying Freeman!


As for SF2, the source is actually the same print used for the previous Blu-ray/HD remaster. It's an interpositive, and it's all Capcom has, even they don't know where the OCN is. We worked with them to get it to Tokyo Lab, so they scanned it and did the HDR grade, bless em. It looks much better than that old transfer thanks to film scanning technology having improved significantly since the old BD was done, so we all couldn't be happier how it turned out, even with that same source.
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Meexa



Joined: 13 Mar 2016
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 4:43 pm Reply with quote
So what is the list of things that we will lose forever?
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2665
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:34 pm Reply with quote
Meexa wrote:
So what is the list of things that we will lose forever?


It's essentially impossible to know, really. Even just looking at the titles on Tokyo Lab's ANN encyclopedia page & limiting it to just "Film Developing", there are 856 titles listed, while "Development" give you an additional 142 titles, & "Laboratory" is yet another 60. There's also 171 under "Editing", but that looks to mostly be for digital productions, & likely don't really matter in this case since those productions tend to not use film. That accounts for just about everything Tokyo Lab has worked on, which gives us around 1,229 titles, and over 1,000 of those involved film masters, to some extent.

There's just too many titles for anyone other than the staff of Tokyo Lab itself to go over & account for, which they've already done by now.
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