Forum - View topicREVIEW: Interstella 5555 - The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem 4K "Remaster" Review
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Amuro1X
Posts: 208 |
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What a travesty. Criminal even. AI is the worst thing to happen to art.
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anime_layer
 Posts: 58 |
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I dug out the page from the Cannes' Directors' Fortnight from 2003, where Interstella 5555 had its premiere at a special screening:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030626001037/http://www.quinzaine-realisateurs.com/fr/archives/fichefilm.asp?filmID=13923&todo=resume It shows the film being shown from a 35mm print, which I had assumed would be the case. Hard to imagine it being produced in SD only and shown like that at Cannes or later in the cinema. So, I guess it's true that they lost some master but I would also assume some film prints still exists. Maybe they opted for a cheaper upscale of a digital SD master they had at hand instead of doing a more expensive scan and restoration of a print? |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1902 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Realistically speaking, only tech purists are going to give a rat's behind over the state of the presentation. The casual fans would look at the release as something else to add to their library. I speak as someone who has been royally screwed on multiple occasions by such cheap upscaling gimmicks in order for the company to maximize as much sales revenue as possible at the expense of real restoration that requires painstaking effort.
I hate to say this, but unless the disdain about cheap upscaling methods carry over to the casual fanbase to the point where they will refuse purchase, these practices (including AI upscaling) will only continue. |
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Zendervai
 Posts: 202 |
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There’s a good chance that even if a proper master existed back then, it’s long gone now. Toei has historically had some issues taking care of their master copies (note the frequent colour correction issues in their older shows) and this is a movie where there’s a rights split involved that means Toei might not have been particularly careful about the original master copy. And the record label (EMI?) might not have bothered asking for a proper master of it on their end because they assumed Toei would handle it like Hollywood and not misplace it somewhere.
I will say, in terms of this release…I don’t know if it’ll do well in the big picture. The social media buzz around the theatrical release was a lot of “this looks really weird and I don’t know why”. A crappy upscale is one thing, but this release looks incompetent on a scale that’s really hard to miss, not just inconsistent. |
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WatcherZer
Posts: 312 |
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Its likely the 35mm print was just a blow up of the Analogue TV quality master, while anime had started moving to digital production around that time the switch wasnt complete and they were still making some productions by hand, especially from veterans. Using 25fps rather than 30fps was also a trick many did in the pre-digital era to save money by reducing the number of frames that had to be drawn and it was always intended primarily for a PAL rather than NTSC release. Interstella never had a wide cinema release, only being released in 30 cinema's in France alongside the Cannes showing all to promote the DVD which was released at the same time. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3046 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Did you look at the screenshots? |
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Troyen
Posts: 27 |
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I'm gonna be honest. Having never seen the original, I had a hard time trying to spot most of the issues in the screenshot comparisons. I could see the extra noise lines on that moon picture and Stella's face looked distorted on both of those comparisons, but on the others I'm still not sure what the issue is even with the captions pointing out where to look. It might be a different story looking at the animated sequence where inconsistencies will stand out more or on a theater where the screen is a hundred times bigger than my laptop's and small details are magnified more, but my overall impression just from the article samples is "eh". If I was a die-hard fan and had watched the originals a dozen times then certain changes would likely rub me the wrong way, but as a one-off viewing I can't say without seeing it in motion. Are they marketing the remaster towards fans of the original or are they aiming it at people who like Daft Punk but have never heard of this movie before? |
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Primus
 Posts: 2823 Location: Toronto |
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Daft Punk's fanbase exceeds the amount of people who are going to look up screenshot comparisons or gripe about it on social media. Even those that do care might just take the lumps as this is the first time it's ever been given a wide theatrical release. I live in the largest city in Canada and the "one-night" screening has been extended to at least Sunday because of multiple sellouts. A new home video release is a different story as the main audience buying those are hobbyists. But even then, I wouldn't say rule out it making enough to justify its existence. The other releases have been out-of-print for so long that they sell for multiples of their MSRP now. There are undoubtedly fans who missed the BD release a decade ago. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6426 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Given Toei's notoriety when it comes to film and media preservation (well, not counting their feature films, they preserve it really well given and judging from Discotek's Blu-ray releases of Horus, Puss 'N Boots Around the World, Flying Phantom Ship, & Animal Treasure Island. All of these are films that were animated by Toei and they looked pretty good given Toei's bad history with media preservation), I was surprised (or not surprised) that they didn't preserve Interstella 5555 let alone give it a proper HD restoration/remastering. Also the fact that the original Cutie Honey TV series is getting a SD BD release (this is what the OP is going to look like on there courtesy of Discotek) kind of speaks volume on Toei's media preservation (and not giving this title a proper HD restoration & remastering it deserve compared to like Mazinger Z, which I'll discuss below). But there are time Toei seems to know how to preserve their media, like for example, they seem to preserve Mazinger Z really well (judging from the OP posted on Discotek's YT channel, and the 2 set BD releases from them) compared to how they treated the 1971 Cutie Honey anime TV series. For Toei's tokusatsu stuff that has been released in the US (both from Discotek, and Shout! Factory), I know Juspion, Jiban, Message from Space: Galactic Wars, & the upcoming release for Winspector which all of them have received SD-BD releases from Discotek. But strangely enough, Toei seem to preserve Kamen Rider V3, Kamen Rider Black, Kamen Rider Black RX, The Space Sheriff Metal Hero trilogy: Gavan, Sharivan, & Shaider really well, and all of them were given proper HD restoration and 1080P HD Blu-Ray releases with no apparent issues at all. I can't explain how Toei were able to preserve and give those titles HD restoration/remastered while others of their titles weren't given those same type of HD restoration & remastering like the latter titles I just mentioned. Toei really baffled me on how they preserve and restoring/remastering their past catalog/IPs. |
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 803 |
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Looking at the screenshots in the article, I couldn't really see most of the issues because the images have been shrunken so much for publication. I think for an article like this, where the images matter so much, ANN should have a way to let the reader zoom in on them. I tried opening one in a new tab in case it was actually in a higher resolution, but the image didn't get any bigger so I still couldn't see what the author was complaining about.
But I agree it's a shame that the upscale was produced so poorly. It's shocking that Toei didn't have a better source to use for a movie where visuals were so important. I was thinking of taking someone who hasn't seen 5555 with me to the theater release, so I'm glad I read this review. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1256 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMroa1WgofA
Trailer for the remaster. Even without direct comparison, it frequently looks peculiarly bad, with weirdly smeary sections, messed up bits of art, and details which appear and disappear arbitrarily.
Of course, this is also true. I think even the less concerned fans may notice how weird and bad it looks, but are perhaps more likely to simply chalk this up to it being old - like, "that's just how it was back then". Makes the situation all the more lousy: the efforts of the artists are being truly lost. |
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TheLineOfSight
Posts: 13 |
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Without knowing it was a "Remaster", I noticed how weird, waxy and deformed faces in crowds were. I went home, popped in the DVD on the SE X and even though it while SD quality, I could finally tell they were supposed to look human.
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 776 |
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The trailer makes the issues a lot clearer than the comparison screenshots here. Looks frightening.
It's so unfortunate, I want to see this real bad but it looks like there can never be a restored version. |
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wndr
Posts: 1 |
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I projected it in the theater, in 35mm, in 2003, and the print was obviously SD-sourced, with low resolution and painful judder that marred all the pans. Our guess at the time was that Toei was treating the production as a "low-budget side job" and thus sabotaging all of the producer's late-emerging intentions to make a proper theatrical presentation without extra compensation. |
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Twage
Posts: 366 Location: North Bergen, NJ |
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Screenshots can't fully show how bad this looks, because the biggest problem is how all the shapes and borders, particularly in the background or on objects that move quickly, end up undulating and morphing unnaturally. Faces and bodies in mob scenes become seething nightmares that flip between sharp angles and asymmetrical ovoids, like a 2002 Flash animation executed by H.P. Lovecraft. Facial features can't maintain any kind of consistency from frame to frame, with pupils changing sizes independently and lines thickening and thinning at random.
It all adds up to make the film look badly made, which is an unforgivable crime against a legend of animation. The whole movie is about the charm and value of handmade art using analog technology. Matsumoto made his name on TV animation, and Daft Punk fell in love with that TV animation, and they made a film together that looks like TV animation. Really good TV animation, but still, 4:3 SD, not too dissimilar from the work that inspired it. Is that really so surprising? Why is that an error that needs to be corrected? |
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