Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyo Laboratory Shuts Down in November, Works to Return Film Originals
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5576 |
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this is possibly the biggest disaster for anime culture ever
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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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
Posts: 11583 |
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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
 Posts: 19 |
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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
 Posts: 3560 Location: Finland |
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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
 Posts: 2656 |
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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... 
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4590 Location: New York |
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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
 Posts: 711 |
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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
Posts: 151 |
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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
Posts: 543 |
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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
 Posts: 467 |
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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
Posts: 2665 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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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_
 Posts: 3101 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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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
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Meexa
 Posts: 212 |
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So what is the list of things that we will lose forever?
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2665 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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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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