Protoculture Addicts 22 (March-April 1993)

8 hours ago, JimJam78 said:

Oh boy, a laser disc of Akira for only...$353.10 CAD with inflation and conversion!

It's be a good conversation starter at least.

As an avid laserdisc collector, I own this release of Akira, and yeah, I can start a conversation about this bad boy. Laserdisc, in the 80's up until the early 2000's when it was supplanted by DVD, was the cinephile format, especially in Japan. The video and audio quality offered eclipsed any other home media format, and they were often the only way to get anything resembling the original theatrical experience at home in terms of sound design and aspect ratio. If you loved movies, and you had the money, LD was the way.

Laserdiscs used two different ways of encoding video. The first was called CAV, or Constant Angular Velocity. In this process, every frame of the film was encoded around a single 'track' of the disc. This allowed the viewer to pause the film, go frame-by-frame (forward or reverse), and offered a high-quality video signal. CAV-encoded discs allowed for roughly 30 minutes of video per side.

The second method was CLV, or Constant Lineal Velocity. In this process, the video was encoded sequentially across the disc, and frames were not given individual tracks. This results in slightly lower video quality as frames are interpolated together, and it also means you can't pause or go frame-by-frame, since there were multiple frames per 'track'. But the trade off was that each side of a disc could now hold about 60 minutes of video, so you could have two hours per disc instead of just one.

The reason this Akira disc was so expensive is that it's a Criterion release. It came on three discs, in CAV format to allow for the best video quality and frame-by-frame. It included both the original Japanese audio track on the analog sound channel, and the English dubbed version on the digital sound channel. It was mastered from a cinematic reel (you can even see the 'cigarette burn' cue markings for reel changes if you're watching carefully) at its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with sound mixed from the original theatrical 3.1 Dolby surround master tapes. It's a masterpiece, with the only downside being there's no subtitles for the original Japanese audio.

In addition to being an incredible audio/visual experience though, the discs are also crammed with special features. There are screen tests, behind-the-scenes footage, pencil sketches of the evolving character designs, storyboards, original production artwork, animation cels, the Japanese and US theatrical trailers, and a storyboard for a planned but never animated sequence where the "Akira Event" sets off World War III. It also includes the first issue of the English-language Akira comic released by Marvel's Epic imprint, both as a work that you can step through using your remote, or experience as a sort of 'video comic', complete with dissolves, wipes, and other basic cinema transitions between the individual panels. These were the sorts of things you simply couldn't do with a VHS tape, and it's nuts how much extra they packed into this release. It was the first animated film to be given the Criterion treatment, and they really went all-out. It's a thing of beauty.

*huggles*
Areala