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Discotek Licenses Japanese Sonic X!

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by KingOfBunnies, Oct 25, 2022.

  1. Windii

    Windii

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    I've been skimming through the set. I guess one notable thing is the orange juice-champagne scene being kept from the dub version. I guess it doesn't really matter since it still looks like booze. I just think it's funny.
    [​IMG]
     
  2. KingOfBunnies

    KingOfBunnies

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    Man, some Sonic X fans are having a fit over that and it's embarrassing but when you see what the JP DVD looked like, it was really bad quality. Discotek said they were using 6 different masters including the 4Kids one and I guess this slipped through the cracks, but on blu-ray.com, some fans were really irate towards Discotek. Not realizing Discotek is a small anime company and QC is done by humans and mistakes can happen.
     
  3. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I would think Discotek would have done some research before splicing the footage, though. 4kids' edits are documented on the internet.
     
  4. KingOfBunnies

    KingOfBunnies

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    Yeah, but have you thought that maybe it slipped through the cracks and someone made a mistake? 4Kids' master is actually higher quality than what the Japanese DVD is which has a ton of shimmering and rainbowing. But also, maybe they meant to fix the edit or just didn't realize. They're documented on the internet, but are all of them well documented? I've never seen this drink edit until now. So, I dunno. You can chalk this up to human error. Like I said, Discotek is not a big company, they're a small company and it's likely not a lot of people were working on this and those who were also were doing other work alongside this.

    https://twitter.com/CafeChaotix/status/1645032867762765824?t=tlyaWbjgzzsioq8DYe0blg&s=19 Here's what I mean by the original material looking bad and having bad compression artifacts. TMS likely didn't supply good footage.
     
  5. HEDGESMFG

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    I'll be blunt.

    Even as someone who knows the original 52 episodes... ahem... very, very well, I can easily see that kind of error slipping through even my own QC process if I were attempting to do all this.

    Plus, honestly, the uncut version's source truly does look terrible. Just too bad the edit itself doesn't look great either.

    But this is hardly a new phenomena. Old localized anime DVDs had minor errors and changes like that all the time. Text, visual, whatever. I get purists freaking out about it (those orange bottles look tacky), it's not like the original garbled sign texts in the uncut version was some kind of masterpiece of background detail either. I'd hardly get upset if one of those errors slips through.
     
  6. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    On the one hand I can see the artifacts you're talking about.

    On the other, I can't get over how shoddy 4kids' edits look. You can see the drinks overlap the shine on the glass. Gross!
     
  7. shilz

    shilz

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    getting my daily allowance of vitamin kk
    I get it, it's Sonic X, not high art, it was sloppily made in the first place, it's a miracle we got this at all, ETC...
    ...But I also think it's downplaying to say it's not an issue at all and that people are overreacting to stuff like this. I'd be way, way more upset about these errors if I wasn't also only half paying attention to some of these episodes and noticed anything out of place myself, but even then, knowing that I bought something that I expected wouldn't have issues like these, it's kind of a bummer, because it means the definitive release we've been waiting for still has issues that seem like they can't be taken back, and we'll potentially will never get a second chance at it.
    I'm not unhappy with the release, because I know what it took to get it done, and I still think it looks really nice at its best moments, but it's also something that now needs to be addressed when recommending the release to anybody and takes more time to explain why it happened, and might just convince people that they're better off watching the show anywhere else when the whole point is to show the original intended experience channeled through people who actually care about the show has value over some old 4kids dub by people who only half cared.
     
  8. Chimes

    Chimes

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    I once talked to one of the guys who works on Discoteks editing side. With certain edit happy shows like this, this was actually inevitable because of Sonic X particularly being a weird nightmare of sources to comb through. Apparently no one has the Season 3 credits...? Regardless, I hope they'll address some of the minor mistakes but at that point it's the "I'm tired, boss" meme all over again LOL
     
  9. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    To be honest I only know of Sonic X Uncensored that was made back in the "olden times" that is long gone.

    I did just find a mirror but none of the episode pages have pictures:
    https://tilde.team/~khuxkm/sxu/index.html
     
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  10. Chimpo

    Chimpo

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    They are overreacting.

    The original source version is awful in quality. They made the correct choice in picking the 4Kidz version for this shot and any other shot. The selling point was to get the best possible looking video with the sources available. They made that perfectly clear and they succeeded in that regard.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2023
  11. Chimpo

    Chimpo

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    [​IMG]
     
  12. Windii

    Windii

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    I've asked the guy in charge of the video part about that shot. He says it might have just been a legit mistake, but also he thinks that specific part of the episode had some zooms and pans that looked bad in the masters so he replaced with 4Kids which looked the least crappy and left a little too much in that nobody noticed. So... you know.

    Like others have said, this was a hack job of several different sources since TMS didn't preserve this show very well. The only surviving credits for 53-78 are somehow just the scriptwriters, storyboard artists and episode directors and no one else (not counting the staff changes we did know about thanks to the Taiwanese VCDs). Sonic X Uncensored, the most comprehensive site on edits like this, has also been gone for years and its webmaster RattleMan has vanished off the face of the Internet. So on and so on. I wouldn't even be surprised if other Discotek hack jobs I'm not aware of have stuff like this in as well. It's inevitable.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2023
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  13. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    upload_2023-4-16_8-13-15.png

    Fans were perfectly within their right to expect this release to be free of 4kids' censorship.
     
  14. shilz

    shilz

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    getting my daily allowance of vitamin kk
    I understand we like to laser focus on parts of quotes here but if there's one post I ever make where doing this is taking my word out of context I swear on my life it is this one.
    I'm not being sarcastic, petty, jokey, cocky disrespectful, etc when I say "I get it" (and honestly I think that needs repeating for this opening here too), I get that the best footage source also has 4kids edits. I get that things like this are going to slip through at some points on a release that isn't expected to perform well, I get that they weren't even technically lying because they said "the least amount of", but I think it can still be reasonably expected that something like an alcohol reference - a fairly frequent change in dubbed anime being marketed at kids - might be reason to double and triple check everything from a group that is trying to achieve the most faithful release possible with the footage they had, but obviously something happened to where they didn't actually use the best footage to fit each situation.

    I will once again say that this may be the best release of the show yet but that comes with a pretty big asterisk now. It's not the worst thing that could've happened. The work done is still great regardless of flaws. The flaws are there and it is somewhat deceptive to say they don't matter and you should buy this release just because this release was one in a million, because what's actually achieved by buying it on that alone? It's not going to get you a third, better-er collection with cover art you completely love from the start, it's not going to change what's on the disc, it is what it is for better and worse. If better is that future, non-Sonic X releases don't have similar problems, and worse is that this is as good as it gets, so be it.

    I'm trying my best not to come off as an asshole but that's hard to do when I have a critique this specific.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2023
  15. Ch1pper

    Ch1pper

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    To be fair, changing wine bottles to match the liquid just makes 'em look even more like Budweiser bottles. Surely that's worth a chuckle if nothing else? :V
    (I care so little that I find it funny, but I get being miffed about it.)
     
  16. Mendinso

    Mendinso

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    While I can't comment too much on this and I'm speaking as myself when I say this: All I ask if you guys have issues, please be mindful and courteous about this. If you guys find anymore issues, be it subtitle mistakes, slip-ups in the video, etc., please compile a list and definitely contact Discotek Media and such on Twitter and stuff about it. But be mindful how you approach it. These are genuine issues you all have pointed out, but how you guys approach this is especially important.

    I can assure you, no one intentionally tried to make mistakes on this and at the end of the day, we're human. That's incredibly important to note.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2023
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  17. KingOfBunnies

    KingOfBunnies

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    Yeah, it's not like it's the dub audio slipping through for a scene or just an entire scene missing. It's one bad edit that slipped through the cracks because the source looked better and someone made a mistake. Some people are saying Discotek is incompetent for letting it slip through when that is not the case. Discotek is a great anime company constantly putting out high quality anime releases. To see some people (not here on Retro specifically) completely write them off over one minor mistake feels like people just wanted something to argue about.
     
  18. HEDGESMFG

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    Yeah, no. The original Japanese version would have the original insert songs, which they discussed multiple times was not possible, and the JP DVDs didn't have either. It was clear there would be some compromises very early. We haven't had the "original Japanese Version" since 2004. With anime, it's never that black and white when you take studio alterations into account either.

    Personally, I will actually be annoyed more by the missing songs (which was not Diskotek's fault) than a single miscolored shot, if we want to go down this rabbithole. I never liked the way the music changed after the original TV airing if you want to go down the angry purist route.
     
  19. shilz

    shilz

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    getting my daily allowance of vitamin kk
    Exactly. If it sounds like I've been saying that, it's the exact opposite, I'm trying to give credit where it's due, but I'm also trying to hold Discotek as a whole to the standard I was convinced they have.
     
  20. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    people really losing their minds over the color of a bottle