Animation Industry Watching No.28: The Case of "The King of Heroes: GaoGaiGar FINAL" at the Forefront of Blu-ray Production, Interview with Q-tec Co.

DVD and Blu-ray software. These are the animation products that fans expect the most and want to keep close to their hearts. When software that was once only available on DVD is now available on Blu-ray, we feel relieved and excited.
So, what is going on in the field of Blu-ray production?　For this interview, we used "The King of GaoGaiGar FINAL," which was released as an OVA between 2000 and 2003, as an example, and interviewed the person in charge of the Blu-ray production. GaoGaiGar FINAL" is a sequel to the TV series "GaoGaiGar, King of the Braves" (1997), and was produced at a time when the transition from analog to digital animation production was taking place. Therefore, there is a mixture of film shots and cuts created with computer graphics.
Furthermore, "The King of GaoGaiGar FINAL" is a sequel to "The King of GaoGaiGar FINAL GRAND GLORIOUS GATHERING" (2005; hereinafter "GaoGaiGar FINAL"). It was re-edited for TV broadcast as "GaoGaiGar FINAL GGG" (2005; hereinafter referred to as "GaoGaiGar FINAL GGG"). In this Blu-ray release, both "GaoGaiGar FINAL" and "GaoGaiGar FINAL GGG" will be released in a single box set.
Let's take a look behind the scenes of the Blu-ray box production with Mr. Sei Sugihara, a sales representative from Q-tec Corporation, Mr. Masami Suzuki, an editor, and Mr. Takuma Kiuchi, a sales representative from Sunrise Lights, Inc.

Combining three types of materials: film, CG cut, and DVD master

Please tell us what you two do at Q-tec.

Sugihara: I was in charge of sales, coordinating the overall schedule and editing methods and specifications. Suzuki was the main person on the editing team and was responsible for the actual work, including quality control.

─ This is a rudimentary question, but what is the difference between DVD and Blu-ray?

Suzuki: To use a simple TV broadcasting analogy, DVD is the video signal format of the analog broadcasting era, while Blu-ray is the video format of the digital broadcasting era. The major difference is the resolution: DVD is analog broadcasting, so it is 640 x 480 SD size, while Blu-ray is high-definition, so it is 1920 x 1080 HD size. If we tried to simply replace the DVD with Blu-ray, we would only be enlarging the image, which would result in jaggies in the fine lines of the animation. However, using our proprietary "FORS" up-conversion technology, we are able to up-convert without any jaggies.
In the case of "The King of Heroes: GaoGaiGar FINAL," out of the eight episodes produced at the time, the first four episodes were shot on film and the last four episodes were shot digitally.
Since most of the first four episodes were shot on 35mm film, there was more information in the picture and a marked difference in color reproduction and color luster compared to other DVDs from the year 2000.
Since the latter four episodes were shot digitally in SD size, the resolution was lower than the film footage of the first four episodes, but by using our FORS, the picture was so much cleaner than the usual up-conversion.


───Then, is the standard of image quality in accordance with the film shooting part of the first half of the film?　Or is it based on the digital shooting of the second half?

Suzuki: To ensure that there would be no discrepancies when the images are connected, we used the DVD master released at the time as a guide and up-converted the digitally shot portion of the second half using FORS to match the image quality of the 35mm film. The first half of the film was re-scanned from negative film. The first half of the film was re-scanned from the negative film, because the current technology allows for higher resolution scans. The scanned data was then color-corrected using the DVD master as a reference. After that, we re-edit the film.

─ You scanned the negative film anew and edited it in the same way as the DVD at the time of its release?

Suzuki: That's right. Because we re-scanned from the negative, all the effects that were added when the DVD was edited have been removed. In the case of "The King of Heroes: GaoGaiGar FINAL," we did not simply connect the filmed material as is, but director Yoshitomo Yonetani added screen effects in the editing stage, and we needed to reproduce the same screen effects on the Blu-ray as when the DVD was released.

Kiuchi: So you had to re-install special effects such as incident light one by one?

Kiuchi: When we checked the negatives this time, we found that some of the processing that was added during editing was not reflected in the negatives. However, we felt that upconverting from the DVD master would not meet the expectations of our fans, so we decided to recreate the film from scratch.

Sugihara: So, we compared the DVD with the original, and re-installed the same effects as in the original.

I'm sure it's a lot of work, but is this normal for a Blu-ray product?

Sugihara: For ordinary old titles, we either upconvert the DVD masters as they are, or we use the films as they are and do the remastering.
Since "GaoGaiGar FINAL" was edited using a variety of methods at the time of production, we were asked to use the best parts of the three types of materials stored at Sunrise for the Blu-ray version.

───Please give us a breakdown of the "three types of materials.

Sugihara: First, data scanned from 35mm negative film. Another is the data called CG cut, which was created by CG at that time. Finally, there is the DVD master. They said, "We want you to successfully combine these three types of materials and reproduce them in the highest quality. We needed to use the potential of each material in its best condition, so both the CG cut and the DVD master had to be adjusted to match the image quality of the 35mm film without any discrepancies.


Kiuchi: To go a step further, 16mm film was also included. This is because "GaoGaiGar FINAL" includes reminiscence scenes using footage from the 1997 TV version of "GaoGaiGar," and the TV version was shot on 16mm film.

Suzuki: Naturally, the recollection scenes are processed to look like recollections. Therefore, we used the HD master created during the Blu-ray production of the TV version of "GaoGaiGar," added the same reminiscence effects, and used it for "GaoGaiGar FINAL. Since such anomalous cuts were used throughout the film, the amount of work involved was quite large.

───Has there ever been a work that required such an enormous amount of work before?

Suzuki: No, this is the first time for me.