Star Blazers The Comet Empire - Warp Speed Version

Overview

Three years ago, when we first decided to look into remastering STAR BLAZERS™, we apprised the folks at Voyager of our efforts. That was the FIRST time we remastered the Comet Empire story arc, and our current efforts are based off of that original project. Back then our resources weren't as snazzy as they are now, and we had to yank all of our video with one of those good ol' "high end" ATI video capture cards. We knew the prints weren't up to commercial grade but sent copies of then to Voyager anyway, hoping they'd take the hint. They apparently decided to stick with those old, grainy, 16mm film prints for their DVDs for obvious reasons -- hence our current effort. At the same time we were redoing the Comet Empire, though, our minds kept going back to the lone dubbed Yamato movie. You know, the Streamline dub of FAREWELL TO SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO. Don't knock it too badly, because it's actually a pretty good dub given Streamline was the top anime dubbing outfit at the time. It's just that it suffers from the same problem as does the Bolar Wars story arc. It has the WRONG VOICES, if you know what we mean. Why couldn't it be remixed with the Claster cast audio from the series ... or better yet, a movie-length compilation from the series itself? Sort of a "warp speed version" like those memorial videos they used to release in Japan, back when releasing an entire anime TV series on videotape or laserdisc was quite a pricey prospect. Our pitch to Voyager was that they could release it as a bargain alternative to buying the entire series, and so we made warp speed versions of all three seasons of STAR BLAZERS™. They said nary a word, but as you can guess our suggestion was never officially taken. Oh, well. We can make a guess at why they decided not to go with the idea and we understand. Even so, we don't want our work to go missing on a dusty storage shelf somewhere before it gets lost to disc rot. Included in this archive is a slightly retooled version of our 2005 Comet Empire "warp speed version" movie. This was pulled directly from our archive master print. We ask that you please forgive the quality of the video and the frequent screen artifacts from time to time. These resulted from the video capture card we were using to generate our work prints back then. We also note that this print was cropped in letterbox format to simulate a theatrical release and with viewing on widescreen TVs and monitors in mind. In retrospect this may not have been such a good idea, what with the stink that the DRAGON BALL Z™ fans have raised over their own show getting similar treatment. Perhaps we might redo it in the future if enough fans show interest. A word at this point about the way this is edited. The idea behind the "warp speed version" was to edit each season down into a three-hour movie. Our prints were keyed off of the original Japanese movie edits for the first two seasons, and off of the Bolar Wars TV movie compilation for the third season. This required the reshuffling of certain scenes, as well as the alteration of others, in order to provided a reasonable flow of events. We couldn't include everything, but we tried as hard as we could to include as many of the fans' favorite moments as possible -- given the limitations of Claster's dub, that is. It actually turned out a lot better than we expected, although the lack of consistent quality audio sources was (and still is) irritating. Oh, how we wish Voyager had remastered the Comet Empire audio like they did for the Iscandar episodes! Our only change was to redo all of title and credits cards. This was for the sake of those whose names were listed and for obvious reasons. This included both people on our team and at Voyager back then -- including one fellow at Voyager in particular who was a big help in our original effort. The key part he played, although much appreciated at the time, must forever remain anonymous per his wishes. This also goes for...