And we all thought Toei was lazy with Kai...

[Codarik]

I know there has been many anime remasterings but I figured this one is definitely worth comparing with since it to was its 20th anniversary. Last week the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series got the "Kai" treatment, and its worse! You wanna know what Nihon Ad Systems/Studio Gallop did? All they did was crop it to 16:9. That's it, same everything else. No new opening, no new animation, nothing. Here is some laziness, check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApaNchq58G8 It's the "remastered" opening, instead of reanimating or cropping Anzu's, Honda's, and Jonouchi's face shots from the original, they just took a screenshot of each from an episode and just placed it there instead.

Because of this I now respect Toei for what they've done, they at least tried to make DB Kai a new experience.

[Theophrastus]

Given the myriad of complaints about Kai's soundtrack and the remastering quality of the Buu arc, I'm sure some people would have actually preferred for Toei to just take the same approach of cropping and upscaling and leaving everything else alone.

[Vegard Aune]

They did this for One Piece as well. Just a cropped re-broadcast of the East Blue saga with nothing else done to it whatsoever. Though in fairness, at least this approach would still give a new audience basically the same experience as those watching the original broadcast back in the day... Well, I mean aside from the framing of the shots being consistently awkward, but we still get that with Kai too. So it's lazy, and it's completely stupid that they try to sell this as some sort of special edition, (both the One Piece rebroadcast and this Yu-Gi-Oh rerun advertises itself as a "special edition" right in the opening credits) but at least they're not consistently butchering every other scene with awkward editing and terrible music-choices...

[NinjaGoku]

At least Dragon Ball Z can be upscaled and look good, shows that are animated digitally to a set aspect ratio look like garbage...

[MarcFBR]

At least Dragon Ball Z can be upscaled and look good, shows that are animated digitally to a set aspect ratio look like garbage...

I feel like you don't know what upscale means...

[Hujio]

I'll jump in and play devil's advocate here. Firstly, the series in question only started last week, so no home video release has been announced, leaving the possibility of having a non-cropped version still available to fans. Secondly, all terrestrial broadcast television has to be in widescreen in Japan, so it's not like they had a choice about cropping if they were going to use upscaled fullscreen footage. At this point, the only way around not cropping an older series you want to broadcast on TV is to completely re-animate it. So while there is substance to a complaint about not getting a newly animated remake of a series, there's very little to having one about an upscaled series cropped for television. I do agree though that Toei at least attempted to do something different and make it a new experience.

[Puto]

all terrestrial broadcast television has to be in widescreen in Japan

That doesn't seem to stop Detective Conan from airing remastered old episodes in their original 4:3 (though with whatever current 16:9 opening is current at the time) every once in a while on standard terrestrial NTV.

[MarcFBR]

all terrestrial broadcast television has to be in widescreen in Japan

That doesn't seem to stop Detective Conan from airing remastered old episodes in their original 4:3 (though with whatever current 16:9 opening is current at the time) every once in a while on standard terrestrial NTV.

My understanding based on an explanation I was given by a friend who lived in Japan a number of years ago (although I've never been able to confirm it looking around online, so I don't know if it's real or something just assumed) it has to do with the claimed 'presentation' of it.

The Conan episodes are presented as repeats of old material, while Yu-Gi-Oh, Kai, etc are effectively presented as "we've updated/etc" it in some way thereby not falling under the banner of just 'repeats' anymore.

In the case of Yu-Gi-Oh, I believe officially they've titled it 'Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters 20th Remaster' thereby giving the show a new title and not having it fall under whatever loopholes exist for older material (and of course they want to get the biggest audience possible, so talking about updating it for modern TVs, etc. always does well with non hardcore audiences.)

I've tried digging into this to get more solid information, but it's pretty hard to track down information about this. From what little I have found I generally believe adding pillarboxes would meet the requirement, but companies around the world have generally avoided using themed pillarboxes whenever possible as the reaction to them is generally negative. And of course the obvious thing which is- While we don't like things cropped... the vast majority of the audience just doesn't care, and in fact expects it to look like that.

[sangofe]

But it was "remaster". And that's what it is. It never claims to be anything else.

[MarcFBR]

But it was "remaster". And that's what it is. It never claims to be anything else.

Except in the remaster they give it a new title.

It's also possible it has nothing to do with the actual statutes and requirements in Japan, but rather the network wanted it that way if they were going to agree to air it.

Or, frankly, the simplest explanation is the most likely- they decided to do it that way because that's how most people watch TV nowadays.

[Hujio]

It's also possible it has nothing to do with the actual statutes and requirements in Japan, but rather the network wanted it that way if they were going to agree to air it.

That is one possibility I had considered, but I haven't really looked at how much leeway the networks actually have under the current statutes. My guess is there is a rerun clause of some sort.

Or, frankly, the simplest explanation is the most likely- they decided to do it that way because that's how most people watch TV nowadays.

This option is always on the list, but it's the one that most knowledgeable fans don't like hearing. But honestly, it's usually the one that makes the most sense when you consider the general public, especially younger audiences that don't know any different.

[Ringworm128]

As slim as a chance there is I'm for this if it means YGO getting a good English redub.

[Theophrastus]

Now that I think about, I thought there was some contractual nonsense regarding one of the Japanese voice actors for this series that prevented them from ever re-releasing the original Japanese version in any form. Did they finally manage to work around that or something?

[MarcFBR]

Now that I think about, I thought there was some contractual nonsense regarding one of the Japanese voice actors for this series that prevented them from ever re-releasing the original Japanese version in any form. Did they finally manage to work around that or something?

The vast majority of the time you hear something like that for anime, it's often just people trying to come up with an explanation for something that they see as inconceivable (something not being rereleased, etc.) when the truth is rather there just hasn't been the interest (from the business or the consumers, either one, or both) and the companies involved see little reason to really discuss this sort of thing with people, so the silence furthers that information since it's all that people have to pass around.

I've heard that explanation before, but I thought people were discussing the Toei Season 0 stuff (I'm not particularly a Yu-Gi-Oh fan, so I could be wrong.)

[Theophrastus]

Now that I think about, I thought there was some contractual nonsense regarding one of the Japanese voice actors for this series that prevented them from ever re-releasing the original Japanese version in any form. Did they finally manage to work around that or something?

The vast majority of the time you hear something like that for anime, it's often just people trying to come up with an explanation for something that they see as inconceivable (something not being rereleased, etc.) when the truth is rather there just hasn't been the interest (from the business or the consumers, either one, or both) and the companies involved see little reason to really discuss this sort of thing with people, so the silence furthers that information since it's all that people have to pass around.

I've heard that explanation before, but I thought people were discussing the Toei Season 0 stuff (I'm not particularly a Yu-Gi-Oh fan, so I could be wrong.)

This particular case, whatever the truth of the matter may be, is a bit different from what you're describing, in that the subtitled Japanese episodes had started being posted online for legal streaming by 4Kids and then they just vanished without much in the way of an on-the-record official explanation:
https://ravegrl.wordpress.com/2009/08/2 ... urn-again/
https://ravegrl.wordpress.com/2009/08/2 ... ct-by-adk/

(I wish I could find a more "legitimate" source to cite here, but it was back in 2009 and Google fails me).

4Kids then went on to post...uh, "most" of the subtitled episodes of YGO 5Ds and a small portion of YGO Zexal before the whole lawsuit/bankruptcy thing went down, so it's not like they didn't have streaming rights for the franchise or something. Something happened that was specific to the Duel Monsters series.

[LordCrumb]

I'll never understand the popularity of a show like Yu-Gi-Oh!.. it's whole purpose was to sell cards..

[MarcFBR]

This particular case, whatever the truth of the matter may be, is a bit different from what you're describing

Random anonymous people claiming to be insiders does not equate to actual proof.

Frankly, even if they were 4kids staff that wouldn't equate to proof. The dub director of Toei's marketing dub for Digimon Xros Wars was 100% adamant that in discussions with Toei that if the show was ever licensed and fully dubbed the same writers and cast as the marketing dub would be used.

[SaiyamanMS]

I'll never understand the popularity of a show like Yu-Gi-Oh!.. it's whole purpose was to sell cards..

I'd like to note that there were no card games at all in the first volume of the manga and that it ran for over 7 volumes before card games became the forefront of the series. ... Though to be fair, Studio Gallop's anime adaptation does kind of exist for the sole purpose of selling cards, even completely skipping the first 7 manga volumes. (Which were kind of but not really covered in Toei's original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime which constantly changed things from the original manga, generally for the worse.)

[Xeogran]

I'll never understand the popularity of a show like Yu-Gi-Oh!.. it's whole purpose was to sell cards..

It has great characters, good story, nice music and fun action?

[jcogginsa]

I'll never understand the popularity of a show like Yu-Gi-Oh!.. it's whole purpose was to sell cards..

The animated adaptations upped the focus on the card game. In the manga, it started as being about games in general. And Yami straight up murdered two people. One was a criminal, but the other was just a jerk.

That said, being Merchandise Driven does not automatically make a show bad. There are plenty of good shows that are merch driven. Including the original broadcast of kai