Kara no Kyoukai on Bandai store?

[Inexperienced Gaijin]

Well I was just looking on the Bandai Entertainment store and to my surprise they shown a listing for the Garden of Sinners aka Kara no Kyoukai. Now when you click on the link there is no photos or price listing but it is still listed. Now whether or not this means Bandai has the rights to dub it or to just release it in the US I don't know but it would be nice if that were the case. What do you guys think?

[fujifruit]

Meh dub...

[NTX]

$500+ box set like in Japan D:?

[Inexperienced Gaijin]

Well I have had it pre-ordered since August on Amazon Japan, but it would still be interesting if it is also released here.

It's been hinted that Aniplex USA have the rights (shows up on their banner add on ANN),
they release via Bandai Store.

Now official http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...den-of-sinners
$400 before store discount, 1/3 cheaper, but still high.

[JRaiKetchum]

WHOOO HOOO!!! XD

*dances around a Happy Dance*

Thank you Aniplex USA!! This is one of the GREATEST BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!!

*continues dancing while listening to "Kimi ga hikari ni kaete yuku"*

-Rai

P.S.: Gaijin, for future reference, Kara no kyoukai is a novel series, not a visual novel sereis. We didn't even make a thread about Angel Beats when it was airing =P

[NTX]

Now if only Del Rey'd get off their butts and make the books or sell the rights to someone else... :/

[JRaiKetchum]

Originally Posted by NTX

Now if only Del Rey'd get off their butts and make the books or sell the rights to someone else... :/

Kodansha USA looks like a good probability ;)

-Rai

[nhat]

Originally Posted by JRaiKetchum

Kodansha USA looks like a good probability ;)

-Rai

O really? Why do you think that? I'm been waiting from Del Ray since 2009 and the only release the had was the one in Faust....

Originally Posted by nhat

O really? Why do you think that? I'm been waiting from Del Ray since 2009 and the only release the had was the one in Faust....

Kodansha is the original publisher in Japan =P

[X-Calibar]

RightStuf.com: Low-quantity alert! There's now a counter on the Garden of Sinners Import Blu-ray set! http://stuf.it/dUxpxZ

I guess they sold pretty well? :D

Anyways... only a few more days till they ship...

[Moogy]

enjoy your shitty q-tec upscale

[X-Calibar]

Originally Posted by Moogy

enjoy your shitty q-tec upscale

what the moogle... *searches*
anyways, I haven't found official info or a sample of the original source that tells me they just botched the job, rather than the quality of the early movies simply being inferior to what we would expect...

Being a layman with this stuff I am relying on entirely on google, so feel free to add better information...

But, assuming it isn't just a botched job; the gist I'm getting is this :

Originally Posted by hissatsu

With all the bickering over the resolution, filtering, blah blah blah... it's just a shame it couldn't all have been animated a few years later and have avoided the issue entirely. Because the screenshots from the epilogue look amazing.

http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue004771.png
http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue014313.png
http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue017740.png
http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue024257.png
http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue035815.png
http://salmon.gundam.eu/knk/knk-epilogue040183.png

It'll just guess it was actually animated at 1920 x 1080, because doing a bicubic down to 720 and back introduces noticeable blurring.

source

Originally Posted by ChrisK

What I can tell so far from looking at various screenshots:
The Blu-rays are not entirely upscaled. The background art and all the 3D CGI stuff looks quite good. The characters however appear to be scanned at SD resolution. Maybe someone screwed that up and they haven’t got enough time or money to fix that, so they simply upscaled them.
Also, the epilogue looks as it should, no upscaling there.
Sum that up with the lossless audio and you still got something that’s way better than the DVDs.

source

Here's a nice comparison of one of the movies versus the DVD version :
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comp...4370/picture:1
And here is one, not sure which movie but a clear difference :
http://twitvideo.jp/contents/img/04fNv
http://twitvideo.jp/contents/img/04fNs

http://cfile2.uf.tistory.com/origina...4D4785E30A6078 (and this face shot is probably from first movie)
The later movies seem to fair better than the earlier... unsuprisingly...

Originally Posted by muhootsaver

http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-2013873.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-2036663.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-2063666_.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3001239.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3005576.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3023135.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3031796.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3043186.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3046864.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3055406.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/knk-3061576.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter002071.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter005673.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter008632.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter009866.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter016525.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter018498_.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter041682.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter068073.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter081392.png
http://acacallis.com/knk/imagewriter114195.png

So my conclusion (Assuming that these are direct screenshots from the BD): I'm not fond of the sharpening filter (that reminds me of Q-tec) at all, but this is probably not a SD upscale. I see that some details are too fine for a SD upscale. By the way filter is applied to the background as well (Since someone was mentioning that maybe they only applied the filter to characters). Check the imagewriter114195.png, you can obviously see the smudging there.

source

And lastly this link gave me a little background on Q-tec :
http://muhootsaver.tistory.com/1200#comment8314152

Originally Posted by muhootsaver

* Q-tec
The biggest Japanese authoring studio, now combined with Memory Tec. Originally worked on HD-DVD.
Encoder: CinemaCraft HDe
Banding Removal: 扇
Audio Improvement: FORS System
- Authored some of the Bandai Visual, Aniplex, and Kadokawa titles (2ch)
- Some BDs they worked on: Haibane Renmei (Lain blog) and Blue Submarine no.6 (AV Watch)

* Sony PCL
The second biggest authoring studio only to Q-tec. UMD (for PSP) are authored here as well.
Encoder: SONY
Banding Removal: SBMV
- Authored some of the Sony Pictures, Bandai Visual, Geneon, King Records (Starchild), and Kadokawa titles (2ch)
- Some BDs they worked on: AKIRA, Evangelion movies, Eureka 7 movie, Mai-Hime series, (AV Watch) and presumably anything with SBMV.


...By the way, one interesting thing. Sony owns Aniplex but I have yet to see any Aniplex BD using SBMV. 2ch source also agrees with this. Aniplex is not listed for Sony PCL.

And this sums up your thoughts on it ?

Originally Posted by chronoclast

instead of just doing a straight upscale, they used what's called "Q-tec upscaling technology" on it. What that actually is, is they basically sharpen the hell out of it and apply DNR which causes detail to be blurred out and the edges of everything looks warped as the screenshot Chiyo_chichi linked to clearly shows. That crap looks so awful.

This sounds pretty reasonable :

Originally Posted by hissatsu

...Could it be better? Well, if it all looked like the epilogue it would certainly look better - but the rest wasn't animated at that high a resolution, so what's done is done. Maybe it was filtered when it was originally made, maybe it was filtered for the BD box. No one at ufotable/Sony/Aniplex is going to answer that question. If there wasn't complaining about filtering, there would instead be complaining about softness. It's all moot now. For all intents and purposes, this is likely the best version of KnK that will ever be...

source

........On a positive note~
Nice looking box and book though... pretty LARGE :
http://gigazine.net/news/20110202_ga...inners_bd_box/

edit*(information subject to change probably; most of these quotes are just a few days old)

[zalas]

So... it's just like AIR, where the animated portions were lower resolution than the backgrounds? Well, except AIR used a really terrible upsampling algorithm for the animated portions. Both releases suffer from less encoding artifacts compared to their DVD counterparts, though.