OFFICIAL SPC and KNT Boxsets to be released by Discotek Media!

[sans soul]

wow.

[Razgrizblaze1]

Another excuse to spend money...and I wonder why my bank account keeps shrinking on me...

[Tigriss]

I've been waiting 15 years of my life for this moment. There are no words...

[CRBWildcat]

I've been waiting 15 years of my life for this moment. There are no words...

I can think of a whole bunch. Just find an online thesaurus and search for all synonyms pertaining to the word "awesome".  

I have never been so anxious to be able to buy something in my entire life. Ever. From a "Cat Fancy" review to an honest-to-goodness collection... one of my dreams shall soon be realized. 

[Blackcat]

I honestly wish I could believe this, but until someone buys it and then posts pics, no dice!

And about Sam & Max, the cartoon season was  released to help promote the videogames, but SPC? This honestly comes out of the blue, and how the heck are they gonna get KNT episodes? They got a laser disk to VHS machine on ebay?

[YoshiAngemon]

They released a lot of other stuff on DVD. Fist of the North Star, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and others. Saban could just give them the SPC Masters, and Tatsunoko can restore the KNT Masters, as well as fulfill the requests.

[Blackcat]

They released a lot of other stuff on DVD. Fist of the North Star, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and others. Saban could just give them the SPC Masters, and Tatsunoko can restore the KNT Masters, as well as fulfill the requests.

The KNT masters are nowhere to be found, or so the rumor goes, so unless Saban had keep the Japenese masters somewhere... actually, aren’t they in the library of congress ?  OR at least a copy is? I remember that from years ago. Of course, the fact only 20 KNT episodes where released might have been because they where on lazerdisk (And by 1990 lazer had internationally flopped and VHS was the king).

Fist of the North Star and Little Nemo are legends, there where intentions to release First of the North Star decades ago but they didn’t do it because the show extreme violence. Little Nemo VHS video release topped the charts for more than a month, selling over 2 million, but SPC? The community is really small, is amazing, I mean one would think we would get an I-tunes release or something cheap like that. 

[KageReneko]

OK Blackcat, don't believe the damn post... We also are sceptical about but the possibility of having both versions of the series in good quality makes us so happy that we can believe at least for a while...

Go watch My Little Pony and stop popping our little bubble... 

[Blackcat]

I am quite sure we will get a SPC release, not so sure about a KNT release, after all France did get a hight quality Samurai Pizza Cats DVD release, so we are sure at least the Masters for non Japanese (SPC) exist.

[felineki]

The master tapes being lost/destroyed /whatever is only a rumor as far as I know. And even if they were, there could be other usable sources (broadcast tapes, etc.). At any rate, I doubt they'd be making an announcement if they didn't have any footage to work from.

[ANE]

  Awesome topic, news and thread.

[Blackcat]

The master tapes being lost/destroyed /whatever is only a rumor as far as I know. And even if they were, there could be other usable sources (broadcast tapes, etc.). At any rate, I doubt they'd be making an announcement if they didn't have any footage to work from.

Actually, the show was never very popular in Japan to start with, it got only noticed way back in 1991, during re-runs. Since Lazerdisk died, one theory is that they have avoided to re-release the show at first because it was considered as a failure, and later because Tatsunoko does not have the international rights for SPC. In fact the lack of international rights is the kind of handwaved excuse for the SPC not being in certain videogame.

[Crow]

Damn, shame I haven't seen an episode in about 6 years now. Looks awesome, I just MIGHT have to make the investment. Perhaps get the rest of my platoon into SPC.

... Or hazed brutally.

Eh, either or, it's all good.

~Burkey

[KyoZaber]

Damn, shame I haven't seen an episode in about 6 years now. Looks awesome, I just MIGHT have to make the investment. Perhaps get the rest of my platoon into SPC.

... Or hazed brutally.

Eh, either or, it's all good.

~Burkey

Nah, just hold your own movie night and do what any MST3K fan would do... Riff the crap out of it!
In fact, might be a good idea to show it along with another movie, just to lessen the impact.

[felineki]

Actually, the show was never very popular in Japan to start with, it got only noticed way back in 1991, during re-runs. Since Lazerdisk died, one theory is that they have avoided to re-release the show at first because it was considered as a failure, and later because Tatsunoko does not have the international rights for SPC. In fact the lack of international rights is the kind of handwaved excuse for the SPC not being in certain videogame.

I'm not really getting your point here. KNT actually had pretty good ratings during its initial run, (see here and here). KNT was never released on laserdisc, aside from possible bootlegs. I don't think anyone knows the fine details of SPC/KNT's copyright situation, but apparently this company was able to get the DVD rights. And I don't see what any of this has to do with whether or not the original tapes exist.

[Blackcat]

KNt had low ratings for the time it was aired, not by today standards, back in 1990, there where a lot less animes, and a lot less TV channels, so anime had higher TV ratings. People in Japan mostly noticed the show in their 1991 re-run.  If we compare KNT ratings to others animes aired that year, it was just average at best. Besides back then TV was the most usual way to see an anime, as buying the series to see at home was expensive and not a regular practice. Nowadays people can see anime online, buy the DVDs (Or download it legally) or pirate it, plus compared to 1990 the number of animes and TV stations has almost doubled.

And KNT was officially released in lazer disk, unless you claim Tsuneko is a liar.

Getting the DVD rights for the series is not so hard, getting the rights for the music in KNT is a whole different deal. Saban had to alter or remove most of the KNT music for copyright reasons.

To sum it up, to release KNT, they won't only have to deal with Tatsunoko, but also get the rights for the soundtrack.

[felineki]

KNt had low ratings for the time it was aired, not by today standards, back in 1990, there where a lot less animes, and a lot less TV channels, so anime had higher TV ratings. People in Japan mostly noticed the show in their 1991 re-run.  If we compare KNT ratings to others animes aired that year, it was just average at best. Besides back then TV was the most usual way to see an anime, as buying the series to see at home was expensive and not a regular practice. Nowadays people can see anime online, buy the DVDs (Or download it legally) or pirate it, plus compared to 1990 the number of animes and TV stations has almost doubled.

Either way a decent number of people watched it. It wouldn't have gone on for 54 episodes if it was failing.

And KNT was officially released in lazer disk, unless you claim Tsuneko is a liar.

Tsuneko's posts are the only reference to KNT laserdiscs I've ever seen. I don't doubt he owns KNT laserdiscs if he says he does, but they are almost certainly bootlegs.

Getting the DVD rights for the series is not so hard, getting the rights for the music in KNT is a whole different deal. Saban had to alter or remove most of the KNT music for copyright reasons.

Do you have any proof of this? Lots of anime dubs replaced background music back then simply because they wanted to.

To sum it up, to release KNT, they won't only have to deal with Tatsunoko, but also get the rights for the soundtrack.

Which apparently they have done, otherwise they wouldn't be announcing that they were planning to release it.

[CatNinjaLegend]

According sources of various animation websites, all rights to the show apparently reverted back to Japan in the last year or so. Discotek licensed both the Japanese and English versions directly from Tatsunoko. Tatsunoko has been known to hold on to tapes of '80s dubbed Tekkaman, so it's not surprising they'd hold on to Saban's dub of SPC as well.

Nobody would know what state the original KNT masters are in but the original production company, though aren't there rips of the entire series floating around that were capped directly from a recent Japanese TV airing? One that occurred in the last 10 years? Most of them looked too good to be off something like VHS.

First post!

[KyoZaber]

I wonder... If there are Laserdisc bootlegs, does that mean that somewhere out there are Laserdisc originals?

Also... That leads me to another quandary... Where did the bootleg market go so wrong as to actually make bootleg Laserdiscs? 

(I'm not arguing the existence of any of this... I'm just puzzled by it at the moment. Kinda like trout yogurt.)

[Threaux]

Just chiming in to share in the celebration.  It's about time.  But you all already knew that.