Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

^^i get that groundhog day phone convo in my own company with different depts sometimes and assume the person is senile. Are they sure it's the same person each time.

Can't beleive i didn't realize the slip cover was reversible until I came here.

So netflix has the rights to monsterplanet's digital release, but who has the physical media rights? Could sony/funimation nab it? If they put this type of wirk into some of their previous releases like Gigan, Hedorah, MGII etc we'll be in for a real treat...Great time to be a kaiju fan.

Semi-surprisingly, Shin Godzilla is actually getting a UK home release, albeit several months after most of the rest of the world. According to Amazon it's landing on 4th December. Based on the tagline on the cover, I imagine they have sub-licensed Funimation's US version. That's pretty typical of Manga Entertainment's policy these days; I don't know if they've bothered doing any translations themselves since the 90s.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shin-Godzilla- ... n+godzilla

Great news for UK G-fans who don't import, especially since the list of Godzilla movies released here on DVD or blu-ray is pretty damn feeble, consisting of the original (DVD only), the butchered US version of KKvG, and the two American movies.

Check out the Printer's Proof I won at NDK's charity auction today. OH YEAH!!

The Hong Kong release waa bare bones as well, right?

^I've heard that it's a deliberate handicap Toho pulls against those in the same region code to keep Japanese customers from importing, but I don't know if it's just hearsay.

Why would anyone want the Japanese text WITH English Subtitles? I hope that is optional.

Whether it doesn't need to be there or not is irrelevant, as it's a part of the films visual identity and helps make it stand out from the rest of the formulaic movies in the series. People want to see the film the way it was meant to be seen, it's as simple as that. It shouldn't bother you that people just want to see it however they like.

For me, the translated English titles fulfill everything that the original Japanese titles provided. I can read English but I can't read Japanese so the on-screen Japanese titles are redundant to me. Combined with the English-subtitled dialogue and the translated English titles, it made for a very cluttered screen when I saw Shin Godzilla in the theater. I'm glad the American BRD kept it to just the English screen text.

The Hong Kong BRD is also coded region-A and it has the on-screen Japanese titles without any English translation, plus English subtitles for the dialogue. It also presents the '1.0' version of the movie without the two (at minimum) altered/alternate effects shots of other home releases, so it really is true to the theatrical version of Shin Godzilla.

For those interested in going the Ultra HD route, and want to be able to follow the Toho UHD disc, there's a neat trick you can do with the Oppo UDP-203 UHD disc player... external subtitles!

Create a folder on a USB stick called 'sub'.
Name your SRT formatted subtitle file 'sub.srt' and copy it into the 'sub' folder.
Play the disc and press the Subtitle button while the movie is playing. The last entry in the subtitle popup list will be your custom subtitle from the USB stick.

My UK blu-ray of Shin Godzilla arrived today. I haven't had a chance to watch it all the way through yet (I've seen the HK blu-ray 10 times, so I'm not in a hurry), but I've done some checking and comparisons. Some interesting things to note:

- Both the box and the disc art incorrectly state the audio as Dolby TrueHD. The two discs each have two audio tracks: 3.1 DTS HD-MA and 2.0 LPCM, though (as Manga previously stated) there's only English on one disc, and only Japanese on the other. This decision is all the more bizarre now I see that each disc has two audio tracks. Anyway, my PS4 detects the audio as DTS instead of Dolby, so the error seems to be on the packaging instead of the menu screen. I did a quick comparison with the DTS HD-MA track on the HK-blu-ray, and it seems to be either the same encode or so close I couldn't hear a difference.
- The Japanese disc is v1.0 with the theatrical versions of the special effects. The English disc is v2.0 with the amended effects.
- The Japanese disc only has one subtitle option, which shows both dialogue and text subtitles. As with other regions' releases, dialogue subtitles are at the bottom of the screen, and text subtitles are at the top. I was hoping for a second, dialogue-only subtitle track as an option, so that's a little disappointing.
- Based on the handful of scenes I tried out, the subtitle translation appears to be the same as the HK blu-ray, which appears to have been used on all releases in English-speaking territories.
- On the English disc, text subtitles are at the bottom of the screen.
- The Japanese disc is significantly brighter than the HK blu-ray, bringing out more detail in the night scenes. The English disc actually appears brighter still, perhaps too much and to the point of looking a little washed out. I suspect I'd just need to switch my TV to the darker calibration I use for some NTSC DVDs.
- The discs are locked to Zone B.
- The discs come in a black Amaray case with alternate artwork on the reverse of the sleeve, and a cardboard O-ring.

I finally got around to watching the UK blu-ray. My earlier impressions remain; the Japanese disc offers a nice audio-visual presentation of the movie, with more shadow detail visible than on the HK release. I have mixed feelings about the subtitles though. It's exactly the same translation that we've seen in other regions, and with none of the typos seen on the HK release. The problem is the timing. I don't know if it's a limitation of the authoring software they used, a limitation of the blu-ray spec, or a conscious choice, but you never see a text translation and a dialogue translation on screen at the same time. Instead it alternates, so the English version of a text surtitle flashes up briefly at the top (often far too fast to read), and then it switches to the subtitle at the bottom for the dialogue. Consequently, dialogue subtitles often don't appear until a couple of seconds after someone starts speaking. It does a semi-effective job of leading the eye through which part of the screen to look at at any given moment, but will be annoying for repeat viewings once I'm no longer reading the text surtitles. For that reason alone, the HK release may end up being my go-to version for future viewings, despite its inferior shadow detail.