1.) No! Considering the title doesn't come out until November.

2.) From what information we got. It's just 2.0, there are no HD masters of the original movie (1.0). This means that Manga would have to go out of their way to up convert it.


Again, the title doesn't come out until November.

Edit: The solicited information is up at Mania, but it's pretty bare bones.


I wouldn't count on it, since Bandai owns the rights to GITS 2 and Manga owns the rights to GITS 1. They had partnerships in the past for GITS:SAC, but this is different release with different terms.

I'd say that article pretty much agrees with everything I had heard from other places regarding the changes made to the original for the Blu-ray release.

After reading that article myself i think that i'll keep the collectors disc that i have for the time being. I'll need to see the disc for myself and decide if i want to get it or not.

One of my fellow anime club members has been following the release closely and managed to track down an....I guess we'll call it an "eval copy". He offered to show us the first several minutes so we could get a feel for the changes/improvements etc. (This was quickly followed by a barrage of vehement promises to buy it as soon as it became available for domestic preorder as my strong feelings on the matters of piracy are well known).

The quality is excellent and surpasses the quality of the original DVD releases in every way despite the lack of an HD master. Presuming the engineers don't leave the remastering software on autopilot a-la The Slayers, good quality originals have enormous capacity for improvement. Akira and Blade Runner are good examples. I don't recall now which but I believe one track, I think it was the dub, is in 2-channel stereo whereas the other is in 5.1 Dolby; both digitally remastered.

Among the four of us there, three of us found the new CG footage to be of such high quality that the somewhat stark mesh between it and the traditional animation was a more than acceptable tradeoff. One of us (not me), however, found it off-putting.

About the only thing I'd consider getting GITS wise would be the movies in bluray-the tv series really don't appeal to me.

I just bought it a couple of days ago for $14 @ Best Buy (I think the sale is over now though). Anyway I haven't got around to watching it yet, but from what I've seen on websites is that the changes they made are not for the better. The original version is on the disc (and for the record, there is an HD remaster of the original, which is sold on Blu-Ray in Japan), but it's a 1080i upscale and probably won't look any better than the DVD does on your Blu-Ray player. The remastered 6.1 DTS-HD audio is supposed to be really good though, which is why I bought it.

I LOVE Blade Runner-it's one of my favorite science fiction movies-that and Forbidden Planet.