Robotech - Part 1: The Macross Saga Review

Cold Cobra

I'm entirely trustworthy...
AUKN Staff
Robotech means a lot to American fans of a certain age, while Macross means a lot to Japanese fans of many ages. Here in the UK, however, neither hold massive sway, least of all Robotech, which was barely featured on TV here. So how does a Blu-ray release containing just the original 80s dubbed Robotech series fare? What is the needlessly complicated history of this show to begin with? Well, it’s funny you should ask…

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low-picture quality

From what I've seen on Blu-ray.com, the PQ looks better than the JPBD of SDF Macross, and I'm honestly all for classic TV series keeping film grain, as grain is just a natural part of film. The BD of Gundam 0079 has excessive DNR which ruins the line work in the process, along with the issue of frozen grain.
 
Funi's Robotech remaster does not seem to have fake grain (Bebop's fake grain plate has a digital aesthetic). HG has multi-gen 16mm copies, which due to generation loss are much grainier than what the Japanese possess.
 
From what I've seen on Blu-ray.com, the PQ looks better than the JPBD of SDF Macross, and I'm honestly all for classic TV series keeping film grain, as grain is just a natural part of film. The BD of Gundam 0079 has excessive DNR which ruins the line work in the process, along with the issue of frozen grain.
I'm all for natural, subtle film grain, that's why this seemed so excessive as soon as I put the first disc in the menu played footage in the background. The blacks are nearly greys because of the amount of noise in them.

Overall it didn't hurt my watch of the series much, but it was noticeable. If you go to my review and view each image but remove the size in the URL you'll see some uncompressed blu-ray grabs I took, like this:

 
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