by Ryan Mathews

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May 2000

Yes, this little column of mine is three years old! Hard to believe. Actually, going back and reviewing past columns, I see that I can mark the passage of time by noting when I picked up new electronic items. Here's where I upgraded to a Windows 95 computer. Here's where I got my DVD player. And here's where I installed my Dolby Digital 5.1 sound system.

Come to think of it, life is really good for the anime fan with money to spend on videos and equipment. I recently finished watching my copy of the long-awaited Cowboy Bebop DVD, one of the best anime DVDs I've ever seen. If you own a DVD player, I highly recommend picking this one up. The picture is simply astounding.

I've really fallen in love with these shiny little discs. They're cheaper than subbed tapes, never wear out, and look better than laserdiscs. And for once, they're becoming easy to get. No more waiting and waiting, hoping a DVD release will arrive someday. Heck, DVDs are beginning to push subbed tapes out of the market. You'd think that would anger some fans, but when a fan on Usenet recently complained about the lack of a subbed VHS release, he got nearly no sympathy.

He's likely to get less in the future. "I can't afford a DVD player" is becoming less and less of an excuse as prices continue to fall. There are players available for as little as $150, players that have gotten good reviews, no less. To add to that, Sony's much-hyped PlayStation2 will be hitting the market in the fall. This DVD-ROM based game console is also a full-featured DVD player, said to rival Sony's better players in quality. The console has already had an impact on the DVD market in Japan, with sales of discs reportedly increasing since the console's release there.

Isn't the digital age marvelous? Well, in some ways. DVD is wonderful. However, there's another digital video technology I wish would go away, and fast. It is, in my opinion, an awful idea and a huge step backward, and yet it's being hailed as a major advancement. I am referring to digital video theater systems.

I first heard of this concept on the DVD Usenet discussion group. Using this system, a motion picture theater can display a full-length movie without the use of a film print. Star Wars Episode I was shown in this manner in a small number of theaters across North America. Some people on alt.video.dvd posted their experiences after having sat in the front row to nitpick the picture. All raved.

It's easy to see why this system could be considered the wave of the future. There's no reels to change. The "print" looks as good the fiftieth time it's shown as it did the first. But let's be honest here. You go see a digitally projected movie, and you're paying seven bucks to watch television. The best television you'll ever see, mind you, with deeper color and a sharper picture than anything you can get at home, perhaps even better than HDTV (though I'm not certain of that). But it's still TV. Obviously TV.

What digitally projected motion pictures do is punish those of us with good eyes. I saw the movie Mission to Mars projected in this fashion, and while I was impressed with it as a video format, I didn't mistake it for film. How could I? I could see the pixels! You know you're not watching film when you can make out the criss-crossing black lines that separate the components of the projected image, or when sharp diagonal lines have obvious jagged edges. Maybe the average person wouldn't pick this out, but I have 20/10 vision and was sitting near the front row. The effect wasn't so bad as to be annoying, just bad enough to make it clear what I was watching: TV.

What depresses me is the prospect of an anime feature being released in this format. Anime would look awful this way. Animation has very sharp image boundaries that give digital formats fits. Paradoxically, the better the image, the worse the problem. The picture on the Cowboy Bebop DVD strains the limits of my 27" set, with Spike Spiegel's ultra-sharp smile appearing slightly jagged as it cuts across the scan lines.

I remember the first anime I ever saw at a theater, Wings of Honneamise at Katsucon in, I think, 1995. It was in a real theater off-site, not a video room. After having seen so much anime on video for so long, it was a memorable experience. It was as if the cels themselves had come to life and were dancing on the screen in front of me. It was art. Not a representation or reproduction, but the art itself, moving and real.

Of course, I knew it to be a reproduction, but the point is, a good photograph of two-dimensional art looks exactly like the original. Until they invent a projection system with as many elements as there are grains in a frame of 35mm film, that impression can't be duplicated with video.

Animation is an extension of the artform of drawing. It deserves to be experienced that way, as moving images leaping straight from the artist's board. I would hate that experience to become a casualty of the digital era.

One last item before I move on to the web picks. Last month, Anne Packrat griped about the treatment the manga strip Heartbroken Angels was receiving in Pulp. Perhaps the folks at Viz read the column, because there's plenty of strips in this month's issue. But if that's not enough for you, there's a site you must visit. is an original English-language comic strip done in the style of Heartbroken Angels. It's every bit as offensive, and every bit as hilarious. My favorite running gag is the guy with a dead girl for his girlfriend.

And now this month's topic. As suggested by a reader, I'm celebrating Last Exit's third anniversary by reexamining a topic from its first year.
On with the show!