Fuck, I can't believe I'm typing this, but here is a surprise EG drop:
THE BIG O:
https://anidex.info/torrent/411689This is a completely one-off experiment that was entirely prompted by wanting to rewatch the show, only to discover that no decent copies are really floating around out there. First off, the Big O BDs that are out there are lame Q-TEC upscales that don't really do much for the image. This is a real shame for the first seasons, because Banrise didn't see it fit to properly rescan the 35mm film. Being from 1999, it should have been right up there with Turn-A Gundam as far as film stock quality is concerned. They instead decided to criminally upscale the first season. The second season of course, was an early 2000s digital production, and while it's well produced, it's a product of its time, meaning it's soft, and eternally stuck in standard definition.
So why did I bother encoding it?
One reason is that, shockingly, no one seems to have restored the original OP to the Blu-ray versions, which use the 2007 Animax opening instead. Even US DVDs from around that same time also stopped using the original opening, presumably for fear of dealing with Queen, meaning the only DVDs that had the original versions were the single volumes and first collection box sets. It's pretty easy to combine files like this, and the whole show was upscaled anyway, so it's not like it matters that you'd be matching DVD to BD...
