A VHS-to-DVD success story

Hey, everyone! I have very exciting news to share. (Well, I find it exciting, and I suspect a few of you might as well. Some of you might roll your eyes, but it’s all good.)

A couple of weeks ago, I finally ordered a DVD/VHS combo recorder/player. It came in last week, and I tried it out tonight with one of my Japanese PoDW VHS tapes, and it worked really well!

I now have a DVD copy of the Japanese equivalent of the Dark Water miniseries. (And this also answers that query from a few posts back, for the end credits for episodes 1 and 3, as it includes the credits for each of the 5 episodes.) It’s also now possible to make DVD copies of the English-language Dark Water miniseries and The Saga Begins.

This opens a lot of doors (or at least leaves the doors ajar, as the one big doorjamb left is time…I’m quitting my job and moving to Pittsburgh within the next month!). I can capture DVDs of the various PoDW videos I have been wanting to digitize for years, and I can also rip screenshots and video clips for the site, especially of the more rare content, like the Dark Water opening (though it’s already on YouTube) and the cut scene from the end of “Dishonor,” as well as screencaps of the differences between DW and PoDW.

And…time permitting, once again…I may be able to offer DVDs for sale. (I’d been avoiding trying to make money off this site for many years, but I’m looking for fairly painless ways to make some side cash while I’m in grad school. Google Ads is something else I’m thinking about trying.) We’ll see how it goes, though. I have no idea if they’d be bare-bones, or if I’d find the time to create disc art and DVD covers, but I’m thinking about it.

Man…so much potential, so little time. But this is still a big stride forward, after all these years of stagnancy!

The quarterly (not-an-)update

Hey, everyone–how are you doing?

So as I mentioned in the last post, I will be starting grad school this fall. I’m attempting to set a goal for myself, which is to make a substantial update to the site (and not just the blog) before school starts at the end of August. We’ll see if I can do it–I really hope I can because there’s a lot I would like to clean up and consolidate. Not to mention, I really don’t know if I will have time to make any big updates to this site during my two years in school (something tells me Carnegie Mellon isn’t the easiest of schools…), and I don’t want to let this site become more stagnant than it already has (the date in the header and footer still says 2007!). The biggest constraints that come to mind are time and my aching right wrist…we’ll see how it goes, though.

To those of you who have continued to stop by and who’ve taken a moment to send me a note recently–thank you so much. Life has been really busy (between preparing to start school, move, and leave my current job and my life here in Atlanta) and your kind words have really lifted my spirits. 🙂

Some PoDW-related stuff
– There are several very cool items on eBay right now: several gorgeous cels from The Quest (ep. 1) and a storyboard sketch sheet (!!!) from Dishonor. (ep. 2) The cels are $70 each and the storyboard sketch sheet is $80. These are the best cels I’ve seen available for purchase in years, so if you can afford them, go for it.
– It’s been pointed out to me (hi, Mugetsu!) that the five seals you see tiling down the page, the ones from the end credits of episodes 1-13, are not available for download anywhere on the site. CRAP. Sorry about that! Here they are: the seals from The Quest, Dishonor, Break-Up, Betrayal, and Victory.

Some animation-related news…80s Fever is in the air again. I heard a rumor (hi, Ryan!) that the same people who released Mysterious Cities of Gold on DVD are thinking about releasing Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. (I have not seen either of these, but from all the e-mails that have come in, a bunch of you have and were very fond of both these shows, so…heads-up!)

On top of that, according to Johane Matte (a.k.a. Rufftoon), an animation artist who did storyboard work on Avatar, there are plans for a sequel to Mysterious Cities of Gold–apparently there have been rumors about this for a while now, and other failed attempts, but she seems to believe this stands a chance of happening.

I couldn’t help but read that and feel a little discouraged. It’s great that so many other beloved shows are being rediscovered, but why not this one? There are so many thousands of fans out there who have such fond and strong memories of this show. I know I haven’t really done anything to organize or mobilize the fans, besides attempts at messageboards and the like (though I’ve thought about it more recently)–my emphasis has been more on digging up information about the show around the time of its production and posting as much as I can find. There’s a petition on petitiononline.com with thousands of signatures, but who’s doing anything with it?

When looking through old e-mails, I came across a mention of a posting on a messageboard a couple of years back where somebody claimed that the PoDW master reels in the Warner Bros. vault had been badly damaged, and that’s why they haven’t been released on DVD or otherwise revisited yet. As far as I know, that’s only a rumor…but it’s kind of sad that wholly unsubstantiated rumors are all we have to depend on. If that news were true, that would be terrible, but at least it would be a concrete reason. It’s hard for me to fathom that people could just blithely overlook this show, considering the loyal fan base and how many people do remember it.