Nowadays, the anime classics of years past are being re-released on Blu-ray one after the other. These vivid movies have the tendency to be talked about just for their “prettiness” or “beauty,” but, truthfully, if you look at the production process they were really a lot of trouble to create.
route2015’s fifth guest is the professional organisation which handles all kinds of film technology, Sony PCL, who produced the Neon Genesis Evangelion Blu-ray & DVD box sets. Since the end of the TV broadcast the original materials have been lying dormant and scattered all over the place. What was it they saw in them...? If you want to boost your enjoyment of these two long-awaited box sets, you should start by getting to know the work of these two guys.
Left
Content Services Division
Visual Solutions Department
Post Production Section 2
Kohei Fujimori
Kohei Fujimori was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1977. After studying film production technology at a specialist school, he joined Sony PCL in 2001 where he handles various editing tasks for TV broadcasts of live action and anime video.
Right
Content Services Division
Content Services Sales Division
Sales Division 2
Masato Yukita
Masato Yukita was born in Tokyo in 1978. He joined Sony PCL in 2001 through working for several other movie production houses. Beginning with King Records who distribute the <em>Evangelion</em> series videos, he was in charge of unifying the sales business, from accepting orders to shipping for various production companies.
Five Years Spent on the Longed-For Blu-ray Release
The readers whose ears will automatically prick up when you say Sony PCL are probably anime fans or those with an interest in movie production technology. The same company handles various kinds of formats of movie production and media as well as all kinds of film-related technology and know-how. These videos that we so casually get hold of are first made into a commercial product by companies like this one generally called post production.
Yukita:“For example, when we were making the Evangelion DVDs, first of all we received a commission from the distributor, King Records. After that, where necessary, we performed an edit at our studio, made corrections, added the menu screens so you can use them with your TV remote, and completed the master data for the production. Then the discs were pressed at the Sony Group factory in Shizuoka before being packed and shipped. Roughly speaking, that’s our product flow.”
Present at this interview which took place on Aug. 26, 2015 are Yukita Masato who is in engaged in handling sales for the production of the TV series Blu-ray & DVD box sets and Kohei Fujimori who is in charge of video editing. They are, so to speak, currently in charge of the final completion of the video we will one day become the audience for.
Yukita:“Our company handles a wide range of operations, from the original video planning and production to media creation, but each kind of work is divided into teams. For example, we have a team specialising in everything to do with commercials, and there’s a team that mainly makes anime its speciality too. Within that, Fujimoto and myself are mainly in charge of movies and anime video. Recently we’ve had a lot of opportunities to work on anime projects starting with the Evangelion DVD box set which was released in 2003.”
That’s the complete DVD box set of the series including the old Evangelion movie, Neon Genesis Evangelion DVD Box. The TV series has been released on DVD before, but this version has been re-supervised by Hideaki Anno himself adding the best video possible for a series from that era plus 5.1-channel sound for a truly special restoration.
Yukita:“At the moment we’re involved with a lot of King Records properties, but that all began because we were able to form a connection with them. In relation to Evangelion, we’re also handling the video for the new theatrical movies too, but even among them this Blu-ray and DVD box set had quite a lengthy production period. The technical verification began about 10 years ago, with the production process lasting over 5 years, right? It was our first experience of being involved with a project over such a long time.”
Revisiting an already complete anime and giving it a new, high quality video, why did they need five whole years to just to do that? Regular people as well as those who like to dabble a little in video technologies will have their doubts as to what they can possibly have been doing during all that time. However, the reason they were so focussed on Evangelion for five years is etched into the video you’ll be watching. Now that the longed-for Blu-ray version is completed, let’s unpack the story as we know it.