Toho's Godzilla 4K Restoration Project

[heiseigodzilla425]

What was on the other bonus discs?

• Box 2 - Toho Unused Special Effects Complete Collection (58 minutes). This was included in Criterion's Godzilla Showa box.
• Box 3
  • Interview with Susumu Ishikawa (42 minutes) - Ishikawa performed the Godzilla March, which was the song featured in the end-credits for Godzilla vs. Gigan.
  • Duel!! Godzilla vs Monster Army (19 minutes) - A TV special made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Godzilla (evidently, the original broadcast elements no longer exists, so this is a VHS rip). This is a compilation of the monster battles from the Godzilla movies ranging from King Kong vs. Godzilla to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Strangely, several captions are blurred out, Destroy All Monsters is absent, and All Monsters Attack is very quickly skimmed over.
  • Godzilla Karaoke - A collection of six songs (such as Give Back the Sun and Godzilla March). Each song has the option of including vocals or being instrumental.
• Box 4 - Stereophonic Soundtrack Collection 1 - According to the (Google translated) description, from Godzilla (1984) onward, each movie's soundtrack was recorded in 4 channels. This is a collection of music from the first three Heisei Godzilla films. The only audio is the film score, with no dialogue or sound effects. Clips from the movie accompany the soundtrack as it plays. Godzilla (1984) has about 15 minutes of music, Biollante gets about 12 minutes, King Ghidorah gets about 14 minutes for a total runtime of about 41 and a half minutes.
• Box 5 - Stereophonic Soundtrack Collection 2 - Same as the last disc, but the remaining four Heisei Godzilla movies. Godzilla vs. Mothra gets nearly 12 minutes, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla gets 14 minutes, SpaceGodzilla gets 18 minutes, and Destoroyah gets 15 minutes for a total runtime of nearly 59 minutes.

[Chrispy_G]

For me this has quickly become one of those situations where, if Toho doesn't respect the legacy of their franchise, their most iconic character....how can they expect fans to?

At some point the "completionist" thing goes out the window. Toho isn't doing what it should be doing to keep these films restored and preserved in a high quality condition...and on top of that they force almost every North American release to be virtually barebones or lackluster in SOME way.

How can we care if they don't?

[goji1986]

https://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/ser ... 55893.html

Shinji Higuchi conducted an interview with the team that I believe is responsible for the recent Champion Festival restorations that were broadcast in Japan. Even with google translate there’s some interesting stuff I made out about the restoration process.

[Joseph Goodman]

The Nihon-Eiga channel will be premiering 4k restorations of the Godzilla series for eight consecutive months, according to this tweet by Tokyo Laboratory sales manager Toshifumi Shimizu. Full lineup TBA.

[airforce111]

i find it crazy its been 6-7 years since hte original announcements about 4k restoration and in that time criterion couldnt even get good trasnfers from toho or even allowed to find ones themselves, crazy.

[Rody]

It does seem bizarre to me that Toho has these restorations and has done so little with them so far. What's the marketing strategy???

[canofhumdingers]

The Nihon-Eiga channel will be premiering 4k restorations of the Godzilla series for eight consecutive months, according to this tweet by Tokyo Laboratory sales manager Toshifumi Shimizu. Full lineup TBA.

That’s actually pretty exciting news. Hopefully this leads to 4K BD releases in the future (and, God willing, for the new masters to be licensed and released in the US). Anything has GOT to be better than the hi-vision HD masters...

If nothing else, I sure hope someone is set up to record and capture the broadcasts.

[heiseigodzilla425]

The Nihon-Eiga channel will be premiering 4k restorations of the Godzilla series for eight consecutive months, according to this tweet by Tokyo Laboratory sales manager Toshifumi Shimizu. Full lineup TBA.

That’s actually pretty exciting news. Hopefully this leads to 4K BD releases in the future (and, God willing, for the new masters to be licensed and released in the US). Anything has GOT to be better than the hi-vision HD masters...

If nothing else, I sure hope someone is set up to record and capture the broadcasts.

For reference, the current HD masters for the Godzilla movies were initially broadcast in 2008. I'm not sure if they were shown one-by-one like the 4K restorations will be, or if they were broadcast in groups, someone else can chime in if they know. Toho didn't start releasing them on BD until September of 2009, so roughly one year after their initial broadcast, and they released the movies in batches over the next year or two. Its worth noting that they only released some of the Godzilla series to BD at this time, and some of the other BDs in this lineup included other Tokusatsu movies like Rodan and Submersion of Japan. The rest of the Godzilla movies were released to BD in 2014, likely to coincide with the release of the Legendary Pictures movie, and some of these movies had minor alterations/fixes over the 2008 masters. Then, in 2017, Toho released Matango and Frankenstein Conquers the World on BD. Other movies like Dogora have yet to be released to BD, despite having HD restorations. Meanwhile, I think our first release of a HiVision master in the USA was MediaBlasters' Destroy All Monsters in 2011, which I believe predates the Toho BD, which was released in one of the 2014 batches.

So, Toho might wait a year after these broadcasts to start releasing these films on 4K BD, they may never release them, or they may even let foreign distributors release these before any Japanese domestic releases. Additionally, there was some decent press a few years ago about how Toho was making the entire Godzilla catalog available to receive new dubs for foreign markets (and I have no idea if any distributors took advantage of this), so I'm curious if and how the 4K restorations factor into that.

Somewhat unrelated, but some German distributors seem to have a decent relationship with Toho, which has allowed them to release box sets and some reconstructions of the theatrical German versions to DVD of varying quality (but they haven't been allowed to release those recons to BD). So that may be another area to look out for physical releases, outside of Japan and the USA.

[Malchik]

It does seem bizarre to me that Toho has these restorations and has done so little with them so far. What's the marketing strategy???

Are Blu-ray sales a big thing in Japan? I know physical media was always huge among the otakus back in the day but times change.

[Jetty_Jags]

It does seem bizarre to me that Toho has these restorations and has done so little with them so far. What's the marketing strategy???

Are Blu-ray sales a big thing in Japan? I know physical media was always huge among the otakus back in the day but times change.

Unless something has changed (and if so some-one please correct me) blu ray sales are actually really big in japan. This is why japanese blu-rays are so expensive because of the demand, and I think they are also considered to be more of a luxury good in Japan. Furthermore I'm pretty sure Japan and the US are in the same region for blu ray (or at least can play each others discs), so releasing higher quality restorations stateside before in japan would probably lead to many of their core market importing them for cheaper then if they bought them in Japan. Unfortunately I don't think the Japanese releases have English subtitles though.

[goji1986]

Unless something has changed (and if so some-one please correct me) blu ray sales are actually really big in japan. This is why japanese blu-rays are so expensive because of the demand, and I think they are also considered to be more of a luxury good in Japan. Furthermore I'm pretty sure Japan and the US are in the same region for blu ray (or at least can play each others discs), so releasing higher quality restorations stateside before in japan would probably lead to many of their core market importing them for cheaper then if they bought them in Japan. Unfortunately I don't think the Japanese releases have English subtitles though.

Japanese Blurays haven't caught on the same way they have in the US, hence their steep price tag. And yes, they share the same region code as North American blurays and are easy to import (although the lack of subtitles could turn off potential US buyers). This is why Toho's licensing to North America has been so restrictive and draconian. Due to the lower price point, it's theoretically cheaper for Japanese consumers to buy North American releases instead of domestic, so Toho won't offer a comparable product to us with loads of special features or give licensors like Criterion the ability to improve PQ.

[Purzel2205]

Somewhat unrelated, but some German distributors seem to have a decent relationship with Toho, which has allowed them to release box sets and some reconstructions of the theatrical German versions to DVD of varying quality (but they haven't been allowed to release those recons to BD). So that may be another area to look out for physical releases, outside of Japan and the USA.

Are you sure that the reconstructions of the theatrical German versions not being available on Blu-ray was an issue with Toho not allowing it?

Knowing Toho I wouldn't be surprised, but Anolis Entertainment said that the reason for the special features from the premium Kaiju Classics DVD editions not being available on the later Blu-ray releases was to not make the buyers of the DVD editions feel like they spent money on something that was later made obsolete. And I always thought that this statement included the German theatrical versions as "special features".

[Joseph Goodman]

Updates: it will be eight films across eight months, starting in March with Godzilla (1954). While the 2014 remaster was scanned at 4K, the actual restoration was done at 2K. According to Shimizu, this upcoming broadcast will be a full 4K redo of that restoration; it's unknown as of yet if it will be from a new scan, or from newly located materials. Not only that, it will also be broadcast in full 4K by the Nihon Eiga+Jidaigeki 4K channel on Sky PerfectTV, in addition to the regular HD broadcasts.

[goji1986]

Updates: it will be eight films across eight months, starting in March with Godzilla (1954). While the 2014 remaster was scanned at 4K, the actual restoration was done at 2K. According to Shimizu, this upcoming broadcast will be a full 4K redo of that restoration; it's unknown as of yet if it will be from a new scan, or from newly located materials. Not only that, it will also be broadcast in full 4K by the Nihon Eiga+Jidaigeki 4K channel on Sky PerfectTV, in addition to the regular HD broadcasts.

It’s been said that the tweet with the list of the 8 films was just a “wishlist” and pure conjecture on behalf of the poster. The info about G54, though, is in fact legit.

[Joseph Goodman]

Updates: it will be eight films across eight months, starting in March with Godzilla (1954). While the 2014 remaster was scanned at 4K, the actual restoration was done at 2K. According to Shimizu, this upcoming broadcast will be a full 4K redo of that restoration; it's unknown as of yet if it will be from a new scan, or from newly located materials. Not only that, it will also be broadcast in full 4K by the Nihon Eiga+Jidaigeki 4K channel on Sky PerfectTV, in addition to the regular HD broadcasts.

It’s been said that the tweet with the list of the 8 films was just a “wishlist” and pure conjecture on behalf of the poster. The info about G54, though, is in fact legit.

Yes, the tweet from @pasinpasin you're referencing was a wish list, but the number of films being eight comes from Nihon-Eiga's newsletter:

In line with the 2021 release, 8 works that fans have been waiting for from the past Godzilla series have been digitally remastered in 4K. Special broadcast for 8 months, one work each month from March!

[goji1986]

Yes, the tweet from @pasinpasin you're referencing was a wish list, but the number of films being eight comes from Nihon-Eiga's newsletter:

In line with the 2021 release, 8 works that fans have been waiting for from the past Godzilla series have been digitally remastered in 4K. Special broadcast for 8 months, one work each month from March!

Ahhh thank you, I wasn’t aware of the newsletter!

[UltramanGoji]

The lineup has been (presumably, I can't read Japanese) revealed:

https://www.nihon-eiga.com/osusume/godzilla4K_2021/

1. Godzilla (1954)
2. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
3. Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
4. Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
5. Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
6. Destroy All Monsters (1968)
7. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
8. Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

[Joseph Goodman]

The lineup has been (presumably, I can't read Japanese) revealed:

https://www.nihon-eiga.com/osusume/godzilla4K_2021/

1. Godzilla (1954)
2. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
3. Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
4. Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
5. Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
6. Destroy All Monsters (1968)
7. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
8. Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

I'm kind of surprised Biollante is the only VS series film on there; I though it would be, since it was picked as the fan favorite in a big survey Toho conducted a while back, but I was expecting the '92 Godzilla Vs. Mothra as well, on account of it doing the most ticket sales in that era.

[Terasawa]

The lineup has been (presumably, I can't read Japanese) revealed:

3. Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
5. Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)

Fingers crossed that these are as big an improvement over their HiVision counterparts as the 4K KKvG was over its.

And hopefully they eventually do the entire series and not just these eight.

[airforce111]

yo BIOLLANTE 4K WTF??? i didnt think the heisei prints could get any better than how they were shot. anyway looking forward to mothra and invasion since they have reaaallly bad versions as of current. i cant wait for the expensive as skreeonk japanese bluray releases