Completing Anime Collections with Different Disk Formats

Japanese animation or anime comes with a lot of amazing artwork, special effects and high quality situations that require a lot of space on disks. You may be tempted to simply watch an online stream or get a DVD of the newest anime series, but there are a lot of details you could be missing that could change the experience. As you look through your anime options, educate yourself on the importance of quality on disk and the reasons to choose blu-ray.

What's the Point of Blu-Ray?

With every new generation of film, new technology and greater levels of detail become available. Sometimes the technology gets ahead of the artists, which can be a great situation where artists are challenged to use as many resources as possible to fill out that potential.

Whether you're using a Video Home Systems (VHS) cassette or Digital Video Disk (DVD), you're holding a piece of history that shows how far storage has gone. Each technology has a physical limit for how much information can be stored. As new technologies emerged, media producers would have to release their movies, TV series, anime or video games on multiple tapes or discs.

When the next technology arrives, it can often hold more than twice the amount of its predecessor. The new technology also has to consider its own costs, which means to be successful it has to be just as cheap (if not cheaper) than the technology before. Blu-ray disks follow that path, and can hold a lot more information than DVDs or VHS. 

This means that a single Blu-ray can hold an entire movie in amazing quality such as High Definition (HD) standards as well as bonus features such as interactive games, removed scenes and commentary.

Blu-Ray Has Another Feature Unique to Anime

The anime industry evolves in a way that is unique from many other industries. Where as western media may release a 'director's cut' that includes removed scenes or uncensored versions as a special edition, the anime industry consistently releases a different version from the aired television version.

"Wait for the DVD" is a phrase that many anime connoisseurs take to heart. When watching anime on television (or from an Internet video stream after the episode airs), many people began to notice awkward snippets of information that seemed to be hastily removed. Once the DVD released, anime watchers would notice not only extra footage, but completely different dialogue, situations or designs.

The anime industry sometimes remasters an anime series on the fly, often by creating their intended work that may have been too long or too controversial for network television. Fitting into certain time constraints may have meant hastily cutting out some scenes, then editing in faster explanations that seemed more awkward than the well-tailored storytelling that was originally intended.

The quality is often better than the television version as well. Although many televisions in Japan (the original intended audiences) are expected to be high definition, the quality is still a bit lower than a dedicated disc, since the signal needs to be transferred at a low enough rate to reduce the chance of pixelation. 

Blu-ray continues this tradition by allowing even more room for additional content. If you've heard rumors about differences in your favorite anime series, or would like to build an anime collection, get in contact with an affordable blu-ray source that has the latest anime and remastered works from the classic 80s and 90s era. Try looking at stores like Pristine Sales.

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