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2.0 out of 5 starsFunimation 4K - Not Even as Good as the Normal Blu-ray (But at Least It Comes with the Blu-ray)
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2021
This is a review of the Funimation UHD 4K Blu-ray.
This is just bad. There is no excuse for this. Unbelievably, this is not as good as the now 12-year-old 1080p Bandai Blu-ray. However, at least it comes with the Bandai Blu-ray, so if you don't have Akira at all, given the price of the now OOP other releases, you actually might as well get this. Still this whole thing is a mess of missed opportunities. And still no Akira Production Clip.
First: the HDR. It's missing. You can get it, at no extra cost, but I did kind of expect the units available months after that issue became a problem to now have the correct HDR disc. No dice, at least in my case. To their credit, Funimation was very responsive and sent me an HDR disc exactly on the timeline they promised (within 2 weeks) without any issue or cost to me, except my time. Unfortunately, that HDR disc barely looks different from the standard one. This is yet another fairly dim HDR master (I'd be shocked if it targeted anything over like 200 nits), where the presence of HDR now means the dark scenes are REALLY dark and CANNOT be brightened, but highlights are only minimally improved over SDR. It just doesn't add much.
Sadly, though, the HDR snafu is not even close to the biggest issue with this release. Unbelievably the overall picture and sound are WORSE than the standard Blu-ray. There are exactly two areas where the 4K does a little better: colors are a little more vivid, and some definite edge enhancement that was present in the HD Blu-ray has been eliminated.
Those considerations, though, together with the theoretically higher resolution and even the HDR effevts, don't come close to making up for the absolute abuse of digital noise reduction (DNR) in this release. Others have commented to the effect that there's more DNR than they'd like, or that some has been applied. Everyone's tolerance is different, but in my opinion, those types of claim wildly understate the severity of the issue. The DNR is so heavy here that it actually affects the integrity of line work that is SUPPOSED to be there. Actual drawn animation in places ends up with stippling and blurring because the DNR is jacked up so high it's trying to erase bits of actual non-noise animation. It's not exactly an epidemic, but there is no justification for that happening at all. When you consider how much less visual information is in a frame of hand-drawn animation than there is in a live- photographed frame, imagine how crazy the DNR has to be to be trying to mess with visual information that's part of the picture, at all, ever.
Here's another symptom of how out of control the DNR is: this actually looks bit-starved in places. Seriously. There is visible smearing and shimmering from time to time. At first I could not make heads or tails of this, because it just seems impossible - they took something that didn't have this problem with AVC in 1080p and encoded it in even higher bitrates in HEVC and spread it over more space, but fudged out any actual extra detail, so how could it possibly be suffering from overcompression? I think what I'm seeing is actually not caused by compression at all, but by overactive DNR trying to turn gradations of color and textures into uniform blobs. Again, not the end of the world, but it's unbelievable that this is even a factor.
The result is a fairly colorful film that looks like virgin-painted acetate with absolutely no texture, nor any sign that it was ever photographed to film. I can theoretically understand wanting to do this to animation - after all, if you remove the film grain, in some sense what's left should kind of be a perfect representation of what was painted in the first place. If nothing else, it's definitely less of a sin to do that to hand-drawn animation than it is to live-shot film. However, this is a visual masterpiece that the producers went to the trouble of using a 70mm master print for. Obviously the creators and studio felt it was worth a premium film presentation. You just don't do that to 70mm film. Imagine seeing an IMAX movie where so much DNR has been applied it doesn't even look like film at all.
Finally, and I cannot believe this is even an issue: the soundtrack. Just so everyone is clear, the 24-bit, 196kHz 5.1 mix from the prior Blu-ray is GONE. Not only is the Japanese-audio track reduced to 24/48, it sounds remixed, or maybe remastered - I don't know. You can tell the second the drums in the title card (don't) hit. But it definitely does not sound the same. Did they do this to save space? They used a 66-GB disc, and could easily of have used a 100-GB disc. Did they do it to save bandwidth? Again, you're using HEVC and there's no real additional detail in the picture - you can't spare like 5 additional MBPS average for audio? The sense of spaciousness is gone and instead it weirdly sounds both flat and also a little too all up in your face in the surrounds. It's like everything is tinnier, closer and smashed together. I'm not a big believer in the hypersonic "science" behind the 192kHz engineering, but maybe it's for real in some sense. In any case, whatever made that mix so great is gone now. To me, that is INSANE.
Here is how this set gets the two stars that I give it: It's not literally broken. It's not actually BAD. It DOES include the Bandai Blu-ray, which appears totally unmolested from its prior incarnation, 24/192 soundtrack, menus, everything. It includes a disc full of supplements (also retreads, but still better than them disappearing as well). It also features a booklet with some new written material and a nice thick glossy cardboard sleeve that's definitely better than the old Bandai Blu-ray.
So, I guess this is TECHNICALLY the best overall home release of Akira, in that it comes with the good Blu-ray and throws in a non-HDR 4K UHD BD that has all kinds of problems and gives you the opportunity to email Funimation and ask for an HDR version of that same crappy 4K disc.
Ultimately for my $35 I now have two 4K UHD BDs, one with HDR, one without, a Blu-ray I already had and will continue to watch, and a Blu-ray with supplements that I also already had. So, that's not exactly a BAD thing, but make no mistake: if you already own the Bandai Blu-ray, there is no reason to buy this. On the other hand, if you are looking at buying Akira and somehow don't already have ion Blu-ray, this thing might actually be your best bet. It looks like most other Region 1 releases are all even more expensive than this thing now, and I have no idea about the quality of the other-region releases. So, if you don't have the film and want it, you're actually getting a fine package. But as an upgrade there's literally almost no reason whatsoever to buy this.
Overall, it's just such a missed opportunity. We could've gotten something great, and instead we got a botch job. Too bad.