Kyoufu Densetsu - Kaiki! Frankenstein (1981)


Translation: purpleparrotking 
Timing/typesetting: MartyMcflies

This...was quite the interesting project, and I feel like the editing that I had to go through with this perfectly fits the whole Frankenstein theme and all lol. Basically...this only aired once on Japanese TV and never seemed to re-air after that, nor was it released on any form of Japanese home media as well. Although various dubs exist on VHS/cassette...neither of them are that good. 

However, out of all those dubs, there're only two that seem to be better than the others: the Italian dub and the Swedish dub. Why them? The incredibly rare DVD releases for both dubs contained exactly what I needed to commence this project. The Italian DVD contained the original Japanese audio while the the video source for the Swedish dub was literally the original Japanese TV broadcast footage itself!! 

Sadly both were flawed to an extent. The Swedish committed a crime by censoring most violent footage from the anime and unnecessarily shortening other scenes that didn't need to be shortened at all. The Italian(?) DVD release also does this weird thing where it literally freezes the video picture on scenes from the movie that are compromised of still frames...it's very noticeable and jarring. Only way I could fix both issues was by taking footage from other dub releases of the movie and trying to stick it in alongside the original footage. The Japanese audio, however...Idk if the audio came like this or if this was cut by the Italians themselves but the 1st minute of the movie was literally cut out and muted. Only way I could fix it was by taking audio from other dubs and taking a piece of music from my personal LP copy of the anime OST, converting it to mono, and trying to stick it into the introduction *just* right so I could also fill in the missing gaps for where the music is supposed to be.

Another thing worth pointing out...all of you have to keep in mind that this was a TV special at some point. As such, there are supposed to be moments within the movie where it fades out, presumably so it can go into various commercial breaks. All the dubs I've worked with for this project seem to have gotten rid of said fading for most scenes. The Japanese audio has those scenes properly intact but all the other dubs just seem to have the voice actors continuously recording over some of those scenes where it's supposed to go into break and it just looks/sounds...kind of awkward...so I've attempted to do the fading in/out myself. I'm fairly certain I did the editing for it at the right parts within the movie but we'll never know unless this gets officially (and properly) re-released one day.

All in all...I suppose this wasn't as perfect as I was hoping it'd be but this is as good as it gets right now. Probably won't even get re-issued soon due to copyright issues tbh. Anyways, enjoy!!

Torrent link:
https://nyaa.si/view/1177728

Comments

  1. jackassDecember 17, 2023 at 7:44 PM

    (After I saw the movie, and than read this write-up.)
    I'm impressed. 👍 Quite an amazing job you've done to put this release together from the various sources. 👍 Really great. Thanks so much again! ❤️ And, like you, I do hope this will be available one day in perfect original Japanese condition. It's sad also that the bad reviews on IMDb are based solely on those censored, and horribly dubbed American/English versions.

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