Piyo Piyo Productions presents: Starship Troopers 1-6 12/25/17 https://www.otakubell.com/ https://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=1535 Project notes: I have many words to say about this project, so I’ll begin with a tl;dr version: This looks pretty good and you should probably check it out. Starship Troopers is an adaptation of the classic Heinlein novel of the same name. Although I am very well-read in the sci-fi genre, I’ve actually read very little Heinlein, as what I have read has not impressed. Stranger in a Strange Land may have won the Hugo in 1962, and I get why maybe it was a big deal back then, but it has NOT aged well. I read Tunnel in the Sky when I was in middle school, and the only thing I remember is the “stobor,” and that’s only because it was a minor plot twist at the end. (I was already reading Asimov in fourth grade, so I was probably not the target audience anyhow). My point is, I haven’t read Starship Troopers, and from what I’ve heard, this anime adaptation doesn’t really follow the original very well. That may not be a bad thing, just don’t get your expectations in a bunch, is all. As to the aquisition of the laserdiscs: This is one of the rarest LD sets out there, a fine gem for collectors. I never expected to own these, to be honest. But one day I made a weird mistake: I looked at Yahoo Japan Auctions. I try to keep myself away from there, because I always find dozens of disks I’d like to get and then blow a lot of money. But I looked in a moment of weekness, and there was Starship Troopers. It had a high initial bid, and a higher buy-it-now price. Rather than jump on it immediately, I contacted Orphan, who had been on the lookout for the set, but they were AFK that day. 24 hours later, the disks were still listed – but for how long? So, I pulled the trigger myself on this one. The video quality is decent, but I’ve seen better. There are rough cuts and some jitter, but otherwise fairly clean. The actual artwork is sometimes pretty questionable though. This will probably never be reissued on DVD due to rights issues, as you can probably imagine. This is probably the end of the line for this one. As such, Orphan asked if I’d bump up the bitrate on the x264 version from 1,000 to 1,200. I have done so, but I am not convinced there is any discernable visial difference between the two bitrates. If anything, 1,000 is probably overkill. I sent some samples in different bitrates over to them, and was told the 1,200 looked best, but nobody could show me where or why, so I tend to think its placebo effect. Still, no skin off my teeth. If anyone ever wants an even higher bitrate, or maybe a different compression method from the future, there’s always the unfiltered high-bitrate DVD conversion included for your conversion pleasure.