Gundam Wing Endless Waltz in 4K — Pt.1 — Advance Thoughts
After 27 years, and multiple transfers, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz (movie edition) is receiving a new 4K release with an updated video and audio presentation. Ahead of watching a screening next week, here are some notes on the existing HD Blu-ray — and what we might expect from this new master.
HDR
Since Endless Waltz was never created with the expanded HDR color palette, I’m hoping that it’s tastefully applied. Explosive effects could have brightness increased for extra impact, and dark areas could potentially have extra detail exposed. Big fingers crossed that the core colors and tones aren’t compromised.
High-contrast scenes could become even more sensational with HDR applied.
Film Grain
Endless Waltz has quite a grainy/noisy presentation, due to the film stock employed in the animation cell photography process. A typical digital technique applied to make older animation feel more ‘contemporary’, is a denoising algorithm that attempts to clean up the look by smoothing out subtle differences in the image. Whilst the technology has advanced over the last decade, it still leads to a softer looking image, with fine detail often compromised.
The grain is an aspect of the original 1997 production, so purists (like myself!) would prefer this to be mostly untouched. Viewers used to digital-first animation may prefer a cleaner look.
Many think that the grain adds a filmic quality, and that smoothing it out results in a different aesthetic.
Dirt and artifacts
Photographing and scanning cells in the 90s was an analog process — prone to dust, dirt and small artifacts. You can notice many of these in the existing Endless Waltz HD edition. They can be digitally removed; and if done sensitively (whilst preserving grain), the result can be arguably an improvement over the existing release.
Marks are highlighted here in purple. Some scenes are cleaner than others.
Image clarity
Endless Waltz has a slightly soft look. I assume it’s due to being shot in 16mm film like most anime at the time — versus the larger 35mm that would’ve typically been used for OP and ED sequences (which is why they hold up incredibly well). Digital sharpening can be applied, but there are many downsides if applied heavily.
Some contrast effects were applied for the existing HD release, but they’re typically not too prominent.
Ringing artifacts
This one I’m a little concerned about. The existing HD edition already features some noticeable ringing, though not as much as other pre-Y2K Gundam shows. However, if additional noise reduction is applied (softening the image), then aggressive sharpening will probably be introduced to reintroduce clarity… usually leading to noticeable edge ringing. Sunrise is keen on this overly ‘sharp’ look — Hathaway features it a ton, despite not requiring it to look incredible.
Look closely along the edge of Wufei’s face, or arm, and you can see what seems to be a stronger highlight along the black ink line. This has been caused by the digital upscaling progress applied for the HD release Hopefully it won’t be more prominent in the new 4K instance.
Cropping
No mention has been made of cropping the original 4:3 material to the more standard-in-2025 16:9 ratio. So rejoice in no visual information being lost!
Thankfully we shouldn’t see scenes like this, where a significant portion of the top and bottom of the image is removed.
Audio mix
The new edition is set to feature a Dolby Atmos mix. This is going to be harder to judge in the cinema, compared to the existing surround mix. I don’t have too many concerns here, it should sound great.
Impressions coming soon!
Original director Yasunao Aoki has supervised the visual approach for this release, but sometimes that doesn’t guarantee anything! 😭
Next week I’ll follow up with my observations, after having seen it with my own eyes in its Dolby Cinema presentation. Please look out for that if interested.
The Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz (movie edition), is screening at 10 cinemas across Japan between September 5th - 18th. A US theatrical release has also been confirmed, but no dates specified yet. I assume a UHD Blu-ray, and streaming options will follow at one stage.
