What the hell is up with the Beetleborgs Metallix toyline?

The Beetleborgs Metallix toyline is weird. Not in that the toys were weird, but in terms of cancelled releases. This is a toyline that was selling well, tied to a TV show that got good ratings, but yet had several toys of stuff that appeared on the show that were marketed but just never got released.

First up are the Metallix Lancer and the Metallix Grappler. These were Gold and Silver's individual weapons, and were part of the B-Fighter Kabuto toyline. (Of course, the girl got left out)

Second was the Astral Bonder, a retool of the Data Bonder. In B-Fighter Kabuto, this was the changer used by the New B-Fighters. Like the Japanese release, it would have come with three cards. (The Japanese release came with four stickers, one for each New B-Fighter, but only three cards. SOmeone would get left out, and it would probably be the girl)

A third cancelled item was the Astral Arsenal, three weapons that could combine with the Data Laser. One of them, the Astral Datadex, contained six elemental Input Cards. Stand-alone versions of five of these cards were included with other items in the line: Chromium Gold BV (Flash), Titanium Silver BV (Storm), Platinum Purple BV (Flame), Deluxe Transforming RoboBorg (Earth), and Deluxe Transforming Boron (Thunder). Water seems to have been left out.

Also, despite the B-Fighter Kabuto having the toy, Bandai America never marketed a Beetle Battle Station. Unlike the prior Beetle Battle Base, this you would have interacted with the full-size BDs, rather than using smaller, simpler toys.


And that's just what didn't come out. The Beetleborgs Metallix line included toys that were made for the B-Fighter Kabuto line that never saw a release in Japan.

The 6" metallic "Action Fighter Series" was the main action figures for the B-Fighter Kabuto line, much like the "X Change" toys for Kamen Rider today. There were seven released (B-Fighter Kabuto, B-Fighter Kuwaga, B-Fighter Tento, B-Fighter Yenma, B-Fighter Gengi, B-Fighter Rin, and B-Crusher Descorpion), and all of them came out in the Beetleborgs Metallix line. Action Fighter toys of B-Fighter Agetha and B-Crusher Mukadelinger were developed, but never saw release in Japan. They were, however, included in the Beetleborgs Metallix line as Ladyborg and Centipix.

A third cancelled toy was Evil Shell God Kuwaga Titan, a retool of Great Shell God Kabuterios. Like the two Action Fighter Series toys, Kuwaga Titan was released in the Beetleborgs Metallix line as Deluxe Transforming Boron.



There are also things from B-Fighter Kabuto that were clearly meant to have toys, but never came out anywhere.

Two were what would have been the 10th and 11th entries in the Action Fighter Series: B-Crusher Killmantis and B-Crusher Beezack. Bandai America even included their Insect Metals with the Astral Saber; the other six were included with the Astralborg and Mantron figures.

The third was the Geist Axe. Extremely toyetic, but never got a release in Japan, or as the Astral Ax for Beetleborgs.


Since the B-Fighter Kabuto line was a flop, it isn't a surprise that lots of stuff got cancelled. But Beetleborgs? Beetleborgs sold well. VERY well. Well enough that when the series ended (because Kabutack wouldn't fit ans Saban decided to make Mystic Knights instead of a third Beetleborgs season with no Japanese footage to draw from), Bandai kept making Beetleborgs toys for six more months under the name "Beetleborgs Force". And this wasn't just a rebranding of prior toys. This had original designs, retools of prior action feature toys, and retools of the 12" electronic Janperson figure thrown in for good measure. It even had some bikes.

This would have been the perfect place for those three toys to be released if Bandai Japan had anything in progress. But nothing. That toyline is just weird.

Updated Gaim Wanted List UPDATED 1/17/2014

Now that we know the details of everything that's coming out, here is the final list of Gaim stuff:


Needed:
Gaim Gaiden Zangetsu and Baron Live Show DVD
Gaim Gaiden 2: Electric Fruitaloo BD (not out yet)

Fruit Salad (Volume 1)

Yep. Kamen Rider Gaim from Bluray.

Unlike Shinkenger, Kamen Rider W and Gokaiger, this is being done in 1080p.Those series were effectively 720p quality, so there was no reason to do those in 1080p. Gaim, however, is worth doing in 1080p. (Rider started using new cameras for Wizard, which would also be worth doing in 1080p if it weren't Wizard. Dohohohoho!)

I'll be doing these as the isos become available, so expect a month or so between releases. (And before anyone asks, I have no idea if Aesir has any plans for the Blurays)

MEGA folder (The torrent probably won't happen until the summer movie director's cut is released and encoded)
Video: 1080p 10-bot x264, crf23
Audio: AAC 50%

And Now A Message About The Power Rangers

As you may be aware if you pay attention to my ramblings on Twitter or on Super Hero Time, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was shot (mostly) on film and edited on tape, with the final masters on analog tape. (They may have switched to digital SD mastering at some point, but I'm not sure) All Japanese footage (including Zyu1.5, Zyu2, Metalder, Spielban, and Black RX) came from film prints sent from Toei until Gaoranger, which was the first digitally-edited Sentai. Starting with Power Rangers Samurai, the series switched to HD, with Saban using the same camera model that Toei started using with Shinkenger.

Since film for NTSC television is shot at ~24 frames per second (actually 24000/1001 fps), while NTSC itself is ~ 30 interlaced frames per second (30000/1001 fps), you have to get five extra frames for each second to keep the footage at the same speed. This is achieved by using a 2:3 pulldown, which is best explained by Wikipedia. Done properly, this telecine can be undone, giving you the full frames at the original 24fps frametate. This only applies to the raw telecine, and may not be possible when editing includes 30fps effects, bits where the footage is sped up or slowed down, or composite shots where one part of the frame is at a different point in the pattern than the other.

A close look at the Shout Factory DVDs for Power Rangers Zeo through Time Force (I haven't looked at Wild Force or any of the Disney seasons yet) show that the people editing the show did great on a technical level. The telecining itself is perfect (unlike Toei's telecines from the same time, which are a blended mess. For more detail, see AzraelNewtype's Adventures in Encoding post on the Over-Time blog).


Now, Shout's MMPR DVDs are different. Most of the episodes don't have clean telecining, as they are taken from the Saban International masters, and as auch are most likely NTSC>PAL>NTSC conversions. The few episodes that Shout had Saban Entertainment masters, like A Friend In Need Part 1, look as good as Zeo does. However, the Saban Entertainment masters for MMPR have the closed caption bubble and the TV Parental Guideline rating at the start of the opening, which may be why the Saban International masters were used for most episodes. Personally, I feel the better video quality of the Saban Entertainemnt masters more than offsets any annoyance caused by the bubble and ratings box. Unfortunately, Saban didn't think so, or feel it was worth the effort to make a new set of masters that only used the Saban International video for those few seconds of the opening.

Now... Count up your sins! Kamen Rider W BD/DVD raw batch

Now that the cod-E DVD has been tracked down, it's time for a batch torrent.

http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=519524

Contents:

Bluray:
Kamen Rider W BD Box Sets
Kamen Rider W Returns: Kamen Rider Accel (AKA Police Brutality: Ryu Terui Punches Everything Forever The Movie)
Kamen Rider W Returns: Kamen Rider Eternal
Music Videos from the Video Rider BD sets: WBX ~W-Boiled Extreme~, Nobody's Perfect, W, Love Wars

DVD:
Movie War 2010 Director's Cut
W Forever Director's Cut
W Forever Net Movies
Movie War 2010 Bonus Disc
W Forever Bonus Discs
Special Event
Final Stage and Cast Talk Show
cod-E

All content from the discs is included. HD material is 720p, since 1080p isn't really worth it. The video extras from the DVD volumes were upscaled for the BDs, so I've encoded them in SD. The Hyper Battle Video and Gaia Memory Encyclopedia, surprisingly, are the same quality as the episodes.

Video: 10-bit x264, crf20 for BD, crf19 for DVD
Audio: AAC 50%

Anyone have the cod-E DVD?

The music video DVD for "cod-E ～Eの暗号～" is the one thing from Kamen Rider W left to encode, but I have been unable to find an iso or anyone who has it. Unfortunately, neither of the videos on it were included in the Video Rider sets, so the only option is the out-of-print limited CD/DVD release of the single.

If you have the DVD or an iso of it and wouldn't mind sharing, please let me know 

Got it! Thanks to SirStack for hunting this down.

Shooting and Editing of early Heisei Masked Rider (Or: why Kuuga's DVDs suck)

 So, you may have noticed a vast difference in video quality between Masked Rider Kuuga and the series that came after it. After stumbling across some articles on Toei's website completely by accident, I figured I'd go over the differences in how the series were shot and edited.

Kuuga Method

 Much like Babylon 5, Masked Rider Kuuga was shot in HD, but because of technology and budget constraints, was edited in SD. And like Bablyon 5, they shot in HD so that, at some point in the future when editing in HD was less expensive, they could go back to the HD footage and make new HD masters. And again, much like Babylon 5, this has not yet been done.

Shooting	→	Editing	→	Broadcast/DVDs
1080i		480i		480i

Kuuga's video quality also suffers because the DVDs use analog NTSC-format masters that have horrible dot-crawl and rainbowing. Only the Special Edition DVD has footage sourced from the original digital masters, and it looks MUCH better.

Agito-Blade Method

Chances are, someone at Toei figured it'd be better to just shoot in SD if they were going to edit in SD, and not letterbox anythung until you were making the broadcast masters. Plus, this let them use the wide-screen mode in the DVD release. While this means these shows could never exist in true HD, it let them have better masters at the time than they could using the Kuuga method. Toei finally went back to HD with Hibiki, which was shot, edited, and broadcast in 1080.

Shooting	→	Editing/DVDs	→	Broadcasting
480i		480i		480i

Sources:
http://tvarc.toei.co.jp/tv/agito/making/03-system/index.stm
http://www.toei.co.jp/meister/vol4/detail/05.html