At last, after just shy of nine months, Hibiki comes to a close!
Gotta give huge thanks to Shushutto Subs for the scripts, BlaisingLion for help with funding the BD sets, and to FortMax for her invaluable help with getting the VFR working for the 2nd OP!
Hibiki is definitely an interesting Rider series in just how un-Rider-like it feels for much of it. It’s no surprise Toei gave something like this a shot after 5 years of what we’d consider more traditional Riders, and while the level of success is debatable, especially given the staff shakeups for the last 3rd, it still makes for a very unique series that I don’t think we’ll see again as we’ve rolled into the Reiwa era. Still, I really enjoyed it and found it even better on a rewatch for the BDs. Also, I don’t care what anyone says, the first OP is one of my favorite Rider OPs.
As is typical, a batch will come out for this soon, with a few v2s confirmed right now, mostly to address some small timing issues I’ve noticed with certain signs. Right now, I would expect to probably see the batch show up around Thanksgiving as I’ll have some time off from work then where I won’t be busy with other obligations.
As for what’s next, since Hibiki had stolen Kiva’s slot in the release lineup due to technical delays on Kiva’s scripts, that resulted in the unusual situation of releasing two catalog Rider titles at the same time. Now that Hibiki is done, Kiva will get the sole Rider focus other than Zi-O Box 4 in December. However, that doesn’t mean planning hasn’t already started for what will come after THAT, and while I’ve mentioned it before, we’ll be moving forward from Hibiki and back from Kiva and doing Kamen Rider Kabuto! Obviously, there’s no scheduled start for this because Kiva is less than halfway done, but rest assured it’s coming! Otherwise, look for more Kiva to keep the Rider releases going strong!
Thank you for your hard work!
Thanks for this, OZC! So happy to see these earlier Heisei Riders getting high quality releases! It’s cool to see that Kabuto is next – the character himself is terrible, but the suit, I think, is one of the greatest (in how it’s cool but simple) in the franchise and the other suits and effects are pretty rad too. Will you be doing any series before Hibiki?
Pre-Hibiki stuff is still undecided. The BDs are just upscaled, but I’ve been experimenting with some filters to undo some of Toei’s oversharpening and such, and because the picture quality is better on the BDs, I might be satisfied with a 540p encode for some of them. Blade is pretty much out because the BDs are trash and the DVDs won’t offer any benefit (though I have a plan for that if the cost ever becomes workable) but Ryuki and Faiz are definitely something I’ve considered if I can get the filtering tests to a satisfactory point. I haven’t experimented with Kuuga and I don’t have any of the Agito BDs to experiment on but I’d pretty much say only Blade has really been ruled out at this time.
Kuuga’s Blu-rays are also much better quality already due to using better masters as their source, even if they are still just upscaled from that source.
Yeah, I figured Kuuga would be better, but since I haven’t looked at them myself, I didn’t want to presume since at one point, I assumed Blade was better and, well, yeah…
Looking at Den-O, I suspected something like this (surprised to see Hibiki looking so much better – how does Kabuto compare to these two?). At least we have GomenRider’s Agito and Turn Up Scrub’s Blade subs and BunnyHat’s raws. And maybe hell will freeze over and Midnight Crew will finally release a complete Kuuga batch.
On a related note – I have some 1080p BD raws for some shows that only have HDTV or web rips subbed and I’ve been thinking about re-encoding 720p from that and slapping on those subs. Can you give me any tips on encoding? I don’t know much about it, so I just experimented with various settings in various freewares, some results were better, some worse…
Kabuto is about on par with Den-O I’d say. The edges have a bit of black space that need cropping but nothing too bad. As for encoding tips, it kind of depends on what you are aiming to do. A simple downscale to 720p probably just needs a resize call in an Avisynth script and then have that fed to an encoder. I use MeGUI, but plenty of people swear by CLI encoding. I’d definitely suggest checking out Doom9’s forums to get some pointers on the best encoding settings for the material you have.
Congrats on another completed series!
Is the English dub planned on being included for the Kabuto release (I’m guessing YoY-Earthly is going to be the source)?
Also, any news/word of Kamen Rider Brain on Blu Ray?
Also, also, this may be worth keeping an eye on when it’s time to do Kamen Rider Zero-One: https://izusubs.wordpress.com/
The dub would be added as a separate release because it doesn’t sync to the raw episodes due to some small edits. Not as bad as Wizard, but it’s still edited. No word on Brain, so I’m not expecting it any time soon. As for the Zero-One subs, I’ll consider it, but I generally don’t see a need for a TV-Nified version of another sub. Detranslating stuff for the sake of… hell, I don’t even know why, it just seems useless to me.
Really happy to see this finished, and even happier to know Kabuto’s up next. I know the main character is considered base-breaking, but I honestly love the character despite his faults. Can’t wait to walk the Path of Heaven in glorious BD!
I don’t care if video quality not good, so please release all BD-source videos on 1080p format.
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Why waste encoding time, server space, and bandwidth on something that has absolutely ZERO benefit? If it was shot with a 720p camera, it doesn’t have any need to be encoded at anything higher. You’re welcome to pick up the BDs if you want 1080p versions of the 720p seasons.