Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Sacred Blacksmith 01-02 BD w/TV Censors

I'm a quality fanatic, but I also don't want to watch any nudity. This presents a dilemma... for example the Blu-Ray version of The Sacred Blacksmith has scenes which were censored in the TV version, but not in the Blu-Ray version. All of a sudden it occurred to me... why not replace those scenes on the Blu-Ray version with the scenes from the TV version?

As a result I re-encoded the release (linked at the bottom of this post) to have the TV censored version for the uncensored scenes. This amounts to about 2 seconds of video for each episode. It was just the video that was changed, not the audio. I upscaled the HDTV (MX rips) to 1080p using lanczos resizing. It doesn't look as good as the rest of the video... but as I said it's only about 2 seconds. There is an extremely minor quality loss from re-encoding the video, but it shouldn't be noticeable (SSIM mean is within 99.4%).

For those wondering, the censors are at:
Episode 1, 14:37 (where Cecily tells Luke she wants him to look at her)
Episode 2, 8:26 (where Cecily's Breastplate cracks off)

Modified version of gg's subs (not by me, but by the poster of the original release)
1920x1080 Blu-Ray video
AAC audio



The Sacred Blacksmith 01-02 Blu-Ray w/TV Censors Torrent

BTW, I only plan to do this for episodes which require censoring. If anyone is interested in the creditless Op/Ed they can be found in the torrent below.

Original uncensored release

14 comments:

  1. "I also don't want to watch any nudity"
    What are you, 12?

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  2. It's disrespectful to women, unnecessary, and inappropriate. I don't see what that has to do with age.

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  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  4. "it's disrespectful to women, unnecessary, and inappropriate."

    Then you shouldn't be watching anime. Before you do something, check the rating of an anime. If it's Adult-rated, don't do it, if it's Teen rated don't do it either because, you are obviously under age.

    Go watch Looney Tunes or something.

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  5. Might have been best to disable post because of the anal retitive folks. Interesting project, thanks for doing it.

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  6. Although it was only a few seconds in this episode, I bet in the upcoming episodes, you will find there are more scenes that will need censoring. So the quality loss will be more noticeable, imo.

    I can see where you are coming from, but a lot of other people won't.

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  7. f, I've removed your comment. When you can post something at least semi-mature and intelligible it will be kept.

    SHiN-gx, there is plenty of anime to watch that isn't disrespectful or inappropriate. I also really don't see where age comes into this. It's my time and if I want to do this, I can. If you don't want to watch it, then don't.

    You are welcome tripperdan.

    Thanks rad_blue, bit I think episode 7 (?), with the bath, will be the only episode that will require any heavy censoring.

    I may have to set moderation on if more people like "f" keep posting, but we'll see.

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  8. As a woman I'm curious about just how this would be disrespectful to us. Please elaborate.

    And "inappropriate"? As with the majority of medieval-themed fantasy stories, isn't the main point to have scantily clad women with big boobs and huge swords or axes battle even more scantily clad demons in an as sexy way as possible?

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  9. Hi Monica,
    It portrays women as objects for sex, which IMO is disrespectful. Do you really want to be considered as such, honestly?

    The point is the epic adventure, huge swords, axes, and battles, yes. "Big boobs" and "scantily clad" are not necessary. For example, Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia are two of the most iconic medieval-themed fantasy stories, and neither have those (granted, they aren't anime).

    Most medieval-themed fantasy anime tend to have some level of fanservice, but often it just detracts from the story. For example... using The Sacred Blacksmith; in Episode 1, unless this was due to nuances in the Japanese language not transferring to English, how does "I want you to look at me" get interpreted to "I want you to look at me naked" in Lisa's and Luke's heads? It doesn't even make sense. In Episode 2 her armor cracked off... it's iron, iron doesn't crack unless it's repeatedly heated and cooled. Iron would be dented or torn (and there's no way you can tear it on a person's body), not cracked. Not only that... she was wearing nothing between her chest and that iron breastplate? Talk about uncomfortable. Again, it's just plain senseless.

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  10. Then you shouldn't be watching any anime except Pokemon. Even if you don't see nudity, any anime that portrays women as busty and unrealistic--though clothed can be construed as disrespectful as this is the idealized norm in popular anime. The same can be said to men as beefy and burly. You're saying we shouldn't have watched Code Geass or Tengen Toppa ...

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  11. Oh, Baccano is prejudiced because Italian people are not like that. No Italian should watch it. You see what I did there?

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  12. Bottom line---busty women with non-existent hips=unrealistic=degrading to women=we should not watch any anime that has this, clothed or not.

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  13. @David- You are taking the idea to the extreme end, which is logical fallacy... Maniac seems to be trying to replace the truly offensive images with video from the censored TV broadcast which is not quite so extreme. For shows with occasional points like that, I don't see the big deal. For shows such as, say, Seikon no Qwasar, which seem to have no purpose other than the grotesque use of women in the most farfetched manner possible, I don't really see the point in editing as the censored version apparently makes no sense.

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