[Kuraze] 暗黒神話 / Ankoku Shinwa (The Dark Myth) (DVD 706x480 H264 Hi10p AC3)

OVA Information

Video

Encode Comparison vs. Source

Audio

Subtitles

Notes:

All other releases of this title to date have been either lower quality or based on the PAL DVD which on comparison has slightly blurrier and washed out image quality with hardsubbed signs. However, the R1 source also presented its own issues with dot-crawl, rainbowing, haloing, and banding whereby filtering to reduce and eliminate each was applied. Additionally, a combination of very-weak luma denoising was also used to eliminate mosquito noise to the extent possible without harming detail. VFR was employed to preserve smooth motion in the scrolling ED English credits. Finally, when comparing the source footage and measuring known white-points by sampling their component RGB values highlighted a consistent slight-green chroma cast throughout the R1 source that gives the film a dingy/sickly appearance which has been reverse-equalized to a neutral white balance to alleviate said bias. See comparison screenshots.

Styled subs were OCR'd and then QC'd to correct a few errors, add several missing lines, split and combine others to improve readability, typeset signs, preserve honorifics, retime the script to eliminate scene bleeds, etc. among other fixes. The retail image subs were also included for those that prefer them. One issue owing to the series's name was the presence of a significant amount of verbose info dumps in the dialogue and narration that occurs throughout the OVA so pausing to fully digest the subs in some scenes may be warranted.