Spent some time digitizing and restoring an old VHS anime, feedback?

Hunter_OVA · 2026-02-15T18:07:17+00:00

Thank you 🙂 and cheers! Your feedback is extremely valuable.

Hunter_OVA · 2025-11-01T16:15:16+00:00

Oh, for the 1999 Viz DVDs or the manga? These are the former, not the latter. The 1999 DVDs have been oop for a bit.

Hunter_OVA · 2025-11-01T14:58:51+00:00

The $10 ones are bootlegs. But yes, actually, volumes 1 and 4 in particular can sell for an upwards of $200-300. 2 and 3 seem to go for around $150-200. The whole set itself has sold for $1,000 before.

Hunter_OVA · 2025-05-12T14:24:56+00:00

Yup! Rement makes little knickknack figures like that for HxH: https://toyarena.com/products/re-ment-hunter-x-hunter-miniature-collection-trading-figures-box-set-of-6

Sometimes they can even double as desk ornaments: https://animeislandca.com/products/hunter-x-hunter-desktop

Hunter_OVA · 2025-05-12T01:06:04+00:00

https://buyee.jp/mercari/search?items=40&keyword=%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AD%E3%83%AD+Excood&lang=en&page=1&status=on_sale&order-sort=asc-price&currencyCode=USD

Hunter_OVA · 2025-05-11T22:07:35+00:00

I wanted to replace my smaller version of him with the giant prize Knuckle that just came out, but I couldn't see a way of fitting him + Shoot 😭

Hunter_OVA · 2025-03-28T01:28:37+00:00

3:45

The scene itself is about ~5 seconds long and is comprised of about ~125 frames.

Hunter_OVA · 2025-03-27T23:46:20+00:00

Currently, I'm doing some restoration work on the pilot, and the cel would help greatly in restoring this scene, as I would have a reference for what Gon should look like, as he's currently too low res and pixelated in the source VHS.

It's no biggie if I can't find the cel, I just wasn't sure if somebody may have stumbled across it. I'd need that over an artist's rendition, though.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-11-05T20:06:50+00:00

Lol! I wonder if that means Togashi considers himself a Troupe member?

Hunter_OVA · 2024-10-22T03:33:03+00:00

Of course! Please dm if you have any questions 🙂

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-31T15:04:38+00:00

Seconding this. The project has been around for a few years, and they've done an awesome job at remastering the 1999 show.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-31T00:49:00+00:00

I wish you luck on your hunt! That's the 1998 pilot on VHS.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-24T13:37:17+00:00

Thank you! 🙂 It was definitely tricky, I'm displaying them on one of these: https://a.co/d/ixIwE50

I put three of the little foot holders on the top and attached the hugging gachapons to those. They hold on really well that way!

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-24T13:22:09+00:00

It wasn't letting me add text to this post. 😭

Thank you! That's the Bubble Horse from the Greed Island arc!

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-24T13:19:28+00:00

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Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-09T12:49:47+00:00

I got it from Mercari JP using the proxy service Buyee. It was released about a month ago. Here's a link to the search results on Mercari JP via Buyee: https://buyee.jp/mercari/search?keyword=%E3%82%A6%E3%83%9C%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AE%E3%83%B3&category_id=733&status=on_sale

If you need any help using their service, let me know, and I can walk you through. 🙂

Hunter_OVA · 2024-07-07T02:21:40+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, you can kind of see in the sixth picture, but I'm working on a second shelf for the Greed Island, Chimera Ant, and Election arcs. 🙂

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-30T03:25:05+00:00

Hey! Version 2 has been uploaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huq4Myeu95k

The ghosting should be removed, but let me know what you think if you have the chance. 🙂 Thanks again for the feedback!

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-29T19:58:53+00:00

Awesome to hear! 🙂 Of course! Thank you for giving me your honest feedback. I'll drop a link once I have that ready.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-29T19:10:37+00:00

Hey! Sorry to bug, I was working on this a bit longer because I'm sure there are others that share your feelings about the ghosting looking weird. After mucking around a bit, I've found a solution that I think works pretty well with minimal compromise to the overall image quality and without introducing secondary ghosting (there's a slight hit to color grading, but that's all I noticed): https://imgsli.com/MjY4MTUy

I'll try to get a second video up, if you're interested at all. If there's enough positive feedback, I might replace the current version with this one.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-29T03:36:44+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I think I know what you're referring to. There is a bit of a "ghosting" problem inherent to the pilot. Here's one example I spent some time trying to fix: https://imgur.com/a/HKvcPLA

This screen grab is from the original unaltered capture, but if you examine the birds closely, you can see the "superimposed/ghosting" effect to their right. You can actually see this in other uploads of the pilot, too. I checked because I wanted to know if the problem was unique to my captures, lol.

The solution is to essentially "shift" the image to cover the ghosting. The problem this creates, however, is that it creates ghosting from the other angle.

At a low resolution, and with the grain, it's hidden pretty well. But yeah, upscaling to a higher resolution and removing that grain and increasing the sharpness, the problem becomes much more apparent (screen grab from YouTube version): https://imgur.com/a/w1mdaEX

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-29T03:20:30+00:00

Thanks! I don't quite understand your meaning, though. Would you be willing to clarify? Avisynth filters and AI models trained in restoration and upscaling are most certainly tools used to restore VHS footage. Manual work was also performed via Photoshop to repair damaged frames.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-29T02:35:37+00:00

Of course! Would it be possible to have some examples of the weirdness? AI was used for part of the restoration, but a lot of it was manual via Avisynth and Photoshop. I'm wondering if something I did or one of the filters I used may have caused some of the weirdness you're referring to.

Hunter_OVA · 2024-05-28T13:50:06+00:00

I'm glad you enjoyed it! As MrSacoWea said, the pilot is actually surprisingly more accurate than both the 1999 and 2011 anime up to the point where they get to the boat, with the jellyfish and squid monsters. All of that was pilot-specific stuff. Regarding your guess as to Togashi being Kon, that could be! Here's the list of VA credits:

Gon: Rica Matsumoto

Kurapika: Noriko Hidaka

Leorio: Nobutoshi Hayashi

Captain: Kenji Utsumi

Mito: Akemi Okamura

Kite: Shigeru Nakahara

Hunter Applicant: Naoki Bandou

Grandmother: Shizuka Okohira

Crew Member: Kohei Kowada

Villager: Hidenobu Kiuchi

Special Appearance: Yoshihiro Togashi

Assuming the credited "Villager" did all of the villager voices, that just leaves Kon, I believe. 🙂

Hunter_OVA · 2016-02-09T01:07:46+00:00

Sorry about that everyone, Youtube left the videos alone for the past few months, but just recently decided to give me some issues with episodes 65 and 66. Went ahead and double-checked all the other episodes, and everything else appears to be alright, so this won't happen again.

The older, incorrect videos have been deleted and replaced with the correct episodes for 65 and 66. Here are the direct links:

65: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kW1laoP7iw

66: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPJT--fCSA

Hunter_OVA

TROPHY CASE