Baccano! – HD vs. SD Comparison

Coming to the UK for the first time on Blu-ray this Monday (16th November) will be the much loved series, Baccano!. We’ll be bringing it to Blu-ray in the form of a Limited Collector’s Edition set that has all thirteen episode of the series plus the three bonus episodes over three Blu-ray discs and there’s even a booklet that comes inside the rigid case along side the digipack holding the discs. The booklet is packed full of great content including interviews with those involved in the show. You can expect a full unboxing of our set later this week but today we wanted to put the focus on the series itself and more specifically how the show looks.

The series has previously received a DVD release and one of the things we’re most excited about is how the footage has been cleaned up for viewing in HD on Blu-ray. Sometimes the best way to showcase this is side-by-side screenshots and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

To give you full disclosure, one of the extras included on our Blu-ray is a behind-the-scenes featurette called Baccano!: The Complete Guide. This was originally included in the Japanese DVD release and includes some moments from the anime itself. As this extra is in standard definition, there is no HD version, we’ve taken a number of screenshots from that featurette, specifically of moments from the anime itself that are shown, and have put them next to screenshots from the series as seen on our Blu-ray release.

The screenshots below marked with SD at the top are from the featurette, those marked with HD at the top are from the HD version of series.

The majority of the screenshots below are from the first episode, so if you’ve not seen the series before you have nothing to worry about in terms of spoilers and such. We’ve aimed to keep them as out of context as possible.

In terms of what you’ll notice differences wise, the key details will be how the picture has been cleaned up; so sharpness, the colour and overall brightness being some key examples. You’ll also notice a difference in the overall clarity of the series as well. In some of the cases below you’ll likely notice bigger differences than in others but all of these elements really do have a positive impact on the overall viewing experience of the show making it a real treat.

For those wondering, the masters used for our release are the same as seen on the now Aniplex of America release. However the discs in our set have been created and authored specifically for our release.

Click on the images below to enlarge them, so you can get a better view of the differences.

And so that is your SD vs. HD comparison of Baccano! You can pre-order our upcoming Limited Collector’s Edition Blu-ray set from the likes of Amazon UK, Zavvi, Base.com and even our own web shop now.

Signing out~!

Jeremy