Project A-Ko

(From Wikipedia):
Project A-ko (プロジェクトA子) is a 1986 Japanese action-comedy science fiction anime film that had several sequels and a spin-off. This film focuses on a happy-go-lucky 16-year-old red-haired, sailor-suited teenage schoolgirl, A-ko Magami, who goes on her magical adventure from high school to outer space as she struggles to finish her homework, rescue her friend C-ko, and save the Earth from an evil alien invasion. This series references a number of other works of anime from the 1970s and 1980s, such as Macross, Fist of the North Star and Gundam.



This is a remux of the 2021 US Blu-Ray by Discotek. Included with this Blu-Ray is a brand new film scan of an original 35mm film print, surpassing the quality of every past release. Also included is the original Japanese audio, the original English dub by Central Park Media, two commentaries, and a myriad of special features; all using newly-translated subtitles. This remux includes everything listed above, however it unfortunately does not include any part of the myriad of image galleries that comprise half of the special features menu due to the difficulty of ripping them properly.



This Blu-Ray is currently the highest effort release ever put out by Discotek, and as such no encoding has been performed for this release to keep the image and audio quality intact. The video file is encoded on the disc in AVC H.264. The disc includes two video files for the main feature, one in an uncropped 4:3 aspect ratio and another cropped to 16:9 widescreen. While the widescreen version is what was shown in theaters, what was illustrated in the storyboards, and is arguably the director's intended aspect ratio, this remux uses the uncropped 4:3 ratio. This is was chosen for a few reasons, one is because 4:3 shows most of the animation, and another is to keep consistency with the sequels once their Blu-Rays are released.



On the audio side, both the English and Japanese tracks are encoded on the disc in DTS-HD Master Audio, while the commentary tracks and the special feature audio are encoded on this disc in Dolby Digital AC-3. Despite this, the English audio is noticeably worse quality, but this is likely an issue with the original mix as the Blu-ray used the highest quality version available. All of the subtitles are directly ripped from the Blu-Ray to use the new translation and to cover all of the special features.



Media Summary:
Video Codec: AVC H.264
Audio Codec: DTS-HD (Main Feature), Dolby Digital (AC-3) (Bonus Features)
Subtitles: Discotek (From the Blu-Ray)

See you next time.