Thar be slight spoilers here, but nothing series-destroying if you haven’t seen the show yet.
This is depressing.
I have no inside knowledge, and very little knowledge of how the actual licensing process goes, so this post is mostly speculation (and desperate rationalization) on my part. I thought I’d share in hopes it would help calm the minds of other fans who are awaiting the ADV DVD release of Gurren-Lagann.
You may or may not be aware that the DVD versions of anime sometimes offer an enhanced version of what was shown on TV. Whether it be removing certain censoring, improving animation quality or outright changing scenes entirely. Gainax has been doing some of these edits with Gurren-Lagann.
I knew this for a while, but this particular idea dawned on me while looking at the DVD version of episode 27 (which is so freaking clean compared to the original broadcast fansub…there’s a torrent of the translated dvd version of ep 27 on the ‘net right now…).
ADV ‘bought’ Gurren-Lagann while it was still being broadcast. So, I’m assuming this means they have the rights to the TV version and were working on it from that point. But, after witnessing all the quality improvements made in the Japanese DVD version (which I’m assuming they *don’t* have the license for), they want that one instead. The last JP GL DVD was just recently released, so ‘that version’ is now available in its entirety.
Perhaps the delay ADV is giving us is related to getting the DVD content as opposed to the TV content. That would certainly be an acceptable reason for me.
Here are a couple of examples of the DVD improvements:
This first one is more a fault of the broadcast method than the source material. It was just too epic for cable to handle.
TV on the left, DVD on the right
This one is more spoilerful (and large), so I’ll just link it. DVD on the left this time, TV on the right
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/600/dvdchangessa8.jpg
