A Look at Discotek’s Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro 4K UHD

One surefire way to know if I really like a title is to count how often I’ve “double dipped” for it. In the case of Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, I originally purchased this on 4:3 VHS. Then I purchased the initial DVD release, followed by a second, DVD re-release, which had some improvements. Then when Discotek released the movie on Blu-ray, I bought it. (My 2016 review is here.) Now, I own the 4K release of the series, also from Discotek.

Note: I’m not reviewing the movie as I did that here.

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4K Quality

As I said in my BD review, I’m not a videophile. As such, I can’t give any kind of technical review for the visuals. However, what I can say is that the movie looks great to me in 4K, certainly better than the BD version did on my 4K TV. So there’s that.

The subtitles look crisp though, which I appreciated. I’m pretty sure the subtitle text is the same as the BD release. As such, Discotek uses the controversial “Gothic” or “Goth” instead of “Goat.” Meh. I accepted it on the BD release, but I still like Goat. That said, my old complaints about the subtitles remain save one. Discotek stopped translating Goemon’s sword name, Zantetsuken. So kudos to them there.

On the audio, again, I’m not an audiophile, but it sounded fine coming through my soundbar. I only used the Japanese audio though.

Extras

As to the extras, everything from the old BD release is on the 4K version. The menu screens on the 4K are the same as the BD, so I’ll just repost the BD extras menu screens here.

The interviews with the Japanese artists are originally from French sources, so they have hard-coded French subtitles. The English subtitles overlay this, but you still notice the French subtitles. Also, these interviews are 4:3 in 720p, so visually, they don’t look great.  As I noted previously, the 2004 interview with Monkey Punch was the one I was most keen on, but it is the shortest. Unfortunately, these interviews don’t pose the questions, but instead have the interviewee simply launch into an answers. This makes for more tedious viewing, in my opinion.

The interviews with the American folks are in 1080p, and are either a video interview or an audio interview with visuals added.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, I’m happy with my purchase of Diskotek’s Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro 4K UHD on 4KBD.