US

(caveat: DNR applied)

International Sony Blu-ray releases have the original DVD extras

Italy Dynit Blu-ray has the best picture quality but has no English subtitles or original theatrical 6.1 mix.

All "4K Remastered" and 4K Blu-ray releases (including from Disney) are taken from a 35mm filmout rather than the original digital source, and then heavily DNR'd, destroying original detail and making lines smearier than before. The Japan Disney 4K Blu-ray is the least bad presentation of the 4K remaster, being encoded with a very healthy bitrate and HDR10+ metadata, and with a top-notch DTS:X remix, with the original 6.1 mix included on the pack-in "4K Remastered" Blu-ray.

The film has multiple English subtitle translations, and the Disney subtitles done by Linda Hoaglund and Judith Aley with Aura are often seen as the best translation, with these subtitles present on the Japan Disney 4K Blu-ray, making this the definitive option for viewers who want to watch the film in Japanese with English subtitles.

Paramount/Plaion Spain/Italy 4K Blu-ray has better encoding than the US 4K Blu-ray.

The EUR 4K has missing dialog.

2017 US GKIDS Blu-ray has better detail and grain, 2014 Japan Studio Ghibli Blu-ray from the Hayao Miyazaki box set for MGVC with added bit-depth for supported players

> France Metropolitian 4K Blu-ray (slightly better encoding on the Sony)

Commentaries for the extended cut are only found on the Germany Constantin Film Blu-ray

4K remaster is cropped 2.35:1 from the original 2.55:1 presentation, and has significantly different color grading, as is the case with most WKW supervised restorations. Due to DNR the detail is sometimes lacklustre compared to the old master. CGI scenes appear to be rerendered. A sepia tinted scene was altered to be fully black and white.

Caps: Criterion US BD vs Cannes HD-DVD, HD-DVD vs KR BD vs DVDs vs US BD

The remixed track has different front panning and little LFE use compared to the original.

HD-DVD is by far the best option for the original track, as DVDs and Korean BD suffer from noise gating, limiting and duplicated surrounds. Remixed tracks are all similar, but French disc has slightly better dynamics, particularly on the LFE channel.

The 2006 HD-DVD is a promotional release made in only 100 copies, handed out to VIPs at Cannes Film Festival. See this blog post for details. The same master can be found on KR BD, though it suffers from interlacing, blended frames and a gamma bug, as well as older DVD releases.

Japan Toho 4K Blu-ray is an upscale of the original 2K DI but has no English subtitles, all past releases are flawed scans from filmout sources.

US Sony Blu-ray (uncut)

(caveat: both cropped to 1.33:1)

See cut information: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4167

Japan 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray have an exclusive end credit song on the Complete cut that is not present on international releases by Sony.

All Japanese releases of the Complete cut have English dub options, but no English subtitles for the original Japanese audio or on-screen text. Original cut only has Japanese audio without subtitles on the Japanese DVD.

All international releases by Sony only have dubtitles for the Japanese audio, not a proper translation of the Japanese script.

> International WB Blu-ray