Product Details

• Actors: Tomokazu Miura, Dangely Diane, Miyuki Ono, Rachel Huggett, Paul Tagawa
• Directors: Koji Hashimoto, Sakyo Komatsu
• Writers: Sakyo Komatsu
• Producers: Sakyo Komatsu, Fumio Tanaka, Shirô Fujiwara, Tomoyuki Tanaka
• Format: Color, Dubbed, DVD, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Japanese (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Discotek Media
• DVD Release Date: January 30, 2007
• Run Time: 130 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000KHX7KI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,025 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Sayonara Jupiter" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

SAYONARA JUPITER - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Movie...not so hot, music and songs...very good though!, March 6, 2011

By 

Rob - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sayonara Jupiter (DVD)

OK, what do you get when you take 2010 and XANADU and mix them together? That's easy...you get BYE BYE JUPITER! Yes, the movie turned out to be a major disappointment when it was originally released in Japan, but there are a couple of good things about it which still have merit today. First, the special effects are excellent and actually rival what ILM was doing back then. The planet Jupiter in particular looks fantastic. Also, the music score from Kentaro Haneda is very good and so are the vocal songs that are featured throughout the film. With all due respect to the other reviewer, these Japanese songs are not sung by "nobodies", on the contrary, they are sung by two of the most successful singer/songwriters working in Japan...Yumi Matsutoya and Jiro Sugita! Both are also excellent singers. The song "Voyager" which can be heard during the rolling end credits is an excellent pop song from Matsutoya and is very catchy. Her other song "At the Blue Ship" is extremely soothing and a fine song as well. The two songs from Jiro Sugita are also fantastic, especially the title song. There's a scene in the movie where the "cult leader" is singing one of Sugita's songs on a beach (with an acoustic guitar), but that's not the actor's voice, it's actually Sugita singing.

Originally, BYE BYE JUPITER was conceived as Japan's answer to STAR WARS, but after many years of delays and rewrites, it became something very different and was deemed a disappointment when it was finally released in 1984. In my opinion, the music is one of the few bright spots though and is definitely worth checking out (for those who like Japanese pop songs from the early 80's). As a matter of fact, the songs which are featured in this film are extremely difficult to find on CD, as the original BYE BYE JUPITER soundtrack is now long out of print. So, if you are curious to hear this score and the songs, this DVD provides an easy and fairly inexpensive way to do it.

As for the DVD itself, the video and audio quality are both excellent, as they appear to be taken directly from the Region 2 DVD which was released in Japan and Discotek has another winner on their hands (along with their WAR IN SPACE DVD). This DVD is literally packed...and I mean packed with bonus features and frankly, it's worth getting just for those, in particular, the 30 minute "Making Of" special (which focuses on the special effects) and the "About The Film" segment which contains pages and pages and pages of text that will tell you everything you need to know about the film. In the end, Discotek gives you your money's worth here, as it's one of the most "packed" Toho sci-fi films available on R1 DVD. On a last note, this movie features Akihiko Hirata's final performance before he passed away.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sayonara Jupiter, January 3, 2012

By 

Gman - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sayonara Jupiter (DVD)

Easily Discotek's best Toho DVD to date, Sayonara Jupiter is an excellent release across the board, featuring superb video and audio quality while also being stocked with a ton of extras. To be fair, though, this release isn't quite as grand as the Pioneer two disc set that was released in Japan, but given that the region 2 set is now long out of print, sold for more than three times the cost of this one, and lacks English viewing options, the choice between the two should be easy for most.The disc is complemented with an excellent video presentation. Overt digital inconsistencies are nonexistent here, and while the movie could have looked sharper the detail visible is still rich. The colors are also nice and distinct on this release, not as vibrant as is possible on the format but the deep reds and yellows still look fantastic. The print used for the transfer, outside of a few scratches, is also in amazing shape with a very low level of visible grain. Sayonara Jupiter is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is Anamorphic for widescreen TVs. Sadly, the video track has been heavily window boxed (a black border around the image). This will allow the DVD to play without a hitch on older sets, which sometimes crop the edges, but also causes for the video, from the perspective of newer sets, to be needlessly compressed.This disc contains two audio tracks, both presented in 5.1 surround. The first is the original Japanese track, while the second is Toho's international English dubbing for the production, which redubs dialogue even for the numerous English speaking parts in the film. In terms of audio quality, both are excellent, featuring no inconsistencies while the added speaker distinction works well for the surround presentation. Overall, the Japanese track fares better, with a much more rich sound to both the dialogue (naturally) and sound effects, but both are still solid audio presentations. As for the performances in the dubbing, it's bad even by Toho's standards for these tracks, while a lot of the dialogue readers should be familiar to viewers as they have been doing these tracks since the 1970's while a few of them would continue on dubbing into the next decade for the firm.The audio can be accompanied with, removable, English subtitles. The subtitles only appear for the non-English speaking parts in the film, though. For those interested in the pricey region 2 set, it's worth mentioning that this release lacks the original 2.0 audio track and the 5.1 DTS track of the movie that are located there.For a single disc release, Sayonara Jupiter is packed with extra content. The star attraction here is a half hour "Making of Special", covering mostly the special effects that went into the production. Unfortunately, the video quality is a little iffy, as seen here, but the reason for this is because Pioneer (the company in Japan which put out the R2 DVD, and the same DVD Discotek is using for their release), decided to transfer the original VHS tape of this "Making Of" special directly to DVD. As a matter of fact, the very beginning of the special starts off by saying Toho Video. So, what we are watching essentially is a copy of the original VHS cassette, which is kind of nostalgic in a way, but also makes one wish that the original source could have been found. The feature is still very informative and in depth on how a lot of the sequences were created, making for an excellent inclusion regardless.Next up is a menu based feature called "About the Film". Now I have never been a fan of these types of features, such as the boring "by the book" ones that AnimEigo does. However, this one is really superb, featuring a huge amount of reports on the film, informative bios on the cast and crew, tons of production stills and concept art which can be clicked on to fit the whole screen. It might be a little overwhelming though, as there are tons and tons of pages to sift through while a couple of their translations also go astray (Godzilla vs. Mega-Girath G and Godzilla vs. Mega-Godzilla), but the information contained within is incredibly in depth. There are also four trailers, including one for this film, of Discotek's four Toho titles.Rounding out the disc are two more features, one a short bio on a play version done of the concept for Bye-Bye Jupiter called "Another Sayonara Jupiter", which is the least interesting of the extras but is exclusive to this release, and another which is a very thorough Photo Gallery. The gallery features background text, with Japanese from the region 2 being seen while Discotek overlapped English translations on top of most of these. The galleries cover the ships, the tons of merchandise released with the film, and stills for the IO production company that was created specifically for this film.Despite the breadth of supplemental content available here, there are still a number of things missing compared to the Pioneer two disc set that was released in region 2. These include three additional making of features that consists of a 46 minute behind the scenes video (showing the cast and crew at a press conference among other things), a 22 minute "TV Clip" segment (which shows Sakyo Komatsu, Koichi Kawakita and his staff discussing the film) and a 45 minute video called "Continuity" (which is a long segment showing all 850 storyboards on a projector). There is also some additional concept art, a commentary track and a "SFX Selection" feature that showcases the scenes of the ships from the movie.Bottom line, if anyone has an interest in the movie, and hasn't already helped themselves to the region 2 set, then Discotek's offering is a must for its English options and easy to swallow asking price.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sayonara ten bucks, February 26, 2011

By 

W. B. Needle (Bonner Springs, Kansas United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sayonara Jupiter (DVD)

Imagine a poorly written, ultra low budget rendition of "2010: The Year We Make Contact" set to an always-present musical score that can only be described as the "B" side of Olivia Newton-John singles sung in Japanese by nobodies. If only this movie were as good as THAT! The horrific music is not only unrelenting, but the movie is repleat with musical interludes featuring song-length servings showing nature scenes or people frolicking on the beach. YES, I'M STILL TALKING ABOUT SAYONARA JUPITER.

The story by itself is interesting; a black hole enroute to collide with our sun, some alien life type discoveries, and a novel way of rescueing the earth. I like all types of sci-fi, including low-budget Japanese film, so I knew what to expect (or so I thought). But the torturous music WILL NOT STOP. At least the stilty dialog and terrible acting is punctuated by a line occasionally being delivered believably, and the wires aren't visible on the ultra-cheapo models. But that music...

Still interested? All scenes seem to take place in only five or six rooms and a small beach area. The giant space station comprise about four of those living room-sized areas with some kind of mission control being the other room. My count might be off, but only because my brain swelling still hasn't gone down. The approach to planets and so forth are all done by the camera zooming in on a grainy still. A few slow-flying laser bullets, too. You know the kind. Get the level of effects here?

STILL interested? Did I mention the fat Japanese Jerry Garcia who heads a Jupiter cult? Yeah, he's intent on seeing the space project stopped. At least he is until his pet dolphin gets bit by a shark. If you want to hear him perform some numbers while watching critters scamper through nature, don't pass up this cinematic gem. Picture the original "True Grit" if Glen Campbell had sung for five minutes every ten minutes. No, not that good, either.

Unless you're buying my copy of this bitterly disappointing afternoon waster (in which case it's the finest film the Academy ever passed over!), please, please, please pass and look elsewhere. I haven't wanted two hours back this badly in a long time. You were warned.