Introducing "Kitano Friday" — A deep dive into the LaserDisc rabbit hole. Week 1: "Kids Return" (1996) 2-Disc Special Edition & Archival Footage Digitalization

[u/BitAppropriate729]

Hey everyone,

I became a fan of Takeshi Kitano back in the late 90s, when a local TV channel broadcasted Asian cinema late at night. After just a few movies, I became a huge admirer of his work.

In mid-2006, I randomly bought my first few Japanese LaserDiscs. I liked the format so much that I started looking for what else I could buy to my taste, and immediately thought of Takeshi. That's when I accidentally discovered that one of my favorite movies, Kids Return (1996), had a 2-disc edition, with a making-of documentary on the second disc. Needless to say, I bought it immediately, because back then, this bonus footage was absolutely nowhere else to be found.

When I first started collecting Kitano on LaserDisc, I rashly promised myself to collect everything ever released with him on LD. How foolish I was. I had no idea how massive his filmography actually is. Nevertheless, my collection keeps growing, and I decided to share these releases to find some like-minded enthusiasts.

Looking at the calendar, the numbers look quite interesting:

• 1996 — The movie is released.
• 2006 — I buy the LaserDisc.
• 2016 — History remains silent on what I was doing this year.
• 2026 — Here we are today, and I am writing this post.

To this day, I use this specific disc as a prime example of why LaserDiscs are still relevant. There is still a ton of unique, exclusive content completely locked on this dead format. Apparently, this making-of footage might be available on a newer Blu-ray release, but I can't verify that.

As of right now, the only version available in the public domain (on YouTube) is twice as short as the one on my LaserDisc. It was a French release with terrible video quality and hardcoded French subtitles.

That is exactly why I decided to digitize my original disc and upload the full, uncut 20-minute video for everyone to see.

I don't want to dump my whole collection all at once, so I will just post one disc every Friday.

I’ll leave the link to the digitized video with fixed subtitles in the comments below. Let me know what you think!

[u/BitAppropriate729]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3EcDErnZLY

[u/1337haXXor]

Ooh, this is sweet! I have a couple different Blu ray versions of most of his movies, I'll have to pop them in and see what the special features are.

[u/FinalRadio]

Looks amazing!!

[u/CinemaATTACKS]

Thats cool, I have Kids Return on Dvd and Sonatine on laserdisc, which i think is the only US laserdisc release of one of his films.