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Typically when an anime airs, it's resolution is 1280x720 and gets downscaled
to 853x480, 640x360, or even upscaled to 1920x1080. However, one of the odd
things I noticed about Grisaia no Rakuen is that it has black bars on the top
and bottom; removing these black bars shows it's true resolution: 1280x544,
which is particularly odd. Is there a reason why they drew/animated/produced
Grisaia series at a weird resolution?


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2015-07-13T05:10:56.583
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2017-11-28T03:33:04.900
2017-11-28T03:33:04.900
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anime-production grisaia
Why does all of Grisaia anime series have a weird video format?


According to [a Gigazine article](http://gigazine.net/news/20150505-grisaia-
machiasobi14/) that reported on [a 2 May 2015 panel at Machi
Asobi](http://www.machiasobi.com/events/grisaia.html) featuring some of the
Grisaia staff, it seems that Tensho (the director) just really wanted to do an
anime fully in a cinematic aspect ratio (2.35:1 / 21:9 / Cinemascope) and
refused to compromise on this point. Tensho does not appear to have elaborated
on his motivations, at least not at this particular panel. So, chalk it up to
directorial whim, I guess?

Incidentally, according to [a tweet by
Tensho](https://twitter.com/tensho_tw/status/518818557488930816), Grisaia no
Kajitsu was in fact the first television anime to be produced entirely in
Cinemascope. Apparently, they had to place a special order for paper with that
aspect ratio since they wanted to draw on paper that was genuinely the right
size (rather than just taping over the top and bottom of standard 16:9 paper).

I should add: [according to
Anibin](http://anibin.blogspot.com/2014/10/1_99.html), Grisaia no Kajitsu was
actually produced at a native width of 1920 pixels (equivalent to 1080p
video), so its "true" resolution is roughly 1920x822, not 1280x544. This is
still something of a rarity (I think with the exception of Kyoto Animation?),
though we're seeing more shows pop up in full 1080p nowadays, e.g. Working!!!,
airing now (in summer 2015).


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2015-07-25T05:29:07.943
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