"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

So a little while ago, I live-tweeted a side-by-side comparison on 57 in this tweet thread, since I’ve been doing way too much politics retweeting lately, haha.  Notable changes: we lose Yugo and Yuzu’s whole “I never knew my mother…” conversation for something about Security being there 24-7, with an awkward cut to Yugo quieting her down because of nearby Security, Frank and Amanda keep their names but Tanner->Tarren (likely because they used Tanner on Himuro in 5D’s), we lose the funny record-scratch moment when Frank and Tanner notice Yuya and Selena, and we also had some big time cuts (Crow assuring Yuya he’ll find Yuzu/Yugo and the TELL ME MELISSA intro, some effect-explanation time later on to make up for the additions early on, 4K ironically passing up a chance to break the fourth wall with Melissa) mixed with some smaller ones (like Crow elbowing Frank and Tanner’s heads).

Overall, I thought it was decent; I just wish they’d stick to the material as is instead of reorganizing or cutting in shots to split a scene, or adding lip-flaps for line padding, which happened a bunch here.  The worldbuilding stuff Crow gives us on Tops[iders] and Commons is kept, save for a wine bottle and glass (sorry, Peggy!Roget, no fruit juice for you), and his “When I went out for tuna, I must’ve picked up some nuts” line was gold (re: dimension-hopping).  The Gong/Dennis show is done well enough, save for some extra/cut dialogue.  Dennis still sounds dastardly evil setting his Scales, and his VA overall did a good job with him.  Gallagher is now “Luca Swank?” At least from what I could hear; why this.

Also worth noting that there were some touchups here, like in the scene with Dennis throwing his cards into his other hand (the card backing’s the normal swirl instead of the old oval).  Likely a DVD master, and I wonder if the city backdrop in that wine edit was like that on the DVD or if 4K did an iffy Photoshop job.  Still waiting to see if 61 gets any good touchups…

Now, to look forward to how bad the FOOD VS SMILES rewrite’ll be next week.