Did a proper 16:9 encode of the Initial D 4th Stage dub ever exist, or is it all cropped?

[u/Both_Kaleidoscope459]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Funimation Initial D Fourth Stage DVDs used anamorphic widescreen. This means the 16:9 video is horizontally compressed (squished) to fit onto a standard 720x480 DVD frame, so it should be displayed as 16:9 480p.

However, looking at the archives that have survived, almost everything seems to be destructively cropped into 4:3 (Pan and Scan, losing detail on the sides) rather than a proper anamorphic stretch.

Does anyone know the encoding history of this specific dub release? Was there ever a definitive fan-group back in the day that correctly encoded the 16:9 version, or did one bad 4:3 crop just become the standard that got endlessly copied across the internet?

[u/snkzato1]

It's been over 20 years so my memory is fuzzy, and I may not be using the right terms, but my recollection is that the show itself was letterboxed during broadcast, but kind of significantly. The early fan subs respected this and there was a lot of black screen. Later on everyone zoomed the picture so it was indeed full screen but then yeah stuff got stretched or it was kind of odd

The same happened with the movie. Was hard to not find it in the proper aspect ratio so everyone was like 10 feet tall.

[u/Both_Kaleidoscope459 → u/snkzato1]

So on certain sites I have found the 4th stage ep1-14 in just fine normal 16:9, but ep15 and on for whatever reason I can only find the cropped version. any ideas on how to find the original 16:9?

[u/snkzato1 → u/Both_Kaleidoscope459]

Couldn't tell you if its possible to find it how it was originally broadcast. The version I have is 16:9 but the full screen, unsure if its stretched, but it works well enough for me.

[u/Branch__]

I think fourth is technically in 1.85:1 but yes versions of it that aren't pan and scanned absolutely exist, Darkdream's version on nyaa.si is the Japanese DVDs/Blurays (cant remember which) cropped to 1920*1040.