The Secret of Crystania

The Secret of Crystania is a full-length feature fandub project created by over 25 members of SPAMM, the Society of Platteville Anime and Maniacs, led by me, Tony, Zach, and Niehaus, and completed in the Spring of 2006.

Production began in late 2004, and later, in December 2013, Zach and Tony completed the "Donut of Power Edition" DVD, which is available above and from the following sources:

The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - DVD (Mega)
The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - DVD (MediaFire)
The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - DVD (Google Drive)

The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - MKV (Mega)
The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - MKV (MediaFire)
The Secret of Crystania: DoPE - MKV (Google Drive)

And here are the credits:

In October 2004, I announced my plans for the fandub.

We held several meetings to develop the characters, story and plot. We wanted to write a completely unique and separate story from the original. We watched the movie several times in Japanese without subtitles. None of us really knew Japanese, so we weren't able to understand it. We created a list of key scenes and plot changes throughout the film, and then brainstormed for ideas. We tried to come up with anything we thought either fit or was funny.

Over the Christmas break, I handed out blank scripts to everyone so would could develop the dialogue. Tony and I were the only ones that actually wrote something. We both wrote nearly complete scripts. Our overall shooting script was a combination of the funnier parts of each script.

We began recording lines soon after. It didn't take long to realize just how massive the scale of this project was after that first night of recording. Recording lines takes quite a while. Plus you need to work with everyone's schedule, in order to get everyone together. Our initial goal was to finish the movie by April 2005. That was simply not feasible.

We gave ourselves another year, and came up with a strict recording schedule of 3 or 4 hours every Monday night. We'd even having some fun recording parties on the weekends to tackle some of the larger scenes with multiple characters. Tony and I would direct the voice actor, while Zach would record. While not recording, Zach would assemble the lines in premiere and put the movie together.

All in all, the movie was completely finished within the hour of its premiere at Plattecon 2006. We screened the movie on Saturday night, and we were still recording lines that afternoon. I think as people started sitting in the screening room, the rendering had just finished on Zach's computer :)

Prior to the fandub, I don't think I had ever actually seen The Legend of Crystania. I only saw parts of it. The animation quality was goofy and weird. Very different than a typical anime of the time. It wasn't until we were watching it as the group developing the story that I realized just how poorly put together it was. It was like a movie version of some show where characters had already been introduced and known, so the film just skipped over that stuff. If you didn't know the characters before, people of new characters just come out of nowhere. It's very confusing.

The Internet at the time hated this movie, too. Abcb has some great reviews on the original movie before the dub:

"Not 5 minutes into the movie I was questioning "why". Why was I sitting there watching this drivel, why is the main character acting like a total idiot, and why oh *why* was I still watching the thing?! The voice acting was, to put things mildly, pathetic. Overacted in some places, just plain *awful* in others. I couldn't really get into the movie whatsoever.." "I can think of other series that could have been licensed other than this one. Truly this LaserDisc deserves to be buried. The only question is whether it would stay there." --JYN, abcb.com

"This has got to be the worst show I've ever watched. I'm still not sure what the story is supposed to be about. There's no real story, and there's no real flow. Characters are thrown into the script indiscriminately. Animation quality is mixed. If this ever gets dubbed in English, I hope it's totally re-written." -- AN, abcb.com

"I hope it's totally re-written" is a very prophetic quote. :)

We screened Crystania at Plattecon 2006 and No Brand Con 2006. After we planned on making a DVD on the movie to distribute to people. But, we started graduating, and going our separate ways. Plus, our motivation was low because we had just completed this massive project and we wanted some time off. Also, creating the DVD was more of a singular effort, rather than the group effort the production took in the first place.

Tony worked on the DVD and created a beta version by summer, but he and Zach were unhappy with some of the imperfections of the film. Some lines were still missing, and a few others weren't timed correctly. Zach vowed to fix them, but time got away from him.

Fast forward almost 8 years later. On Christmas 2013, Zach and Tony completed their edits and released the Donut of Power Edition of Crystania. This edition has the following features:

• A full DVD menu


• Three full commentary tracks


• A remastered audio track with fixes from the previously viewed version


• Behind-the-scenes photos, video, and audio from the production


• Selections from The Secret of Crystania audio book, by Tony


• The single L-to-the-egend of Crystania by Cellblock


• and several other hidden features and files on the disc