Butchery! (And a hasty retraction...)

Well, the "l33t-raws" version of Tsubasa showed up, and I just watched it, and guess what??

Widescreen!!

Not only that, but there's a little bit at the beginning of the OP that isn't there on the Saiyaman raw either.

So I guess the reputation I heard about them accurate then. I thought it was just because the encoding was a little overdone, but that it's actually cropped and edited... Well, it may not be their fault entirely depending on where the broadcast was recorded from, I guess. Often, certain networks use cropped versions to "fill" normal screens, and most production design accounts for that sort of thing.

But now that there's a widescreen version, I can happily continue my faith in Bee-Train that they're not needing to compromise so much in order to get something aired on prime-time.

UPDATE: Due to someone finding my page via a Google query of "Tsubasa Chronicle HDTV", I've discovered that Saiyaman has since posted an "HDTV" version. However, since it's actually a smaller file than their original, I'm guessing it's not actually hi-def, but just the widescreen standard-def version a la l33t's. Though I am going to follow that search a little closer to see if there's really, truly a hi-def raw available somewhere! Stay tuned...