Released in the Summer of 2017, this set includes a Blu-ray, DVD and an Ultraviolet copy of Godzilla Resurgence, aka Shin Godzilla. All in all, Funimation does a solid job with this release, offering a great video presentation and a good audio presentation, although it is notably weak when it comes to supplemental content.
As a side note, this review focuses on the Blu-ray in the set, since the DVD is sold as a stand alone.
| Video: |
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For this Blu-ray release, Funimation gives us a modified take on the original Japanese version. It contains the original title sequence, but removes other Japanese text that was burned in. This includes text for locations and characters as they were introduced, which is now moved to the subtitle tracks and is welcomely removable if desired.
As for the presentation, this is a 1080p, high definition transfer. The movie looks sharp, with nice details in the frames on city scapes and other zoomed out views of the destruction as its happening. The brightness level is also great, set at just the right level to make details easy to see while still giving the viewer rich, true blacks. However, the colors are on the duller side, rarely vibrant and often the movie comes off like there is a slight yellow tint to the video track.
Shin Godzilla is presented in a slightly cropped 2.40:1 aspect ratio, versus its 2.39:1 original scope.
| Audio: |
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Two different audio tracks are found on the Blu-ray for the movie.
The first track is the movie's original Japanese, presented in 3.1 surround presentation with Dolby TrueHD. The track has no notable discrepancies, with clear dialogue and no audio issues. In terms of the surround presentation, the sound effects are partially sampled, and many don't take advantage of the added soundscape. This isn't true for all effects, though, such as the pushed debris while Godzilla is in its second form which do have better dynamic range. In general, though, the dialogue is pushed toward the center, while the music is used for the side speakers.
The second track is a 3.1 surround presentation, also with Dolby TrueHD, featuring the movie's English dub. This was my first experience with the dubbing for the film and, I can say with no hesitation, we were incredibly lucky that we didn't have to suffer through it during the US theatrical run. There is pretty much no passion in the line delivery, and while much of the boardroom meetings themselves are meant to convey the mundane, the Japanese one had a sense of humour at times that is lost in the performances in the dub. Furthermore, pronunciation is sometimes very poor, like at one point Haneda Airport is pronounced "Han-e-duh" rather than "Ha-ne-duh". Overall, viewers are better off sticking with the Japanese version for this film, although both have comparable audio quality in terms of clarity and speaker range for the surround presentation.
Included with the audio are two English removable subtitle tracks. One just translates onscreen text, or where text would have been. This is commonly seen for the titles of all the officials as they are introduced. The other track translates both this and the Japanese dialogue into English.
| Extras: |
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The Blu-ray in this set is pretty light on extras. It does contain quite a few trailers, including ones for fellow Toho features Attack on Titan (2015) and Attack on Titan Part 2 (2015). However, all of the trailers are US ones created by Funimation to promote their titles. Thankfully, many of these are pretty good from a creation stand point, and other than the Black Butler the Movie they tend to favor the original Japanese audio versus the dub. The big negative here, though, is the total lack of trailers for Shin Godzilla.
Next up is a 33 minute feature called "Godzilla vs the Nerds". This has Funimation brand manager Paul Fruge II conducting a roundtable interview of three fans of the Godzilla franchise. Those fans are Matt Frank, comic artist for the IDW Publishing titles such as Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth #1 through Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth #25, Ben Cortez, Digital Content Coordinator at Funimation, and Eric Tipton, Senior Manager of Digital Media Planning at Funimation. Together they chat about the movie and elements of it. This includes themes and the music, which has a bit of a goof as they talk about composer Shiro Sagisu and his work on Neon Genesis Evangelion and this film... but cut away to a segment from the 2016 movie that plays Akira Ifukube's theme from King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). Sadly, the extra could be better. It's mostly held back due to Matt Frank being the only star, and the others feeling like Funimation did minimal effort by just grabbing some of their employees who happened to be fans. All in all, it might have been better had Matt Frank been the sole speaker, although the best approach to this concept would have been to get three fans who are as influential and knowledgeable as Matt Frank. The latter is particularly important, as the Funimation speakers don't seem to have the chops to spar with Frank on the series as a whole. For example, at one point one of the speakers lumps everything past the Showa series as being in the Millennium series, citing both Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). During that same conversation, where they try and state their favorite roars, he goes on to praise the "totally new" roars of the Godzilla in Shin Godzilla... even after Matt Frank had previously already noted that they were sampled from other entries in the series rather than being new.
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Bottom line, this is a great way to pick up the 2016 Godzilla movie. While some cool extras, like the deleted scenes or even just trailers for the movie, would have been welcomed this release at least soars in respects to both the video and audio quality on it.
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