Extras |
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Menus (English) |
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Chapters (24) |
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Trailers: Demon Spies, Shadow
Hunters, Echo
of Destiny |
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Image Gallery |
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Program Notes (English) |
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Character Biographies (English) |
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Captures |
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Review |
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Anthony Romero |
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The 19th live action Toho disc from AnimEigo
holds no surprises over the 18 discs that
came before. All in all, this release is a
little on the weak side, with a decent video
and poor audio presentation, while the extras
do little to turn heads. |
Video: |
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Flawed, but still a good presentation
all around. The colors here, sadly, are a
mixed bag though. They are distinct, but the
entire movie is slightly discolored as it
appears that the magenta level has been set
too high. The brightness level is another
mixed mark. It's not set low enough to completely
obscure any of the scenes, but it is low enough
to give those with a darker set up some trouble
during the many night sequences. As for digital
inconsistencies, the disc is mostly spot on,
but there are some signs of some faint artifacting,
most noticeable in the reds which are slightly
pixilated on this release, a color shade which
is always the most effected by digital compression.
Still, the movie does look sharp, while edge
enhancement isn't overly apparent. The print
used for the transfer also looks to be in
excellent condition as there are almost no
scratches present. Noise levels are also good, with visible grain kept
to a minimum that comes off as more of a natural look.
Demon Spies is presented in its original
aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and is Anamorphic
for widescreen TVs. |
Audio: |
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AnimEigo as usual here; in fact, I could
copy the audio section from just about any
other disc from the company and paste it here
without notice. Anyway, there is one audio
track present: a 2.0 mono track in Japanese.
The condition of the track is a little poor,
sadly, although it at least doesn't have any
hiss or crackle. Its main detractor, though,
is it sounds faint and lacking in clarity,
like you are hearing it from the next room
or there is something blocking the speaker.
The audio can be accompanied by, removable,
English subtitles. Like other discs from the
firm, the subtitles are color coded so it's
easy to tell when multiple characters are
speaking during the same scene. The subtitles
are available in two types: a general one,
and one that only subtitles onscreen Japanese
text. |
Extras: |
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AnimEigo has never been known for their
extras, and this disc is no exception. There
is the usual collection of trailers (Shadow
Hunters, Echo
of Destiny and the film's own trailer)
present... but wait, is that an image gallery?
Is this an extra beyond the trailers on a
AnimEigo disc that is actually worth someone's
time to look over? In short, yes. The image
gallery runs for 3 and half minutes and shows
off 42 production stills from the movie, 12
color and 30 black and white. The quality
of the photos ranges from good to fair, with
some being heavily washed out while others
are discolored.
Beyond this "upset" in AnimEigo's
collection of extras, it's business as normal
here as some program notes and character biographies
round out the disc. Unfortunately, AnimEigo
has changed the presentation of these, as
they are now videos instead of a series of
pages that can be scrolled through. It's still
text based, but now it changes automatically
to the next slide, so one will have to have
the pause button ready on some of the more
text heavy parts. The compression here also
makes it difficult to read, especially on
the very
dry character biographies. On the positive
side, at least the program notes cover some
of the crew of the film in detail, although
it would been nicer had these segments been
separated, and selectable on their own, instead
of having to sift through the program notes
to see them. |
Overview: |
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Bottom
line, Demon Spies is a decent release at best,
although even that might be stretching for
it. To be fair, it's not bad, but there is
really nothing commendable about the release
either. The $30 asking price is way too high
for this DVD too, and probably should have
been sold at a budget level. |
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