Volume 4 of Kimagure Orange Road, one of 12 DVDs that AnimEigo released way back in 2003 for this 1987 television show. This particular release includes episodes 13 through 16. Sadly, the quality on this release continues the set's trend of being lacking, even if it is slightly better than the three DVDs that came before it. A weak video presentation is the main downfall here, which good audio can't help overcome while a lack of extras doesn't help matters either.
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To my surprise this volume does shake things up a bit in the video department. It's enough to be a very, very narrow improvement to what has been done so far from AnimEigo for this series. First, though, let's start with the bad: the intro doesn't seem to work for this disc. For the prior three volumes, an isolated video track of the intro would play before each episode. For volume four, though, the episode just plays right away. Was this intentional? If so, feels odd to introduce this on the fourth DVD of this series.
Intro aside, let's talk about the colors on this release. The worst of the lot here is episode 13, which has a notable teal tint. This tint is particularly overbearing in a few scenes, which look even more washed out than the rest of the episode as a result. Episodes 14 and 15 have a blue tint to them, but it's overall an improvement versus 13. The colors on all three of these episodes are a bit muted, which is par the course so far for these releases. Episode 16, however, is a curve ball. Someone increased the contrast on this episode, producing a better range of colors and even some quasi deep blacks. While it still has a blue tint, it's by far the best AnimEigo has done so far across these first four DVDs.
In terms of source damage, things are improving here as well. The frame is occasionally unstable across the four episodes, but not as frequent as it has been on earlier releases. Episodes 15 and 16 do have some constant source damage on the far right of the frame, though. This is less noticeable on 15, which has a faint yellow tinted line that hugs the edge of the screen, while episode 16's is a bit bigger. Both of these later two episodes also have some rough transitions, with episode 15 having rough transitions where the frame jumps while print damage is seen at the top of screen at the three and five minute mark.
Kimagure Orange Road is presented in its original
aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
| Audio: |
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The audio presentation continues to be the bright spot for these releases. As with the earlier DVDs, each episode features a single audio track, which is the original Japanese presentation in two channel stereo. Clarity in dialogue and music, as there is a concert segment in this episode block, is good, at least for a TV show of this age. There isn't any notable discrepancies in the audio source, which continues to be a surprise given the uneven video sources.
Each episode's audio track can be accompanied by removable English subtitles. There are two options here, with one for limited translations while the other will translate all speech and text.
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If you've read the first three DVD reviews on this TV show you'll know the drill here. Basically, virtually no extras to talk about. The disc does feature a very ugly menu that allows the viewer to select an episode. That episode navigation is the only selectable chapters from the disc. Now most don't really consider a menu an extra, so looking beyond that the only true bonus feature is an extended English credits video. This basically takes the show's outro and overlays captions on the entire screen that translate the show's staff on screen.
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Bottom
line, this is actually the best of the four DVDs so far. That's not enough to raise the overall star ranking, but still nice to see that AnimEigo is going in the right direction. As before, this remains an option to watch the TV show on DVD, but fans are better off seeking the Blu-ray set.
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