DVD Title
Lupin the 3rd: Farewell to Nostradamus
International Title
Lupin the 3rd: Farewell to Nostradamus
DVD Length Original Length
98 Minutes 98 Minutes
Company Year of Manufacture
Funimation 2005
Language Subtitles
Japanese, English English
Region Number of Discs
1 1
Aspect Ratio Sound
1.85:1 2.0 Mono/Stereo, 5.1 Surround
Extras
.
Menus (English)
.
Chapters (21)
.
Trailers: Galaxy Railways (US), Degrassi, Dragonball Z (US), Yu Yu Hakusho (US), Baki the Grabbler (US)
.
Character Profiles
.
Q&A on Nostradamus
Captures
Review

I will attest that this is my first Funimation title, and I can safely say I was left unimpressed in the least, especially given the inflated retail price. Of course, overpriced DVDs are nothing new for Toho fans; in fact, they have been there since the dawn of the format, with Criterion's Seven Samurai release, and have perpetuated even to this day. However, one would hope that companies realize that they need to at least warrant the larger price tags with something to boast. Be it supplemental content like Criterion, superior video quality like (some) AnimEigo discs, or a mixture of the two like Geneon's portfolio, something should stand out. Unfortunately, nothing about this release is particularly good. The better aspects, like video and audio, are simply mediocre, while the extra content is fairly meaningless.


 Video:

Pretty sub-par quality video quality here, and fairly disappointing given that this is a 2005 release. It would seem that Funimation went to the trouble of including their own US version of the film, with the altered title and credits, along with the Japanese one. Unfortunately, it would appear that they did some noticeable compression on the two versions. Of the two, the Japanese one fares much worse, with a larger degree of artifacting. Both presentations look slightly blurred as well, despite some heavy edge enhancement on Funimation's part that has resulted in some halos around objects.

Fortunately, other aspects of the disc are presented much better, although there isn't much to gush about with genuine praise. The colors, for example, while not bad on this release could have done with a slightly more lush array. The print used in the transfer is thankfully in good shape with few scratches. Noise levels are also good with what appears to be only minor grain, although it's difficult to gauge with the level of pixilation.

Farewell to Nostradamus is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.


 Audio:

It's always disappointing to see companies place tremendous care in the dubbed tracks, and then seemingly slap on the original Japanese audio as a afterthought. As is the case with Funmation's release here. The two English dubbed tracks are presented well, excluding the awful voice acting, with a nice speaker distinction present in both the 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround. Furthermore, there are no distortions to be heard in either track. To Funmation's credit, the Japanese audio, the third track on the disc, also fares well, with dialogue being crystal clear. However, it's only a mono presentation that was doubled to two channel, so of course there is no speaker distinction, and it's unfortunate that this wasn't given a more lush multi-channel presentation like the other tracks.

The audio can be accompanied by, removable, English subtitles that correspond to the Japanese track or the English dub.


 Extras:

Nothing much of interest here. There are a slew of trailers present, but all of them are ones that Funimation made themselves instead of going with the original Japanese ones. It's also disappointing that none of these are of the other Lupin features.

The other two extras are text based, with one being a character biographies list and the second being a Q&A on the life of the prophet Michael Nostradamus, whose work is mentioned in this film and will also be recognizable to Toho enthusiasts for the 1974 film Prophecies of Nostradamus (yes, I was just waiting for an excuse to bring it up...). Both of these extras are fairly lackluster though, with the character bios being obvious information from the film while the Nostradamus segment is information that could easily have just been Googled.


 Overview:

Bottom line, this is a pretty ho-hum effort from Funimation. If one is interested in simply seeing the film, then this release will more than suffice, but it certainly isn't as pretty looking or as content packed as it could have been, or probably should have been given the $30 price tag.

- Anthony Romero  
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