Nur in English:
I ordered the Blu-ray from Amazon.co.jp so I got the disc a little bit later than other people who ordered from for example CD-Japan, because Amazon seems to wait now for the release date before they send their stuff (it was the same for the Clannad Blu-ray box).At least DHL Express only took 2 days for the delivery but I had again to pay more customs than necessary -_-.
But now I have my favorite movie of 2009 on Blu-ray in my hands, so I’m happy^^. In the following „First Look“ I try to avoid spoilers and I only created screenshots of the beginning of the movie. I will probably create more screenshots from other scenes with spoilers, but will post them on my other website later.
Packaging
Here’s a „group photo“ with the 1.01 DVD and the 1.11 BD:
The packaging follows the general idea of a simple color from 1.01 and the rest is very similar to the 1.11 BD set. I prefer these simple designs to the international mecha-related artworks but I totally understand why a simple design can’t be used in Western countries.
Supplements
There’s a booklet, a flyer and the „First Press“-only film strip. This time I got at least a main character: A jealous Misato^^.
I was surprised that there isn’t any character illustration at all in the booklet, but I’m looking forward to the German release because Universum Anime said that there will be a booklet, so I will then be able to actually understand what’s written there^^.
Disc Content
BDInfo: Here
Disc type: BD50 (code free)
These are photos from the menu. The last one shows the menu background.
As promotional extras there are a teaser, a trailer, a „Train channel spot“ (obviously without sound^^), a Trailer for Yahoo!Japan, 2 TV spots for the BD/DVD, a Promotional Reel (the one from TAF2010) for the BD/DVD and 7 TV spots for the cinema release (all 1080p). Then there’s the complete Japanese script.
Rebuild of Evangelion 2.02 is a 22:29 „Making of“ in the style of the one on 1.01/1.11 discs. That means different stages of animations are shown to background music. It’s sometimes very interesting to see what is done by computer and what is done traditionally. Furthermore, it’s also very visible how much filters help to remove the computer generated look.
There also 4 deleted scenes on the disc that look very rough and are only storyboards, but they are fully „dubbed“. The first scene (!:08) shows presents Toji, Kensuke, Kaji, Misato, Shinji and Asuka on a train.
Rei and Ritsuko get 45 additional seconds.
Kaji and Shinji get another 41 seconds.
The last scene (0:58) features Misato, Makoto Hyuga, Shigeru Aoba, Ritsuko, Maya Ibuki and another person I didn’t recognize.
Then there’s the climax of the movie in the „NOGUCHI“ version (4:57), that means that there’s now some clapping to the music included, similar to the clapping in „Komm Süßer Tod“ in End of Evangelion.
Picture Quality
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC High Profile 4.1 (31824 kbps)
The movie looks very similar to 1.11, that means it looks great^^. Unfortunately, some computer animations are now better „visible“ but that’s always the problem with Blu-rays. Perhaps I will add more when I watched the entire movie.
Audio Quality
DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 16bit (2370 kbps)
Dolby TrueHD Audio 6.1 16bit (2370 kbps)
Dolby Digital 2.0 (640 kbps)
And there are Japanese subtitles.
I only checked some scenes and the surround mix used the surround speakers very well so far.
Screenshots
All screenshots were created with DGIndexNV and were saved lossless as PNG.
Conclusion
Like expected this Blu-ray is probably one of the best of recent anime movies. The bonus material isn’t spectacular but an improvement to 1.11. Unfortunately, they still didn’t think about the large potential number of importers so that there are still no English subtitles…
When I find find fansub subtitles I will post them here.
Update: The UTW-Thora subtitles should be better than existing ones (I will watch the movie next time on sunday and will test them then).
By the way, the legit Hong Kong version will have English subtitles.