Nur auf Englisch!
I ordered this Blu-ray because the price was really low (under 2000 Yen). It offers only the first episode, but some extras like a mouse pad, so the price is really fine for Japanese Blu-ray.
I watched the series as fansubs and it’s not the best one this season but I think it’s one of the better. The characters are not the typical archetypes which are so common for the last couple of years, and they even leave out most chances for fanservice. Merry looks similar to other heroines from J.C. Staff shows but she doesn’t act like a Tsundere at all and even the male lead shows sometimes more „character“ than the typical „heroes“ of these shows. The childhood friend that obviously loves him also isn’t as jealous for comedic purposes than in most other anime. I like especially the character design and that the story offers some slight surprises. The series was licensed by Sentai Filmworks a while ago, but they didn’t mention so far if they will release it also as Blu-ray, If they do, I will definitely buy the set.
Packaging:
The illustration on the front of the slipcase was drawn by Yoshitaka Ushiki, the creator of the original manga and the purple and silver background was printed with some metallic tone mixed in. The inside DVD case is thicker than normal to offer enough space the „booklet poster“. The design for its cover uses the anime designs and I think the packaging is really fine – especially for the relatively low price of this Blu-ray.
Supplements:
They put the mouse pad outside the slip case and its as big as the DVD case, so relatively small in comparison to western mouse pads. It uses a very grainy surface and the print suffers from that but I tested it with my mouse and it works really well – much better than other mouse pads I got with games or similar.
Then there’s a small key ring with a SD Merry and the large poster which also acts as the booklet offering interviews with cast and crew and some illustrations.
Disc Contents and other information:
Japanese Name: 夢喰いメリー 1
Region Code: region free
Disc type: BD25
PCXE-50091
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 38999 kbps / 1080p / 23,976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Japanese / LPCM Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1536 kbps / 16-bit
no subtitles
BDInfo: here
Bonus Material:
The only bonus on the disc is a talk / interview with the voice actors Ai Kayano (Isana Tachibana) and Ayane Sakura (Merry Nightmare) that lasts for ~25 minutes (1080i).
Menu Shots:
The menu is simple and uses only a little bit of animation, but I really like the background picture, so here it is as screenshot^^:
Picture Quality / Audio Quality:
It’s the first J.C. staff show I ever bought on Blu-ray and like I suspected they look quite soft. The backgrounds of the show are not generally not very sharp, but that is ftting to the style of the show. Sometimes the character drawings are very soft and sometimes they look like other TV anime series (e.g. Angel Beats! if I remember correctly), not very sharp but offer definitely more details than anime produced in SD. It’s probably not a show with high budget and most times the action scenes really look great so I can live with these compromises.
I only watched some scenes and especially the dream sequences and darker parts look very watched out (which is probably intended) but the real life, daylight scenes (e.g. in school) look fine. I didn’t see artifacts or other problems in the picture so far.
The audio track is normal PCM stereo track.
Screenshots (Lossless PNG 1920×1080, beware of spoilers!):
