Thursday, January 23, 2014

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Nozomi Extras (Part 2)

L to R: Student Council, Black Rose, Apocalypse Sagas + Signet Ring



Now that I've seen it's time to take a look at the extras in the Apocalypse Saga box.




THE MAIN DISCS



The main discs only have trailers for other Nozomi titles. This is probably the one aspect of that is likely to have changed.



Thankfully American discs still have menu selection of trailers without feeling the need to insult the paying customer first.



Based on the trailers I'm now at least somewhat interested in seeing Rental X Magica, and Toward the Terra.



There is also an episode commentary track with Kunihiko Ikihara and Chiho Saito on episode 39. I haven't listened to this as I'm not a particularly big fan of commentaries, but it deserves a mention anyway.



There is also a director's commentary from Ikihara on Adolescence of Utena, which I also haven't listened to.



THE TV SERIES



The final disc in the set includes extras for both the TV series and Adolescence of Utena.



First up in the TV Series extras is a set of animated artboards looking at the backgrounds of Ohtori. As with , several of these images would make nice desktop images or screensavers. These are accompanied by instrumentals from the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack, so there's some nice background music here. This is important given that looking at a slideshow of artboards for 36 minutes isn't to everyone's taste.



Next up is a set of, and I did you not, Dueling Themes Karaoke for about a dozen of the songs. I hope you can read Japanese because the karaoke text is NOT translated. The other point of interest here is that the footage does not appear to have been remastered, which only made me appreciate the remastering of the TV Series more.



There's also a series of apparently untranslated interviews with the director and seiyuus. There are also interviews with the dub actresses which obviously don't need subtitles, but are of limited interest if you haven't listened to the dub.



The TV Series extras are rounded out with the usual TV spots and trailers.



ADOLESCENCE OF UTENA



The major item is a behind the scenes look at the English dubbing that includes some commentary from Ikuhara. Since I haven't seen the dub this is, again, of limited interest to me.



The usual TV spots and trailers round out the extras for Adolescence of Utena.



THE BOOKLET



The liner notes booklet in the Apocalypse Saga is a monster: 129 pages. Once again I haven't been through this in detail but there's some glorious art work, particularly line art work of the characters, and a lot of interviews/background pieces. Definitely something for a devoted student of the series to spend several hours with.



SUMMARY



Overall the Nozomi Apocalypse Saga box comes well supplied with a range of extras. Australian fans would do well to acquire the local release from Hanabee.



[1] This disc doesn't have a set up menu to select subtitles, and attempting to switch the subtitles on with the remote was unsuccessful. So there might be a translation, I just couldn't find it.
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