~アイモ Aimo~ Macross Frontier マクロスF Blu-ray Disc Vol.2 review

 

 

1. Packaging, goodies.

The packaging is the same as volume 1. The cover art has Ranka and Alto with VF-25 Ozma's fighter on the back. The goodies this time around is way better than volume one's Nyannyan sticker. It is a S.M.S badge set which comes with a separate holder.

show/hide

The badges are made in China, while all the printed material, the blu-ray disc, and the case are all made in Japan. Looks like even the Japanese knows how to cut the corner...  

 

 

The booklet focuses on the mecha this time, about 7 pages are introductions about Ozma's VF-25..

First couple pages are introductions about the episodes.

There's also a character profile page.

 

 

The last page introduces the backgrounds on the macross frontier. Interesting thing about the knife the VF25s using are made from pin-point barrier.

 

Other stuff are some ads and Blu-ray disc operation menu, and a Bandai online membership voucher. It's pretty "slim" compared to last time's.

Bubblegum Crisis OVA has an appearance in the ads:

 

2. Spec, Video Quality, Audio Quality, screenshot comparisons...

Here is the spec:

Video

Codec: mpeg4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

Audio

Japanese: LPCM 2.0

Audio Commentary

Japanese: LPCM 2.0

Disc

BD 25

Bandai/honneamise manages put 4 episodes (acutal content is 3 episodes, but the way of authoring the disc is that they duplicate the video of episode 4, and put the audio commentary on that one, so it counts as four episodes of space) But anyway, the video bitrate doesn't drop because of that. It still got a beautiful full 40Mbps full bitrate transfer.

2.1 The Video: A-

The videos this time around remain the same quality. Episode 4 might be a little brighter. One thing worth noticing is that upon episode 2, we can already see some animation quality drop, especially the characters aren't drawing consistently or oversimplified...

2.2 The Audio: B+

The audio is clean and clear, that's all I can say. It has not too much dynamic range. There's very little if not at all channel separation/directionality are present... LPCM 2.0 seems to be standard nowadays, but for this series, 2.0 is really limiting the Blu-ray capability...

2.3 The Menus and Subtitles: B

Same as the first volume, the menu of this release includes both non pop-up, DVD style always-on menu. Menus are static with no background music; as well as Blu-rays pop-up menu. The difference is that in this volume always-on menu and pop-up menu do NOT share the same design. The pop-up menu is missing the music chapters, the only way you can access the music chapters is thru the always-on menu, which defeats the convenience of what Blu-ray offers. The menu is simple and effective (Not so for the pop-up menu!), navigation is easy and intuitive. But again I would prefer a more Macross related theme...

And again, there's NO subtitle

2.4 The extras: B

Audio Commentary (haven't listened yet..)

Other extras on the disc are MACROSS INFORMATION for Macross related ads such as CDs and BD/DVD INFORMATION for Bandai related ads such as (needs confirmation here.) It's not an extra feature rich disc, but there's a 16 page booklet, I'd rather prefer to have an actual print-out of the "extras".

 

3. Content:

needs more work

Final thoughts:

     add later.

Lastly, booklet scans:

JPEG version:

 

Uncompressed TIFF version (4 parts):

 

 

See You Next Deculture