So this is a seriously late review, I’ve been procrastinate on this one… But somehow I managed to post it before Vol.5 came in… (can’t wait for that all green artbox…)
1. Packaging, goodies. Vol.4 includes episode 8 to 10. Episode 8 is a very screwed up off model bad anime style episode, episode 9 tells a very mediocre background story about Michael, episode 10 is a remake of Macross Zero. So this volume is pretty weak compared to the first three volumes, the better episode is episode 10 since I like Macross Zero. First off this is a very BLUE volume… It kinda demonstrate how a Blu-ray packaging should be (blends in well…) The first press goodie is the so called BIRD HUMAN ticket set. It’s very underwhelming, you get one sheet of the introduction of the movie (cast, info etc) (see right picture below), that’s it… And the left ticket is inside the Blu-ray case, so I guess everyone gets it. Below left is an earlier picture from Macross F blog just to compare with the actual product on the right… And here is the cheap sheet scans: And here is the jacket picture: Disc label: The booklet also focuses on two parts this time, first part is the Sheryl clothes section, second is the mecha section. Yeah, it’s all about Sheryl this time! Full page from the above two scans. And here is the picture I found earlier someone made it to corresponds the clothes to the episodes which is also very nice: Then the focus switches to mecha… Other stuff are the same as previous volumes, some ads (mostly 80, 90 catalog titles), Blu-ray disc operation menu, and a Bandai online membership voucher. It’s nice to see Bubblegum Crisis and Gunbuster here. 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 remain the same quality. There are some fixes to the characters so that they look more consistent. About episode 8, I think there’s some fixes to the characters, it doesn’t look as bad as I first time see it, maybe it’s just some illusions… I think I’ll compare with the TVrips if I’ve got that kind of time… Even if there were fixes, the styles of the animation is just totally off… 2.2 The Audio: B+ The audio is again 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 Vol.2 and Vol.3, 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 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 subtitles. 2.4 The extras: B Audio Commentary (haven't listened yet..) Other extras (ads) are quite exciting this time. MACROSS INFORMATION are the usual Macross related ads such as CDs and BD/DVD INFORMATION, Macross ACE PSP game which is a quite good ad. Bandai related ads, there’s Gunbuster this time. 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 
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