プラネテス Planetes Blu-ray Box - the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise (Blu-ray Review)

 

 

 

 

プラネテス, Planetes Blu-ray Box is the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise, looks like Bandai has finally got the Java stuff together.

In this review, I’ll first focus on introducing BD-J function. In short the whole set is a very good looking HD title, especially consider this was done in 2003 from Sunrise and NHK. Sound wise, this title includes a newly remixed Dolby TureHD5.1 audio with 24bit depth which will rock your house. All the extras features from previous DVD release has been ported to this Blu-ray edition, including the commentary pot, audio drama, audio commentary for select episodes, clean opening, ending, lots of lots still image galleries.

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New Blu-ray exclusive features have been produced (PIP commentaries for episode 1 and 26, with all features in HD presentation. I really can’t think of any problem from this set (maybe including Japanese subtitle?), which sells at a “reasonable” price for six discs with a Box and 16 page booklet on Amazon (by Japanese Blu-ray pricing scheme…)

To me, this is the one of the three best Blu-ray boxsets I “got” in 2009 (other two are Darker than Black Season 1 and Kanon)

 

 

 

 

1. BD-J Menu:

 

 

Usually menu stuff is NOT on my first topic, but this one is the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise, I want to make the emphasize on it. The disc is pretty much built on the Ghost in the Shell TV sets, which has a “Disney chapter style” so that when pop-up menu is activated, the whole video window squeezes into a corner, allows a clearer view of the chapter selection or other function (I call this Disney style because I see this pretty much on every Disney’s BD). What a big improvement over the previous BDs, or probably all anime BDs released in Japan so far is the bookmark function. This is a supposedly standard function on all Hollywood discs, but it’s my first time to see on a Japanese anime disc. The bookmark function uses the standard “Green” button to add a custom chapter points so that user can view it the next time. This is a compromised approach to compensate the lacking of auto-resume feature on BD-J titles.



The other improvement includes an overriding time bar, in place of the Blu-ray player’s built-in time bar. It gives more customized feeling over the standard time bar.

 

 

The menu also has click sound (requires machine decoding the audio to hear it, no bitstreaming). The click sound can be turned off which is a big plus. The sound effect fits the show quite nice, doesn’t annoy me.

 

 

The whole disc has a very clean interface, the navigation is quite easy. The disc contains both a pop-up menu and a title menu. Pop-up menu gives chapter selection and audio setting. Title menu is where you can access all the special features.

 

A special note on the “return” key, when the content is NOT resumable (when the video is end and back to the top menu), this key will be disabled.

 

Bandai has certainly put a lot of effort into making this set. I really appreciate the amount of work, and the special care put into it.

 

 

2. The video

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This show was produced in 2003 and 2004, and previously had been broadcasted on Bs-hi in HD. The video is in 1080i, and it looks really great, the lines are well defined with no aliasing issues, the colors are well rendered without any trace of color banding or edge enhancements (EE). It is by leaps and bounds better than Ghost in the Shell TV series produced at about the same time which also claimed from HD master. The best part is certainly the opening, which is really sharp and detailed, and you’ll get drawn into the show immediately. The actual content still looks spectacular, but not as impressive as the opening.

 

 

 

The animation quality is top notch from Sunrise, with paying particular attention to details on outer space life, especially the weightless scenes. Characters designs are attractive, and multi-cultural races are drawn with recognizable features. The background are well drawn and shows a lot of details on space objects.

 

 

 

3. The audio

 

 

The boxset provides two flavors, one newly remixed 5.1ch Dolby TrueHD lossless track with 24 bit depth (quite rare in TV anime), and one original LPCM 2.0 mix. I don’t think there’s too much difference between the two tracks in terms of background music or character lines, at least not so obvious during the time I switch between the tracks. (I’m not familiar with the original mix any ways…) [The reason I mention this BGM change is because the previous two shows directed by Goro Taniguchi, Infinite Ryvius (1999) and s-cry-ed (2001) had dramatic change in 5.1ch remix for their DVD release, s-cry-ed didn’t even provide its original 2.0 mix] In terms of the audio quality, the 5.1ch Dolby TrueHD track is really a treat to the ears and can fully demo how your home theater system can sound. Upon the opening song, you’ll be immediately drawn into how much bass they put in there, and the use of surrounds are just so great. The surround sound are always present and never muted unlike some cheap 5.1ch mix. The front stage directionality are good, you can hear people floating around in space and talking from their respective place. The center channel clarity is great with clear voice. The only problem with the mix is sometimes the BGM volume is too high that could overthrow character voice a little bit, but not too often.

 

 

 

The interview on Director Goro Taniguchi from the booklet specifically talked about the 5.1 mix renewal process, and compared it with previous works such as Infinity Ryvius and s-cry-ed.

 

 

4. Special features

 

 

The commentary pot and audio commentary are ported from previous DVD release, as well as the audio drama which is spread out on all six discs. Disc 5 is heavy on the non-credit op/ed, fixed animation, digital gallery stuff; while disc 6 includes some newly produced Blu-ray exclusive features such as PIP commentary for episode 1 and 26 (once again they drink beer), and sound element collecting report from Tsukuba space center. And what’s most importantly, all features are presented in HD with very good quality.

 

 

 

The commentary pot feature starts the episode normally, but will pause on some interesting spots from time to time and zoom in to show some notes/commentary. Only LPCM 2.0 audio is available when this feature is on.

 

 

 

And the booklet talks about the sound remixing, change of lyrics in opening, HD video source, commentary pot feature, etc.

5. The contents:

Well, this is actually the first time I finished this show. Last time I tried this show, I stopped at episode 4 and thought it was rather some what uninteresting. This time I got it through, especially the first disc thanks to the HD quality and the amazing audio. I think from the second disc and on, the show got a lot more interesting (particularly the Ninja episode and Fee’s revenge on stopping her from smoking episode).

There are lots of humorous moments for the first 10 or so episodes, then the show takes a deeper look at the other characters, particularly Yuri who had a very sad past. Other characters such as Ravi, Kacho (Philippe), and the temporary worker Edel give their moment or episode as well.

The character I like the most is NOT the crews from Debris section, but the girl Nono whom Hachimaki happened to meet at the hospital. Although she is 12 years old, she looks very mature and tall due to her being born on Moon (so call Lunarian). Her body couldn’t stand the gravity on the earth thus she’s been living on the Moon for her whole life. When Hitomi’s first insert song “a secret of the moon” is heard, and the image transit from the Nono in Astronaut suit in space to swimming suit on earth, that’s one heck of a tear jerking moment.

What is a real turn down is the last couple episodes, which the show suddenly changed to a more serious tone, and switch the theme from space garbage collection to sudden space exploration and war… This is a too much change for me that I find rather jarring. The main character Hachimaki suddenly became a very ambitious guy aiming at getting onto the Jupiter exploration team and got a rival Hakim which is a terrorist in disguise… Plus Hachimaki’s previous girlfriend Claire suddenly became a terrorist too… This change is just way too much for me. But the last episode has a rather sweet ending and clear everything out, especially seeing how noble Ai Tanabe is to give up on grabbing the air tank from Claire when she had the chance makes some tear jerking moments.

 

So to summarize, I like the middle part of the show, which is from about episode 6 to episode 17, plus the epilogue. The beginning is rather uninteresting, my opinion about it didn’t change on second time viewing. And the last part there’s too much change in it which I don’t like that much. But this show still gets high rating (8.5/10) from me, maybe partly more due to the strong technical area (animation, video, sound, etc). This is a good effort from director Goro Taniguchi, which now I have finished watching all his directorial works including Infinite Ryvius (1999), s-cry-ed (2001), Planetes (2003), Gun x Sword (2005), Code Geass (2006), and Code Geass R2 (2008). I think I would rate this show after Infinite Ryvius and Code Geass as the most enjoying show from him.

 

Lastly, get booklet scans and image captures in orginal 1920*1080 resolution saved in png format from CoreAVC 2.0 this time HERE.