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PR: Right Stuf's Nozomi Entertainment Announces the Gasaraki Complete Series DVD Collection




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Echo_City



Joined: 03 Apr 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:11 pm Reply with quote
So there are no new special features? Lame!
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CrownKlown



Joined: 05 May 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:41 pm Reply with quote
Why? The adv is release is fine in terms of quality and is really really cheap. You can get single volumes for 2-5 bucks a piece, and the perfect collection wont cost you too much over 30 bucks.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:00 pm Reply with quote
CrownKlown wrote:
Why? The adv is release is fine in terms of quality and is really really cheap. You can get single volumes for 2-5 bucks a piece, and the perfect collection wont cost you too much over 30 bucks.


It's also more than 10 years old and features hard-encoded subs for stuff like signs and the like. Since then the Japanese have also received a release that features better video and audio. So re-releasing Gasaraki still makes sense.

And then there's the whole fact that buying the ADV release now does nothing to help the industry at this point.
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dragonrider_cody



Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Posts: 2541
PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:10 pm Reply with quote
I already have the ADV singles and art box, so I will be skipping a Nozomi release for a change. I don't see enough here to warrant a double dip, especially for a show I haven't finished watching yet.

It's always good to see license rescues though.
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pajmo9



Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 630
PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:11 pm Reply with quote
If this has remastered video I'll definitely get it. If not I'll probably just steer clear.
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Echo_City



Joined: 03 Apr 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:57 am Reply with quote
Normally Nozomi throws us a booklet or something on their releases. Even releases that they haven't dubbed have bonus features thrown in, but Gasaraki gets nothing. I'm disappointed. Especially as the original bonus features aren't anything too special:

The ADV "behind the scenes" videos with the English VAs total under 5 minutes IIRC, and as they came out in the early years of anime-on-dvd, they're pretty ramshackle. One of these videos only plays in a small frame in a "window" on a dvd menu screen, as memory serves it is a Monica Rial line. Chris Patton also has a behind the scenes video clip. I don't remember the rest exactly (it's been ~10 years) but all together they're under 5 minutes in length.

The Japanese behind-the-scenes is an incredibly boring bit, several minutes long (far longer than the English videos), of a Japanese woman with a cold opening envelops of storyboard drawings(so uncolored, unshaded line drawings) and identifying them. She does it in a voice so monotonous that it makes Ben Stein sound emotive, and she isn't descriptive at all. Examples being: "This is a mecha" "This is Gowa at his mecha".

I had a faint hope that Nozomi would maybe give us some cool packaging as a homage to the cool Gasaraki-printed metal box that ADV came out with, but sadly this is a no-frills production.

There's even a fair bit of material to put into booklets. I recall some bios on the DVDs, and I checked that my DVDs actually have mini-booklet inserts with profiles for the mecha and characters. If Nozomi doesn't at least give us those then this release is a step backward.

I'm glad to see the show on the market again, though I don't think it'll sell well. Fans already have it, people such as myself who enjoyed the show but didn't think it was remarkable (the plot falls to crap at the end, to put it bluntly, and it beats the viewer over the head with blatant activism.), and most everyone else won't give it the time of day.

A mecha show that tried to have plot and a modicum of actual science behind its mecha?! No way the Gundam fans are going to give Gasaraki a chance. They didn't 10 years ago, and I don't see that changing. It's too bad, as I'd much rather have another Gasaraki than another Gundam 00 or Code Geass.
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GhostShell



Joined: 25 Jan 2011
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Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada
PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:01 am Reply with quote
After searching for Gasaraki for a really long time, an acquaintance told me a about a store that sold second hand games that also had a few anime DVDs in a bin for sale. One of the titles in the bin was the ADV complete box set of Gasaraki. Needless to say, I was thrilled and immediately bought it. I quite enjoyed the series. Hopefully, additional anime fans will discover this nifty series through it's latest release. Though I enjoyed the original English dub, I just wish the ADV release, and Nozomi Entertainment's, had 5.1 audio instead of 2.0.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:19 am Reply with quote
Although this was never a favorite of mine (I have only ever watched it through once), it is a series worth keeping in circulation. Its technical merits were quite good for its time, few other series have ever even come close to matching its attention to technical detail in mecha operations, and it has one of the most dense plots of all mecha series. It's worth a look if the more fantastical operations of mecha normally turn you off.
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Echo_City



Joined: 03 Apr 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:33 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Though I enjoyed the original English dub, I just wish the ADV release, and Nozomi Entertainment's, had 5.1 audio instead of 2.0.
An ADV re-dub of the series with all of those classic actors (like what they did with Bubblegum Crisis 2040) is something I would pay for. Sadly I don't think it will ever happen. Several of the actors haven't done anything in years, and at least one has passed on (Mike Kleinhenz).
Quote:
It's worth a look if the more fantastical operations of mecha normally turn you off.
Gasaraki still has a fairly fantastic base. The mecha are deeply rooted in the show's interpretation of Japanese mythology, as is the plot, and the first episode is pretty fantastical. There are some pretty ridiculous mecha action sequences which spit in the face of physics, but the show on the whole is more coherent and believable than any Gundam series ever. Gasaraki is also a very slow-moving show, and features near-silent main characters leaving plot development to the infinitely more interesting side characters (the opposite of Gundam, sadly).
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GhostShell



Joined: 25 Jan 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 12:55 am Reply with quote
Key wrote:
... it is a series worth keeping in circulation. Its technical merits were quite good for its time, few other series have ever even come close to matching its attention to technical detail in mecha operations, and it has one of the most dense plots of all mecha series. It's worth a look if the more fantastical operations of mecha normally turn you off.


Agreed. I much prefer to watch mecha series like this, Patlabor, and Flag because they are grounded a little more in reality compared with Gundam-like mecha. The mecha designs and action was actually what drew me to the series initially, along with the character designs. I thought the animation was very well done for the time that Gasaraki was made.
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CrownKlown



Joined: 05 May 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:41 am Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
CrownKlown wrote:
Why? The adv is release is fine in terms of quality and is really really cheap. You can get single volumes for 2-5 bucks a piece, and the perfect collection wont cost you too much over 30 bucks.


It's also more than 10 years old and features hard-encoded subs for stuff like signs and the like. Since then the Japanese have also received a release that features better video and audio. So re-releasing Gasaraki still makes sense.

And then there's the whole fact that buying the ADV release now does nothing to help the industry at this point.


Ah okay, and we are talking about Gasaraki, right? Its not a bad show, but it was never anything terribly popular, and like I said its not hard to come by. I can understand rerelasing Utena, which is considered a classic, so yeah, updating that show okay. But, we are talking about gasaraki right? Its not like that many people will buy this rerelease anyway.

And of course this rerelease of gasaraki and your what 30-40 bucks are going to save the industry. Godspeed, good sir, Godspeed.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 2:42 am Reply with quote
Second show I started collecting, first boxset I ever bought, first show I finished . . . me and Gasaraki go way back. Loved the politics, loved the social commentary, and above all, loved the mecha. The whole "Japanese mysticism" side of it really dragged the show down, I get the feeling it was only included because of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I mean, Miharu is definitely a Rei clone if there ever was one. spoiler[Well, there were, lots of them, but I'm not talking about the actual clones of Rei.]

The show is still very good even with the funny dancing and the boring leads and the rushed ending. That said, I wouldn't have thought that it would appeal to newer fans, who (as others have mentioned) can get the DVDs fairly cheaply anyway. Re-releasing it seems a strange move, even if most of the hard work is already done (like the dub for example).

What I would love is a re-release of Serial Experiments Lain, which was made in the same year (1998) but is interesting enough (read bizarre enough) to still be sellable. But that's just me.
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