Review of Urotsukidoji: Perfect Collection

Introduction

OK, lets start with some background on the story…

Legend has it that there are three worlds, the human world, the world of the man-beasts and the demon world and that the Overfiend will arise every 3,000 years to rebuild the worlds into his vision. The story centres on 4 main characters and explorers their relationship with the Overfiend and the possible end of the 3 worlds. The story has plot twists and a level of depth that is unusual with this kind of production. That should give you a vague idea of what this Anime (Style of Japanese Animation) is about.

Long regarded as a classic in it’s genre, it was one of the first anime series to explore the darker side of the art, its graphic depiction of both sex and violence is both shocking and alarming.

This Region 0 DVD set presents the original 1987 Japanese 5 part OVA (Original Video Anime) series in a virtually uncut format over 2 DVDs. The series has previously only been available in the US and UK on edited (and substantially cut) movie versions called ‘Legend of The Overfiend’ and ‘Legend of the Demon Womb’. This DVD version contains about an hour of extra footage over the movie versions, some of which is extremely graphic but all of which adds to the plot. The 2 DVD’s are broken down into the original 5 episodes of about 50 minutes each rather then in a continual movie style format. Episodes 1-3 are on disk 1 and 4-5 on disk 2.

Video

The animation itself is very visually stunning with some quite complex scenes and good quality stylised artwork throughout.

The DVD’s visuals however are not quite so stunning, the video is presented in its original full frame format and for the most part the image is clean and problem free however the master is defiantly showing its age and on some scenes colour bleed and small artefacts can be clearly seen.

Don’t however let that put you off, the picture quality is far better then any other version of this I have seen and is very watchable, its just not as good a transfer as some other anime DVD’s of the same period I have seen of late. It is also a shame to see this lower quality of transfer on such an expensive disk.

Audio

On the soundtrack front, it is in Japanese as it was originally recorded.

There is no English dub on this version, which IMHO is no bad thing, as the few that exist are either not very good or ‘presumably’ do not cover the extra footage. However there are full English subtitles on the disk that are concise and mostly accurate throughout.

The Japanese soundtrack is presented in Stereo (as recorded) and is clean and hiss free. Dialog comes over nice and crisp and the music that accompanies lots of scenes comes over clearly.

Features

The presentation of the two discs is fair with functional but non-animated menus.

There is also a small one-page text feature called ‘Meet Mr. Maeda’ which gives a little background on the person who created the series and a small video feature that gives a little background on the origins of anime. There are also a handful of trailers for other anime series.

If you have a DVD-Rom there is a small selection of stills from the feature along with some information on the associated comics and web links, however it’s PC only.

Conclusion

OK, despite the minor picture quality issues and lack of real extras, I can thoroughly recommend this DVD to anyone who is a fan of the series or who is a fan of anime in general. The DVD seems to have been designed with the fan in mind with a good subtitle track and the original language soundtrack rather then a cheaply produced dub that has ruined so many releases. The presentation is far better then any VHS edition and the extra 50 minutes of footage does flesh out the story somewhat and fill in some plot blanks left by previous cut versions.

All in, it`s probably the best version of this anime you are likely to get and although it is not to everyone’s taste due to its extreme content. I personally regard it as one of the classics of its medium, even if I don’t watch it all that often and if you want it this DVD is the way to get it.

This disk is NOT for children, the Manga:UK 18 release that is available on VHS here in the UK was considered explicit after it had had more then an hour cut out. This version is presented with minimal cuts and is definitely not for anyone who is offended by violence or sex.