Appleseed Ex Machina (Japan - Pony Canyon) pics and impressions

[kannisto]

I received this Appleseed Ex Machina Premium Edition Japanese release today, on the release day (from Amazon Japan).

This is a 4 disc release, with HD DVD as 4th disc.

Disc 1: Standard Japanese DVD release (NTSC region 2)
Disc 2: DVD extras disc (NTSC region 2)
Disc 3: English audio / Japanese subtitles DVD release (NTSC region 2)
Disc 4: HD DVD

Pics of the whole package:

#1 Unopened case (front, back, side):


#2 Everything from inside:


#3 Discs:


#4 Booklets:


#5 Backside of disc case and postcards:


Specs of the HD DVD:
Video: 16:9 MPEG4/AVC 1080p
Audio: Japanese TrueHD 5.1 (24bit), English DD+ 5.1 1023 Kbps (16bit), Japanese 2ch DD+ commentary track
Subtitles: Optional English and Japanese
Extras: PiP: some kind of Tech Spec / 3DCG Anime explanations during movie
Menu: Japanese/English menu labels that turn from one language to another over time

From my quick peeks so far the PQ looks fine. I'm working on getting some screencaps of this, to be posted soon. I will also provide more detailed impressions when I've had time to watch the movie.

The English subtitles are with a relatively bold white font that has a narrow black outline, they look pretty nice.

[kannisto]

Screencaps from the early part of the movie:







There's quite a lot of action in low light in the early part, difficult to get static sharp screenshots as there's some motion blur almost all the time.

I'll try to get some more caps later when I've watched the movie.

[kannisto]

Some more screencaps:

[kannisto]

And the last 4:

[ahsoka]

Thanks for the great pictures as usual! YesAsia shipped my copy today so I'll recieve it by the end of next week.
Looking forward to it even more now after seeing your pics. If possible could you list what the extras are regarding the music? I know that Haruomi Hosono/HASYMO has made some of the music and they are among my my favourite artists. Also like other artists on the soundtrack such as Cornelius and Towa Tei.

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by ahsoka

Thanks for the great pictures as usual! YesAsia shipped my copy today so I'll recieve it by the end of next week.
Looking forward to it even more now after seeing your pics. If possible could you list what the extras are regarding the music? I know that Haruomi Hosono/HASYMO has made some of the music and they are among my my favourite artists. Also like other artists on the soundtrack such as Cornelius and Towa Tei.

On the HD DVD disc there don't seem to be any Music related special features. HD DVD has:
- Bookmarking feature (button A makes a bookmark)
- Tech Spec On/Off (button B can be used to toggle)
- Animatics On/Off (button C can be used to toggle)
- Animatics Type 1 / Type 2 (button D can be used to toggle)

Animatics Type 1 shows the main movie in the whole screen with a smaller PiP window near the right bottom corner. Type 2 shows main movie in a smaller window on the left and PiP window on the right next to it. It seems all through the movie a bit rough looking 3DCG version of the same part of the movie is available through the PiP window.

Tech Spec On introduces a kind of info tab near the left top corner whenever a new character or something that requires an introduction appears for the first time. By pressing Enter on the PC (I guess some other key on remote control), a textual window screen explaining something about the character (or whatever it is) appears in Japanese. At least in PC environment the movie pauses at that point until user quits the textual info. Unfortunately this text info is not available in English (I tried in both audio modes and with English subs on and Japanese subs on, this Tech Spec text was always in Japanese).

The pop up menu also pauses the movie when it is accessed and shows a background image. It seems the pop up menu works as expected on a standalone player so that playback continues while it is accessed. Only on my PC environment it paused the movie. On the PC environment when user chooses to "Resume movie" it continues from the point where pop up menu was accessed.

Disc 2 (SD DVD) has different extras, those are:
- Unscreened Movies
- Music Archives
- Movie Archives
- Design
- Design Archives
- Monitor
- Staff Profile
- Cast Profile
- Key Word
- Character

Music Archives menu contains a list of artists and 3 of those have associated "music videos". Those show a song together with some sequences from the movie. It's in SD so it doesn't look perfect.

- Hasymo: Rescue (music video available)
- Wagdug Futuristic Unity: Ill Machine (xUltra Brain) (music video available)
- Lina Ohta: Puzzle Riddle (music video available)

For other music artists there's just textual info available in Japanese:
- Towa Tei
- Cornelius
- Rei Harakami
- m-flo
- RADIQ a.k.a. Yoshihiro Hanno
- Aoki Takamasa
- Technoboys Pullcraft Green-Fund
- Tetsuya Takahashi

I still didn't have time to watch the movie yet but I took some more peeks and it seems to have great use of music in action scenes pretty much like Vexille (which is natural since it's from the same creators). Those action scenes seem to be great. I think this movie should really have a high resolution soundtrack, like on this Japanese HD DVD release

[ahsoka]

Originally Posted by kannisto

Music Archives menu contains a list of artists and 3 of those have associated "music videos". Those show a song together with some sequences from the movie. It's in SD so it doesn't look perfect.

- Hasymo: Rescue (music video available)
- Wagdug Futuristic Unity: Ill Machine (xUltra Brain) (music video available)
- Lina Ohta: Puzzle Riddle (music video available)

For other music artists there's just textual info available in Japanese:
- Towa Tei
- Cornelius
- Rei Harakami
- m-flo
- RADIQ a.k.a. Yoshihiro Hanno
- Aoki Takamasa
- Technoboys Pullcraft Green-Fund
- Tetsuya Takahashi

I still didn't have time to watch the movie yet but I took some more peeks and it seems to have great use of music in action scenes pretty much like Vexille (which is natural since it's from the same creators). Those action scenes seem to be great. I think this movie should really have a high resolution soundtrack, like on this Japanese HD DVD release

Thanks for the info about the extras!! Overall there seems to be a lot of good extras even though there's really not that much about the music as I had hoped but at least there's the RESCUE video. There's always the Ex Machina soundtrack CD (Complete Edition) that comes with a DVD with some additional videos and interviews.
Really like Vexille and the music on that one. Ex Machina have YMO and several other good artists so it must be great musically as well!

[HD 335]

The packaging looks fantastic.

[Hiroka]

I've gotta say, Kannisto your pics have just made me spent an extra 80 bucks on the HD version. The storyboard booklets just dragged me into it... they looked way too awsome!!

[zappaien]

Just bought it from yesasia, was cryin for the poor edition in BD or HD-DVD... thanks for those infos and pics ! Can you please tell us for the video quality and ddtruehd track ?

Can't wait ^^

[kannisto]

I watched the movie this weekend and liked it quite a lot. It has quite a lot of similarities to "Vexille" (newer movie by some of the same creators) that I got back in January (Avex HD DVD release). The main characters in both movies look like identical twin sisters

The soundtrack is very good on this one too, with a lot of effective bass use and some great original tracks. The action was often complemented with well fitting music. I don't have a lossless setup so I could only get a 1.5 Mbps DTS stream that my HD-XF2 (equivalent of HD-A2) produced from the original Dolby TrueHD 5.1 source. Still, the soundtrack was very impressive when it comes to music and sound effects.

I think PQ was fine but I could notice some aliasing which I think is in the master as is suggested in some forum discussions. It didn't bother me that much, it wasn't too noticeable and mainly occurred only in some large scale cityscape views.

Some scenes in the movie look sharper while some have a bit of a dream-like softer visual design and the colors are also a bit different in some different parts of the movie. I think this is all done by design and looked fine to me. There are some quite interesting costumes in the movie and in the starting credits it was mentioned that Miuccia Prada has done costume design for the movie. Some of the costumes really stood out and had really impressive looking textile surfaces with lots of details that looked really good. I was perfectly happy with the PQ myself. I don't know how it compares to the Warner release as I don't have that one.

As a movie I think the best points of it were the action together with the music and some of the cool design aspects. The story itself is interesting enough though rather standard sci-fi action, Anime style.

It's good to see Japanese releases with such good support for English language like this one.

On my standalone the pop-up menu also works seamlessly (unlike in my PC setup), so the movie was not paused when I accessed that and the playback continued at the same time as usual.

I'd recommend this release for anyone who is into Anime and who's OK with the cost aspects The packaging is really impressive and the movie is very good too and comes with some advanced features (though unfortunately the tech specs' information is only available in Japanese).

[ahsoka]

Got Appleseed Ex Machina Premium Edition and watched it over the weekend. Thought it was really enjoyable with very good PQ/AQ. The packaging is indeed very impressive and very heavy, mainly because of that 384 page book!
Highly recommended and IMO well worth the 10,290 yen.

Some pictures of the menus and special features:

[kannisto]

Originally Posted by ahsoka

Got Appleseed Ex Machina Premium Edition and watched it over the weekend. Thought it was really enjoyable with very good PQ/AQ. The packaging is indeed very impressive and very heavy, mainly because of that 384 page book!
Highly recommended and IMO well worth the 10,290 yen.

Some pictures of the menus and special features:

Nice pics of the menu Glad you enjoyed it too!

I sent one of these packages to a friend of mine in Finland and I was also surprised by the heavy weight especially with regards to shipping costs that became relatively expensive. The parcel where I sent it weighed 1280 g in total and it was just the Ex Machina box inside a padded envelope and nothing else. Anyway, the packaging is really nice and definitely substantial!

[Jester217300]

Took some hi-res scans of this set, too. The biggest difference from the Amazon.jp pic is the size and gray detail. Also submitted them to DVDAF and Amazon.jp. Enjoy