Video:

Quite good. It's sourced from DVD, but has some problems. There are 4 or 5 scenes where the image becomes very low in quality, like a VHS, but lasts only a few seconds and only for a complete scene, seems like a damaged master. Apart from this, there are those annoying moments when the image flickers and seem to be pixelated, like if the vertical resolution was halved. I can't understand how you can screw it that way. Who knows what crappily cracked encoder these guys used... Fortunately it's rare. Ah, of course MI didn't forget to let us all know who is the company who did this set, and as usual they like to remind it during the show... I HATE those email addresses! Weren't they enough, those thousands on the gatefold?!

Audio:

Nothing to complain here, fortunately... the problems on this set were already enough!

Subtitle:

Fansubs here, but the way they used them... The translation is very good and close to the original dialogues, even if in my opinion on many points they used too many words to translate the sentences. This may seem odd, but we have here a show that is 90% dialogues and only a bit of action scenes, and even those are often full of dialogues. Anyway the real problem here is that often they are mistimed. There are moments when instead of displaying a full sentence for the dialogue, they split them into many parts that pop up quickly as the character speaks, and you have to concentrate on them. Other times the subs start to come out too late and for a whole scene you have the next lines coming out turbo-fast until they return in synch with the dialogues. I also noticed two or three moments when they thought that the last line of a scene was the first of the next scene, so you see this damn half sentence coming out only after many many seconds when a new dialogue starts. If you are interested in this title, prepare to read A LOT and very very fast, you never know when the lines will start to go too fast. It's not terribly problematic, but became irritating sometime to me.

Comment:

I really hate those weird V shaped locks to keep the DVDs, they seem to be very likely to break soon. Why they can't use the good old holders like those on the CD cases? Ah, I think nobody noticed it, but the title on the cover is wrong! Who knows where they took the image? Anyway it says "-fan disk- Mugen no Ryvius Light" ("Mugen no" means "Infinite"), on the side it is correct, tho. I really like the show. I read of this show on a fanzine, when it was still airing on the Japanese TV, and I was very curious to see it. If the R1 collection will be good I will surely buy it, but for the moment I'm very happy with this set.

Video:

This set has those infamous translucent green bars, that can be found in some MI releases. I also noticed the effect mentioned in the reviews below, when the picture gets "blocky" for a split second, but still I found the green bars more annoying. Nevertheless, still very good.

Audio:

Sounded excellent on my simple stereo TV. I didn't notice any noises whatsoever.

Subtitle:

Excellent subs, probably taken from fansubs. Some typos now and then, but I still was impressed how good they were for a complicated series like this.

Comment:

An excellent series. A thinking man's space opera. Of course you get your space fight stuff, but basically this is about building a society. The alternatives, the mistakes, the suffering. Think of a space version of William Golding's "Lord of the Flies". Really outstanding from the cliches that so many animes follow. Highly recommended!

Video:

DVD quality, but every now and then will change to lower quality, and then back. Sometimes skips (though this may be only on some DVD players).

Audio:

Fuzzy noise in the background, but you get used to it after about an episode. Nothing compared to the Gundam X set.

Subtitle:

Looks like fansubs that were types to fast (spelling errors and grammer error, but they still mak e sense). Also they sometimes go too fast.

Comment:

All of the openings and endings are there. The episodes are split into intro+opening, show, and then the ending. They do translate the episode previews. This show has a great plot, but the way they go about it is not the greatest. This show deals more with what happens when people are left to lead themselves then with what is actually happening outside of the Ryvius world.

Video:

It was DVD ripped for sure. It looked great, but as other reviewer said sometimes there seemed to be some "grain" in the Video, but nothing really significant. Of course they insist of ruining it with the M logo and the Email adress (though it only happens a couple of times...much, much less than in others sets)

Audio:

Sounded good to me, though i am not an Audio perfecionist...listened to it trough 2 speakers

Subtitle:

Well, they are pretty good, Great timing and few spelling mistakes , don't go off screen. But sometimes you will wonder at what is being said...it's like they don't have a "flow" to it , it's grammatically good but sometimes you can be confused at what is going on, some senteces seem too "literal" (like other reviewer said it)and Awkward. You may find that you have to make an effort to figure what's going on, at some points in the story.

Comment:

The menus for the 1st DVD are in English, the others in chineses. Contains no Extras. The other thing to improve here are the subtitles, though you'll understand what is going , with almost no problems. Oh... and they really should get rid of the M Logos and Emails hardcoded in the Video :)

Comment:

This isn't a new review, but I wanted to add something to what I already said -- on the 2nd and 3rd DVDs, the menus are in Japanese, and as minor as an issue as it may be, the fewer the number of surprises, the better, right? Even if you can't read Japanese or Chinese, if you are intelligent enough to appreciate anime, you should have no problem navigating the menus with intuition and a little trial and error. The menu order is the same as other import DVDs. But for those interested, or those who can't figure it out, here's the guide: (Main Menu) - Play DVD - Subtitle Menu - Chapter Selection (Subtitle Menu) - Chinese Subtitles - English Subtitles - Return to Main Menu (Chapter Selection Menu) The episodes run sequentially down from the top of the left column, continuing down from the top of the right column (and concludes with a "Return to Main Menu" option -- denoted as "R" in the following). On the 2nd DVD it's 10-11-12-13-14 on the left side, 15-16-17-18-R on the right. On the 3rd DVD, it's 19-20-21-22-23 on the left, 24-25-26-R on the right. Many of you who buy import DVDs already understand Chinese menus, so this may come trivially. But for those of you who don't, this may be a potential (though minor) issue, so it's better to make it known just in case. :)

Video:

Video: No problems here.

Audio:

Audio: No problems here.

Subtitle:

Subtitles: Aside from the jargon used by the series, the English subtitling is easily intelligible. It's grammatically accurate most of the time, with minor mistakes like incorrect conjugations and occasional typos. Overall it's not frequent enough that it's a constant distraction to enjoying the series, but it's not so rare that you never adapt to it. As long as you don't mind minor imperfections, it's more than adequate if you'll be reliant on English subtitling to understand the series (as I was).

Comment:

I watched the series through and loved it. I'm in the process in rewatching it, and it's apparent that the character designers had an eye for detail, because you'll notice the characters act true to the personalities they establish later on in the series. The series itself starts off slow due to the large number of characters introduced -- the external plot doesn't really start picking up until about episode 9 -- but the character development is excellent as even the dozens of minor characters have their own distinct personalities.

Video:

Obvious DVD rip. The only problem is that there's a little bit of grain (might be in the R2 too, don't know) and a TINY bit of pixelation in the heavy scenes. Just your average stuff when you put 9/8/8 eps on a DVD. Like Kakomu said, the doubling lines. I've seen this in about every MI DVD rip release I have (the newer ones) but I alway thought it was a problem with my DVD player converting NTSC to a PAL format. Now I know that he has it too, I agree it's pretty annoying. It happens about one or two times every episode. It jus looks like the resolution is turned down by half for one or two seconds, than it gets back to normal... very weird stuff, but it didn't really bother me that much. Looked very good!

Audio:

Sounded perfect to me! I like the intro song for some reason.

Subtitle:

Copied from fansubs. There are some typo's offcourse, and sometimes they subtitle 2 characters lines in one line of subtitles, buy you'll get the hang of it fast. And like said before, at some points it seemed translated a little bit literal, but you'll still be able to get the point through. Very good!

Comment:

Notes: - Only in a few episodes the email adresses of MI are hardcoded in the video. I know of episode 1 and 2. After that no more on that disc, and then again on ep 10 (first of DVD2) and maybe later eps too, didn't watch that far. - Logo appears in the same episodes as the hardcoded email adresses. - Full series, 26 episodes, 9 / 9 / 8 episodes on DVD. - No extra's.... sadly. - All DVDs have diffrent menu's. The one on the first is lame, the ones on DVD 2 and 3 are very cool! - Chapter stops : Start / Next ep. Preview / ED, too bad not the opening. The series itself seemed like an obvious cross between Argento Soma and Crest of the Stars (Sekai no Moncho). Even the music was VERY resembling. At some points I'd swear the music was taken straight from Argento Soma (battle scenes), and some straight from CotS (ending song, some other themes). Funny little things: Yuuki's VA is the same as Ryu Soma from Argento Soma, the 'bad guy'has the same voice as Vicous, from Bebop. And some other recognisable VAs. Defenatly made by the same people as Argento Soma. It's a nice series on itself, I've watched up to episode 10, but I get the feeling the best stuff is still to come. Recomended if you like Crest of the Stars and/or Argento Soma. Like said before, the box of this series has the email adress smeared over it. But I agree with the other reviewer that for some reason it doesn't really bother me on this release, like Argento Soma. It looked really bad on Inuyasha Set 4!!! Nice box!

Video:

Well, as it has been said in the reviews before, the video is not perfect, but still very very good - almost perfect. There are a few scenes where the video quality suffers a bit, but most of the show it's absolutely DVD quality.

Audio:

Absolutely no problems - clear sound - very good.

Subtitle:

The subs are really great - gramatically correct and no mistimings. Well, maybe it's not translated with much elegance - but it's absolutely understandable. Some typos here and there but no big problems at all.

Comment:

A very interesting show - absolutely worth watching.

Video:

I have mixed feelings about the video in this set. The video for the most part was decent. There were no major flaws like color bleeding, and it was more or less sharp. However, there were problems with the video fields. The video had interlace lines that were VERY apparent, and were happening quite often. Sometimes, the fields would double, which meant that you would get a very blocky pixelated image for a few seconds. Why it did this is beyond me, but it was obnoxious looking to say the least. The video looks like it was heavily compressed as well. It wasn't as compressed as an AS release to lead to bad macroblocking, and the set is no where as bad as an FX release in terms of blockiness, but there was a lot of compression apparent on my computer screen (basically on lines, there was some compression of the likes you would see in a japeg). The compression was in a moderate amount, but it still bothered me. I haven't watched this on a TV yet, so I'm not sure how good or bad it looks there, I'm going to guess that it would look a lot better, but I'm not exactly sure how much better.

Audio:

The audio was more or less all there, and wasn't compressed very much. The sound came from the source which was most likely an R2 DVD. There was no Dropout, hums, buzzes or anything to detract from the sound.

Subtitle:

As the previous reviewer stated, the subs were pretty literal. They seemed to tell you what was being said, however, it seemed like there was no cohesion nor did it blend very well together. It was more like a bunch of statements than a story is the best way I can describe it. On top of that, there was a lot of Engrish moments. The subtitles never degenerated into downright Engrish, but there were lines that would baffle you with poor grammer. Lastly, the subs as a whole went by really FAST. The would be there way too short, and you couldn't really tell what was being said. Then they would put a bunch of short lines together, and connect them together with an ellipse. For instance First Sub Picture: I'm going down there to... Second Sub Picture: ...Do what I need to do Mind you these aren't real lines, however, after First sub pic is there for a short time, second sub pic will replace it. THe subs aren't as bad as something like Arc the Lad or Cowboy Bebop, however, they aren't as good as sets like Noir or Trigun (All MI).

Comment:

The story is really pretty cool. I was hooked. THough one should be warned, you will have to sit through quite a bit before you get to the meat of the plot. In fact, when starting off with the first 2 or 3 episodes, LOTS of things happen, and really fast, with weird jargon being spewed, and subtitles that makes all of this hard to understand. The Jargon that is being used is really hard to decipher as well (a la Clockwork Orange) with words like sere, gedulht and the like. Once the initial crisis is over, and the students settle in, the story gets good, and by about episode 17, I was hooked (10 episode in 1 night ;) ). As for the DVDs themselves, I suppose my review says it all. However, the things I squabble about in the video section are more or less nitpicks. But I am very nitpicky about my video. The inclusion of all intros, outros and previews for the next episode are present, but also suck up LOTS of the space that could have been used to spruce up the video. And one side note: The packaging is pretty neat in my opinion. There is the MI address splayed over the ENTIRE PACKAGE. HOwever, the writing is light, and it also (unintentionally I'm sure) adds a pretty neat effect to the packaging.

Comment:

I bought this set almost entirely due to various good things i had read about it here and on HKDVD message boards. Now that I have it I have to say I'm not disappointed with my purchase. Video: 4.5/5 The video quality is quite nice. I'm not a huge perfectionist when it comes to video though, so as long as there's no awful color bleeding or artificing I'm happy. None of that here though. Subtitles 3/5 Hm. These were a bit iffy. The character's names tend to change (Kouji, Koze, Kouzi, etc...) from line to line. On top of that, the subtitles are quite literal with quite a few misspellings that can result in some humerous lines ("I want to be an office!"). There was also a rather annoying tendency to put dialogue for different characters on the same line, but it's not too hard to figure out which person is saying which. In the end, the subtitles, while a bit tricky, do their job of letting you know what everyone's saying. Audio: 4.5/5 Sounds good to me. No buzzing or sound issues that I can hear. Packaging: 4/5 A nice looking gatefold, with a picture of one of the characters on each fold out. I'm a little ticked off by the fact that there are watermarked e-mail addresses all over the inside and back of the set though. Misc: There are no chapter divisions for midway through the ep, and there's no mid-episode (intro, outro, etc...) chapter selection available from the menu. Overall: It's a pretty cool series that really draws you in. The subtitles are readable and don't hurt the experience that much. A Recommended purchase.

Comment:

Space opera was never this good before! Teen angst, hope and love squirming all around in a barrel of fun! This is basically "Lord of the Flies" in space. It's a "what if" kind of thing. What if 400 kids were abandoned on a space ship with apparently no immediate hope of rescue? How would their civilization evolve? Who would rule them? How would order be kept? It's a 26 episode series where you FEEL the passage of time almost like the characters do. That's not a bad thing. It just means that SOOOOO much happens during the story. When you look back at the first few episodes when it's all done, you think "whoa! That was a long time ago!" Good stuff. Video: 4.8/5 Some distortions, but near perfect. Definite R2 rip. Audio: 5/5 Nothing wrong here at all. Subs: 4.5/5 VERY good, but lots of instances of fastsubs. Not every episode, and you don't need to rewind most of them, just be ready to read fast. Fansubs scripts used (I believe one episode actually has the "not for sale or rent" warning on it). Only a few instances of MI's logo popping up too. I'd be surprised if it happened more than 5 times.

Comment:

Video 4.5/5 I got this and Scryed at the same time and this set just doesn't seem to be as crisp as Scryed, I can notice on screen noise (minor) but still good transfer overall. Sound 5/5 Bog standard 2.1 Stereo, no problems encountered. Subs 5/5 Great subs, I watched the whole thing in English subs cos the name translation was better than the Chinese counterpart. I haven't seen the fansubs but it's either that or really superb HK originals, I am leaning more towards the first. Contents: Top notch stuff, this along with Crest of Stars series ranks as my favourite Space soap drama of all time. It starts off slowly as characters and backgrounds gets introduced in the first few episodes but the pace really starts to pick up near the later half of disc1. The plot is entirely original and will have u glued to ur seat wanting to find out what's gonna happen next. The ending is also extremely satisfying as it wraps up everything nicely leaving no questions unanswered (which in term means no possibility of sequels or OVAs). If u want deep character interaction/development, romance, a bit of action (not much), do urself a favour and add this classic to ur collection.