Video:

Very, very good video quality. It is presented in a 16:9 anamorphic format. The video is crisp and clean without any pixellation. The video does break up a little in the openings of each episode, but it is due to the animation itself. Let me explain: there a multitude of closely arranged, thin, sweeping black and gold lines. As the camera pans across them, they look fuzzy and kind of pixellated. This is really just a problem with DVD itself being unable to carry this off. Maybe HD can do it better. Anyway, other than that, the rest of this show's video is flawless.

Audio:

Quite poor. The Japanese and English language tracks both have problems with audio. It seems as if EZDVD re-encoded the 5.1 audio from the R1 release. When the characters are speaking softly or at a normal volume there aren't any problems. However, when they raise their voices (there is a lot of screaming in this show, mind you) the audio gets a tinny, scratchy quality. There was a similar problem with EZDVD's "Samurai Champloo" set.

Subtitle:

One of the worst subtitle sets I've ever seen. Most of the lines are timed well, but in at least three episodes, the timing is off. There are tons of missing lines throughout both discs. Sometimes when a subtitle should encompass two lines, the lower line is missing. It is really poor of EZDVD to allow this to happen. All they had to do was the rip the subs and throw them on a disc. It isn't difficult to do. There is no excuse for this. Unless you speak Japanese you'll have to watch it in English to understand what is going on. And then, of course, the audio quality is poor, so that further hinders your experience.

Comment:

An EXCELLENT show. A very mysterious, action-packed, sci-fi anime. It has a great, haunting atmosphere. As an anime fan you owe it to yourself to check out this program. However, either download it or go for the R1 boxset. It's only slightly more money than the HK and the quality will be astoundingly better.

Video:

Great quality R1 ripped video! HK Sets almost never look this good. No Blockyness or black lines during fast movement. There was slight skipping 2 or 3 times on episode 11 (less then a second long at a time) on my stand alone player but on my PS2 episode 11 won't play at all. I think it's likely only my set but if you only have a low grade dvd player beware.

Audio:

In the dub A few times some of the girl's high pitched voices seemed to have a slight tin-e-ness to them though it was slight to the point that it might just be the voice acting (only happens in a word being said here and there). No sound quality probems otherwise and I liked the English dub also loved the soundtrack.

Subtitle:

Tested these in some episodes on both discs. When it's an R1 rip sub job there is no good reason for error but that's what happens a lot in this set. In the first half of the first episode the subs go way to fast and in later episodes they seem cut off in places, not cool.

Comment:

Notes* *As was said by another review the preview for episode five is missing. *I watched this series on a COBY brand DVD player (DVD-224 model) with AV cable on a 25 inch RCA TV *Tested some on a PS2 (50001 model) The series it self: Before I watched it I worried that Elfen Lied got the hype that it did because of the gore and nudity factor. But thankfully along with the intense content comes a solid plot, likeable characters and a great soundtrack. Even though Elfen Lied manages not to feel rushed it at the same time felt like it could have gone on longer then 13 episodes and it's to bad it didn't. highly recommended. :)

Video:

Set comes on 2 D9 DVDs, split 7/6 episodes each. Video is 16:9 anamorphic widescreen - as taken from the R1 discs. The quality of the video is superb throughout, and you could almost think you're watching the R1 discs! I couldn't see any pixellation while watching.

Audio:

English 5.1 and Japanese 2.0, as usual. Listened to the English dub and could find nothing wrong.

Subtitle:

Is there just one sub track on the R1 discs? That's all you get in this set. Anyway, as I was going through getting screengrabs, I noticed that a lot of sentences just trailed off, like there was an extra line of text missing below. So I reckon that there may be a fair few subs missing.

Comment:

No extras, as has been stated below! Another thing I noticed, was that episode 4 had no next episode preview on the end. I have no idea if this is normal or not. Anyway, this set has got excellent video and audio. All the gory bits look great, with limbs breaking off and heads flying all over the place - I really enjoyed this show! People wanting to see this subbed might get a bit pissed though at the missing sub lines.

Video:

No problems here. Good r1 rip, anamorphic widescreen...everything is clear and detailed, except for some Pixelationin opening credits (Is the r1 like this also ???)

Audio:

Also no problems. Includes Ja

Subtitle:

Unfortunatelly there are a couple of missing and screwed subs. In the end of eps 1 the subs "lock" for a couple seconds and then there are a couple missing subs. In eps 5-7 whenever there's more than 1 line of dialogue only the top (1st appears). This also happened ocassionaly in DVD 2 and sometimes there's a missing sub (not too frequent ...but ..) Ezdvd should fix this

Comment:

No Extras. Episodes are not linked, so you have to go to the menu and select the Next.