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Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Release Thread


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On 10/18/2024 at 11:22 PM, Keith said:

Honestly, I'm going to swap the discs with the Japanese BD release, and pop the big mess in the closet (using the superior Japanese packaging for the shelf), so whatever.

Same thought I had.  Store the better content in the superior package.

Same thing I did with my de-specialized Star Wars DVDs when I got the bluray box. :p 

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I got charged and received shipping notification from Crunchyroll so they're working their way through the list.

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1 hour ago, ErikElvis said:

just checking. too lazy to look through the thread but is the going rate for this $180?  i just happened to see it on crunchyroll. 

Crunchyroll's store has it listed at MSRP ($189.99) for non-members.

The member discount takes 10% off the top automatically ($170.99) and it's eligible for a lot of their coupon code discounts too... which is how they handled the preorder discount pricing in the US, to the discontent of some.  Since the coupon codes are pretty ubiquitous, the real pricing is more like $151 w/ free shipping.

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So mine arrived saturday. Got home after a long day mecha piloting (40k tournament, played Imperial Knights) and it was on my porch. Thankfully it was flat and the porch pirates seemed to have truely moved on. 

I don't normally get special editions like this, last one I got was the LoGH one Senti did years ago.

This thing is awesome. Artprints are nice and going to frame/mount some in my new den. I do need to get a separate DVD holder just so I can store those with the rest of my anime collection. Though I didn't have any issues popping them out and placing them back in. 

Will read through the book over the winter. I kind of hope they do something like this for others, at least for the Delta version make it a translated collection of the book inserts they did for the first run. 

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Got my set today. Fortunately I'm off today.  Box is huge and won't go with the rest of my collection right now. Thought there would be a regular Blu-ray case with it instead of using the book cover,  but it's very sturdy. Was almost afraid of getting a disc out until I pushed n the center harder.   

Looks incredible.  I just watched my old DVD last month.   On episode 2 of the OVA on my 85 inch UHD setup. Will roll through them all then d the movie edition (culdn't find my old DVD). 

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Just took a quick peek through both disc's:

There's a new front loading "Big West" logo, I expect to see that on the other U.S. releases (whenever they happen).

Subtitles are locked, meaning you can't change audio options on the fly (you have to use the disc & pop-up menu).

OVA: The subtitle translation is similar to, but feels cleaned up / updated from Manga's old sub script. There are also song subs now.

Movie: There are 2 subtitle options now, Manga's & a newer Bandai sub. The Bandai sub is definitely cleaned up / refined from what we got on the Japanese release, using Guld & Isamu's fight on Earth for comparison. Oddly, only the Manga subs have song lyrics though.

Audio: I didn't go into the dub much, but the Japanese audio is bright & clear. The bass lines during "The Borderline" stood out especially strong.

Video: comparing withthe Japanese release (might as well, since I'm swapping them into that massive box), it looks like we have the same master. Colors are vubrant, blacks are mice & deep (save for sone early space scenes, but I think that's just 90's gray space color choices more than anythjng), grain is present but not intrusive, all in all what you'd want from the era.

I'm quite satisfied here. It's just too bad too bad the regular release won't have the OVA's included, but they definitrly justified picking uo the massive box version for me.

For those who care about such things, the U.S. dub of ep 4 is indeed an extra (in the extra's section of the disc), and accompanied by the remastered video. All of the credits are the original Japanese credits, it doesn't look like they translated them anywhere on disc.

Edited by Keith
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Can people who got the US bigass set from Crunchyroll check things out and confirm if the discs work on region A players? I just got mine, and right before opening it up, I saw a bigass region B on the back of the box. Does yours say region B, too? If so, did everything work on your region A player?

I want to make sure it's actually region A before I break the seal.

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13 minutes ago, Gamma00Ray said:

Can people who got the US bigass set from Crunchyroll check things out and confirm if the discs work on region A players? I just got mine, and right before opening it up, I saw a bigass region B on the back of the box. Does yours say region B, too? If so, did everything work on your region A player?

I want to make sure it's actually region A before I break the seal.

Why would you stop to read the back, when you could just rip open the packaging & pop in a disc?

Wth that said, yeah, they play fine on a region A player, and there are no signs of French subs, so I'm thinking they did 1 master for the U.S. & UK, witg possibly a different master for the French release.

The disc art also has the EU rating.

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Sound on the movie is a much more robust 5.1 DTS-HD MA compared to 2.0 LCPM on the OVA (except for the bonus Manga dubbed Ep4 which is was 5.1 and noticeably louder).

I thought the scene of the YF-19 arm cannon blowing up the monster was only in the OVA and not Movie but just saw it in both.  Movie has some grain that I didn't notice on the OVA. Looks more film like than video of the OVA. 

Think I cracked the tab releasing the Movie version from the book cover. Think I'll do some blu-ray cases and keep the book with my other Macross books (Design Works, Master Files, etc)  while the discs stay with my DVD and Blu- ray collections.  

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Thanks, guys. I tried and watched half of the OAV disc so far. It's got no problem with region A.

1 hour ago, Keith said:

Why would you stop to read the back, when you could just rip open the packaging & pop in a disc?

Regarding that, it wasn't so much the B that stuck out, but the UK-looking age rating. I wasn't looking for it, but I know it can spell bad times in region A. Then I saw the gargantuan B.

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Here's a list of issues I have found with All the Anime/Anime Limited's Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray set:

- The discs are held on cheap, crappy spindles in the art book instead of in a plastic case.

- The art cards and poster are a bit unnecessary and I don't know what to do with them other than keep them in the box. However, they have already sustained some scuffing and frayed edges just from me taking the art book in and out of the cardboard slipcase three times.

- The whole box with all contents inside is heavy, unwieldy, and does not fit well into a typical Blu-ray collection. 

- No closed captions for the English dub.

- The English subtitles are always on when you switch to the Japanese audio track. You can't turn them off.

- The artbook's text is full of run-on sentences, grammar errors, random switching between American and British spellings of words, and instances of words being repeated like a line that has "was was" in it.

- The original Manga Entertainment English dub for Episode 4 being a bonus feature instead of a selectable audio track option. The later redub of Episode 4 is the default, despite having a totally different cast from the other episodes.

It just feels outdated, unprofessional, and rushed in a lot of ways. All of this is especially annoying when you take the set's $190 MSRP price tag into consideration.

I will edit this post as I find more issues and learn more about the set over the next few days.

Edited by CollectorCanine
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8 minutes ago, CollectorCanine said:

Here's a list of issues I have found with All the Anime/Anime Limited's Macross Plus Ultimate Edition Blu-ray set:

- The discs are held on cheap, crappy spindles in the art book instead of in a plastic case.

- The art cards and poster are a bit unnecessary and I don't know what to do with them other than keep them in the box. However, they have already sustained some scuffing and frayed edges just from me taking the art book in and out of the cardboard slipcase three times.

- No closed captions for the English dub.

- The English subtitles are always on when you switch to the Japanese audio track. You can't turn them off.

- The artbook's text is full of run-on sentences, grammar errors, random switching between American and British spellings of words, and instances of words being repeated like a line that has "was was" in it.

- The original Manga Entertainment English dub for Episode 4 being a bonus feature instead of a selectable audio track option. The later redub of Episode 4 is the default, despite having a totally different cast from the other episodes.

It just feels outdated, unprofessional, and rushed in a lot of ways. All of this is especially annoying when you take the set's $190 MSRP price tag into consideration.

I will edit this post as I find more issues and learn more about the set over the next few days.

Well, there is good reason for making the UK dib the primary version, that being it has all of the original music & SFX. The U.S. dub for ep 4 was rushed because of some issue wirh Manga U.S. not wanting to wait to get get the raw music & SFX tracks on ep 4, so they patch-worked their own. Manga UK did wait, but not all of the original dub cast was available at that point.

As for the subtitles being locked, that's certainly Big West stipulating it in the licence, and isn't uncommon these days. It's a tactic meant to discourage re-importing foreign releases into Japan.

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I knew it from the get-go when I asked on Twitter, but locking the subtitles is fraked up for such a beautiful production. I'd like to avoid hearing the dub whenever possible. I guess it's safe to assume that any Macross show not getting a dub with have locked subtitles too. I hope you don't like looking at the full frames of animation!

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I rather enjoy the artbook, translation errors and all. Lots of fun insights, like Itano reminiscing about pulling an unsanctioned flight maneuver and blacking out. :lol: After this many decades dealing with the language barrier, I've come to the understanding that these things are just inevitable; sometimes it's even the case that the creator/interviewee/etc. are the ones staunchly refusing a translation fix, despite how innocuous or inoffensive or logical it might seem to an English-speaking audience. Remember, Shinji is the "Third Children" and all that.

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Yeah, all quibbles about the actual media presentation aside, I'm loving the book itself.  I'll definitely put the discs in my older Japanese release box, but the book is probably going to occupy my coffee table for years to come.

I admit, I didn't read the description in detail, and wasn't actually prepared for how big the book is, since I was expecting something like an awkwardly sized squared-off standard disc case.  I'd never bought any of the previous books of this sort, so I'm happy to have a nice big archive of the art.

I will say I was slightly disappointed by the artwork choices for the prints though.  As long as they were including the Hasegawa YF-19 box art, I would have preferred a matching copy of the YF-21's box, rather than a reprint of the prior release's box.  But eh, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get a frameable copy of that art as well.  Otherwise, the selection there has a couple of my favorite production images, so I'm going to be happy to get frames to hang them up.

Edited by Chronocidal
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Is it true the discs are extremely difficult to remove from the book? I'm on the verge of ordering but the only unboxing video I can find show the guy bending the discs so much it looks like they're about to break! And @Uxi mentions above that they are tricky to remove.

https://youtu.be/XxOJqktKs6Q?t=274

Edited by Ando
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