I guess the frozen tundra makes a change from all those beach resorts, if not exactly welcomed by all…

Apparently they are going to release My-HiME and My-ZHiME on Blu-ray in Japan. This is perhaps not too much of a surprise, given that releases of Zwei and S.ifr were already on the cards.

I admit that I’m sorely tempted to pick them up – I was planning to grab at least S.ifr anyway, and perhaps Zwei. Saying that, looking at my shelves, I realise that I now own the whole series on R2 DVD (that’s nine volumes of HiME, nine volumes of ZHiME, four volumes of Zwei, three volumes of S.ifr, the HiME Fandisk DVD, the movie re-edit of ZHiME TV and the movie re-edit of Zwei), plus everything that’s been put out on R1 (the singles releases of HiME and ZHiME, and the LE release of Zwei), and a single disk of the European release of HiME. I guess if there’s one thing I don’t really need, it’s another release of My-HiME.

Of course, for HiME and ZHiME TV the transition to Blu-ray will have limited benefit. Aside from the fact that they were animated in 4:3, all signs point towards them being animated in broadcast resolution as well – wording suggests that the video is going to be upscaled to 1080i. Admittedly, it’s still going to look better than the DVD release simply due to the reduction in compression artefacts the format tends to bring, but the gain over the R2 DVDs is likely to be minimal. S.ifr and Zwei appear to be sourced from actual HD materials, though.

Plus, you know, the sets are running at £200 a piece at the current exchange rate. That’s kind of pricey. I do love the show (quite clearly), but it’s a lot of money for a set providing a show in what will be marginally higher fidelity which I’ll only find the time to watch through once.

This new Aoi Hana thingy appears to be being made available on Crunchyroll shortly after airing in Japan, commencing in about… nowish. I’ll guess I’ll give it a watch – I’m pretty ambivalent towards yuri content, though – I don’t mind it, but if sole purpose of the shows existence is to pander to fans of that material then I am likely to find it more grating than entertaining.

I ended up watching the animated Transformers movie last night. I only really intended to watch up to the end of the Megatron/Optimus Prime battle, but ended up watching the whole thing. I realise that this is mostly nostalgia speaking, but I really do love that damn movie. It’s got that whole “constant barrage of crazy stuffs happening” going on that makes me love Sunrise productions, be even more-so – it’s kind of sad that the movie has more badassery in it’s opening half hour than both of the over-long live action movies do in their entire running times (and I liked the first LA movie, I’d like to add). It’s really kind of embarrassing how much of this movie I can still quote to this day, though I find it sad that I’ve yet to find myself in a situation where declaring “Turbo-revv’n young punk, I’ll straighten you out yet!” would have been an appropriate statement. I live in hope that it’ll come some day.