So, my copy of one of NISAs first DVD releases turned up today – that being the first Toradora set, being that I’m not really interested in Persona despite (or, given what I’ve heard, more likely because) of the fact that I’m a fan of the games. Of course, being the first release from a new publisher on the R1 side of things, particularly a release that’s generate a lot of talk for various reason, it’s certainly one what’s worth going into in some detail.

First off, it’s freaking huge. The only thing I have of a comparable size is last months R2 Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2 release from last month – with which it’s pictured above. There’s really very little comparable on the market in terms of how this is packaged.
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From the third instalment of the current OAD series, appearing exactly where it did in the manga. Who’da thunk it?

One has to wonder whatever happened to that Negima movie they announced a while back. Suppose it wasn’t due until next year, so maybe we’ll hear something around about the time this OAD series wraps up (how many episodes was it supposed to be, anyway? I know there’s a fourth due in a couple of months, at least).

I’d be surprised at the show I’d spotted this in, but it’s not as if Slayers has ever shied away from anachronisms in it’s content.

Actually, what makes this mikan box significant is that it (hopefully, having not seen the show previously) marks the disappearance of Nama from the series. Seriously, if anyone had told me before hand that they’d find a way to make me like Naga less, I’d have had a really hard time believing them. It turns out that making her an amnesiac suit of magical armour did the trick.

… and I wasted valuable Q&A time asking the director about it. It kind of makes me wonder if there’s anywhere else I can take this blog from this point onwards. I kind of feel like I’ve now peaked, and it’s all going to be downhill from here.

That said, I’m not sure that I bought his answer – that such things are so common in Japan that most households will have at least one, which is why he likes to include them in his works. I think he’s trying to cover up some grander conspiracy that the anime industry is maintaining.

As for the film, it was pretty fantastic, though I’m loathe to talk about things too much since it’s likely to be another year before most people get to see it. What I will say is that the movies final act could really have done with losing about fifteen minutes – everything leading up to that point was gold, featuring a lot of the kind of irreverent humour you’d expect from something written by Hideyuki Kurata, but the climax drags on a little. It’s hard to complain too much about it, though, as it’s such a visually stunning movie. There’s an amazing density to the look of the movie – like those scenes in Kamichu where Yurie visited the land of the gods, only on a movie-level budget. Honestly, I also think having seen Evangelion 2.0 the previous evening may have elevated my expectations for how a movie should be paced, as that really is insane.

One of the things I really want to do over the coming months is finally get on-top of all the unwatched media I have lying around. The problem here is the huge stack of movies I bought back when I figured that I really wasn’t watching enough in the watch of HK, Korean and Japanese live-action movies. With even legit HK releases being dirt cheap, I ended up picking up a few too many titles which were a little too random, all of which have since remained entirely unwatched. Until today, that is, when everything other than this peculiar little number which found it’s way into my DVD player remain sealed within their shrink-wrapped cells.

As for why this movie is of interest, well…
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