Evangelion 3.33! + bonus

And finally today, the mailman rang my door, holding a small package. I knew it was on it’s way, but didn’t expect it to come this quick, not that I’m complaining. Not at all.

So now i can finally add two Blu-Ray’s of Evangelion 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo, first pressing, to my small but growing collection of movies. And as a bonus, since i was ordering from Japan anyway, i bought a really nice Children Who Chase Lost Voices box.

I have not and probably will not open the Evangelion BD’s, since they are Japanese spoken and subtitled only and my Japanese language knowledge is about 0. I will wait for the US or UK version or if there are any other nice European releases with English subtitles. I haven’t opened the Children Who Chase Lost Voices box but i might open it.

Evangelion 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo
EAN: 4988003818128
First limited pressing including OST CD

Children Who Chase Lost Voices
EAN: 4935228113569
Art-booklet
Small manga booklet
Bonus material disc
35mm movie strips

But without further ado, here they are:

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Sunday topic, exclusive rights.

Well, since I’ve been lazy as [insert word of choice] last time and missed 2 Sunday topics and almost 3. it’s time to step up the game.

Today’s Sundays topic (if a little late) is, exclusive rights on movies. The reason for this topic is what horrible things i found out when searching for a Blu-Ray release of Akira Kurosawas movie “Ran”.

Everything started after i borrowed a DVD version of Ran and really enjoyed it and thought it would be a really nice movie to have in the collection. So i began searching for a BD version, i stumbled upon “Criterion Collection” and their DVD (the one i borrowed was not a criterion) and after reading all good reviews of it i had high hopes that they would release it on BD. And Criterion have a very good goal with their releases, mess nothing with the movie, no cutting, no editing.

But i soon found out that they lost their rights to StudioCanal and that there in fact were a BD version. Fine and dandy i thought, but when i started reading reviews on the StudioCanal version, it turned out to be a really bad release, way to much EE (Edge Enhancement) and so on.

This is a very good example of why i really hate exclusive rights to movies and basically anything, if the release or what it may be is bad, there’s nothing for the consumers to do, there is only this version. Some of the reviews on the StudioCanal BD version even suggested it was an upscaled DVD with lots of EE and other filters to try and make it look better. Another good example is Disneys exclusive rights to all Studio Ghbili films release after 1996. The cause was good, getting more money to be able to cover the production costs. But it feels like the have sold their soul to the devil.

I should rename this blog to “Ranting for my eyes”, because it feels like i just rant about things.

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Sunday topic and Dir En Grey.

Well since i realized I’m not very good at keeping content coming all the time, i decided to try and post something every Sunday, it could be about a music group, a movie, a special release and so on.

So, this Sunday’s topic is about a music band. It’s the Japanese metal band Dir En Grey. (hopefully later this week, you’ll see why)

Short history, Dir En Grey was formed in 1997, the groups lineup has remained the same till this date. They have released 8 full length albums and 3 EP’s. Their musical style have changed throughout the years. In my opinion from not so hard metal to very hard/experimental metal. -Yes, i looked this up on wikipedia.

Dir En Grey is among very few bands that always been in my play list regardless of what genre I listened exclusively on at different times. I had a period with almost only hardstyle, a period with only techno and so on, but Dir En Grey was always mixed into the play list. It’s a very good example of where you don’t know the lyrics but you can still enjoy the music very much, and maybe that’s what kept me listening?

I’m not really sure when i started listening to them, but i think it was somewhere back 2004-2006ish. It was my, at the time “wapanese”, cousin that introduced me to them and also dragged me along to a Dir En Grey concert back in 2007, which was a really cool experience. I’m not completely sure but i think the first album i got was “Withering To Death” from 2005, but I’m not 100% sure and after that i was hooked. The small problem of living in Europe is that only 6 of their 11 EP/studio albums have been released outside of Japan. Luckily, when a relative were in Japan on a business trip he bought 2 of their albums; “Macabre” and “鬼葬/Kisou”, their both compilations “Decade 1998-2002” and “Decade 2003-2007” along with their “1999.12.18 Osakajo Hall” DVD, as a present since he knew i liked Dir En Grey.

So while my album collection is far from complete, I’m really glad that I’ve been able to get as many album as I have. But since I’m at the moment is very much into Japanese culture, music and movies, I thought I would try to extend the collection by trying to find the missing albums and since I’m 50/50 between a collector and a music listener, i will try and find first presses of the albums as they often are limited editions that often are very nice.

An image of the current collection and what it contains;

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