Good: Grain. Few obvious restoration artifacts. Customer service. Two of my discs were bad and Mill Creek sent replacements.
Bad: No original mono. The sweetened stereo remix is jarring, even when listening on headphones with a stereo-to-mono adapter.
The series is over-subtitled. Every word is subtitled, every time, including names. The first few times are ok, but it quickly gets annoying to see repeated things like names repeatedly pop up. “Jun-chan,” “Yuri-chan,” etc., over and over. I’m undecided about the use of honorifics, but if subtitles merely copy what’s being said, then they cease to be translation and instead turn into closed captioning.
The subtitles reach ridiculous lows near the end of the series. Episode 23 features characters speaking an obviously gibberish language. One of the characters is a translator. We’re clearly not supposed to understand the words.
Episode 27 features extended portions in English…which are subtitled:
Excessive subtitling robs us of the joy of viewing without words marring the picture and that we can understand the words being spoken. Subtitles are impossible to ignore and become a crutch. We look down and still read them, even when we can understand what’s spoken.
I didn’t really notice restoration artifacts overall. The transfer is clear, clean, and some damage remains throughout, which is ok. It looks nice and natural. Not suspiciously “pristine.”
However, episode 27 has a horrible stretch of frozen cloning and scratch removal. In the sample below, the first shot is splotchy, and then turns into a still. The left side of the following shots freeze up. The scratch removal left a smear. Play it at .25x and see how much you can spot:
I am not opposed to damage repair, but if attempted, it needs to be flawless. If it results in portions of the image freezing and smearing, then leave it alone. The watery scratch removal still left a scratch.
After that horrid repair, I was on high alert.
Interpolation:
How did I catch it? I wasn’t frame-stepping as if I was neurotic. I simply noticed that the picture seemed to freeze: