Stand Alone Complex special edition BD boxes

[FooFyta]

This is an overview of my recent JP import copies of Ghost in the Shell SAC special edition BD boxed sets. There's very little info about these online besides the stock marketing photo and scant audio/video/subtitle options that you can piece together from different sources. I took the gamble and spent the money and now I want to share them with you.



I ordered them both from amazon.co.jp and payed ~ 29,000 Yen for each, discounted from the RRP of 42,000 Yen. With import VAT @ 17.5%, along with handling fees and shipping costs I ended up paying ~ £216 per box.
To buy the alternative BD versions, which consist of 2 boxes per season, making a total of 4 boxes, would have cost a little less, but only a little. Interestingly, the split GIG box versions have also seen an Italian release, but I will discuss this a little later when I get onto the A/V.


Spine of 1st GIG.


Reverse of 1st GIG


Each GIG set consists of 4 white BD cases, 3 of which contain the series and the 4th being a bonus disc that you only get in these SE versions.


Close up of the box, it's that really nice, thick card you always hope for when buying a box set, very sturdy with a lovely smooth matte finish.


The white cases are thinner than standard BD cases, here I sandwiched a regular case between them to show the difference.


1st GIG cases 1 and 2, each case contains 2 discs.


1st GIG case 3 containing discs 5+6 and case 4 which contains the SE bonus disc.


Each case is a double sided holder type, very basic with no booklets.


The reverse of each case contains episode listings per disc, a mixture of English and Japanese text.

Now onto the AV side of things. The audio options for each of the 26 episodes in GIGs 1 and 2 are:
Japanese Dolby true HD 5.1
Japanese Linear PCM 2.0
English Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles: Japanese ONLY

Below is an off-screen shot of the audio menu options:


The Video for each of the 26 episodes in GIGs 1 and 2 is AVC 1080/60i with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Blu-ray.com member Jesse James created a thread about the then upcoming Italian version of 1st GIG box #1 here:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=7719127.
Which contains this well obtained piece of info regarding the BD transfer:

…As for the speech for which the Work will be presented in 1080, and at 60i, I contacted Luca Franciosi, who was in charge of the Transfer on BD, and so he told me about the issue…:

""…The 60i is due to the fact that the anime (dated 2002, and digital native) was produced mainly for the small screen when the bluray and the need for fixed rate to 24p still not there. In this case, the initials of the head / tail were animated at 30p, while the episodes were made to "24p over 60i" with the technique of 3:2 pulldown but is not regular (i.e. , at each change-scene the pulldown pattern changes, indicating that the installation was done when everything was already converted to 60i).
The Japanese Blu Ray Edition, are also in 60i.From the Video point of view , the Italian one is identical to the Japanese.""

Identical to the Japanese release, and although it's a 1080i transfer, I assure you they have done an excellent job, the gain in detail over the DVD versions is incredible. To prove this point I took a couple of off-screen comparison photos of the BD and DVD versions, this is the best I could manage without
direct capture hardware, but even so the results are striking:


Everything from the painted backgrounds, to the inked cells have so much more detail.


If you find this scene yourself, you will see how tiny these guys are on screen, just little blurs on the DVD version, but fully defined thanks to all those extra pixels on the BD transfer. The over-saturated look of the bluray shot was just because of a lighting change in the room.

Incidentally, the Italian versions of the split GIG boxed sets come in different packaging and I think look much nicer (photo in Jesse James's thread), however they contain only Japanese and Italian audio and Italian subtitles.

The bonus disc that comes with each GIG contains a series of interview files, which are the same as the interview files on the DVD versions, except here they are in their proper 4:3 format and not stretched to 16:9 like the DVD versions. They are also presented in 1080i so look much sharper. On the down side they only have Japanese 2.0 audio and no subtitles whatsoever, so i'll still be relegated to watching the DVD versions in the future. There is one interview titled 'special edition' that is not found on the DVD versions, but again it's Japanese only.

On the plus side there are some nice things to look at that are exclusive to these bonus discs. There is a selection of digital archives featuring some beautiful artwork to browse through, and what seems to be a screenplay for one of the episodes (episode 01 for the 1st GIG bonus disc and episode 26 for the 2nd GIG bonus disc.


An example of some artwork found on the 1st GIG bonus disc, there's only 13 in total so a few more would have been nice.


First two pages of the screenplay for episode 01 "Section 9"

In conclusion, I have no regrets about the purchase, Ghost in the Shell is one of the few Anime that I would be so extravagant over, and that price was certainly extravagant. The fact that the Japanese blurays contain the original English dub was a deciding factor for me however, I probably wouldn't have made the purchase if I was limited to english subs, having grown so fond of the English cast over the years it would be jarring to hear them in Japanese now, that's just me though. Likewise if I faced the RRP of 42,000 Yen I probably wouldn't have either.

Having one series per box was much more appealing and I also loved the white design of these sets. The bonus discs are nice but in no way make these special edition versions a must own over the split ones, considering much of the content is on the DVD versions. Also, with the reduced RRP making the price difference between them negligible, you really could go either way.

I hope this information has been interesting and useful to people thinking about importing, if you have any questions go right ahead and ask me. take care folks.