Expand on the past with these OVAs that never saw release in English before.
What They Say:
The fires of war don’t create heroes, only legions of the wounded and the dead. For a pilot of an easily destroyed VOTOMS unit, every foray into battle is one more calculated bet with your own life as the prize, another day of cheating death. When your commanding officers send you into a fight that can’t be won, or set goals that can only be achieved through massive sacrifice, then a decision has to be made. Are you going to be a hero? Or a survivor? The brutal realism of the acclaimed anime series returns, as men and machines are thrown into the meat grinder of war, in the epic second Original Video Animation collection!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track only but it’s in stereo and encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The show is what you’d expect from this period in that it’s a pretty basic stereo mix that’s more center channel and mono than anything else. But once you get into it just a bit it’s not noticeable at all. There isn’t much of anything in the way of real directionality or placement like we expect with shows today but it works overall with the highs and lows to give it some variety and appropriateness for various scenes. The lossless codec certainly works well for the opening and closing songs and some of the incidental sounds come across better as well, especially since all we had before were 192kbps lossy encodes. I do still kind of wish that this would get dubbed someday for fans but what we get is solid and there aren’t any dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2010 and 2011, the transfer for this series is presented in its original full-frame aspect ratio in 1080p using the AVC codec. The two discs for this set are designed to split up the show a bit where the first one focuses on the Phantom Arc while the second disc gets the follow-up pieces. The show definitely looks good even a decade out with what it is and how the animation for it takes from the original but updates as it needs to for a variety of reasons. The color design is solid and it’s the kind of project where you’re halfway left wishing that the original series could get a completely new edition made these days so that it’s all as good looking as this set. Details hold up well and the overall visual design hits all the right notes to delight with.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard-sized Blu-ray case with two discs. The front cover uses some really good artwork that’s well-massaged here to really work the red and darker tones well, giving it a strong and menacing look as we get some armored unit material and the whole pilot uniform aspect. It’s wrapped in some good military-style pieces to give it a bit more weight, which the logo itself ties into nicely. The strip along the top makes it clear that it’s a standard definition show on Blu-ray but I’m sure that gets overlooked with some purchases, but there’s only so much you can do. The back cover lays out just how much material there is here along the top and we get a solid summary of the premise. There are a number of good shots from the show that highlight the style of animation as well, giving it all a little color. The breakdown below highlights what’s included and we get a small but legible production credits slot and technical information in the grid that makes it clear how the show is encoded. While there is no reversible cover we do get an insert that breaks out what OVAs are included in this set.
Menu:
The menu design for this is pretty nice as it has to cover a lot of material. The future-military style gives it a hard edge but with some nice angles that work in its favor where the left third is the menu navigation itself. It’s here that we get the blue block that has the episodes by number and title in an easy-to-read font and a green selector that makes it clear where you are. The rest of the screen is given over to a rough and worn green background that has the logo along one side while the other changes out the armor aspect with each disc, giving us a little more variety..
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the original VOTOMS TV material being released a number of times over the past few decades in English across different distributors, it took until this release to start getting to the OVA side of it. Which is unfortunate because these are fun things that help to build the foundations more of what went on and expand on the world in some creative ways. This release brings us what was produced in 2010 and 2011 where it was all in high definition and more modern productions overall. There are four different projects that were released here with two standalone OVAs and two short series of material that touches on what has come before. The end result is something that helps to move things forward again and to play in a different way for a bit.
The first thing that we get is the Phantom Chapter OVA series that came out in 2010 and ran for six episodes. This one serves as a sequel to the 1994 Shining Heresy OVA series which in itself was a sequel to the original TV series. With this one taking place further in the future, Chirico’s disappeared and it focuses on the group of friends he made in that time that decide to go looking for him. They’re not the only one looking for him, however, as another AT pilot is out there in the shadows doing the same. This one took a bit to get used to overall because it brings back a bunch of characters from the original run but with the three-decade difference, it took time to remember some of them. There’s definitely some real nostalgia to be had in this run of the show.
After that, we get Case: Irvine which is a one-off 50-minute OVA that was directed by Shisho Igarashi. Here, it delves into the life of one character with Irvine Lester, who works as someone who repairs the mecha. What made this one interesting is that with pretty much evey show, the focus has been on Chirico or looking for Chirico. Here, it’s got nothing to do with him and we only saw that otherwise with the Mellowlink show that’s still uncliensed. The story is a familiar one and our lead in Irvine isn’t bad but he’s just saddled with a story that doesn’t break new ground even within the VOTOMS universe itself. But it was welcome to see someone new directing things and trying to do something new and different with it all. And a 50-minute OVA in 2010 was pretty rare.
Next up is Votoms Finder, another 50-minute OVA that was directed by Shiegeta Atsushi. While the Irvine story focused on the familiar, this one with another director gives us something completely unrelated to what we’ve had before. There are some familiar trappings at times but it doesn’t take place in areas that we’ve seen before over the run and feels almost completely disconnected from the rest of the works. It is, however, a simple but well-executed story with boy rescuing princess and going through all tha it entails.
And finally, we get Chirico’s Return, which is also known as Alone Again, released in 2011 and bringing back Ryosuke Takahashi to direct it. The last thing released as of this writing, this one takes place between the two OVA series with Shining Heresy and Phantom Chapter and serves to try and bridge them with the events there. Which is all well and good but it’s done with so much to try and accomplish that it really needed to be built into the Phantom Chapter storyline iteslf and given a few more episodes so that it could flow better and not feel quite so rushed overall. It’s good to see some of what we discover here, such as Fyana’s subplot and a few of the others, but it’s a bridging OVA overall and those often only go so far.
In Summary:
Digging more into the world of VOTOMS is definitely fun to do. These things were lost for so long and it was unfortunate that at the time of their original release for the ones in this set that we never got them coming out then. But with a lot of work to get everything together over the years, having it all picked up and translated and treated as well as it has been is a real delight. This set has all the HD material in it and it’s a decent mix of stories that doesn’t quite try to recreate what it was before as it explores new areas and things. But in doing that, it doesn’t quite manage the magic in the same way, which when you consider one of the stories has sixteen years beteween products, is fairly understandable. That said, for fans of the show this is an absolute no-brainer to get as it delivers from start to finish in pleasing the VOTOMS fan.
Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Maiden Japan
Release Date: July 23rd, 2019
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 290 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
