I didn't buy this to collect anything. I bought this to watch the show and nothing else. Cost difference between buying and renting was obviously insignificant to me.
Now that I got that out of the way, I can write about how bad the video is. What kind of clueless uncaring stupid idiots work on these things? How much do they get paid? Wait, that doesn't matter. If they get paid anything, they're getting overpaid. This is the year 2006. In fact, it's almost the year 2007! Composite video has no place in the production chain. Hell, even if the only source they had were in composite format, practically everything has a decent 3D comb filter these days to minimize the crawlies. Can you imagine how much profit ADV makes? You can't bullshit me about them not having enough money to purchase some quality equipment, or to subcontract out to a decent mastering house. But then that would cut into some fat executives' wallet. Those ungrateful selfish bastards. I have not seen the fansubs, but I imagine those divx files probably look better than these.
Now that I got that out of the way, too, I can write about the fluff. This show is fluff. They picked out only the joke episodes from the novel and bundled them. I actually knew most of these stories already because I read the manga adaptation of the novel upto volume 9. That's not to say it's bad. Animation is very good and the stories are funny. Funny stories don't really leave a lasting impression on me, though, so I'm glad I missed out on the R2s. The original anime by Gonzo actually has more character, at least until their animation quality drops to the bottomless pit. Still, if nothing else, just the animation quality would've been enough to justify this set, but the annoying crawlies get in the way of enjoying the fine animation. I expected to see quality that matches the Kaleido Star boxset at the minimum. I guess I shouldn't expect anything from all those clueless "engineers" being overpaid to do such simple jobs.
I didn't want to bother spending a lot of time on this, so I only have two screen captures. They're much higher quality jpeg than usual, though.
I like the thinpacks for the non-collection sets like these. My item photos have improved quite a bit over the months, no?
Can you say composite artifacts? Even the fields don't perfectly line up vertically. Sheesh!
