Now and Then, Here and There Vol.1
Created/Updated 2001-01-28
- Catalog Number : PIBA-1056
- Manufacturer : Pioneer
- Series : Ima Sokoni Iru Boku
- Printing Date : 1999-12-22
- Region : 2
- Price : Y6,800
- Play Time : 75 minutes
- Number of Discs : 1
- Number of Sides per Disc : 1
- Number of Layers (side1) : 1
- Number of Layers (side2) : N/A
- Audio1 : Japanese Dolby Digital 2ch
- Audio2 : N/A
- Audio3 : N/A
- Audio4 : N/A
- Audio5 : N/A
- Subtitle1 : N/A
- Subtitle2 : N/A
- Subtitle3 : N/A
- Subtitle4 : N/A
- Subtitle5 : N/A
Animephile Rating: D (6.0)
- Video Scan Type : interlaced-TV (-2.5) -
The video does have 3:2 pulldown information for the most part. It
keeps changing due to editing, but if you set the dTV (2.1.2) to NOT
fallback to video deinterlacing on bad pulldown, it'll do just fine!
Disabling fallback on dTV is recommended for any other anime that you
know to have 3:2 pulldown information in the video stream. Also, I
recommend setting PullDownCount to something low (like 2) because
every time pulldown changes (due to editing), it doesn't take long to
switch to the correct one.
- Aspect Handling : standard (-0.0)
- Compression : -0.0
- Video Separation : -0.5 -
It's as minimal as it gets other than staying away from composite
format altogether. Pioneer Japan must have pretty darn good hardware
for this.
- Scene Transition : -0.0
- Calibration : -0.5 -
There are some places where "black" is not quite black enough. All in
all, it's not bad. Slightly washed out feel, which could be
intentional, is not bothersome. It's unlikely to even be noticeable
on CRT based system because of the inherently non-linear gain curve at
extremes of the brightness curve. DLP/ILA type projectors have
perfectly linear gains, but this is not necessarily a good thing :(
- Other : -0.5 -
There's a few pixels worth of reflection on the right side. It's
certainly not going to be noticeable with stand-alone player because
it won't be shown due to overscan. I'm not sure what causes it, but I
do know that the vertical bar is of the same color as whatever is on
the bottom right corner. This phenomenon is not present in other
volumes of this series.
Comments:
"Ima Sokoni Iru Boku" is, by far, the most influential anime I've ever
watched. What I mean by that, is that I _actually_ think of "La-la Ru"
whenever I see water. I consciously conserve water because of an
anime! It is not necessarily the most memorable anime I've watched,
because it's too intense for repeat viewing. It's kind of hard to
explain. Whenever I want to watch something, I look at my collection
and when I see this series, I want to reach for it, but I can't! All
the images in my head somehow keeps me from reaching for it. Once I
manage to start playing it, I can watch it just fine, though. In
fact, I can't stop watching it.
This is traditionally animated anime (with cells) as far as I can
tell. Background cells are drawn with pastel feel. They're
wonderfully realistic. Pastel feel helps to enhance various emotional
scenes. Some might argue that the character design is too simple. I
thought the same thing at first, but if you look at the DVD
cover-arts, you'll notice that they're drawn extremely realistically.
Looking at those, I feel that, if the whole anime was drawn to be that
realistic, I'd actually have a harder time coping with the anime.
This anime _is_ extremely artistic both with the animation as well as
with the story telling. You'll find symbolisms and foreshadowing
almost from the start! Story moves at just about perfect pace.
Everything flows nicely without being excessively obvious.
Enough babbling.
The image below shows one of the many beautiful scenes from the series.
Look at the right side for the vertical bar. This bar is always of
the same color as whatever is on the bottom right corner, so it can
become very annoying. Please excuse the jpeg artifacts.
Basically, if you're into serious anime, this is as serious as it
gets! Don't let the first episode fool you.
Heads up for you readers. There _is_ a screenshot on the DVD2
review. I usually don't put any screenshots on any review except for
the first DVD of a series, but DVD2 has the most beautiful (to me
anyway) scene I've ever seen on an anime.
Images:
