Region 4 Winners and Losers

    The Region 1 disc was released towards the end of last year. Like the Region 4 release, it was made available both in a collector's box, or as an individual disc.

    The boxes are quite similar, except that the R4 box has a picture of Yume in a creek on the back, and Yume in front of a building on the front. The R1 box has the creek picture on the front, and a picture of all the main characters at a picnic on the back. I think I prefer the R4 box, but only slightly.

    The R1 box included a couple of postcards, with one offering the image from the cover of the first disc, and the other offering the creek image. They are quite lovely, and I couldn't bring myself to use them as postcards.

    The R1 disc includes a folded insert that lists the chapter stops for each episode, and has another image, this time of Yume and Runa. It's a larger version of the image on the reverse side of the cover slick in the R4, so we haven't missed out on seeing it. Their reversible slick is pretty much the same as ours.

    The Region 1 disc has two soundtracks, just like the R4. They are Dolby Digital 2.0, just like the R4, but at the unusual bit-rate of 256kbps (the R4 uses the more common 224kbps).

    The Region 1 transfer is quite similar to the R4, except that it is NTSC. It might be a tiny bit darker, and a teensy bit more colourful, but the difference is slight. The more noticeable difference is that the R1 doesn't have as much over-brightness — it looks like the R4 transfer may have been set too bright, unfortunately.

    I think you can be equally happy with either version, but if pushed to it, I'd have to rate the R1 as slightly better due to that over-brightness.