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Region 4 Winners and Losers

Region 4 Winners and Losers

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Explanatory Notes Additions or corrections (Please refer to the Explanatory Notes before emailing an addition or correction to this listing)

Title

Best

Castle of Cagliostro, The (Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro No Shiro): Special Ed.

Online reviews suggest the Region 1 NTSC Special Edition is a double sided disc, with the storyboard feature separate from the feature film. The Region 1 edition also adds a Dolby Digital 5.1 English option, but is missing the gallery of conceptual art.

The Region 2 Japanese NTSC release spreads the content over two discs, but it does not contain the Animator interview. Reviews of this disc praise the video quality, but the English subtitles are dubtitles rather than a proper translation of the Japanese audio.

The Region 2 UK Optimum release is an NTSC conversion (PAL runtime 99:32). An introduction by Jonathan Clements (6:13) is added.

The original Region 4 disc contained no substantial extras, was an NTSC conversion (PAL runtime 101:56) and had significantly lower audio quality. I can't see any compelling reason not to go with the new local product. Fans of the film needn't think twice about upgrading.

UPDATE: February 2008. Both the R1 Special Edition and the R4 Special Edition have butchered opening sequences (a slow-paced montage with Japanese credits is minimized to freeze frames with English credits overlaid). The original R4 and R1 releases, the R2 (UK-Optimum) release, as well as the 2-disc R2(JP) and recent Lupin the Box R2 (JP) are all uncut. As an aside, the R1 Special Edition has production art as an extra, but there are fewer images and they have a much smaller viewable area. (Thanks to lupinthethird.net for this info).