Neon Genesis Evangelion-Collection 0:1 (Episodes 1-4) (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Biographies-Character Trailer-3 DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	94:25 (Case: 120)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Hideaki Anno
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$29.95	Music	Shiroh Sagisu

Episodes 1/2:

    Shinji survives the battle with the third Angel and Misato arranges for him to move in with her.

Episodes 3/4:

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and thus is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Sharpness is very good most of the time, but there are many scenes that are rather soft, such as at 6:17, 20:56 and 37:47. There are also plenty of occasions where the black lines around objects are sharp in one spot but are blurry in another - in some instances it almost looks like water has fallen onto the artwork and caused the black line to run slightly, such as at 8:59. Another problem which is much more distracting is where a black line on a still object goes in and out of focus, which causes moiré-like artefacts to appear. One of the most distracting occurrences of this is at 75:57. There isn't much in the way of shadow detail, in fact there is basically none, but I guess that is to be expected since this is a cartoon. There are a few strong instances of Vertical Banding present, such as at 55:10, 70:41 and 78:27. See my X-Files Season 1 Box Set review for a picture and further details of this artefact. No low-level noise or edge bleeding was noticed. There is some periodic edge enhancement, but it is minor and really does not degrade the picture quality (e.g. 33:42, 35:35 and 61:54).

    Most of the horizontal panning shots are slightly jerky (e.g. 2:17 and 61:43). Thankfully there aren't too many of these, so this is only a minor problem. There are several scenes where it appears as if the Japanese writing has been replaced with English writing. Unfortunately these sections of the picture are much clearer than the rest of the picture so they tend to stand out.

    The colour was very good and true to the original content, with all objects being well-saturated.

    There are a couple of instances of some minor grain, but none are worth worrying about. Pixelization is a more of a problem. It is minor, but it does disrupt the picture on several occasions.

    One very serious MPEG artefact was noticed at 55:58. Here the picture becomes very blocky and pixellated for several frames. There are also a couple of minor instances where a black line will appear jagged for a couple of frames and then become much sharper and smoother, as if there wasn't enough video bandwidth to correctly render the line, but there are only a couple of instances of these, such as at 90:42.

    There are also a couple of instances where there is some noticeable and distracting telecine wobble. The most noticeable and longest of these can be found in Episode 1, from 15:27 to 22:06. Another example can be found at 58:14. Yet another minor problem is where the right-hand-side black border moves in and then out again. The best example of this is at 14:14. In a similar fault, a white line appears down the length of the right-hand-side border at 14:55 which is also distracting. Even the End Credits have problems. They appear jittery and look like they have a focus problem, but when you pause and step frame by frame, you can see what is actually causing this problem.

    There are some trivial instances of aliasing, but they aren't worth mentioning as they are pretty trivial and are really the least of this transfer's problems.

    There is a light sprinkling of film-like artefacts, all of which are trivial and are not disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie.

    As this series originates from Japan, all the English dialogue sync is way out, but this is to be expected.

    The music score is by Shiroh Sagisu.

    The surround channels are very lightly used for music, with the odd sound effect thrown in, which is totally acceptable considering this is not actually a surround-encoded mix at all.

    The subwoofer is very lightly used throughout the movie.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The main menu is presented in 1.33:1 and has audio and video animation. In fact, all menus have audio and animation, which certainly enhances the menus. There is also some additional animation when you select menu items.

Notes - MAGI Data Files (5 pages)

Theatrical Trailer - Bubblegum Crisis 2040 (1:27 minutes)

Theatrical Trailer - Martian Successor NADESICO (1:38 minutes)

Theatrical Trailer - GASARAKI (1:38 minutes)

Notes - DVD Credits

• Additional French and Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0) soundtracks.

• Nothing

    The overall picture quality is pretty reasonable, but it does have its problems. On a projector its weaknesses are often quite noticeable and become rather distracting on many occasions. On a TV set however, the picture looks pretty good.

    There are no transfer-induced faults in the audio, so there is little to complain about in this regard.

    Extras are limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall