i wish i was being paid in Euros so i can still afford box sets! :(
Hey, I fully understand…in the end this set cost me 109.49 Euros which converts to $137.50 in U.S.dollars!!! That comes out to roughly $6.88 per disc, which makes it less painful an investment if I look at it that way!
Next up: Lee Kang-Shen’s “Help Me Eros”, Taiwanese release.
Now this is quite a serious film. Even though there are some quite explicit softcore-sex scenes in it, it’s definitely not about sex. Rather, it’s about a guy on the way down, and one of the few respites he has in his miserable life are his drug-influenced fantasies about sex. It’s a psychological portrait about hitting rock-bottom and ending things the way you want it. “Leaving Las Vegas” with hemp instead of booze…
Not that you’d notice from the packaging of the DVD though!
Look at this:
Ah yes, I remember that onesheet being plastered all over Rotterdam during IFFR 2008…
So far so good as the slipcase features an actual poster. But look at the decoration of the discholder:
Riiiiight…
Opening the discholder will probably show that this is NOT a skinflick but rather an arthouse film which…
... oh no, it doesn’t:
Maybe I misinterpreted the film after all?
Oh, and that package I was bragging about? That’s coming up tomorrow…
OK. That big package I kept mentioning?
That was the Japanese Limited Edition BluRay of Satoshi Kon’s giallo anime “Perfect Blue”.
Now, before watching the pictures below which show off the awesome packaging, note the following:
-This edition has no English subs or dub. Not on the main film, and not on the extras.
-The HD-quality is negligible. It’s like an upscaled DVD. It’s even got telecine wobble, that’s how crap the transfer is.
Nevertheless when I heard about the special unique packaging for this set I wanted it. And as Oscar Wilde once wrote: “I can resist anything except temptation…”.
Satoshi Kon created the box art specially for this series of editions. The regular versions got the jigsaw image seen on the BluRay-holder itself, but the Special Editions got… something special on top of that. Something that highlighted the theme of schizophrenia and split personalities which dominates the film itself.
Without further ado: here is what it looks like.
Taking the contents out of the double slipcase:
All contents out: a thick storyboard book and the (standard) BluRay holder.
All contents opened:
Now normally this is where I stop. But both the slipcase and the book have some trickery in them so let’s look at them in detail…
Slipcase first: the outer slipcase is a translucent sheet of plastic with thin black bars on it.
The cardboard slipcase underneath has two pictures on each side, interlaced through one another. When the outer slipcase is put around it, only one of the pictures can be seen. Move the outer slipcase slightly, and you get to see the other picture!
Here you can see how it works:
-On the left is the image without the outer slipcase.
-In the middle you see the same image, but now with the outer slipcase surrounding it.
-On the right you see the same image, but now with the outer slipcase slightly moved.
Here are the different covers, dependent on how you apply the outer slipcase.
Regular (good girl) and hidden (naughty) front cover:
Note that this is not the best picture possible of the “naughty” image (bits of “good girl” are shimmering through, like the bow on her shoulder), but it’s the best I could manage with one hand holding the camera and the other pulling the outer slipcase askew. Rest assured that when you have an extra hand or two, with some effort the “naughty” image is completely naked without the other half being visible.
Regular (innocent) and hidden (murder) back cover:
Cool, what? Even the spine of the slipcase is not exempt:
Regular (title) and hidden (top billing) text on the spine.
Finally: the book.
Included in the set is the storyboard book and it’s cool enough in itself. But what is that on the side of the pages, the opposite of the spine, so to speak? Looks like another hidden image…
Bending the book a bit spreads out the pages a bit, and look: the “good girl” image appears.
Bending the book the other way again spreads out the pages, but now the “naughty” image appears!
Very cool. I’ve only been collecting DVDs and BluRays forthe last ten years, but I’ve been collecting books for almost forty years now, and this is the first time I see this particular trick being used!
Stellar, STELLAR work… what a beautiful set. If only the BluRay in it was up to scratch…
I’m sorry to ask, but where were you able to find the Perfect Blue bluray? I’ve been trying to hunt this one down for quite some time now.
Well… that was the weirdest thing. I was looking for something completely different and bumped into an anime sale over at cdjapan.co.jp ...
To my big surprise, one of the things they were selling was the “Avalon” LE BluRay released by Honneamise, an edition which is listed as OOP by both Play-Asia and YesAsia.
So I browsed a bit through their catalog and surprise surprise, they had the “Perfect Blue” LE as well! They charged top dollar though so I decided against it.
Then, I first got a discount for signing up and another discount for having ordered several, uhm… other rather pricey items (like “Avalon”) and they allowed me to load all my discounts onto ordering the “Perfect Blue” LE.
So… I couldn’t resist anymore.
By the looks of it they still have it, by the way. It’s filthy expensive by itself though, I’m really glad I was able to knock a few tenners off of that price: http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=GNXA-7001
If that Perfect Blue had English subs I’d be all over it.
I’m psyched about the kick-ass Alien statue coming later this year. I have to decided if I want to spend that kind of money on it.
Same here, but that won’t come as a surprise I think.
The regular boxset is offered for only 65 EUR though, which makes me wonder if I’m willing to put down an extra 60 just for that egg… which glows in the dark… DAMMIT!
