Favourite BD/DVD extras

CommanderZx2

CommanderZx2

Hunter
What are your favourite extras present in physical anime releases?

I am quite fond of the location scouting vlogs and always watch them. Some examples I can think of are the K-on movie and Aria. Really enjoyed watching them explore the real locations that would inspire the anime scenes.

For instance with Aria the trip to Venice demonstrated how they had designed the gondola and method for rowing being entirely wrong and they had to redo parts of the anime already in production to make it more accurate to real life.
 
Mini-episodes are my favourite, though their quality can be all over the scale. The best ones that come to mind are included with Umaru-chan, Blue Seed, and Sound! Euphonium.

Shelving the debate of whether it's anime, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within has an interesting collection of test renders called The Gray Project, some of which show scenes from a very different version of the script.

The worst extras tend to be staff and cast interviews. They're often so nervous of speaking out of turn that they just circle-jerk each other and don't give any insight. I doubt we'll ever see anime production documentaries with the blood-on-the-walls honesty of the Alien Anthology, though to be fair that's rare in Hollywood too.
 
Dai said:
The worst extras tend to be staff and cast interviews. They're often so nervous of speaking out of turn that they just circle-jerk each other and don't give any insight. I doubt we'll ever see anime production documentaries with the blood-on-the-walls honesty of the Alien Anthology, though to be fair that's rare in Hollywood too.
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Given the original Alien documentaries were interfered with for the Alien 3 documentary (Fox at the time hated being blamed for the interference on the film and also other allegations that were made too) until the Blu ray re-release (which was unedited) does show there can be hesitancy in the west from big studios. However with the general controlling nature of anime production committees and animation studios, it's extremely unlikely that will ever happen in Japan. I would like to see it at least.

I barely trust the EPK style format for most big budget films (comes across inauthentic) and given the much more controlling nature of Japanese talent agencies, that problem is even worse there for the phoniness of it all and its all very fake in comparison.
 
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Dai said:
The worst extras tend to be staff and cast interviews. They're often so nervous of speaking out of turn that they just circle-jerk each other and don't give any insight. I doubt we'll ever see anime production documentaries with the blood-on-the-walls honesty of the Alien Anthology, though to be fair that's rare in Hollywood too.
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I think that may be a side affect of the Japanese honorific polite speech, which when translated to English just sounds like people constantly apologising/praising each other.

The same is certainly true for like the recent Disney Star Wars movies compared to the prequels, you can see George Lucas looking depressed and talking about problems in the behind the scenes for the prequels, but it's all glossy and everything perfect for the recent ones.
 
Like @Demelza I really like physical extras. Books with nice art being one of the big ones. It's why I've become very fond of Al's ultimate editions. I know it may not be for everyone but I also like the move to adding things like key chains and pins that Funimation do these days. They all come out of the box and go in display on my shelves.

One of my all time favourite releases in that's sense is the premium K-on! release with the custom plectrums. I want to play with them so badly but also dont want to ruin them so they're still in their little bag.

For on disc extras I do like audio commentaries though with Funimation their are 2 types you get. One where the director or script writer is there and is able to focus the conversation into something meaningful. And the other where it's only the voice actors and it inevitably descends into inane nonsense.
 
I generally like commentaries on extras. Now granted this depends on how you watch in regards to anime as, in my case, I tend to prefer a dub if its both available and its not genuinely bad (I tend to be of the school of thought a dub is not bad alone based on a change in adaptation or some minor performance issues/casting, it can still be good in fact) but getting the cast to talk about something is occasionally worthwhile but as @WMD says, sometimes it inane. I did like the 1st Keijo commentary with Alexis Tipton, Felecia Angelle, Amber Lee Connors and Sarah Wiedenheft and thought it was a genuine laugh throughout. Some of the AoT commentaries are interesting as Mike McFarland (The ADR Director) is usually involved in all of them.

I could do without art books that feature fairly meaningless art (Rage of Bahamut: Genesis being an example) and my personal pet peeve of not listing the English VA's alongside the Japanese in these booklets (Aniplex does it, even for the Funimation shows, so all companies should do it).
 
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Demelza said:
Books! I love booklets with interviews or artwork especially since if I've gone to the effort of buying a CE I must really love that show already. :)
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the Flipflappers one is great and great pricing from MVM, i just wish Manga wasn't so overpricing with theirs because i wanted that SSSSGridman book but after hearing of problems with the glue on it i don't think the pain of not getting it hurt so much
 
I also really like good quality books though extra ova/mini-episodes are probably the best but rarest of bonuses! I do really like a good audio commentary but from the original creators (not so much from the dub voice actors and I don't really watch dubs) though often don't have the time to re-watch whole movie/episodes for a commentary, except for my absolute favourites, and the temptation to just watch the anime itself is too much!
 
Just finished Cautious Hero and on top of the show being a hilarious joy to watch I'm impressed with the bonus stuff in the collectors edition. Audio drama CDs both in Japanese and English dub is a real nice touch. The booklet containing a bonus manga short was fun. The lenticular art card was a novel way to do something like that. And the cell frame bookmarks are really cool but I'd never use them as a bookmark as they'd just get ruined.

But all in all it's a really nice set.
 
Extras? What are these so-called Extras??? But, seriously and truthfully, I never watch the extras on any of my physical releases, either with anime or live action films. I watch the main feature, and then I'm done with the discs, back in the case and back on the shelf they go. At least I never have to complain about the lack of extras on a bare-bones release, lol. Extras interest me about as much as physical trinkets inside fancy Limited Edition box sets - they all get tossed into a storage box in the back of a closet, never to be seen again. But then, trinkets at least do get seen once - extras don't get seen at all!
 
I really liked commentaries on live action stuff, mainly films. I think there's like 6 different tracks on the Lord of the Rings Extended Version and I've watched everyone of them! The ones on the Cornetto Trilogy are hilarious! But I've only seen 2 on anime films Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind with Hideaki Anno and Kazuyoshi Katayama which was quite interesting and The Girl Who Lept Through Time with Mamoru Hosoda (Director), Riisa Naka (Makoto), Takuya Ishida (Chiaki) and Mitsutaka Itakura (Kousuke) which was dull as anything as they were mostly doing the polite Japanese thing of one being modest or saying I was bad, whilst the others would disagree and say no you were great there.
 
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