Unboxing the Re:Zero Season 1 Complete Blu-ray Set

While not the biggest fan of isekai, I hold Re:Zero in high regard due to its writing, characters, and music, and have wanted to own season 1 on blu-ray for a while. The opportunity presented itself during All the Anime's Christmas Sale last month, where the standard editions were part of the "buy one get one free" offer at £19.99, and the limited edition complete box set was at the same price. I went for the latter since why not get more for the same price, buying it on day 2 of the sale just before it was sold out. It's worth noting that this edition is different from the original collector's edition releases Anime Limited did for the series (which have been unboxed on NormanicGrav's blog), and is essentially the standard editions in a box with a bonus booklet, similarly to what AL is doing for Revolutionary Girl Utena this year. Subtracting UK tax and adding shipping costs, I bought this for £28.16 in total, then paying the sales tax in Finland during the customs clearance process. Took a few weeks to arrive - it was in Finland before Christmas but due to complications (fucking Posti just has to deliver my packages to the worst place in the area from my perspective) I could only pick it up after Christmas. 

The limited collector's edition complete set of Re:Zero season 1 comes in Anime Limited's usual rigid art box packaging, featuring a wide illustration by the original light novel illustrator covering the front, spine and back. It looks nice, and some of the foreground characters are highlighted. Despite the included standard editions already having this information on their back covers, there's also an infocard with usual back cover information such as the BBFC rating. The infocard was glued to the box with two spots of glue, which were annoying but doable to remove and didn't leave any visible mark on the box. 

Inside the box are two amaray cases, using the usual standard edition design with BBFC ratings on front and spine. (However, unlike the standard editions, these use the new post-2020 BBFC logo designs.) These cases contain two blu-ray discs each, for a total of four discs covering the entire first season. In addition to the disc cases there's an about 30 pages long booklet containing character artwork, drawn by the anime's character designer and the original light novel's illustrator, and on the last page a clean version of the iconic "Subaru carrying Rem" visual that is used on the English BD/DVD covers of season 1 part 2. It's nothing special but nice to have. 

The disc content is identical to the standard editions as far as I know, and use the fixed versions of the episodes that were poorly encoded in the original collector's edition discs. They're authored and encoded by Funimation, and therefore the subtitles are white, the credits are in English (both in normal OP/ED and special cases like episode 15 - note that unusually for Funi discs, these credits replicate only the original Japanese credits, and the dub&localization credits are at the end of the disc content instead), and song lyrics are subtitled. Audio options include Japanese and English in Dolby TrueHD 2.0. Trailers (both before-menu ones and extras) are only in English. 

Disc 1 contains episodes 1-8. Before the main menu, the dubbed trailer for The Future Diary is played. 

Disc 2 contains episodes 9-12, and as bonus features the creditless OP1 & ED1, eleven "Starting Break Time from Zero" shorts (total runtime about half an hour), and Funimation's trailers (Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic, live-action Parasyte, Chaos;Child, 2016 Berserk season 2 and live-action Tokyo Ghoul). Before the main menu, the dubbed trailer for Attack on Titan season 2 is played. 

Disc 3 contains episodes 13-21. Before the main menu, the dubbed trailer for Black Clover season 1 part 3 is played. 

Disc 4 contains episodes 22-25, and as bonus features the creditless OP2 & ED2, fourteen "Re:PETIT" shorts (total runtime about half an hour), and Funimation's trailers (Twin Star Exorcists part 4, Overlord season 2, Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World, Steins;Gate, Deadman Wonderland and the Japanese live-action Death Note double feature). Before the main menu, the dubbed trailer for The Ancient Magus' Bride part 1 is played. 

Overall it's definitely a good release. Not super packed with extras, physical or on-disc (although I did watch and like the shorts), but considering I got it for cheaper than the standard edition of just the first half of it normally goes, I have no complaints. As I said, this edition now out-of-stock/print on the distributor's own store, and also on Anime-on-Line and Amazon UK, so you might have a hard time finding it new anywhere, but the standard editions are still in print and will likely remain that way for a good while. 

This is the first unboxing post I've done in a long while, but I thought why not talk about this one since it hasn't been covered by any blogs I follow. There's gonna be another one later this month when a certain import from Japan arrives...