Really suprised with how well it is. Very nicely compressed

I'd buy the R1, but for the price difference and the quality difference, the HK version is great. Without a doubt, this set should be bought. REALLY enjoyable

Once again, no complaints, other that some really minor stuff. People had said things about green bars/green flesh tones, but I didn't see any of that (perhaps it's my TV?). MI now has burnt in advertisements on the video, but they were put in tastefully (well, as tastefully as one possibly can I guess).

Sounded better this time around. Nothing wrong.

Sounded better this time around. Nothing wrong.

Disc 4 is a DVD 5 and has 4 episodes. There are chapter breaks at each new episode. Disc 5 is a DVD 9 and has 9 episodes. There are chapter breaks at the intro, part A, part B, credits, and next episode preview. One of my favorite series of all time. If I weren't such a cheap bastard, or had the HK DVD's sucked, I would drop the $160 on this series in a heartbeat. 5/5

Great DVD rip, but sometimes there are some green areas in the screen ...it's not to noticeable and won't detract from enjoying the show, but they are there.Apart from it ,Great video.

Great

Great

The menus are in english. They could have put the entire show in 3 DVDs , don't know why 2 separate sets and 5 DVDs ...Apart from that , if you want the show buy this and stay away form the AS set.Includes a couple of Music Clips also.

Normally this should be 4.5 as in the first set, BUT: very often there are translucent green bars across the screen. Sometimes they're small and can hardly be noticed, but sometimes they can clearly be seen. And sometimes they are as nearly as big as the screen, so that the whole screen is slightly tinted green. Everything is still perfectly watchable, but once you noticed the green bars, you keep looking for them and that reduces the enjoyment of this series. 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.

Perfect stereo.

Perfect stereo.

Despite the green bars, I still recommend this set. The anime itself is excellent, at least if you don't expect light hearted entertainment. This is one of the series that leaves the viewer slightly depressed and in a melancholic mood. RECOMMENDED!

Note: Three music videos are included as extras.

This DVD presents some good points and some bad points as well. The Audio and Subtitles are pretty on par with the previous set, however, the set falls short in terms of Video quality compared to the previous version. There are a few issues with the transfer that I'm kinda irritated with (though I'm not sure if they are made because of the source material, or made because of the mpeg-2 compression). Video 4/5 This show is widescreen, and presented in a 1.85 aspect ratio with anamorphic widescreen (YES!) which is just about always better looking than a regular letterbox DVD. The video is fairly crisp with a little blockiness here and there. There wasn't too much noise during motion intensive scenes, and it stayed pretty clear w/o any over blockiness. The problem I had tho was in the overly large amount of telecine happening on the video. The lines appeared a lot during scenes with the whole scene moving (this happened on the computer, it may be alleviated during normal TV play). Also there are green lines that appear on the video. now I'm not sure if these lines are because of a bad transfer, or because of an mpeg-2 encoding flaw. The green lines are basically a tint over some flesh tones (they tend to come around, then go away). Not too distracting if you're paying attention to the show. Audio 5/5 nothing to complain about here, very crisp with no Buzzs, hums, crackles or any sort of breakup. Subs 4/5 The subs for the most part are very understandable (fansub like), however every once in a while there is a line that leaves you scratching your head in confusion. Also every single sort of subtitle problem happens at least once in this set (misstiming them late, sync errors where one character speaks, and the sub line is what the last person says, disapearing lines etc.) However with all the errors it had, they appear very seldom. I do remember them all happening, but totally they appeared maybe once each, so most of the time the anime is readable. I took a point off because the mistakes were there. Over all, if you liked Part 1, this set is a must buy in order to finish the series. In terms of content, I was kinda displeased with the ending, and was left with an empty feeling inside. the anime was ok (a 6/10 in my book), but I didn't find it to be anything great, at least compared to the likes of other action animes like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop etc.

This is the second part of Noir (if you haven't figured it out). The story is firmly out of its formula beginnings and picks up the pace. The end of the story is not quite unexpected, but I didn't really care while I watched it--again, it's such a high quality series that you don't mind even if you see the plot twists coming a few episodes ahead. Anyway, about this release: Video: 4.5/5. I wanted to put this on the rating system, but it only lets you put integers in there. Oh, well... The video is nearly as good as for the first part. Widescreen, crisp, you know the drill. There's a few glitches in the second disc, though--sometimes, bands of slightly different tone show up on a skin-colored surface. I think those are probably due to high compression on the second disc. See, this release is made up of one DVD-5 with 4 episodes plus a music video, and one DVD-9 with 9 (!) episodes and 2 music videos. So, I'm not exactly surprised by those glitches. I wonder why they didn't put one more episode on the DVD-5. However, the problem seems to vanish towards the end of the disc (or I just stopped noticing it :{). Also, MI started to use in-picture text (instead of ads in the subs) to advertise. They usually do this at an unobstrusive point, but there's a couple of eps where it's rather annoying. Don't let this deter you--the video is almost flawless. But I can't honestly give it a perfect mark in the view of this slight color error and the obstrusive ad. Sound: 5/5. As in the first release. Excellent soundtrack still, although it's a bit more "ambient" in some ways. Subtitles: 4/5. Gone are the quotes, but the mistimings are still there, and in a few episodes, they're worse than they ever get in the first set. You just have to pay attention, and you'll understand what's going on very well, but it's a bit annoying nevertheless. Also, the subs seem to run out the screen a bit more than in the first set. There's a specific line in the next to last episode which I could never catch because of this, and although I could deduce the gist of it, I wish I had been able to see the exact way it was said. Overall: I recommend this set as much as the first one. You'll want to see how it ends, first of all (the end doesn't let you high and dry, by the way--it actually presents a lot more closure than the end of other series I've seen). The three music videos are nice extras, although they're probably not the primary reason you'll want the set. I must say, overall, that I'm very enthusiastic about this series, and will probably want to watch it again several times. It's not without its flaws, but its strong points overwhelm them by a huge margin, IMHO. edited by bge on 09 Jun 2002 5:10 pm