Video:

The video is pretty good for a series that is compressed to fit 8-9 episodes on a single disc. Although I'm not a very discerning viewer, the image doesn't pixelate during high-motion sequences and the quality is consistent.

Audio:

No problems with audio. Sounds good.

Subtitle:

I've only made it past the first 2 discs so far, and I've noticed that the subtitling style changes between episodes. It's overall fairly consistent, but several things draw attention: [The review concerns the ENGLISH subtitles.] - grammatical incorrectness: sentences frequently missing subjects/verbs, poor subject/verb agreement in present tense. The present perfect tense is often implied but not successfully conveyed. - missed lines: doesn't happen often, but distracting and detrimental - improper translation: I don't know much Japanese, but it's annoying when you hear something and you know it doesn't agree with what you see on the screen. Not a major problem, but the translations are incomplete. - poor conversational subtitling: It's hard enough knowing when a sentence begins and ends since some episodes are done entirely in lowercase letters. And it gets even more annoying when two characters' dialogue gets put in the same line. - name inconsistencies: The main characters' names remain intact, but others aren't so fortunate (the mascot "Haggu" becomes "Momo" in episodes 12+) and some names seem to be translated from Chinese and not transliterated from Japanese (which is a bit annoying when sight and sound do not agree). - subtitling mistakes: Apparently the i-umlaut in "naive" wasn't in the subtitle font, so it gets displayed as "na?ve" when it's displayed on the screen. In episode 17, a subtitling snafu causes timing information and random dialogue to be displayed for a couple seconds.

Comment:

This is a direct rip from the MI release, and MAC doesn't do anything to hide it. Not that I mind that much, I personally prefer MI releases. The subtitling is definitely sub-par, but intelligible with some thought. While the DVDs themselves are pretty, the gatefold case is bland and sports large MAC logos throughout. What a waste, this series has lots of beautiful artwork (especially for a 1994 release) and it definitely could have been made more colorful. Though the main menu is in English, sub-menus are in Japanese. They are simple enough that someone with no knowledge can navigate them (especially if you have a knowledge of Chinese). Overall, I like this series despite the substandard subtitling. Fans of console RPGs will enjoy it too (I like calling it the anime that's an RPG). The series is plenty interesting, and this release is adequate -- but it doesn't realize much of its potential.