Video:

Ok here we go. One of the obvious bonuses of this set being ripped from it's R1 counterpart is that you can count on the video side of things to turn out pretty good. Thankfully this one does not dissapoint. Even with the 8-9 episodes contained on each disc, compression artifacts are nowhere to be found. The video also suffers very little in the way of aliasing problems and barring the minor print damage in places, (also evident in the R1 release) I would say that the video aspect on this set is sharp, defined and as a result, quite pleasing overall. Pretty darn good.

Audio:

The quality of the audio on this set will largely depend on whether your a dub fan or not. This is because I noticed when I changed it to the Japanese audio track, everything (sepcially the narrator's voice) seemed a heckuva lot less clear. This however is not the case with the Pioneer English dub, ripped from the R1's as it remains easy on the ears and doesn't sound muffled at all. Dolby Digital encoding is present in 2.0 in the English audio track, but again in the Japanese audio track it seemed like it was either bog standard stereo or just badly encoded Dolby Digital. Again, this problem may well have been present in the R1 release too. Could have been better, especially as far as the Japanese track goes, but in terms of all round sound and audio i'm pretty happy with it as besides that problem, there is precious little wrong with the sound on this set.

Subtitle:

The subs for this set are pretty good, but do have a few flaws that keep them from being great subtitles. I'll start with the bad first. The subs fairly often (most notably in the earlier episodes) tend to be mistimed. A character such as Miaka or Tamahome will say something in Japanese only for the subs to pre-empt what they're saying, or, to appear on the screen late after they begin talking about something else. Another problem with the subs is that i'm not entirely convinced that they have been ripped from the R1 set, just like the audio and video have been. My reasoning for this is that there are a few glaring grammar mistakes in the earlier episodes that just wouldn't be on the official R1 release. I may be wrong, and those mistakes may be on the R1 release, but I just can't see a subtitle track that is meant to be identical to an R1 subtitle track, sporting such imperfections. The only other flaw, and this one is a minor one really, is that the subs don't appear to be aligned correctly at times and sport a nasty, large and sharp white font. Minor issues really. Now for the good. Even with the flaws outlined above, the subs rarely stray from an impressive degree of integrity and understandabilty. Everything is spelled correctly and grammar, for the most part, remains correct. As a result, the subs are very to understand and make watching the series with the Japanese audio not a chore at all. Ultimately impressive, but flawed nonetheless.

Comment:

Well, besides the flaws that I mentioned regarding the subs and the audio aspects of this title, Fushigi Yuugi: Suzaku Boxset still remains an essential purchase. Not only are the characters and storyline very compelling, but the price of the set alone makes it affordable to people who have previously shunned the series due to the high R1 price point. This is essential stuff. Don't be the only who hasn't watched it ^_^.