Video:

The MI logo appears once in a while, so AV ripped MI for episodes 5-12 (ironically, MI ripped AV for episodes 1-4). While there are no translucent lines going in the background like with AV's original TV rip of this series in Volume 1, the video lacks crispness, the colors seem a bit duller and little more drab, and the details appear softer. In fact, it looks like a VHS rip--it reminds me of MI's original Rurouni Kenshin TV set.

Audio:

There are no problems with the audio, and it appears in sync with the video.

Subtitle:

Subtitle and translation quality fluctuates here from episode to episode, the lowest point being episode 8, where not only was there a buttload of Engrish mixed in with decent, understandable sentences, they also couldn't get any names right. Otherwise, most of the time there is about 50% good, understandable sentences and translations with 40% decent but somewhat Engrishy sentences, and 10% sentences I wasn't quite sure how to interpret and understand them. Aside from Episode 8, they get most of the non-Japanese names perfectly correct but they never get any of the Japanese names correct at all, most of them getting butchered completely.

Comment:

I wish AV had stuck to doing their own version of this series, because I think they did a better job with the video, and they certainly did a better job with the subtitles, particularly with the Japanese names which were right much more often than they were wrong. If AV had done their own work on both discs, I'd recommend theirs over MI's. But since both 2 disc are exactly the same (except in episode count; AV is 4/8, MI is 8/4), than I can't really recommend either one unless you just have to see this series simply to watch it. Being that this is a very slow-paced, coming-of-age teenage drama story, without any action to speak of, this series suffers from the lackluster subbing/translation job done by MI--although, to be honest, it feels like it would only be a mediocre to above-average series anyways.