Video:

Not anyting special. I guess they call oldschool!

Audio:

Sounds fine to me.

Subtitle:

Alot of booboos. Hard to understand. I found they often mixed up characters names. Hard to go byu the subtitles. Enough to understand it if youre paying attention but you cant rely on them fully!

Comment:

I enjoyed this series more than Berserk. I dunno if that says anything for it. I really enjoy the mystical creatures and alot about Japanese cutlure and history even if it is indirect. I really enjoyed it as a well balanced series. It has action and a lil romance and sometimes a bit of humor. Good wholesome TV.

Video:

4.5/5 Looks quite good for a satellite/cable source! It may fool you into believing that it was an R2 rip. No visible artifacts even during fast actions scenes on a 40 inch tube.

Audio:

4/5 Only Japanese language track is available. Presented in dolby digital 2.0. Again, quite descent considering it is not a DVD rip.

Subtitle:

3/5 This is where things always seem to go downhill for HK dvds. The subtitles will give you a sense of what is going onscreen, however, a lot of the translation leaves much to desire. Names of characters and countries were not translated properly, there is the occasional 'engrish' and grammar was just not present sometimes. This won't hinder your ability to understand the story, but it is just plain annoying sometimes. The only reason I have given a score 3/5 is that there are a couple of episodes were it seems the subtitles were ripped from fansubs. Otherwise, probably would rate it 2/5.

Comment:

Episode count: 39 Number of discs: 5 Menu: Just your standard menu (play, scene selection and setup), no extras. Chapter breaks: Unfortunately chapter breaks are present only at the beginning of each episode, at the start of the openning OST. This means that once you get tired of watching the openning OST, you have to manually fast forward to the beginning of an episode. Tends to be quite repetitive and annoying after a couple of episodes and there are a total of 39! Twelve Kingdoms aka Juuni Kokki follows the struggles of a girl who finds herself taken to another world and tries to come to terms with her destiny. It is quite entertaining once you are past the first 10 episodes because it takes all of those episodes to set the background story and frankly speaking, it drags and it is very annoying sometimes (especially the main character). Once the background story is set, things will get very interesting and the series will hook you in as you follow the main character and her adventures. All in all, It was quite entertaining. Again, if you feel bored or annoyed in the beginning, just be tough and hang in there as the series definitely gets a lot better!

Video:

Taken from a very good cable source, better than the R1 version. Notice the small BS 2 in the upper right hand side.

Audio:

Very good, dolby pro logic encoded.

Subtitle:

Very good subs for a hkdvd, some gramattical and phrasing errors, but not enough to hinder the meaning.

Comment:

Very addicting series, it mixes Japanese and Chinise mythlogy freely. The soundtrack is beaufiul, it freely mixes traditional Japanese and western elements. The characters are well developed, the storyline is deep and rich. I really enjoyed this. It has been released here as The 12th Kingdom.