Unboxing: Samurai Champloo – The Complete Series (Blu-ray) [UK]

The fans demanded it, and MVM Entertainment responded; Samurai Champloo is finally here and available on Blu-ray within the UK but what exactly can you expect from the product? Well lets take a look in our latest unboxing.

To start with this Blu-ray release of Samurai Champloo compiles all 26 episodes of the series onto a three disc set, with each episode being presented in High Definition; however don’t get too excited as these episodes have been re-mastered in HD from their original standard definition release. In other words the product isn’t HD Native so they won’t necessarily look as good as recent Blu-ray releases, such as Another or Fate/Zero, which are all HD Native. Don’t let this discourage though as the picture and audio quality is still superior to that of the original DVD release; which is the whole point of this release.

Picture quality aside for a moment the artwork, both disc and packaging, is quite impressive. From the offset the outer packaging looks pretty basic and bland, with its dark red backdrop and logos scattered across the front, however upon moving to the back cover – and then later the inside – you’ll notice that some care and attention was made. For starters the back of packaging is very informative and offers everything you’d expect from a Manga Entertainment release, with a clear synopsis, list of extras and technical details; this ‘impressiveness’ continues on the inside of the packaging whereby not only is an inside artwork included, which some MVM titles don’t have, but the disc artwork offer a LP Design thats clean, simple and effective.

Basically the front cover deceives you into thinking its another ‘cheap cash-in’ from MVM Entertainment; but upon moving to the back, and inside of the product, you’ll find thats not entirely the case. The most interesting aspect of this release however is that MVM Entertainment have decided to use the same disc masters as those created by FUNimation in america; everything thats included on the American Anime Classics Blu-ray release of Samurai Champloo (which is Region A and B) is included here. Basically these are the same discs as those sold in america with the only different being the packaging and disc artwork.

This Blu-ray release of Samurai Champloo – The Complete Series is easily one of MVM Entertainment’s strongest releases and since its the same ‘disc content’ as that within America we treated to a variety of bonus materials; including a selection of American only trailers for other anime products.

Samurai Champloo – The Complete Series is now available on Blu-ray; alternatively a DVD version of the series is also available.