Unboxing: Love Live! School Idol Project – The Movie (Limited Edition Blu-ray) [AUS]

With a UK release of Love Live! School Idol Project – The Movie currently nowhere to be found, despite a special screening at London MCM Comic Con and Scotland Loves Anime last year, I decided to import the Australian Limited Edition Blu-ray release of the film to see what it has to offer – and more importantly – to see if it will fit well with MVM Entertainment’s previously released UK Blu-ray Editions of the TV Series.

For starters this Limited Edition Blu-ray release of Love Live! School Idol Project – The Movie comes packaged with a chipboard artbox that has been designed so that it can fit the previously released Season 1 and Season 2 TV Series collections inside; which in turn will offer that ‘Complete franchise collection’ you could only dream of. Initally I wasn’t expecting this to work with the UK Releases but it turns out they actually fit in the artbox nicely with the film.

How is this possible you may be wondering? Well it seems that MVM Entertainment (UK Distributor), Madman Entertainment (Australian Distributor) and NIS America (American Distributor) all teamed-up to provide the same assets and production materials; and seeing as Madman Entertainment released their Blu-ray version in DVD sized cases (which is what MVM Entertainment did int he UK) the boxes still fit perfectly fine.

The history of the artbox aside for the moment the Blu-ray release of Love Live! School Idol Project – The Movie comes packaged in a DVD sized case with a carded sleeve covering the DVD Case; which is of course the exact same style and presentation as that of the previous Season releases. Disappointing however someone opted to use white text on a colourful background and as such certain parts of this sleeve (specifically the spine) are difficult to read; but this aside it does have some fabulous artwork on the carded sleeve that mimics the Japanese release.

Underneath the carded sleeve is the regular DVD sleeve and some disappointing artwork (in this case individual character keyart spliced onto a DVD cover); but Inside the DVD case fans will find a single disc, which in this case is the Blu-ray, with a rather simplistic disc artwork featuring an image from the film as well as some additional artwork behind the disc which continues to be colourful with various snapshots and logos from the film; a similar design which was used in the Season releases of the franchise.

Finally wrapping up this Limited Edition bundle is the booklet featuring character bios, artwork and various information about the film and nine different artcards; each of which featuring a different character. The design of the artbook is similar to the previous Season releases of the TV show so it’s nice to have that continuity flowing through all of the releases; its just a shame that the same continunity couldn’t be had with the carded sleeve that goes around the DVD case and the DVD sleeve itself – although in this case they did use artwork that mimics the Japanese release of the film.

For those unwilling to wait for the UK Release of Love Live! School Idol Project – The Movie then this Australian Blu-ray release, which is of course Region B by default, is a great alternative; as while the artbox features those horrible Australian Ratings Board logos it does fit naturally with our UK releases of the show and it means that you can have everything now rather than wait several months for a UK release to be announced.