I was very excited when I ordered the first box set of KimiTodo, and it felt like it took forever to get here. Most of the excitement was due to it being the first NISA title I had purchased, rather than the content of the show itself. Right out of the gate it's obvious that these boxsets are made for the serious collector. Both the price point and the odd format (more on that later) reinforce this.
The set contains 4 discs: 2 DVDs and 2 Blu-Ray discs. This first set (of three) covers episodes one through twelve. Each disc has a cute plaid pattern on it, except for one which has Argyle for some reason. I swear I can hear the maniacal cackling of the crazed design team who deliberately tried to irritate us OCD types. But I digress....The bonus features are the standard clean opening and clean closing, which look breathtaking in 1080p. I could see the roughness of the pencil/pastel lines so clearly that it is almost as though my TV had transformed into a gigantic sketchpad. It is import to note that this release was Japanese with subtitles only. There is no dub.
The first thing to notice about the packaging is the size. The face of the chipboard box is 8 in x 11 in but only 1 inch thick. Other box sets are dwarfed by comparison. Right away the problem is where the heck is it going to go on my shelves? My shelves are not tall enough to set it upright, and if it lays on its side it juts out from the shelf by over 5 inches! As someone who prefers a semblance of uniformity in a collection, this does not fly. Basically my options are to set all NISA sets on a shelf designed especially for them (which would completely throw off my alphabetization scheme! ;_;) or try to deal with dangling dics..... Neither option is attractive.
But what is attractive is the set itself. The behemoth box has very attractive artwork (see below)
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| Side One of the box |
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| Side Two of the box |
I will let these pictures speak for themselves. Overall, the artwork on the packaging is consistent, in that NISA did not mix images of the anime with images from the manga the way that Geneon was wont to do. Everything is brightly colored and there are no artifacts or flaws to be had. The box itself is pretty heavy duty and everything fits neatly inside.
The main reason the size of the box is so large is that it has to accommodate a rather large artbook. I am never one to complain about artbooks, but why NISA couldn't have made it similar in size to a standard DVD case escapes me. At any rate, the artbook is hardcover (squee!) and features full color stills from the anime, as well as some background art and character art.
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| This is just one example of the beauty of KimiTodo's ephemeral backgrounds. |
The format of the book follows a sort of picture diary with notes from Sawako sprinkled among stills from the anime series. That's all well and good, but I would have preferred more of the series' background images and character models to those. The artbook clocks in at 28 pages. It's printed on thick glossy paper and each image is crisp and clear. Really, my scanner doesn't do it justice. It is probably the highest quality artbook that came with a show in my entire anime colllection.
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| An example of a character bio. |
If this set is indicative of the quality that NISA strives for in their releases, I will most definitely throw more of my paycheck at them in the future. Every aspect of the packaging is of the highest quality. As the price point is rather steep ($5.83 per episode at the full MSRP) I can really only recommend it to collectors or to die-hard KimiTodo fans. For the casual collector it's a bit much. The only major drawback is the size, and I have a feeling that most people are normal enough to be able to shrug that off. Now I shall bid you farewell, as I have some shelves to rearrange.......
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