Forum - View topicREVIEW: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End - Part 1 SE & Part 2 LE Blu-ray + DVD Review
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malvarez1
Posts: 3017 |
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I know the discourse regarding the demons took up most of the air in the room, but IMO, it was certain people’s reaction to the last arc that got under my skin. It’s amazing how you add a handful of fight scenes, and suddenly people claim the show fell off. Shonen action elitism is alive and well, no matter what some people say.
Frieren is a great show, one of the standouts of recent years. I’m confident that season 2 will be a worthy successor, though I doubt any opening can surpass the first theme. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5365 |
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The credits and on-screen text seem like a casualty of the similar changes Crunchyroll has implemented around that lately. It's even more odd when the work was already done for the on-screen translations, so someone had to go back and change it. Maybe it's more readable this way, but it isn't as pleasing to look at.
I don't begrudge Crunchyroll doing a fancy release for Frieren at all, but it also does make me question what they are doing in general since other things that streamed around the same time, or before it, haven't seen home video at all. |
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Gina Szanboti
 Posts: 12752 |
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So there's a Limited Edition only for Part 2? And a Standard Edition only for Part 1? Is that normal or am I misunderstanding?
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 12080 Location: Frisco, TX |
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About the subtitles for signs/songs. Blu-ray discs use a format called PGS (Presentation Graphic Stream) to display their subtitles. This has been the standard for the format since BDs were made. The digital files for the streams use SRT (SubRip subtitle file).
PGS is supposed to be very clear and presentable, making them an upgrade over the old VOBSUB format used on DVDs. But PGS doesn't provide much in terms of customization options. SRT, on the other hand, provides lots of customization. Fansubbers have translated from scratch, copied, or modified their own/other peoples' scripts long before streaming became a thing, which provided many an option for things like: fonts, sizes, colors, placement, karaoke effects in the OP/ED/insert songs, liner notes in the middle of dialogue, etc. The most I've seen any company utilize PGS subs is Universal Studios. Instead of having all the subs right in the middle (top or bottom) of the screen, they actually try to hover the subs around an actor's face/body, in addition do making their subs SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, which describe the sounds on-screen, like "[car exploding]"), doing some cool things with placement, probably for deaf/hard-hearing people to better identify who is actually talking on the screen. CR probably just converted all their translations from the stream into PGS and did top/bottom placements, like they do for everything else. It's standard practice, but again, is also one of the downsides to PGS, in general If you want Blu-ray quality with SRT subs that have fancier placement and effects, then you'll have to rip your own discs, download SRT files (CR's or someone else's custom/modified subs) and mux those SRTs with the ripped video files into a .mkv for each episode, then play that file off your PC/media device into your monitor/TV of choice, which will probably take up a lot of hard drive space, unless you know how to properly re-encode the video rips. But digital archiving is a completely different can of worms for another conversation. The too long; didn't read explanation: PGS subs on BDs are very plain. SRT subs from the stream lost their customization in the conversion to PGS, and thus, are plainly presented. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 5365 |
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That is normal. A two-part release will oftentimes have a more deluxe edition for one because it comes with a box that holds both parts. Funimation, and later Crunchyroll, have switched back and forth on whether it was done with part 1 or part 2. |
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Schmullus
Posts: 1 |
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SRT subs are actually also extremely basic subtitles that don't support much customization and are often used for streaming services that don't support the kinds of fancy sub work CR's streams do. What you're thinking of are ASS (Advanced SubStation) subtitles, which do provide the customizations you're describing. And PGS is mostly capable of doing many of the things ASS subtitles can do, with limitations, because PGS is effectively a transparent image overlay on the video stream. Positioning, custom fonts, colors, fades and even limited animation is possible with PGS when using the right software to export ASS subs to PGS. While not as unrestricted as a fansub or CR's streaming subs due to the limitation of the subtitle buffer memory capacity in the Blu-ray spec, plenty of typesetting can be done. I would know because I've done all of these things on assorted MediaOCD Blu-rays for Discotek, AnimEigo, and other clients. What's shown from the streaming version in the review would easily be possible on Blu-ray if CR's Blu-ray production pipeline wasn't inherited from Funimation's, even if it were only fonts, colors, and positioning. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 12080 Location: Frisco, TX |
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You're right! I tried making custom subs for an anime rip years ago, but got so busy with life and stopped after two episodes. I often use SRT subs for watching foreign live-action movies and see them more often than ASS and always jumble the letters in my head  .
Good to know PGS are actually as customizable as ASS. With that being the case, it's a shame more companies (namely CR) hasn't actually tried to implement fansub-like subtitle quality. I would definitely pay a little extra for fancier subs, if they ever became a thing. Also, congrats on your first post. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2508 |
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So is there a regular edition of Part 2 available? Or coming out? I hate that Crunchyroll splits them up. Just give me the whole thing and charge me up front. Not to mention confusion over what is regular, special or limited, as it is it is difficult to find them available locally. I found Part 1 at Walmart by pure chance. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2712 |
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Last year I bought the early volumes of the manga which made me wonder something: Why did the author add Sein to the main cast when he is removed in the same volume he enters? The anime was awesome but the second cour felt too forced as the entire mage exam took the entire arc, removing Stark from the narrative unless a part of an exam ends. Probably a scene that hit me emotionally was when Frieren had to strike the ghost of the most important person in her life believing it will be her master but it turns out to be Himmel. In contrast to Fern's manipulation at the same moment, Himmel's "ghost" just tell Frieren to shoot him and it suddenly ends.
The action sequences were well animated but the idea of the episodes focusing on the characters interacting while remembering others felt so unique that I was annoyed by the action from the second half. When such part started, Dungeon Meshi started airing which interested me since it tried to prioritize adventure and interactions. over action scenes. |
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Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1625 |
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I thought those criticisms pretty baffling. I always thought that whole mage examination arc was the best part of the manga -- and I think I'd still say it's the best part of the manga, over the arc(s) that followed. Especially that ending. Like as much as Frieren's narrative is structured around our titular heroine's past relationships, to me one of the most compelling parts of the series is Frieren's quasi-parental relationship with Fern.
This. And I also hate when they'll do things like say "includes season 1 and 2" for a show that actually has a second season, but that season isn't included in the set, because the first season was 26 episodes or something and they decided to just arbitrarily call the last 13 episodes "season 2." Especially when the *real* second season is literally titled "The Second Season" or something like that. Just, like... obey the KISS rule. Always, always, always, ALWAYS obey the KISS rule. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1792 |
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Yeah, it's crazy how some people just turned on the show the moment it spent more than 30 seconds on a fight scene. That criticism especially funny to me because throughout the exam arc, the emphasis is placed on character interactions and worldbuilding, just like in every previous storyline. The exam and the battles are used to reveal character, and the fights themselves are always quite short (none longer than a fraction of an episode) and often most of the battle takes place offscreen. If Frieren wanted to be a shonen action show, it would be written completely differently. The dungeon segment, for instance, could easily have taken up three times as many episodes if we had seen every battle. Instead, we only get brief glimpses of each fight, and *only* when those moments either reveal character or are absolutely essential to the story. In some cases, the story refuses to show us fights at all. spoiler[For example, we never see Fern's replica, even though it's clear that Methode fought it offscreen.] And the final stage of the exam is spoiler[just a series of conversations, designed to show us more of Serie's character and her relationship with Freiren. A more action-focused series would have made that into a proper tournament, especially since that would have provided a solution to Serie's complaint that too many mages had passed the second exam. And after the exam, Lernen challenges Freiren to a duel, and again, no fight occurs. Freiren resolves Lernen's problem by talking to him, and we get an emotional character moment instead of an action sequence.] At every turn, Freiren has avoided the trappings of battle shonen stories. Don't get me wrong, I love a good action anime, but Frieren is not one of them. Simply having physical conflict now and then is not enough to make something an action series, and it's getting a bit ridiculous that some fans are acting like that's all it takes. Frieren takes place in a world that's still dealing with lingering conflicts from a centuries-long war, so some fighting is inevitable. But this has never been a series about fighting. Anyway, Frieren is my current personal frontrunner for anime of the decade, and I agree with you that this particular criticism of the show is just ridiculously nitpicky and misreads the show quite badly. My only major complaint (aside from wishing Stark had gotten more to do in the 2nd half of the season) is that I wish I could afford this box set!! |
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AnimeFan617
 Collector ExtraordinairePosts: 83 |
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Yes, there is. Part 2 is available in both standard edition and limited edition. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 4398 |
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I looks quite nice, but I'm a little over the large LEs instead of just a nice box (like the one inside the suitcase. If that had been what was on sale I would have picked it up. Now I might just go with the standard addition (that price doesn't help either, though it doesn't seem too unreasonable for what you get)
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IronWish
 Posts: 240 Location: Ukraine |
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TBH, shifting balance of action vs subdued quite moments is a valid point of criticism. Problem is, you can't have a civil discourse about it online, since it's been hijacked by bad actors, just like the demons thing. Only instead of political nutjobs it's "pretentious snobby anime watcher". Performative hatred of Frieren became a book move to signal "oooh, I'm not like all these basic b**ches, I have mature developed taste in anime, I like Sonny Boy". P.S. Sonny Boy is excellent, I'm not riffing against it, it's just the only anime that came out over the last 10 years you are allowed to like if you are a "pretentious snobby anime watcher". |
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 908 Location: PA |
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The LE set is nice, but not $175 (amazon as of this post) nice.
You can get the standard S2 set on Amazon for $40 currently. And while the swag in the boxset is neat, its not really $135 extra neat IMO. Looking at price tracking the LE box was down to $160 on Amazon back in Sept.. |
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