Another Trip to the Library


 6/12/25

Another Trip to The Library

I took another trip to the library again today and was surprised when I locked eyes with some kind of DVD box set of the 2010 anime Squid Girl. Though against my judgement at the time had no idea it was a 2017 release by Sentai Filmworks. I kinda just assume a lot that when I see an anime DVD that it's automatically old as hell. I didn't even realize they were making DVDs still in 2017, I kinda just assumed Blu rays were now just the default for home releases. Anyways I grabbed Squid Girl and another anime called Kino's Journey. I figured I'd do a quick little review here to quickly dot down my thoughts on these releases.

    Before I get to the actual review I wanna mention that I was forced into a bit of a side quest on my way home and by that I mean I got a fucking flat tire. This was the first one I've ever gotten and it was because this stupid construction site laid out these wires or cabling. Despite going the speed limit my car hit them too hard and cut a hole in my tire. So I had to spend like 3 hours in an O'Reilly Auto Parts trying to get my tire changed all while standing in 80 degree heat. needless to say it was a pretty awful experience especially now since I can't pick up my new tire until tomorrow.

     Anyways back to the review, I've already seen the first season of Squid Girl similar to a lot of the other DVDs I grab. I've seen a little bit of the second season but unfortunately I never got around to finishing it. Honestly now might be a really good time with it being summer and this seems like a perfect summer anime. It's a very silly anime that doesn't really take itself seriously at all and definitely has that 2010's anime charm that I love. As for the DVD release it suffers from what I like to call "Boring DVD Menu Syndrome." the main menu is just a PNG of the titular Squid Girl with the intro playing on loop until you select something. At least they put in a bit more effort than something like the Lucky Star or Dragon Maid releases where the menus actually are themed to the show and have different submenus. I really like the bright blue color they used in all the Squid Girl media it really screams summer beach vibes. All the special features are pretty par for a modern DVD release, promotional material, OVAs, shorts, textless openings, and textless endings. This release does something really cool that I haven't seen in any other release in that they have audio commentaries where the Japanese VAs talk over episodes of the show and comment on what's happening. I'm a big fan of the audio commentary on the Smiling Friends Blu Ray release so having this as a feature is really cool. This is also the first time I've seen the dub in a viewable form as they don't got it on Crunchyroll. I love the dub because it means I can hear all the bad fish puns in English. Also if you know anything about me, I can never forgive this anime for tarnishing the name Sanae.



(video of the audio commentary included on the DVDs)

    Now it's time to review the Kino's Journey's DVD and oh my god I'm so disappointed in this release. now as I'm writing this I haven't actually sat down and watched this anime but this is a fucking ADV release. In my humble opinion ADV is the pinnacle of anime DVD releases. They put to much effort into their DVD menus and special features that all I can do is praise them for their work. SO WHAT THE FUCK WENT WRONG HERE??? This is the time that "Boring DVD Menu Syndrome." Has hit me the hardest. it's like that one clip of Chris from Family Guy where he goes "There's nothing."


 

    You see the issue is that there's not really much for me to talk about because it's so bad compared to ADVs other work and just seems like they were copying what every other company does now. The title screen is just a png with no added animation, there are only two trailers for other ADV releases compared to the older ones that had 5 at the minimum, it doesn't even include production sketches, and the worst of all they don't even have their silly advertisement for their goofy anime network that I always like seeing. ADV WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU??? I mean look at the menus for Kino compared to Azumanga bellow.
 
 
 
 



 
(the fact that one is a video and the others are pngs should tell you everything.)
 
Anyways that's about all I got for this time I'm sure more DVD menu reviews will be coming in the near future because I got the weird autism where I care about this kind of stuff. Hope ya'll have a great day and keep reading. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

is this how you do this?

Image
4/22/25 Blog Creation     Crazy that they can just let you do this.  Hello I'm Tomato, maybe you've heard of me. I run an Instagram account that's modestly popular. Anyways I'm trying to find creative outlets and I often hear about old blogs or websites that people used to have back in the early 2000's and that sounds cool as hell so I'm starting a blog. This isn't anything professional I'm just doing this for fun and trying to recapture that old feeling of actually having fun on the internet.       For those of you unfamiliar with my whole vibe I'm a dorky college student with a bunch of nerdy hobbies. The one I'm really into right now is collecting DVDs. I don't have any photos of my collection at this current moment but I collect a lot of anime DVDs and movies that I like. I'm currently working on a video for my anime DVDs and have a couple low quality screenshots of the project cause my camera is shit.   (Photos from the video I'm...
Read more

Close Enough, Welcome Back Blockbuster

Image
 5/31/25 Close Enough, Welcome Back Blockbuster      I wanna start this off by apologizing for my previous post I was in a really bad head space when I typed that up and if any of my online friends are reading it I wanna deeply apologize for the things I said about ya'll. I didn't have a real outlet to vent my frustrations and that turned into hatred that I didn't know what to do with. With that said now that I've talked with some people about it I'm feeling a lot better and to those of you that this doesn't apply too uhhhh here's Youmu on a trampoline. Anyways I did something I never thought I'd ever do in my entire life ever. I went to the fucking library. My friend wanted to get a library card for some reason and so we were like "fuck it" and pulled up to our local library. This is crazy insider knowledge ya'll, they got fucking everything in that place. It's like a physical version of the internet archive. Not only do they got a goo...
Read more

Making a bad financial choice by buying the Sims 2 on steam

Image
 5/7/25 Making a bad financial choice by buying the Sims 2 on steam. you know it's crazy how I've already forgotten about my blog and it's only been like a week. I've been so fucking busy lately with moving home after exams. I'm downloading the Sims 2 because I watched a bunch of videos about it and now I wanna play it. I'm just a little worried since the reviews on steam are mixed so I guess I'll update my thoughts after I try it. anyways onto life stuff, I've spend the last 3ish days just working on more 40k models. I got a Russ built this one being a punisher with the Gatling gun. From what I've heard it's not very good on the table top but it was a personal request from my dad so I did it to humor him. I decided to make it just an infantry destroyer. Equipping it with heavy flamers and a lascannon in case it needs some heavier armor penetration. On the infantry side of things I got a Heavy Weapons Squad and a Terminator painted. If you...
Read more