The review gives the DVD a 9/10 and it appears to be very solid all round. No red tint unlike the Japanese release. Among the special features there is a 40 minute making-of-documentary which sounds very interesting. I wish they had put in as much effort with the Princess Mononoke DVD.
This one is on my to buy list. I really loved this movie as well as many of the other studio Ghibli works. I would buy it regardless of the red tint but am happy to see that it is not there.
I have the DVD from Japan (ordered off of amazon.com japan) and it is EXCELLENT. I haven’t seen the English language version, so I don’t know how that compares, but the subtitles seem to be failry accurate.
Compare that to the same picture in the dvd.ign review (it’s the third one). “Red tint” may not be the most accurate description but the first picture is clearly less attractive to me at least.
I couldn’t really find a page with comparisons, so I thought I’d whip up a quickie comparing the two versions of the film that I have. Check it out here.
Indeed. Since the closest the theatrical release came to my city was Toronto (1.5 to 2 hour drive), I never got to see the movie in the theatres. I figured the next best thing would be to order the region 2 DVD since I have a region-free DVD-ROM. I was pretty disappointed with the colour on that release so I went hunting and finally found a pirate SVCD. It’s pretty sad when a pirate copy is better quality than an official studio release.
You’re right, Buena Vista Japan, to be exact. I should have clarified that I was looking forward to the Region 1 Special Edition.
Judging by the review linked in the OP, I’d say that the extras on the Region 1 DVD are more extensive and all-around much cooler than those on the Region 2 DVD.
The Japanese release is also a 2 disc, special edition with the movie on 1 disc and extras on the other. The second disc contains something like 30 mins of Studio Ghibli trailers and a storyboard to movie comparison. Sadly, this disc contains no english subtitles whatsoever.