Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, a little rant to explain the perspective from which I reviewed this set. When these films were initially released on DVD in the US they had been thoroughly butchered during the localization process. DVD was a somewhat new format back in 1999, but even then studios were planning for the future, releasing most films in anamorphic widescreen to preserve their original aspect ratio. An unfortunate stigma at the time, however, was that widescreen kids' films had to be cropped to 4:3, and animated films in general had to have horrifically over-saturated colors to achieve wide appeal. This is why I procured copies of the Japanese releases alongside the U.S. DVDs. I even went so far as to attempt transplanting the English Dub over top of the widescreen color-correct Japanese video to get the films that _should_ have been released here - but even that effort was stymied by the fact that the people who adapted the movies were apparently so desperate to make their mark that they inexplicably moved scenes around and changed plot points, so much that the audio tracks would not line up. This is particularly egregious in Revelation Lugia a.k.a. "Pokemon the Movie 2000" where they found it necessary to change the entire central theme of the film to it's polar opposite. (::::Begin Spoiler:::: In the original film, the central theme was that no matter who, someone would fulfill the role of the hero - it could have been anyone but just happened to be Satoshi (Ash), but in the U.S. release they emphasized that Ash alone could have fulfilled that role - the theme "The Power of One" was antithesis to the original plot of the film ::::End Spoiler::::) I guess since it was a kids' movie no one was supposed to notice or care if they took liberties. When I saw this was slated to come out on Blu-ray, I was thrilled because it was an opportunity for at least some of my biggest gripes about the original DVD releases to be fixed. The results, however, are a bit of a mixed bag. This is without doubt the most bare-bones Blu-ray release I have ever seen. What they got right: The films are finally presented in their original widescreen aspect ratio. The HD transfer makes this the clearest version of these films I've seen since watching them in the theater. Unlike the last Pokemon Blu-ray release, each film comes on its own disc. It comes in a really nice Steelbook case. The animated menus are done well. What they got wrong: The Pikachu's Vacation, Pikachu's Rescue Adventure, and Pikachu and Pichu short films were not included. In fact, there are no extras of any kind - no trailers, no commentary, no interviews. The menu consist of "Play" and "Scene" and that's it. The soundtrack is 2.0 stereo - which is a step back from the 5.1 DD tracks on the original DVD releases. (And a real shame because the 5.1 DVD soundtrack for Mewtwo Strikes Back took real advantage of the technology - I used to use it as a reference disc if you can believe it.) No subtitles. No alternate languages. The original Japanese soundtrack would have been a nice addition. It would have required the use of branching to play the scenes in the correct order according to the language, but that's exactly why Blu-ray was designed with the capability to do it. While the picture quality is much clearer than the DVD releases, the colors are still clearly oversaturated (although not as badly) and very little appears to have been done to clean up the film - film grain and specs are prevalent throughout. I was really hoping that given most of the kids who saw this movie when it was first released are adults now, this release would have been more geared towards those of us who view these films with a degree of nostalgia, but clearly the publisher is still marketing to kids and still thinks kids "don't know any better." It probably seems like I'm very down on this release, but I'm not. It's a bit overpriced for what you get, but I have a feeling that it was a miracle it was released at all and I'm glad to have it in my collection, there's just a lot of unrealized potential here.