Samurai X Theatrical Release
:Requiem for the Ishin Shishi in America:

I found it one Thursday while I was killing time after work waiting for my ride. "Samurai X Theatrical Release." On DVD. I'd been waiting for this since I heard Kenshin was coming out in America. *drool- I love my DVD player*

I bought it the next Saturday, having to wait until I remembered my Replay card for Mediaplay. (everyone who has some comment on that, be quiet!) While I was blown away (metaphorically speaking) by my Slayers Next box set, the Samurai X Theatrical Release was... well, mediocre.

It has practically nothing in terms of extras. Okay, not a big problem. Most of us still get VHS anyways. The packaging is... okay. The picture's livable- Kenshin as if from a character sketch or something (he looks not-quite-like-himself-but-still-enough-so-you-know-it's-him), with a big dark shot of Shigure's face. But I absolutely HATE the Samurai X logo. It drives me nuts. It's inaccurate.

Can you tell I'm picky about my Kenshin?

Still, with the rights to the name "Rurouni Kenshin" bought by a different company, they had to swing something. It isn't a bad logo; it's a fine logo. It's just not Kenshin.

The subtitling job is okay. I didn't notice anything particularly bad- and if even I notice something that's badly translated, it's gotta be bad. So nothing wrong there.

The dub, though....

Now, I know from experience that voice-over's are hard to do. Voice-acting is tougher than you'd think! So I don't have a whole lot of issues with the dub. Especially since I only had the nerve to watch little bits here and there. I despise dubs (Trigun's amazing though!). Kenshin having a masculine voice is a bit hard to get used to, and so's Sanosuke with a voice that actually sounds eighteen. I think they should have used Gentatsu's voice actor for Shigure, or even better, Kajiki, and then Kajiki's as Shigure and Shigure's as Gentatsu, but this is mostly because it was incredibly weird for Gentatsu's voice to be deep.

Yes, I believe the best word for the domestic release is "okay." It's not bad, but it's nothing to write your mom about. Buy it if you're into Kenshin. Rent it if you're not collecting. It's worth a watch, definitely. Then decide if you want to own it.