[US] Pandora Hearts Vol.2 Premium Edition

[yoshi_x2]

This was meant to be done a few months ago... I'll try to keep this brief but unfortunately I have a bone or two to pick with this release.
Part I post here.

The contents:




Like the first part, there's the usual huge dvd box with two thinpaks and a hardcover artbook. The choice of Break and Jack for the dvd covers is appropriate while the Retrace IX cover featuring Oz is used for the artbook cover. The inside of the thinpaks are the same as the first. disc menu's use the same cover art.

By the way, notice any difference between the artbook cover and Part I's artbook? Yeah, I wonder how they managed to forget a part of the series logo considering their sample image doesn't have that problem? Opening the artbook also leads to another inconsistency with the previous set:



While I'd consider these two problems minor nitpicks it would still be much more preferable if they were more consistent with their sets.







Thankfully the artbook's contents don't have any faults. It starts off with a character relationship chart and then translated versions of the little booklet pages that were in the original jp releases. There's less promotional artwork this time in favour of character design references. The Gilbert in Wonderland special manga pages are much better edited (aka not half-assed)  this time with NISA choosing not to erase the text outside of speech bubbles and not bothering to covering up the patches that resulted. Instead, the English text is just placed nearby. Unfortunately my photos of the first set didn't demonstrate that problem.

There was one very nice addition amongst the illustrations included:



The second jp dvd box art illustrated by Jun Mochizuki! That was a wonderful decision to make use of all the unused box art. Sadly, the credits page this time did not use another dvd cover like Part I did =(.



That was a bummer seeing how they could have had Vincent's cover to match with Echo's or if they wanted to show Sharon they could've used her cover instead. Overall this means that compared to the jp dvd releases, NISA's Pandora Hearts premium editions have used:

1. 7/9 dvd cover arts.
2. All dvd box arts
3. All the booklets.
4. All pages of the Gilbert in Wonderland special manga.

The only thing it was really missing were the playing cards but those had a really small (read: non-existent) chance of being licensed out of Japan.

Overall I'd still say these sets are a good deal for those unwilling to buy the jp releases. I know there's been many complaints about the video quality but it didn't bother me that much really. Only certain scenes were decidedly kind of bad. I'd say it depends on your own mileage, unless some of you just collect for the sake of owning rather than watching then go ahead. In terms of collector's value (as opposed to watching value) the overall pros of these two sets outweigh the cons.