Elitist DVD: Patlabor the Movie

Since I had mentioned it, I thought I would share some pictures of what made me think it was such a big deal. For one, it's a limited edition of 10 thousand (actually, realistically, this is still a fairly large number); mine is marked as 4346.

Firstly Patlabor the Movie is one of the first serious anime I've had the pleasure to watch - that was around 1994 when I stumbled on it while visiting my local HMV music store. In fact, HMV remains one of the driving forces in bringing anime to the masses (back then it was the domain of underground networks of fans trading VHS tapes by mail). I have a special love for this particular police drama because of that.

Secondly, this edition features the recent Dolby 5.1 remixed audio tracks (both in Japanese and a new English dub). But enough of that - let's get to the goodies of the LE edition!

It came in a heavy package with a resealable plastic wrapper like Japanese media usually does. My box was a little dented, but the card stock is about 1/8-inch thick, so it hardly bothers me...
Here's what came inside the slipcase: two books and a fancy dual-DVD digipak.
The first book is very cool for old-school fans like myself. It's a documentary-style look at behind-the-scenes of developing the movie including interviews and rare artwork by the designers.
The other book is a fan's dream: a complete set of the storyboards including translated dialogue. BTW, there you can also see the digipak opened up with the second documentary bonus disc that was not included in the regular edition.