Welcome to our third ever anime unboxing here at Japan Curiosity; we definitely plan to do many more in the future and hopefully coming to you in video format as well as our usual photo unboxing format. It has taken us a lot longer than planned but we’ve finally sat down to unbox the latest release from Universal Pictures UK – The Heroic Legend of Arslan Series 1 Part 1. This set is available on both Blu-ray and DVD; aside from the disc format both feature the same content.
Initial inspections show us a set very similar to the Seraph of the End one (you can see our unboxing here) also from Universal Pictures UK. We can assume this will be the standard look for all of their future releases and to be honest I’m happy with that as they’re very nice sets. Once again we have a removable J-card that wraps around the box and includes all the BBFC certificate, logos, technical details, etc. It’s still not my favourite way of displaying this info but at least it leaves the box free to feature full sized artwork.
So here’s the box without the J-card and you can see the bottom (apologies for the poor focus) features some logos and copyright text. There’s some very nice full sized artwork on display and the sides feature the series name and some emblems on the other side.
This set contains quite a number of different extras and surprisingly more than the Seraph of the End set. First up is another fantastic visual guide, again similar to that included in the Seraph of the End set, although not quite as many pages but still maintaining that very high quality.
There’s another set of character cards featuring some nice artwork and character stats. While a nice addition to any set their functionality is questionable without a full deck to play with.
The next set of items are truly brilliant and there’s a whopping twelve of them. Art cards make an appearance in collector’s editions every now and then but rarely do they feature the art used at the end of an episode and here with have one for each episode of part one. There’s no question whether these art cards are a good addition to this set because they are truly brilliant.
If this set’s extras ended at this point then I think we’d all agree that it’s a worthy purchase but, fortunately, it doesn’t end there and we have probably the most interesting piece to come. On one side we have a map of the world seen in Arslan but on the other side contains a chess board, or shogi, a form of Japanese chess, along with a set of pieces featuring characters, that can be used to play a game of chess or shogi.
With all the extras out of the way we can finally take a look at the discs and the digipack that holds them. Like the Seraph of the End set the digipack features artwork on both sides as well as on the discs and behind them. Regardless of my feelings on digipacks I have to admit that they do look pretty cool.
Overall Universal Pictures UK have put out another stunning set with The Heroic Legend of Arslan Series 1 Part 1. The amount of extras put into this release is overwhelming and the quality is top notch on every single item. Personal favourites for me are the visual guide and art cards but the chess/shogi set is certainly interesting. On the subject of price and value for money it is a little more expensive than the Seraph set seeing RRP’s of £59.99 and £49.99 for Blu-ray and DVD respectively although both versions can be found for cheaper. Even so, given the amount of extras packed into the set and the quality of them, it’s definitely worth every penny.
Well that’s it from us here at Japan Curiosity, we hope you enjoyed our unboxing of The Heroic Legend of Arslan Series 1 Part 1. Let us know what your thoughts are and be sure to check out our review of this release when it goes live; we hope to bring you more unboxing articles and videos soon.