S'more Expressing the Galaxy

Like many I was really excited to hear that a new company would pick up some slack and start releasing anime, and rather niche anime at that too. S'more Entertainment, a small company established in 2005 whose main goal; at least according to their facebook page, is the "preservation of the sounds and images from your past and a dedication to making those memories easily available." Sounds well and good, their website seems to point out that they have been releasing some rather old school silly live action shows and some music compilations over these past years. They don't seem to be wet behind the ears and have plenty of releases behind their belt; so kudos, this will be interesting, a niche release company going into the anime market. Aaaaaaaaaand then their Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo release came out, and everyone freaked ...

The main problem with Bobobo was that it was promised to be a dub and sub release, what it ended up being was just a dub release and a Japanese audio options with no subtitles. Well actually technically no subtitles. The release did have PDFs of the scripts you could rip from the DVD disc and presumably read-along with the Japanese dialogue. Yeaaaaaaaah that doesn't really cut it for me and obviously it doesn't really cut it for most out there too. Honestly what got me was the way S'more acted after the release, not so much that the release was essentially a dub only piece. Honestly Bobobo had a pretty great gag dub, but when it's marketed as having a sub release and your reply to fans questioning why they had no sub option could be summed up in "Oh, what are you talking about? We never said anything about a sub option" Oh course, I like many, got somewhat weary of these guys.

After Bobobo dropped the ball everyone turned their eyes to S'more's next release, Galaxy Express 999. A series I have always wanted to see but have yet to get around to watching. For the first time the TV show will be available for the North American Home Video Market. But there was some catches. Firstly hardsubbed subtitles. Something anime fans still to this day can't stand. For me, I accept this, it's not a deal breaker. But the drama didn't end there. Next up, ugly packaging. First we have a new logo that's just ... bad. Not end of the world bad but it really doesn't match the Japanese logo that's for sure. And it was a shame since the American movie releases had a nice logo. But the real kicker for many was the box art. This was U-G-L-Y to a rather comedic affect actually. Look at this thing, it's got no signs of space travel anywhere and it isn't even the 999 train but the 444. Wow!!!

Well as it turns out, the whole packaging fiasco was actually a clever ruse to get more fan attention, trying to spark fan campaigns to change the packages and get more people to look at their facebook page. Or so says Mike Toole at least. I can kinda see it, but personally I have somewhat of a disbelief behind it. Possibly because I watched as Smore posted new art for the DVDs to be selected from their facebook page. The person behind Smore's facebook account honestly seemed to be trolling us. Not just with the gag cover though oh no, just the general behavior behind the poster. He/she seemed snippy with the people who posted on the facebook wall and had lots of spelling and grammar errors in their own postings too. It was far from professional behavior, that's for sure.

Well after the packaging got sorted out and the logo changed to look like the Eastern Star movie release's, the last real big commotion for many was the fact that this release is 15 hours and 39 minutes long, that's 38 episodes, and it's all crammed onto 4 disc. This seems to of been the deal breaker for many. Complaints about picture quality and bad compression could be heard from across the internet over. And well, looking at the reviews so far those worrisome complaints seemed to be right. Though I cannot say for certain until I see the actual show, though I am not really one to worry over quality too much so hopefully it won't bother me too much. But something can be said when the quality of a DVD release is in question and the whole show is already available for free via streaming Crunchy Roll.

In the near future you can expect to see a review proper from me on Smore's Galaxy Express 999 The Complete series Volume 1. But as for now, I will leave you with a small photo opp of the packaging for the series. I must say, I actually love how this box-set looks! And well there STILL seems to be a lot of confusion behind just what the heck this box-set looks like. I've seen lots of covers that look like this. I honestly have no idea why, and actually thought that was a bootleg cover.

The front cover of the outer cardboard slip case.

The back cover of the slipcase. List all 38 episodes in the package.

From the side, Stacked next to my 2 GE999 films from Eastern Star.

Other side, you can see how 2 DVD cases fit inside.

The 2 DVD cases, both with different covers.

The back of the 2 DVD cases. They list the episodes on disc like the slipcase.

Inside DVD case 1. You get 2 disc and a Program Guide.

The inside of the program guide. Has detailed summaries of each episode.

Back of the program guide; continuation of the summaries.

The inside of DVD case 2. Same disc art but the program guide has different art.

The reason why I don't have Eternal Fantasy in the photo opp is because I don't have my copy of it yet, it's still in the mail shipping. You can expect to see a review for this Galaxy Express set as well as Galaxy Express 999 (the movie), Adieu Galaxy Express 999, and Galaxy Express 999 Eternal Fantasy in the near future.