Fist of the North Star Complete TV Series SDBD

A must have for fans of 80s MANime. It's a good value for what you get.

I own both the DVD version and Blu-Ray versions. Bought the DVDs directly from Discotek back in early 2010s and there’d been one disc missing in one of the box sets 😞 so I had to repurchase it again here - this time the BD version. I won’t comment on the content of it, you probably know what Hnk is if you’re reading this. I’ll go directly into describing the minute differences between the two versions. - played both versions DVD and Blu-Ray on a PS3 (not PS4) with a FHD Plasma TV. - with the DVD version I used the upscaling (Full) and it looked significantly better than without using it. - with the Blu-Ray version you can’t use and don’t need upscaling. It’s has already been done out of the box, I think. - the video quality between the upscaled DVD and Blu-Ray is trivial, on one day I prefer the colour of the DVDs and on the other day I prefer the cleanliness of the BDs. - the DVD version has a typical DVD Top Menu. with thumbnails of a picture representative of the episode of the story you’re about to watch. The BD version has a Menu with a sentence in words describing the respective episode. One BD disc holds 50 episodes. - on BD there’s an Extra menu which lets you plays the opening, closing, or credit songs directly without having to fast forward to them inside each story. There’s also a short commercial clip advertising Hnk in Japanese way back when they first broadcasted the anime in Japan. - the subtitles on the DVD are white in colour, broader texts. The BD versions is bright cyan colour, more streamlined text. Personally prefer the latter. My two cents: if you own either version, you need not purchase the other. You’re not missing anything with owning either or, save your money.

If like me you,very been watching this series on YouTube (or wherever else you can find it) then you've been missing out. The average file size of an episode I've found online is about 120mb. The average size of an episode on this disc is 830mb. Now compressed files are great and I'm not claiming it looks 7 times better but there is a notable difference. The picture and sound quality are far more vibrant but, just to manage expectations, the show is 480i resolution (which can be upscaled) I imported this to Ireland. As mentioned by others, it's region locked so you'll either want a region free player or do what I did and rip it ( which will still require a capable BRDVD drive and software). I have a Plex server so I've ripped this, uncompressed so I can enjoy the series the way it was meant to be watched. When streaming to my nvidia shield pro I can upscale to 720p through the settings to make better use of the bigger screen. Getting back to the show itself, you get all of the 152 episodes. The first 36 have the English dub in Dolby Digital 2.0 (stereo) tracks and all 152 are in Japanese Dolby Digital 1.0 (mono). I really like the English dub. It's the version I actually remember watching at 2am on some random channel because anime never got air time. It was actually more than just a dub. The music was swapped out for a drum and bass like soundtrack. It gave the show a different vibe and I liked that a lot. The ultimate collection for me would have all episodes dubbed and both language tracks remastered in 5.1 surround sound. I don't see that happening any time soon so this is as good as it gets for now. Although the upfront price of this collection is up there, you are getting a huge amount of content for your money. I estimate about 5 cent per head explosion so not bad at all. I'd recommend buying this collection but it's too late, you already have!

This is a very good ' old school show ', I enjoyed it a lot.

Legendary battle anime, a must watch.

The product delivered was in great condition, properly packaged. The quality of the show is good, but sometimes the audio cuts out on certain parts of the show, which is fine since more than likely it will be watched in subtitles. The show itself is quirky and a bit much of filler, but that's what makes it good. Interesting story and good protagonists.

*08/2021 update* The PS4 playback issue I mentioned in my original review from 2017 has been fixed by Sony in an update. Not only that, but newer prints of the set have been made by a different company and these also worked flawlessly on PS4 even before the update. You should not experience any issue watching this set on your console now. Tried on mine and everything works great. *11/2017 original review* This is as good as it gets. It still is SD, as the packaging does mention very clearly, but the video quality is excellent, and remember that even Japan does not have a HD release of this series yet. Sound is the original Japanese mono. I can't comment on the English track of episodes 1 - 36 since I never watched that show in that language. IF YOU'RE EXPERIENCING PICTURE JITTERING / FRAME SKIPPING AND YOU'RE USING A PLAYSTATION 4 THIS FOLLOWING SEGMENT IS FOR YOU: I was concerned at first because that happened to me while watching the first disc on my PS4, despite an outstanding picture quality. I then played the disc on my PS3 and there was nothing wrong. So, again, if this is happening to you, THIS IS NOT coming from the discs nor is this a manufacturing problem. I do not know if this comes from the fact that these are SD videos on a BD and that the PS4 upscaling is to blame, or something else. For curiosity's sake I put in another blu-ray in the PS4 (thinking it could be my system at fault) and it played just fine, and then played a DVD with the same upscale settings and it worked perfectly too. Thought maybe others were experiencing this and might come here to look for some answers, so hope this helps. I will update soon on that matter after tweaking the upscale or turning it off on PS4, since I realize not everyone might have two systems that play blu-rays. Thank you Discotek for this release.

When I was growing up there was a Manga Video label in the UK and in the early 90's they released the film version of Fist of the North Star that was made in 1986. It was basically the whole tv series from a few years previous edited into a two hour movie. As much as I loved the original movie I have found it pretty exhausting to watch the full series. It basically is the same formula over and over - Ken and his accompanying kids come across loads of wasteland people and problems, usually folk being terrified by roving bands of Mad Max style muscle men. Each one usually results in Ken applying his Hokuto Shinken and making the baddies explode in a bloodbath. A pleasant nostalgic trip but if you are hoping for the series to have the same pace as the movie you'll be disappointed. I also think this was released on blu-ray just to conserve disc space as the quality is the same as DVD.

思った以上画質綺麗！しかもフル画面！買って良かった! 何回みてもおもしろい。

Absolute best way to experience this legendary show, absolute must have for any fan or anime fan in general

As advertised 152 TV episodes spread across 3 Discs. A must have for any Anime fan with a burning excitement for action, drama, and martial arts.

北米版ですが、リージョンコードは日本と同じなので、問題なく再生できます。音声、字幕共に日本語や字幕消去できそれも問題ないです。ブルーレイだが、画質はDVD品質並みですが、普通に見れます。別に汚いと言うこともないです。問題点があるとすれば、メニューが英語で各タイトルも英語で、一気に全話見ることはできないと思うので、どこまで見たか英語で覚えておかないといけないですね。 でもすごく安い。