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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2009
To begin, The Castle of Cagliostro is one of my favorite/best ever adaptation of the world of Lupin the III. This DVD edition has an impressive new 5.1 English soundtrack and finally 16x9 enhanced for widescreen TVs. My biggest gripe about this "Special Edition" is the butchering of the opening and end titles and lack of any special features. Watching this DVD the first time then seeing this type of crummy translations are disheartening. Anime to this day should not have this type of Voltron-edit butchering anymore. So now the opening titles are no longer animated and are restricted to still images with English credits. Really an insult to the original anime Hayao Miyazaki's vision of giving a bit of narration even during the credits.
Same goes to the end sequence in which it no longer closes with "The End" and a long shot of the surrounding city. Now it has an extended credit roll sequence in an empty void with the only saving thing is the use of the extended song. A "special feature" would have suffice of having the original unaltered openings and closings, but alas none. All in all, a good buy for overall sound and picture, but if you are familiar with the original openings, you will find it very disappointing as many fans will still have to wait for a definite version of Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro in their collection.
Same goes to the end sequence in which it no longer closes with "The End" and a long shot of the surrounding city. Now it has an extended credit roll sequence in an empty void with the only saving thing is the use of the extended song. A "special feature" would have suffice of having the original unaltered openings and closings, but alas none. All in all, a good buy for overall sound and picture, but if you are familiar with the original openings, you will find it very disappointing as many fans will still have to wait for a definite version of Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro in their collection.
