Now And Then, Here And There (DVD)

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This series attempts to be a hard, realistic look at war. In Hellywood´s world, the fighting has dragged on so long that there´s hardly anything left to fight over. There are so few soldiers that children are kidnapped and enlisted. In no way is Shu´s idealism validated or rewarded, as in other, lighter series. While Shu manages to hold on to his idealism as much as he can, it´s gradually chipped away and worn down by the soul-crushing reality around him.

Video:
The video aspect ratio is 1.33:1 (full-screen on 4:3 monitors). The picture quality and colors came through crystal clear to me. The artistic style uses strong, solid colors with a small palette. The effect is to create a lot of contrast and a slightly retro look and feel.

Audio:
You can watch the show with either Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo Japanese with subtitles or DD 5.1 English. I chose to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. I think it unfortunate that the American company decided to put more effort into a good audio mix for the dub than the Japanese company did for their version.

The music in this series is exceptional. It was composed by Taku Iwasaki, a name that I should become more familiar with. I would put the music in this series on par with the best classical music from Yoko Kanno. It balances being moving and evocative without ham fistedly pushing the listener around.

Extras:
On the DVD with the episodes, there´s a large selection of extras. Most are self-explanatory. There is an Art Gallery, Cast and Production List, Textless Closing, Character Sketches, Mechanical Sketches, Background Sketches, and Storyboards. The Storyboards extra is rather novel. A section from each episode is played, while the corresponding storyboards are shown alongside the episode.

--Miscellaneous--
There isn´t anything inside of the case. However, the case is clear, and there are black and white pictures on the inside of the cover as well as Japanese and English credits.

Film Value:
The first volume was almost shocking to me. The first episode is very light, much like other comedic fantasy features in anime. Shu´s fight with Abelia´s forces is farcical- a young boy taking on trained soldiers in futuristic technology, and winning. My brother watched this episode with me, and declared that the series looked silly. Every other episode, however, was grounded in gritty reality. Shu is repeatedly and viciously beaten, then pressed into the children´s corp. His fate, and the survival of his youthful enthusiasm, are uncertain.

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