#梶浦由記 #KajiuraYuki #ufotable ~ Kimetsu no Yaiba 1st trailer released

ufotable's Facebook page posted a video of the first trailer for #鬼滅の刃 #KimetsuNoYaiba.  Kajiura Yuki is collaborating with #ShiinaGo #椎名豪  on the soundtrack of this anime series that's due to air in April of 2019.

The music on the trailer does sound quite Kajiura-ish which is the kind of music I like.  The style and look of the animation looks quite ufotable which I also generally like.  I'm not sure how the collaboration for the music will work and I'm not sure if I'll enjoy the story.  But since both Kajiura Yuki and ufotable are involved, then I'll definitely be checking it out.



I'm looking forward to this and am curious to hear new music from Kajiura Yuki next year. :)

Okay, I'm off to bed.  It's been a long day.  Good night. :)

Unboxing ~ Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower [Limited Edition]

I actually received the #ufotable #fatestayhf box-set months and months ago but I didn't do an unboxing post then because there were just too many things happening in my life and there was so much OT at work it was virtually impossible to do anything outside of work.  At first I thought that I wouldn't do the unboxing since it's been too long but I have decided to do it for two reasons.  Firstly, the Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - II. Lost Butterfly will be screening soon so its seems appropriate.  Secondly, I keep getting distracted from my review of Sun Li's Happiness as Flowers (幸福像花儿一样) drama because Legend of Condor Heroes 2017 (射雕英雄传) is so much better than I expected that I can't concentrate on the review. Hahaha!!  So I decided to do something easier.  This will be one of those photo heavy unboxing posts and I won't be doing any reviews or commentaries on the anime film or on Kajiura Yuki's (梶浦由記) soundtrack this time.

This is a truly beautiful release.  Few do such beautiful packaging as Japanese companies.  I ordered this from CDJapan and as usual they packed it nicely.



I wished the company I got the Sun Li book from via Taobao had packed my book up with this kind of bubble wrap.  Sigh....

Any way, I will be doing the unboxing of this release, Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower (Movie) (English Subtitles) [Limited Edition. The pre-order tokuten for this release is a B6 size sticker from CDJapan.  But, unfortunately, this is no longer available.



The sticker came in a little plastic bag to keep it safe.



The above are photos of the box that holds the contents of this release.  As is common among Japanese releases, there is a sheet of paper that wraps around part of the box that gives you information of the contents of the release.  I took photos of the case with and without that sheet of paper.



The case is made from good quality hard cardboard stock and opens up nicely to reveal two books and the digipak CD tray.



One of the books is a paperback booklet with about 51 pages.  This book is called the "Animation Material" book and it contains tons of information and illustrations pertaining to the anime film.  There are character design sketches, small thumbnails of the background images. There are credit pages at the end.  It looks like it uses "perfect bound" binding and is nice and sturdy.  The text is all in Japanese though, so you'll need to be able to read Japanese if you wish to understand what is written in the book.

Haha!! Maybe you can tell that I'm using a new mobile phone to shoot these photos.  I'm not used to the screen and I keep shooting everything off center or I keep messing up the composition. :P



The other book is a beautiful hardcover 52 page book called the "Art Book".  The cover has shiny purple illustrations embossed into the front and back.  The back cover has an entire paragraph in English text.  It's a very pretty book. The inside of the book consist of pages and pages of full colored key visuals and character illustrations.  There is no text in the book except for the credit page at the end which lists who the artists are.



The Limited Edition comes with the Blu-ray of the anime film.  Luckily this release has English subtitles.  Quite often Japanese anime releases only have Japanese subtitles.  It also contains a DVD disc that has special material on it and an additional CD disc with Kajiura Yuki's soundtrack. The three panel digipak opens up to reveal one single illustration on the back.

This release comes in three versions.  The one I unboxed is:
Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower (Movie) (English Subtitles) [Limited Edition]

There are two other Regular Edition releases.  One is a DVD version and the other is a BD version.
Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower (Movie) (English Subtitles) [Regular Edition] DVD version

Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower (Movie) (English Subtitles) [Regular Edition]  Bluray version

The Regular Editions only come with one disc and I don't think the come with the two books too.

For those who wish to get it from CDJapan like I usually do, please feel free to use the above links or any other links you wish.

This is a very nice release and fans of the series should be very happy to own this.  Now, I'm looking forward to the release of the next film in the trilogy and the next box-set release too. :)

Unboxing ~ #孙俪 #SunLi #遇见你陪伴你 Meet You Accompany You - book

Sun Li (#孫儷) recently released a book called《遇见你，陪伴你》(Meet You Accompany You).  It's a book about Sun Li's love for animals and her life with them.  I think it's mostly about dogs and a little bit about cats.  Sun Li really likes dogs it seems and has quite a few of them in her home.  I think at one point she had up to six dogs but I'm not sure.  I happen to watch an interview of it some time ago and I've forgotten the exact number.  I've also not really read this book because I really don't have the time to do it yet.  I've only read a few lines and paragraphs so I won't be giving any comments or summaries on what was written because I can't just yet.

This book was released in Oct 2018 and it took me a while to figure out how to get a hold of it.  I tried bookstores in Singapore first.  I even tried Popular but no one carried the book.  On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I also checked a bookstore there.  And finally I asked a close friend who was on holiday in Taiwan to try a bookstore in Taiwan.  All that failed.  So I tried Amazon China and I tried getting direct from web-stores in China but that failed too.  That's because I don't have a China mobile number or address so I either couldn't get it shipped to Singapore or I couldn't sign up for an account.

So I decided to try and pull a favour and asked one of my friends who had friends in China to see if they could help me out and he was like, "Why don't you use Taobao?"  And I was like, "They sell books on Taobao?!?!"  Well apparently they do and that's how I signed up for Taobao and made my first Taobao purchase ever.  Haha!! :)

The book itself is actually not expensive especially after the discounts.  It cost me only about SGD7-8.  The shipping and packaging cost me another SGD7-8.  So the total cost of this book shipped in from China is slightly above SGD15 which is a very reasonable price for a book shipped in from overseas, in my opinion.

It took about 7 days for the package to reach me and you can track it pretty much all the way till the package reaches Singapore.  From there you'll have to wait for them to transfer it to a local courier.  In my case, it was Speedpost (SingPost).

The packing is very minimal especially when you compare it to a web-store like CDJapan.  But CDJapan specializes in entertainment goods from Japan so unless there is a Japan release of said item, they probably won't carry it.  And people who buy from CDJapan are often collectors who will want their orders to reach them in perfect condition.  In this case, with this book shipped from Taobao, the book wasn't wrapped in bubble-wrap or something similar, it was simply loosely placed in a thinly layered bubble padded envelope.

While the book survived the journey without any major damage, two of the corners did get dented.  Book lovers who like their books to be as perfect as possible might be dismayed by it.  I do like my books to arrive in as pristine a condition as possible, so it was a slight let-down.  But I do know that Taobao thrives on cheap and if I wanted better packaging, then shipping would also end up being more expensive.  So I got over it relatively quickly especially since this was really the only way I could get this book.

The other thing odd about this book was that the shrink wrap around it was actually not properly sealed.  I don't know if it means anything but it felt odd to me.  I don't think it was the Singapore customs who opened it since the shrink wrap was pretty much intact except at the ends.  The customs can't open a book to check that way.  Well, at least not properly.  Also the padded envelope packaging was fine and didn't seem to have been opened and then re-sealed.  So I've no idea why the shrink wrap wasn't properly shrink wrapped.

Anyway, I took off the shrink wrap and the dust-cover isn't full on glossy, it's just slightly reflective.

The binding is kind of interesting.

I've honestly never seen binding like this before.  Usually its covered up and not "naked" like this so I was a little surprised.  It also makes me nervous about its durability.  So I think it might be a good idea to read this book like one reads comics, with one hand on the spine and without opening the book too widely.

On the inside fold of the dust jacket, they actually name all the dogs that are featured on the cover.  I thought that that was kind of cute.



That's what the inside covers of the book looks like without the dust cover.

There is a printed autograph from Sun Li on the page immediately after the cover page.  It would have been nice to get an actual autograph.  Recently, Sun Li's been holding a few autograph sessions in China.  I saw photos of the sessions on Weibo (click me, click me, click me for some photos).  Sadly, I do not live in China so the possibility of getting this book autographed for real is practically zero.  Since beggars can't be choosers, this is good enough for me.

This is the inside title page which is nice and readable.

The content page on the other hand was actually a little hard to read.  The white text shows up a little faintly against the light gray background and the lack of a greater contrast makes it a little hard to read  especially when light falls on it at certain angles.

The section headings have English titles accompanying the Chinese ones but unfortunately for those who cannot read Chinese, that's pretty much the extent of the amount of English in this book.



This book itself is pretty awesome for fans.  The quality of the paper is not bad.  And it's chocked full of lovely full colored photos of Sun Li with animals.  The book is about 300 or so pages long if you include content pages etc.  There is a lot of text but there are also so many photos that it could even serve as a photo book of sorts for fans who cannot read Chinese.  There are many pages that just feature photos of her without any accompanying text.  And there are many more pages that have photos accompanying the text.  Even though there are text-only pages throughout the book, it seems like they don't exceed more than 5-6 pages in a row before there are more photos.

I shot a few photos as an example of some of the pages in the book but as usual, with most of the unboxings that I do on the blog, I much rather you buy the product itself if you can.

At the end of the book, there is a pull-out page that's attached to the book. This pull-out page contains tips on how to look after your pets.

For those of us who do read and understand Chinese, but aren't very good at it, you should not have too many problems with the level of Chinese in the book.  It's pitched at a comfortable reading level for most people, I think.

I think that if you're a Sun Li fan, you will most likely like this book.  Most fans would be very happy to own it especially since it's not particularly expensive.  My only concern is the binding, I don't have full faith in it.  But as long as you treat the book with some care, it should be fine and those lovely photos should more than make up for it. :)