It has come to our attention that there’s a slight pixelation issue in select scene for Digimon Adventure Tri. - Determination DVD and Blu-ray. Since the initial manufacturing began, we have repaired this minor issue and a limited amount of copies are affected. If anyone has any concerns after viewing the disc, please contact info@shoutfactory.com for a replacement disc with proof of purchase. Click to expand...

It's time for Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 Determination after a far shorter wait than some of us thought.Since licensing and other issues are now taken care of, for the first half of tri. at least, we are getting a pace of release we didn't really expect.And with a special early release due to the summer convention season, it means it's possible to get tri. Part 2 just a month and a half after the retail release of part 1.No special theatrical event is planned this time and the full retail release is a month and a half away, but let's go ahead and dig into see what we have for our disc release of Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2.Very little scanning and editing on the scans in this one. Mostly just a bit of color balance on a few of them this time.There may be spoilers for Part 2 given below, just a small warning.First, a short jump into the story.Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 - Determination picks up a short time after the end of Part 1. Infected Digimon have appeared and been pushed back, but other connected events are happening, such as the distortions. After the end of Part 1 defeat of Alphamon, Part 2 picks up...With the kids going to an onsen (spa in the dub!) Based on what you wanted from tri. this was either amazing or a massive disappointment. I've never made a secret that character stuff is like catnip to me, so I ate it all up.tri. Part 2 has been among the black sheep of tri. for many people. They were hoping to get the plot moving forward, but minus a handful at the end, it's mostly the kids (for lack of a better term) being kids. I think spending the time showing Meiko acclimating to the group (and Mimi specifically) works well, but I do understand the issues people have with it.We are spoon fed small bits of important information throughout, but at the core you really have four primary elements to tri. Part 2:The first is the visit to the spa.The second is, as mentioned above, showing Meiko acclimate to the group and Mimi.The third is a handful of things happening to Mimi making her question what kind of person she is.The last is Joe having to contemplate his place in the world, and what and who he wants to be as he's growing up.The spa visit is perhaps what many people might have expected from the beginning of Part 1, and shows just how much things change when friends all have something common in their view. The characters are simply hanging out as friends. tri. Part 1 at the beginning went out it's way to show us that while they hadn't drifted apart exactly, they all had lives to deal with. tri. Part 2 (and to a degree the end of tri. Part 1) swings thing back the other way in a fun way.Meiko acclimating is part of the spa trip, but she probably does more as part of Mimi's plot than anything else. Meiko has been one of the more divisive parts of tri., but she works well in that she's integrated with the group, but can act as an outsider as events are playing out, because she simply doesn't have the familiarity with the others, and in particular Mimi, with whom she spends most of her time.Mimi's plot is based around Mimi trying to figure out if her (shall we say) overly honest and straightforward nature is the best thing. Classmates at her school have a short argument with her over how she acts, and then after not thinking about where her actions may lead she causes issues for the kids and the Digimon, along with getting Palmon hurt.Joe had less time, but the depth felt honest due to the fact we saw how things going on affected him even in Part 1. Joe is growing up, and not having an easy time in general. Now that he's trying to push himself, destiny is thrown in his face again. And as a teenager often does when told/shown something, he chooses to ignore it and keep doing what he's doing.The English dub in tri. Part 2 feels tonally different (slightly) from the Part 1 dub. The Part 1 dub had a few small bits of dubisms (for lack of a better term.) Every once in awhile there would be a slight rewrite not to deal with locations, or make things flow better, but to specifically fit in a more 'Saban dub' style line. These were often replacing jokes from the Japanese script, and worked well.The jokes still work well here in general, but it feels like there are more of them. I take it as the English scriptwriters being more comfortable after Part 1, and the general setup of Part 2 allowing more interactions.A good number of these, whether coincidental or not, are voiced by Tentomon, which will no doubt have many fans smiling, as Jeff Nimoy's Tentomon has always been a fan favorite, and always been good for a few sly lines here and there.What works especially well is that some jokes actually have callbacks in the script later, making them feel more like natural interactions rather than the firing out of jokes.The cast from Part 1 is back in Part 2, but of course there are a few important additions to the character lineup this time around...Dorothy Fahn, who came back as Tai and Kari's mom in Part 1 always seemed a lock to play Lilymon again, along with Rosemon (since she played her in Data Squad.) While the actors aren't credited by role, it's definitely her (and she's confirmed as such on Twitter.) Rosemon might be a touch different than the voice she used in Data Squad, but it sounds fantastic.Now we get to where I'm not 100% sure on voices.The credited actors for Part 2 are the same actors as Part 1... so...Update- We've received confirmation from a few actors who aren't credited in Part 2 that they are in fact in it. It appears they just aren't changing the credit roll.Michael Sorich isn't credited in the end credits, and it appears Bob Klein has taken over Zudomon for tri. (not for the first time either, he also played him in Data Squad if I'm remembering right.) It also sounds like Bob Klein is Vikemon (considering he's every other form for Gomamon in tri. that would make sense.) Vikemon is given a significantly different voice than I expected. I expected something deep and booming and got a very good 'noble Viking warrior' type voice. It was unexpected to me, and very pleasant.As for Leomon... I honestly don't know. It sounds like Paul St. Peter, but a touch off (and in the pre-release clips we've seen I'm not the only person who has noticed this.) If we assume the credits are correct, then it's a matter of who is playing. I kind of hear a bit of Kyle Hebert, who is credited but didn't have any main roles in this episode from what I could tell, but I'm honestly not sure.Update- Paul St. Peter has confirmed he's Leomon in tri. Part 2. In addition, despite no actual 'dialogue' in tri. part 2, Beau Billingslea has confirmed the growling and gruntint for Ogremon in tri. Part 2 is him. Thanks to AR for this info.As for The Digimon Emperor and Imperialdramon, which a lot of people seemed interested in... both are the same as the Japanese version, they do not speak.I honestly believe the dub, on the whole, is superior to the dub for Part 1... minus a few issues.There are a small number of mistakes or changes made that simply do not work for me, and I'm going to go over all the ones that I noticed:1. Tai seems to call out to his 'sis' while looking and speaking to Sora when Kari was elsewhere. Kari shortly does show up, but it felt out of place to me.2. It introduces a dub-centric reason for TK and Matt to have different last names which simply does not jive with what what I remember from the dub version of Seasons 1 and 2.3. Despite Part 1 (and even a minute earlier in Part 2) giving an 'English friendly' explanation for Meiko saying 'don don' (Meicoomon speak), they leave in the detail from the Japanese version of TK knowing 'roughly' where Meiko is from due to the line, and going into the same explanation the Japanese did about his grandmother saying it.4. Meiko refers to Meicoomon as he. Some of the others might be me being a bit overly picky (I'm a fan, we all do it.) This is simply a mistake.5. Tai refers to it being 'bad' that Alphamon was defeated. Again... this is simply a mistake.6. And maybe back to me being overly picky... the dub refers to the distortion at the end of the episode as being the Digital World.I really do like the dub. These handful of things just grated on me. Some of them are certainly because I'm picky and take things overly serious... but a few of them are simply mistakes.A few small additional notes... (Most of these are the same as Part 1.)The opening credits have been swapped out from the original Japanese for equivalent credits in English. This was done to the original (pre-credit) footage and matches the style of the opening credits in the Japanese release.In addition, the ending credits are shorter than the version on the Japanese disk. The actual ED footage in a window box is the same as on the Japanese version, but the credits have been shortened and a shorter version of the ED theme is used so that all 3 elements end at roughly the same time.Also, no visual edits or tweaks have been made to the film itself that I noticed.The logo used in film is the Japanese logo.And because I know everyone wanted to know... the tri. dub theme is indeed used again.Onto the product itself!Any screencaps from the Blu-ray, DVD, or digital copies are lossless PNGs.Most images in the article are smaller copies from our gallery (to keep loading sizes smaller for everyone), but link to the full sized versions when clicked.Scanning was done as high quality as I could do, and compressed and shrunk to reasonable sizes, along with reasonable quality JPG compression. I've explained my workflow in my personal thread and will answer any questions involving it or the processes used.First up will be the physical stuff.The front cover (at the top of the article) uses the well known theatrical poster art for tri. Part 2. The logo is the English version of the tri. logo with blue backing so that the text is easier to read. They've also added a small 'slide' to the right of the bottom part of the logo in a nice purpley color with the title of Part 2, Determination. The top has a purple colored bar listing Blu-ray and DVD. This being probably the best known part of artwork specific to Part 2, it makes sense to use. The fact it does something so fun and actiony with Mimi and Joe is probably why so many people love it.It's worth mentioning it isn't the same green used in the poster art in Japan, it's been shifted to a gradient with more yellow in it.The logo placement feels significantly better than what was done with Part 1. I wouldn't mind if the logo was shrunk a bit so the art could be raised a bit, but it works well.The back cover has a general plot description for Part 2. Thankfully, this being a dub-centric release, they make sure that the proper dub names and terms are used. And Ogremon is spelled Ogremon! We don't get the pseudo-modern mistranslation Orgemon! This will make many of us happy (more on this later.)Underneath that they tell us the extra (along with a mention of the Japanese audio.) We also get a few cropped screenshots, along with a full list of product specs and info at the bottom.The UPC code was partially clipped out, so I've removed the rest of it.Because I could scan it flat since the entire thing was an insert, we also have the spine of the insert. This uses the English 'straight' tri. logo version nicely, combining the green and purple motif the packaging goes with in a way that looks quite clean.The Blu-ray comes with a slipcover (in an o-card shape) that is made out a nice cardstock. The slipcover front, back, and side are all reasonably the same as the main insert. The main changes are the mention of the digital copy on the front and back. I assume once the digital copy is no longer offered, Shout will simply will stop including the slipcover, and they won't have to revise the packaging any further.The front has a sticker on it mentioning tri. Part 2 being new, it having both audio tracks, along with a mention of the special feature.The back has a square cut out of it so the UPC is visible through the slipcover.There was no way for me to get the slipcover flat to get either of the spines, but they are both identical to the insert spine (I tried to get them anyways, same as last time... and they came out all curvy and weird, same as last time.)The Blu-ray case itself is a relatively standard Blu-ray case, which means that it isn't just colored blue, it's also see thru.This time the other side of the insert is a great shot of Gatomon, Tentomon, Gomamon, and Agumon with various credits printed on it.The bit clipped out from the UPC code, of course, also removed a chunk of this (it being the other side and all.) I didn't repair it based on the location (poor Joe and Gomamon), but will rescan when my retail copy shows up.The physical Blu-ray and DVD continue the usage of green.They look nice with just a simple picture of Gomamon and Palmon this time around. The images of both of them show a good bit of personality.No physical extras, except the digital copy slip.The code has been blanked out for the time being.. It's a basic redemption information sheet, that gives you instructions that are very clear.The back features an ad for Part 1 - Reunion for any potential buyers that may have missed it.And that's it for the physical... onto the disc contents itself!The video is encoded using AVC at an average bitrate of roughly 26 Mbps. Good bitrate for animated content. tri. Part 2 is encoded at 1080p and 24 frames per second. This is roughly identical to the Japanese release of Part 2 and a touch less than the US release of Part 1.tri. on Blu-ray looks great, which has been consistent for nearly every tri. Blu-ray.The video quality itself is roughly what we expected. Everything is digital animation, so it looks great. You occasionally get a background or some other detail that isn't aliased that well, but that's par for the course for animated content. One thing to note is dark scenes look quite good. On occasion you will see some very mild banding but it doesn't seem to be to much of an issue.There are slightly off frames if you pick and choose, and the occasional stilted bit of animation, which is normal in animation when you pick and choose what to show, but the encode on the Blu-ray itself is relatively pristine.Relatively... there is a short video glitch when Rosemon and Imperialdramon are facing off. More on this down below..The English audio is a 5.1 lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track. Good lossless 24-bit audio.The Japanese audio is a 5.1 lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track, also 24-bit.The audio quality overall is, to my memory, roughly equivalent to what the Japanese release had. Unlike Part 1, we get the proper 5.1 Japanese audio here. We can only theorize why, but it's good to have it and not to have to potentailly worry about it anymore.And since someone will no doubt ask, same as last time, yes, the Japanese audio uses Butter-Fly.The DVD included here should be the same as the standalone DVD release, and I'll get into the quality after the specs...Video is encoded using MPEG-2 at an average bitrate of 8.5Mbps. This is quite a bit higher than we often see for anime content on a DVD, and is nearing the tip top of what a DVD can do (this is identical to tri. Part 1's US release.) It's encoded at 480p and properly shows as '24fps film' content....but the short video glitch when Rosemon and Imperialdramon are facing off is back. The glitch is similar, but not identical to the Blu-ray (we get a flash of a full green screen on the DVD, but not the Blu-ray for example.)But we actually aren't done with the DVD. The video looks odd to me. Lines seem to be unusually jaggy, and when things move or the camera pans I notice an odd shimmer. It suggests the HD video was improperly downscaled. I tend to be overly sensitive to things like this (look for random tweets about me screaming about integer scaling on retro games for examples), so it's quite possible you won't notice any issue, but you should be aware of it. The issue doesn't show up particularly clearly in screencaps.Unfortunately while I own the Japanese Blu-ray of Part 2, I don't own the DVD to compare.But more on the video down below a bit like I said before...The audio is roughly equivalent also. The English track is a 5.1 Dolby track at 448k, while the Japanese is 5.1 Dolby at 448k. Relatively standard and expected.It feels like the audio on the DVD is missing a bit of punch compared to the Blu-ray, but there isn't much surprise there. It's roughly the same as listening to an MP3 versus a FLAC or WAV. Some people will notice, others wont, and even the DVD is pretty good.3 subtitle tracks are included on both Blu-ray and DVD:Closed Captioning for the English dubSign track for the English dubEnglish subtitles for the Japanese audioClosed captioning is something that has tapered off in anime related releases a number of years ago, but has come up quite a bit in recent memory. It's nice to see it included, more so that it is a proper closed captioning track. If a character's mouth isn't visible, you see their name. If a phone vibrates offscreen, they caption that a phone has vibrated, etc. I don't use captioning tracks myself, but it's a good thing to have a proper track for those who need it (or want to watch it with friends/family who may need it.)Unfortunately the caption track has issues. After a few people noticed a caption issue or two last time (Where's Garurumon?!) along with the video glitches this time, I went through the caption track as well as I could with a single pass.Characters who are identified by voice are often misidentified (I'll admit a few of these I wasn't 100% sure who it was, but some were very wrong.) Palmon is often misidentified as Biyomon, even if Biyomon isn't in a scene. At least once Biyomon is identified as Palmon, even though Biyomon appears onscreen talking partway through her sentence. Once Himekawa's nickname 'Hime' is misspelled as Hemi (and one time Miss Himekawa was captioned as Missy Makawa.)Some of the issues are understandable, but it happens a bit to much for me to be comfortable with.The sign track, minus the end credits song, is 3 lines. Nice to have, but very short. Although Brave Heart isn't captioned, which seems odd.The subs for the Japanese track seem generally good. I didn't compare them in depth with the CR subs like I did last time.Not many issues here, although they did misspell 'responses' and used a spelling of Flower Cannon I don't personally agree with. I look forward to Lilymon showing up again with her well known attack, Flow' Cannon (and yes, I'm aware some people do translate it as such, but it reads quite poorly with the ' included.)And oh yeah... Orgemon... I mentioned that would come up later... the sub track uses Orgemon. I know a lot of people aren't bothered by it because Bandai has used it for awhile... but it's still a mistake.And a few additional subtitle notes:Brave Heart isn't subtitled on any of the tracks once again... although MAN: [Singing in Japanese] doesn't seem to show up this time... which makes me a bit sad..Butter-Fly and Seven are both subtitled on the subs for the Japanese track.Seven is subtitled on the caption track.The sign track for the dub, as mentioned above, only has a handful of lines, but on top of those it does caption Seven.The subs aren't bad, but it feels like a bit of quality control was missing.Blu-ray subs are image 1, DVD subs are 2, Blu-ray Captions are 3One of the issues last time was the Blu-ray subtitle font was a touch small.I only skimmed the subtitle fonts this time, but it appears all 3 tracks have identical fonts on both discs this time around, which appears to have been bumped up in size a decent chunk on the Blu-ray, leading to a more pleasant reading experience.The Blu-ray menu is rather nice and functionally identical to Part 1. It has the dub theme playing, along with random clips from Part 2. The clips all have various mock 'digital corruption/noise' filters on them to some degree to add a bit of flavor to them. The actual menu items are clean and easy to read, with a yellowish-green highlight and arrow appearing on the item you are on. The menu was fighting me on getting captures, so I was only able to get the main menu. The various sub menus appear in small pop ups right above the main menu bar.Due to having only one extra, they skip giving extras a submenu and just place it on the main menu, which I rather like. Less pressing buttons to get to content.One other thing worth mentioning is some colors have changed. There was a light blue border and orange detailing for Part 1. Part 2 has switched to a yellowish-green and purple.The DVD menu does it's best to emulate the setup of the Blu-ray menu, and does it reasonably well. Each submenu has it's own menu page on the DVD using a very nice digital 'wave' motif (which is actually screencaps from the opening minutes of tri. Part 1.)Menu elements on the DVD are once again a bit small, likely having been reused from the Blu-ray.Time for extras! Well... extra.No clean OP or ED material, but we do get a single extra.We get another nice behind the scenes extra. This one is a bit under 10 minutes and focuses on the director, Ryan Johnston, and his process in working on tri., his thoughts on how he does his job, along with comments from some actors. While shorter than the nearly 30 minute behind the scenes last time, this one generally feels more focused, and acts as a very good follow up.Based on the bits they are recording for tri. Parts 2 and 3 during the behind the scenes, I'm going to guess this was filmed concurrently with the extra from last time.Not really an extra, but seems like a good place to mention it again... the digital copy!Oh wait... can't! This is out early and the digital copy redemption isn't up yet. I figure by the rules of the universe it will pop up either right before, or right after, I put this up. Once it's up I'll spend some time and add it.Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 has received a very good release in the USA on Blu-ray. In general everything feels about in line with Part 1. Which leaves me with not much to say...If not for the problems...There are the bits of video glitches I mentioned up above, which is in the middle of the signature fight of Part 2.I took some screen captures of that (included up above in the video section) and sent them to Shout after confirming it wasn't my equipment causing a problem and Shout responded reasonably fast:It appears the glitch will only affect these early copies, and those will be replaced without any charge for anyone who picked them up at Anime Expo 2017 (no word yet about if the fixed discs will be ready for the early sale at San Diego Comic Con though.)The DVD video may just me being picky, but I don't think so. I'm told there doesn't seem to be any issue with the DVD minus the small glitch mentioned above which is being fixed. I did the vast majority of my checking for both Part 1 and Part 2 using the DVD because it allowed me to jump around faster, and don't recall any issue with Part 1 (and in fact I checked Part 1 before writing this chunk in case I was mistaken.) This issue carries over to the bonus feature on the DVD. The downscaling from an HD master appears to my eye to have been done incorrectly.In addition, I've done QC work in a professional capacity before... but I wondered if perhaps I was being overly harsh to the DVD based on unrealistic expectations of an older format. In fact, I started to be a bit paranoid I was looking for a problem that didn't exist...So I showed the DVD to a friend who currently does QC work relating to video quality for standard definition anime releases and he also felt there was an issue (and by 'relating to video quality', I mean he literally does QC for anime discs.)But much like video scaling issues in general, there is a good chance you will never notice it, after-all, the NES Classic had the same issue in 4:3 mode and almost no one who was not sensitive to these issues noticed it.I have high standards for video, but I stand by that I believe something is wrong in regards to the DVD.The other issues:A few dub lines that are off, are a combination of me being a fan and being very picky, along with a few legitimate mistakes (using a male personal pronoun for Meicoomon as an example.)The Japanese subtitle track as mentioned seems fine minus one or two misspellings.The English caption track is not bad, but have numerous issues relating to identifying who is speaking correctly, and even occasionally missing a joke or pun.These issues (the dub and the subtitle tracks) appear to be source issues and what was likely given to Shout to use, so I have minimal expectations that they will be fixed (for licensing reasons I wouldn't be shocked if they couldn't fix them frankly.)The 5.1 audio being included was a jump up, but a handful of issues bring the release of Part 2 down.The digital to own versions of Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 should be reasonably similar to the digital version of Digimon Adventure tri. Part 1: dub only with closed captioning. Various storefronts have Part 1 as $10 for the SD only version and $13 for the HD. Digital storefronts generally haven't listed Part 2 at the time of this review, but I expect the prices to be the same (or at least very close.)Screencaps were taken largely at random while jumping around the various versions included with the Blu-ray (although if I knew a moment was coming up I wanted a cap of, I'd wait.) Owing to the unique way DVDs are encoded, the DVD screencaps have been stretched lengthwise to the proper aspect ratio, as they would appear while actual watching. The Blu-ray screencaps are all straight off the disc.Various additional screen captures are in our gallery:The scans can also be found in the gallery. The scans are very small compared to the master scans I did (the work and backup folder structure for the scans and screencaps is a touch under 15 gigs.) I will try and make wallpapers if people are interested. If you want to see a specific screencap of something give me a rough timecode if you can.If you have any questions about the release feel free to ask.Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 is available to pre-order with a release of August 15th (Affiliate links.)Digimon Adventure tri. part 1 is also still available to order:At the moment Shout only has Digimon Adventure tri. Parts 1 thru 3, and sales of this will certainly directly affect if Shout decides to nab the rest of it, so if you like tri. and want to support it, nab a copy (in fact, if you are near a store on the day of release, nab a copy from a store, if brick and mortar stores have interest in having more Digimon on their shelves, it's the easiest way to get more.)Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 was reviewed using a screener that came in the standard retail packaging (with part of the UPC code clipped out.) I still have my pre-order active and plan to keep it (the screener has that cutout on the UPC code I mentioned earlier, and I want to have one that is all pristine.)Thanks to everyone who has donated for us to do various scans and breakdowns in the past. We are still taking donations so we can do similar for future releases. If you are willing to donate please take a look at the most recent thread on the subject.We should have a few more things soon for people to look at. Images are hosted on our gallery and embedded on the forum, so let us know if anything is acting up.