The DVD for the Digimon Adventure tri. Stage Play is out!The Stage Play ended it's theatrical run a few months ago and Digimon fans seemed, by and large, very positive to the concept.The handful of people who are at WtW who were able to go found the the stage play a worthwhile addition to the franchise and now that it's on DVD it'll be much easier for people to see.Honestly, there was a decent amount to scan but it all went rather well.Any screencaps from the DVDs are lossless PNGs.All 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.There may be spoilers for the stage play below, but I plan to do my best to keep that to a minimum.First, a jump into the stage play itself.Super Evolution Stage Digimon Adventure tri. -The August 1st Adventure- is a rather interesting aside for the franchise. Taking place at an unspecified moment in the midst of Digimon Adventure tri. but with a handful of clues that makes guessing it not insanely complicated, even if there isn't quite a solid answer. The stage play is both very different and very similiar to tri., which will cause your enjoyment of it to be based on what you want from the franchise, along with your expectations.The stage play, owing to it's format, is very much a character drama, even moreso than tri. itself. Perhaps the most interesting thing is, without a larger story to tell, it's taken the path of very much wearing it's heart on it's sleeve. It ties in with Adventure in a number of very direct ways, including the characters thoughts and commentary on who they used to be, who they are, and who they want to be. It does this in an even more direct way than tri. has while taking advantage of the fact that it doesn't have to fully reintroduce the characters (since tri. already did that heavy lifting.)The stage play begins after the battles are over, and it's time to move on and grow up. With August 1st approaching the characters have decided to go camping to celebrate their original adventure in the digital world and the original meeting of their partners.The story begins with a somewhat surreal introduction with Agumon. They hint that something is wrong, but the other Digimon wave this aside.The story moves along to showing us the planning for the camp. From Koushiro wanting to plan out everything, to Mimi just wanting to show up and rough it. Amusing asides with Knife of Day and everyone being worried that Taichi doesn't want to go leads to a character being introduced in an unexpected way... Jou is happy and ready to jump in to relaxing at camp.These introduction scenes are perhaps longer than they needed to be, but provide good setup to where everyone's state of mind is at the beginning of the story.The camp itself begins with the kids wondering how they will make do, and if they will even stay for the multiple days they have planned. Luckily for everyone, the campground supervisor, who seems very familiar, tells them all about the amazing campgrounds and how it seems unlikely there will be any issues.As the story progresses it's mostly about their general thoughts on growing up. At times this gave me a real jolt in flashing back to decisions and general contemplation of growing up.But, sometimes things are to good to be true, and it begins to occur to everyone involved that everything about this camping trip has gone just a little to perfectly.With the reveal of the supervisor as Etemon (to the kids... since they never really hide it) the show moves to it's intermission.I'll leave everything post intermission for you to discover on your own, down to and including the eventual reveal of what's really happening and if they ever touch more directly on elements of tri. (such as Meiko and Meicoomon.) We have a thread where the stage play is being discussed in more detail regarding the play itself (with lots of spoilers.)The stage play overall is a really fun watch, and more than that, it's something unique. 20 years in, a franchise still being able to do something unique with familiar characters can really be a treat. The cast inhabits the characters perfectly. The visuals seemed to work in early promotional photos and clips, but on stage they work perfectly.Some people had concerns about the puppets, but on stage even when you are looking at the puppeteers, more often than not you feel like you are looking past them and just seeing the Digimon.Of course, extra credit must be paid to Oreno Graffiti as Etemon. He overacts in a manner perfect to his character, he breaks the fourth wall multiple times while the other characters ignore what's happening, and he steals the show every time he appears. He's also credited as composing music for the stage play (Etemon's songs I assume?)Beyond the stage play just being really enjoyable, there were a lot of little touches that even many fans might have overlooked if the stage play didn't point them out (for example, Etemon pointing out that despite him showing up in wildly divergent chunks of the TV show, him and Hikari have never met.)While I loved it, I imagine a lot of people will be more torn. 99% of the stage play is simply characters talking to each other, often about growing up, and reflecting on who they used to be, and who they may become. At times it certain can drag a bit, but that's also why there is an intermission in the middle.It's a fun side story that I highly recommend.Next up is all the physical stuff. Everything included with the DVD was scanned minus one thing (a generic instruction sheet about DVDs.)The front cover (at the top of the article) is the stage play poster art that we were shown with the initial announcement. The art is a rather clean shot of Taichi and Yamato on a CGI Omegamon who fades away into a wireframe. The cover is done in a rather minimal fashion and it works well. It's even easy to forgive the characters being on the wrong shoulder since they needed to do that for placement.The packaging is a standard black DVD case, with a sturdy page flap to hold the second disc (always happy when the discs aren't stacked on top of eachother.) The discs themselves snap into the case with M style locks, which seem to work well, but I've never liked due to hard you have to push them to pop out the discs.The back cover for the DVD is the opposite of the clean front.The back cover is rather busy. It includes a short description, along with photos of each actor playing the kids. It also lists the cast includes a group shot of everyone on stage (with a small shot of Etemon added.) On top of that, there is still all the technical aspects at the bottom. While I tend to not like things that look busy, everything feels compartmentalized to a degree and it works, even if it does feel cluttered.Since it's a standard insert I was able to scan the side also. It features a flat tri. logo with the stage play title on a bit of continuing art from the front.The physical DVDs uses a different theme than the packaging though...It uses the digital pattern motif that tri. has used throughout it's run. Interestingly, while the scan of the first disc appears to be a very dark green color, that may be due to the reflected light of the scanner. Looking at the disc it appears to be black in person. The second disc has the same effect, but less so. It's definitely a bluish green, but appears darker in person.The DVDs came with two physical extras since it was the Amazon version.Very nice prints of Taichi/Agumon and Yamato/Gabumon. Somehow it feels in character to have Agumon looking at 'us' while Gabumon is looking at Yamato. They're relatively basic bonus items, but they're still rather nice.Other retailers had different bonus items.Alternate poses for Taichi, Agumon, Yamato, and Gabumon if you bought from Animate or HMV, while the Toei store had a full cast print.A booklet was also includedThe front and back continue the digital tri. motif. Again, in person these appear black, although looking at them more closely I can definitely see some of the greenish and blueish colors. The cover is soft and glossy and absorbed fingerprints in a way that's hard to believe.Interior pages are mostly photos.We start with a nice two page spread of the kids with a cityscape behind them, along with some story text. To be honest, the images chosen feel a bit overly serious and stoic to me, and the photos don't feel like the best choices to be honest. Taichi's actor looks like he was overly photoshopped which makes his face appear a bit off, and Jou and Mimi have none of the warmth their actor's show throughout the stage play.The bulk of the booklet features singular promotional shots of the characters. We get text in both Japanese and English with character and actors names, small pictures of the Digimon, along with the various tri. motif imagery. The layout is rather nice.These are also in general much better photos than the ones used on the first spread, but it feels like a lot of artificial lightning has been added giving the pictures an oddly 'glowy' feel and a general feeling of shininess was added to everything (this has been an ongoing issue with promotional photos of the cast.)This layout features a profile shot of Oreno Graffiti as Etemon on one side and the ensemble cast on the other (the ensemble being the puppeteers.)The shot of Etemon is overly serious for the character, but works great as a general character shot.The ensemble side feels weak to be honest, just using general headshots. I'm not sure showing them in their grey puppeteer outfits would have been appropriate, but I have to believe there was a better choice than headshot thumbnails.The booklet ends with one more credit spread.On the left we get the voice actors for the Digimon, all returning from Adventure and tri. The artwork featured is early tri. promotional art that fits well with the credits.On the right side we get the various credits for the stage play over the same cityscape used in a few places.And that's largely it for the stage play's package. Except the ads, which I'm including here...Only two ads this time and... wait a second... this is the same ad sheet that was included with tri. Part 5. This means they are advertising the stage play in the stage play release...Outside of the plastic there was also a sticker.Just basic price information.And that's it for the physical... onto the disk contents itself!The video is encoded using MPEG2 at an average bitrate of roughly 6.9 Mbps. The bitrate is about what you'd expect to see, but with extra space left on the disc (and nothing else on the disc outside of the stage play itself) you would have hoped they would have just encoded it to the brim. The video is 480p.The video is encoded properly in anamorphic widescreen. The screencaps are provided stretched to the proper aspect ratio to emulate how they would appear during watching (raw screencaps from the DVD would not look correct.) The DVD is encoded at 30fps.The audio is a 2.0 Dolby track at 384k. That's reasonably high for a Dolby track, but we've seen higher on the recent Appmon DVDs.Most of the audio recording appears to be direct feed off the cast's microphones but with a bit of reverb and echo at times feels like they occasionally swap to other microphones in the theater. It does an oddly good job of making you feel like you are in the audience (perhaps mixing it in on purpose for a more 'theater' like sound.)It's generally a pleasant enough listen... mostly.I say mostly because the handful of musical numbers don't feel quite as sharply recorded. Etemon's music numbers feel a bit more natural to the space, so sound less crisp than you'd hope for, but it's fun and works well enough. The one Knife of Day performance sounds... not good. I don't know if there was an equipment issue or if they just never setup properly to record that sort of 'live band' music. It comes across as harsh and unpleasant and I was glad it lasted for less than a minute.No subtitles are included, which is expected.The video quality itself is roughly what most people would expect for a production like this. The overall quality is a bit soft, but not bad. The camera changes are reasonably decent in choosing what to show for a stage production. It's overall decent video quality, but nothing special.The stage play comes across well on DVD overall with no obvious technical issues.The menus are about as basic as possibleThe menu on the first disc features the poster art along with chapter selection. It splits the chapters into before and after the intermission on the same page.The menu on the second disc is just a single button to play the bonus feature.And speaking of bonus features...It's time to discuss the extras! Well, the extra.The stage play gets a single rather sizeable extra on it's second disc. It's an extended behind the scenes of the stage play that clocks in at just under 75 minutes. The feature is mostly most candid video footage of the stage play being worked on from almost every step. We see the actors practicing in the performance space and leaning how to interact with the puppets (and prior to the puppets a sweater.) The actors early on seem somewhat uncomfortable in amusing ways with this. Yamato's actor almost pokes his eye on Gabumon's horn, Takeru's actor jumps a bit as he's touched by Patamon's wing, and later on we see Etemon's actor figure out how to fight the massive MetalGreymon puppet without getting clobbered.The extra continues along with footage from full costume rehearsals, prepping for the full performance, and continues along to show us footage behind the stage during various shows. It appears it became something of a tradition to screw around as MetalGreymon shows up, whether that be Mimi's actor posing as MetalGreymon calls out or Yamato's actor and the puppeteers air guitaring (and keyboarding.)There are also a handful of more formal short interviews with the actors done at various moments, and it's just a fantastic extra. I'm not sure I could pick my favorite moment if I tried, but overall it just shows all the effort and energy put into the stage play.This is almost certainly the finest extra we've gotten on a home video release.Also, while not (strictly) an extra, the final curtain call is included when the stage play itself ends. This is an extended nearly 20 minute presentation of the cast taking their bows, talking to the audience, and so forth from the stage. The puppeteers seem to especially have some fun here. I was particularly amused by Agumon doing a little dance as the cast makes their final exit.Overall the stage play got a very nice release on DVD. When the worst aspect of a release is that you wish the menus were nicer there simply isn't much to worry about.Screencaps were taken largely at random while jumping around (although if I knew a moment was coming up I wanted a cap of, I'd wait or take extras.)The scans are very small compared to the master scans I did (the work and backup folder structure for the scans and screencaps was over 35 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.The Digimon Adventure tri. stage play is still available to order (Affiliate link.)Lots of Digimon stuff is coming out soon and supporting us via our Patreon or donations would be greatly appreciated so that we can do more breakdowns and improve the site. Feel free to join us in the Discord if you want to chat about the DVD.More things to come! Images are hosted on our gallery and embedded on the forum, so let us know if anything is acting up.Thanks to onkeikun for letting me bounce stage play thoughts off her late at night as I was putting this together.Prior Stage Play news can be found here: