One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta Blu-ray

One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta

 (2007)

Action | Adventure | Anime



The straw Hat Pirates are on a quest to save the desert kingdom of Alabasta. A civil war brews there among the sands, one started and stirred by the hand of none other than Crocodile and his corrupted Barque Works gang. The stakes run ever higher as Princess Vivi's homeland threatens to tear itself apart. More than lives are on the line....

For more details about One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta on Blu-ray, see the One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta Blu-ray Review

One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta Blu-ray, Video Quality

 


As the first "One Piece" product to hit Blu-ray, One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates is afforded a wonderful 1080P transfer encoded with the AVC codec (averaging 20 MBPS). Though the animation is somewhat crude at times, the lines are replicated with perfect detail, giving the picture an unexpected level of depth. Colors are equally impressive, with bold hues, and a vivid spectrum. Even in sequences that take place in the desert or at night, the colors never appeared washed out (which tends to be a stylistic choice that is over-used in modern anime). Banding, aliasing, and other digital replication problems were nonexistant (aside from some minor flaws described in the next paragraph). Black levels were inky deep, and there was nothing disappointing about the contrast on this release.

Unfortunately, I did detect the presence of some problems that brought down my score of this otherwise perfect transfer. First, I noticed some obvious stairstepping on the outline of a sand dune at approximately one minute, five seconds into the film. I never noticed the problem again, but lines should never exhibit stair-stepping on a 1080P transfer (since the increased resolution should eliminate those flaws). The second problem occurs on at least two occasions, where the scene went from a close up of a character's face, to a long shot. In the process of the transition from near to far, the screen would exhibit digital blocking, and fine textures would disappear until the shot came to a stop. It was only slightly distracting, and probably won't be noticeable to many viewers, but is still worth mentioning. Lastly, there were two scenes where detail took a noticeable drop, If you'd like to see examples, I've included shots from both scenes as screenshot 17 and 20.

One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, Adventures in Alabasta Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 


We're given four audio tracks on this release. The primary track presents the English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and the second track is the native Japanese language version, presented in glorious Dolby TrueHD 5.1. You also have the option of choosing a Dolby Digital 2.0 track in either Japanese or English, but those offerings hardly seem like worthwhile inclusions given the high quality of the surround mixes. Both TrueHD tracks are fantastic, and feature similar volume levels on all non-dialogue audio. The dialogue on the English track is slightly louder than the Japanese version, but did not overwhelm the onscreen action. Audio separation among the surround speakers showed a great deal of depth throughout the many action sequences, and sound effects exhibited the level of precision and clarity we have come to expect from a lossless audio track. Your subwoofer won't exactly get a dynamic workout, but there are still plenty of action sequences that pack a punch. Overall, I was sufficiently impressed with both TrueHD tracks, but you should keep in mind the source material won't come close to the quality of an animated film produced in Hollywood.

There's an English subtitle track included on the disc, which runs throughout the length of the film and is meant to be paired with the Japanese language track. The subtitles are easy to read, with fine white lettering. I left the subtitle track on throughout the entire feature (I typically do that whether I'm listening to the English dub or native Japanese track, since the dub sometimes presents story elements in a different manner that can be detrimental to the film), and I never noticed any spelling or grammar errors that made it past quality control.