Kill la Kill Parts 1, 2 & 3 (Collector’s Edition Blu-ray) Unboxing Redux

Kill la Kill is a 2013 original television anime series by studio Trigger, director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima. Aniplex published the series when it first broadcast in Japan on October 2013 as part of the Autumn season.

Brief Unboxing Redux Note:

I first acquired Kill la Kill Part 1 in October 2014 followed by Part 2 in April 2015 and Part 3 in May 2015. All three parts were unboxed over on my Normanic Vault blog via Blogger. This post is a remaster of that unboxing with better photos, updated information and any added extras. Enjoy!

Background:

“Honnouji Academy – where the school is ruled by students clad in special outfits called Goku Uniforms. Deriding the student body as “pigs in human clothing”, Student Council President Satsuki Kiryuin, along with her loyal underlings, the Elite Four, has the academy under their absolute control.

One day, a vagrant schoolgirl named Ryuko Matoi appears and tries to get Satsuki, who recognizes her Scissor Blade, to talk. Was their encounter a mere coincidence or fate? The clash between the two will soon consume the whole academy!”

Plot Synopsis via Anime Limited, October 2014

When it comes to anime during the past twenty years one animation studio that everyone liked a fair bit was Gainax who brought us Evangelion, Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. The latter two of the shows were worked on by the same members and eventually they decided to form their own studio called Studio TRIGGER.

Studio TRIGGER’s first major project was in fact Kill la Kill and they went all out. It’s a strange blend of action, comedy and bits of magical girl and ecchi in-between, and most notably one of the most popular anime of 2013. It was also acquired by Aniplex of America and Anime Limited, the latter of which had just started licensing anime for under a year.

Kill la Kill though, despite being popular, does come with the fact that by being an Aniplex series means there’s going to be licensing restrictions involved. The series was released across multiple volumes in North America and that didn’t please many people, and while Anime Limited was able to lower the amount from 5 to 3, it still had restrictions in place. Do note that this happened back in 2014, and it’s been exactly six years since the release of Anime Limited’s first part of the collector’s edition set. Aniplex over the years have kept their stance on what is allowed for UK & Australia but it’s nowhere near as bad as before.

Collector’s Edition Contents:

Anime Limited loves providing collector’s edition releases for their catalogue. Because Aniplex is not a fan of having cheaper releases available so soon, Anime Limited had to release Kill la Kill as a collector’s edition only title for a long period of time. This was also released during the period that the distributor liked to have their A branded logo on the spines, but the BBFC logo is also no longer used.

Each Kill la Kill set comes with a rigid box using artwork from the Japanese Blu-ray volumes and houses the discs in a digipack. As Anime Limited were not allowed to include the Original Soundtrack 2 & Remixed Soundtrack from Aniplex of America’s releases (both OSTs were eventually made available as a standalone set in Japan), the UK distributor on the other hand was allowed to include a bunch of artbooks for their releases.

Part 1 includes a 188-page Key Art Collection & Storyboard book from the first Japanese Blu-ray volume, Part 2 includes a 216-page Key Art Collection book from the second & third Japanese Blu-ray volumes, and Part 3 includes a 132-page Artboard book from the fourth & fifth Japanese Blu-ray volumes.

Also included with the first batch of units for Part 3 is an outer box to house all three parts together. This outer box is interesting as Anime Limited were able to get approvals by the licensor to utilise this outer box style which were used exclusively for merchandise in Japan if I remember correctly.

All free parts are also free of most information (the spine and parts of the front cover has some info and logos) or BBFC content, as those were instead placed on a mini o-card that wraps around each set. For outer box for Part 3 does also come with its own info sheet which is wrapped around the box similarly to the original Mobile Suit Gundam Part 1 Blu-ray release (I do still have it but because the info is basically the same as the o-card I decided to not show it here).

Like the other Anime Limited sets, these collector’s edition releases each have 1000 units printed for an SRP of £59.99. The DVDs also received the same treatment for £10 less. Regular editions were eventually made available for a lower SRP as all three parts of the collector’s edition have since gone out of print.

Physical Contents:

• Part 3 first batch: Outer Box with clean artwork
• 3 x Rigid Box with digipack packaging with some info on the artwork
• 3 x O-card for specs and BBFC + 1 info sheet merged with the wrapping
• Part 1: 188-page Key Art Collection & Storyboard book
• Part 2: 216-page Key Art Collection book
• Part 3: 132-page Artboard book

On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Anime Limited
Released: 24th November 2014 (Part 1), 23rd March 2015 (Part 2), 29th June 2015 (Part 3)

Kill la Kill was released across three parts for the UK. The first part covers episodes 1 to 9 (disc labelling is also incorrect so Disc 1 covers episodes 1-4 while Disc 2 covers episodes 5-9), the second part covers episodes 10 to 19, and the third part covers episodes 20 to 24 plus the OVA. The disc count matches the Aniplex release so there’s 2 Blu-ray discs for Part 1, 2 Blu-ray discs for Part 2 and 1 Blu-ray disc for Part 3. However, the encode and authoring are different.

The authoring was done by Anime Limited and Part 1 uses burned in subtitles for the on-screen text (users weren’t happy so Part 2 & 3 switched back to normal method). The white subtitles are locked during playback but for Part 1 Disc 1, when you select any individual episode, they are unlockable.

The audio options available for the series include Japanese with English subtitles and the Bang Zoom! English dub. The regions are locked to B for Blu-ray.

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Video	1080p High Definition Native format 16:9 aspect ratio
Region	B
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	Yes Disc 1’s individual episodes are Unlocked Discs 1 & 2 use burned in on-screen subtitles
Discs	5

Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:

Part 1 – Disc 1:

• Textless Opening “Sirius”
• Textless Closing “Gomen ne, Iiko ja Irarenai” (Sorry, I’m Done Being a Good Kid)

Part 1 – Disc 2:

• Textless Opening “Sirius”
• Textless Closing “Gomen ne, Iiko ja Irarenai” (Sorry, I’m Done Being a Good Kid)

Part 2 – Disc 1:

• Textless Opening “Sirius”
• Textless Closing “Gomen ne, Iiko ja Irarenai” (Sorry, I’m Done Being a Good Kid)
• Web Previews

Part 2 – Disc 2:

• Textless Opening “ambiguous”
• Textless Closing “Shin Sekai Kōkyōgaku” (New World Symphony)
• Web Previews

Part 3:

• OVA: Episode 25 “Goodbye Again”
• Textless Opening “ambiguous”
• Textless Closing “Shin Sekai Kōkyōgaku” (New World Symphony)
• Episode 24 Clean Opening
• Web Previews
• Kill la Kill Digest: Naked Memories by Aikuro Mikisugi

Unboxing Photos:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Final Notes:

Kill la Kill is available to order through multiple retailers across the United Kingdom. The collector’s edition sets have all gone out of print and are no longer available. You can still acquire the standard edition sets on Amazon UK.