Kaiba (Collector’s Edition Blu-ray) Unboxing

Kaiba (カイバ) is a 2008 original television anime series written and directed by Masaaki Yuasa with music composed by Kiyoshi Yoshida. Studio Madhouse animated the series and was first broadcast in Japan on April 2008 as part of the Spring season.

Background:

“A boy with no name awakens with a hole through his chest, a strange marking on his belly, and no memories. The one link to his past is a locket containing a picture of a girl whose name he does not know. Within moments he meets Popo, who unlike the memoryless boy has a purpose. Through Popo, the boy learns that where he is a body without memory, in this world there are many who are only memories with no body.

The rich harvest the choice bodies, leaving only the dregs for those down below. And yet even though he has no memories, there are many who seem to want his life. How does he fit into this world where not even memories might be real?”

Plot Synopsis via Anime Limited, January 2022.

Masaaki Yuasa is a pretty well-known director at this point with his works often having diverse art styles and intriguing stories. While many of his titles are based on existing properties, like Devilman Crybaby, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! and The Tatami Galaxy, they were pretty great due to the director’s take on the series. His original projects like Lu Over the Wall and Ride Your Wave were pretty good too, but he has a couple more that are not as known as the others. One of those was Kaiba, which was made back when he worked with studio Madhouse on a few titles.

Kaiba is a series that I don’t actually know much about, but saying that it has had some attention over in North America thanks to Discotek Media providing a Blu-ray release back in 2017. It’s surprising to me that it took Anime Limited roughly four years later to acquire the UK & Ireland rights because they have been actively bit by bit picking up the rights to Yuasa’s works, and there’s only a few major ones left at this point (Devilman Crybaby, Japan Sinks: 2020, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, and Kemonozume ~ though two of these are Netflix exclusive so there may be some challenges to acquire them).

Collector’s Edition Contents:

Keeping the collector’s treatment going for the Masaaki Yuasa catalogue (well except for Mind Game), Kaiba managed to have enough artwork available for the same deal from Anime Limited.

The package is presented as a rigid box with an Amaray Blu-ray case to house the disc and alongside the case is a 44-page booklet. The booklet features character designs, artwork from the series, and a short essay from Andrew Osmond.

The artwork is free of any information or BBFC content and the info sheet covers the information and specification like previous Anime Limited releases. The collector’s edition Blu-ray set is limited to 1000 units for SRP £59.99.

The series was one of the 11 anime titles made available for pre-order as an Early Bird during Anime Limited’s 12 Days of Christmas 2021 sale. It was on offer for £34.99, but with the Anime (Un)Limited discount lowered the price to £31.50.

Physical Contents:

• Rigid Box with clean artwork and Amaray packaging
• Info sheet for specification and BBFC description
• 44-page booklet

On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Anime Limited
Released: 10th January 2022

The collector’s edition release for Kaiba contains all 12 episodes on a single Blu-ray disc, with the encode and authoring produced by MediaOCD & Discotek Media. As there is no English dub produced for the series, the only audio option available is Japanese with English subtitles.

The yellow subtitles are unlockable during playback, and the regions are locked to Blu-ray players set to B.

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	Japanese
Audio	Japanese Linear PCM 2.0
Video	1080i High Definition Native format 1.78:1 aspect ratio
Region	B
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	No
Discs	1 BD-50

Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:

• Textless Openings “Never”
• Textless Endings “Carry Me Away”
• Textless Inserts “Ki no Uta” & “The Tree Song”

Unboxing Photos:

Final Notes:

Kaiba is available to order across multiple retailers in the United Kingdom. The collector’s edition Blu-ray can be acquired on Amazon.

(Disclaimer: Amazon links are also included when available. They are affiliated so if you decide to order them, I’ll earn a small percentage if they ship which will help me with any hauls or small bills.)