My-HiME (Collector’s Edition Blu-ray) Unboxing

My-HiME (舞-HiME, Mai-Hime) is a 2004 original television anime series produced by studio Sunrise and director Masakazu Obara with writer Hiroyuki Yoshino and music composer Yuki Kajiura. The series first aired in Japan on September 2004 as part of the Autumn season.

Background:

“Sometimes special powers are a curse…

Mai Tokiha and her brother Takumi have just transferred to the Fuka Academy, where a lot of strange things have been happening lately. They learn of the existence of the HiME, girls with supernatural powers capable of summoning powerful entities known as “Children”. It soon turns out that Mai is one of those HiME, although her powers have not yet fully awakened!

However, being a HiME is not as easy as it sounds – all this power comes with a steep price, and there will come a time when the girls will not only have to put their lives on the line, but also what’s most precious to them…”

Plot Synopsis via Anime Limited, February 2022.

Sunrise have provided a bunch of original projects over the years; Code Geass, Cowboy Bebop, Love Live!, Mobile Suit Gundam and tons more. During the early 00s they also produced a series called My-HiME which also spawned a franchise with My-Otome and a couple of OVAs afterwards. There’s also a manga adaptation and a few video games produced so it did well enough to stick around. While my knowledge of the franchise is minimal, I do remember hearing about it thanks to Yuki Kajiura’s music as some of her songs in the show’s soundtrack was very memorable.

The series did make its way into the west under Bandai Entertainment and Beez Entertainment on DVD and with an English dub, and much like the many titles during that era, the distributor discontinued and those licenses went into limbo for a while. Funimation managed to secure a package deal with Sunrise that included My-HiME and its sequel properties, so they released it on Blu-ray in regular sets though its OVAs were left undubbed.

In the UK, Anime Limited made a surprise license announcement for the My-HiME part of the franchise during their Christmas sale 2021 event so the series is now available once again.

Collector’s Edition Contents:

When Funimation re-released the Sunrise titles, a select few received limited edition releases while the rest were regular sets. That said My-HiME had special treatment during their singles run when Bandai was releasing the series. Anime Limited kept their usual pattern going by offering the series a collector’s edition set with some pretty nice artwork spread-out.

The package is presented as a rigid box with a digipack to house the discs and alongside the case is a 36-page booklet. The booklet features character designs and some illustration artwork from the series.

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 Digipack packaging
• Info sheet for specification and BBFC description
• 36-page Booklet

On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Anime Limited
Released: 14th February 2022

The collector’s edition release for My-HiME contains all 26 episodes across three Blu-ray discs, with the encode and authoring produced by Funimation. The audio options available include Japanese with English subtitles and the Blue Water Studios English dub commissioned by Bandai.

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

Also to note, Anime Limited didn’t add disc number labelling on the discs so you’ll need to remember which disc is the first disc etc.

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0
Video	1080p High Definition Native format 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Region	B
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	No
Discs	3 BD-50s

Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:

Disc 3:

• Textless Closing Episode 15
• Episode 26 Director’s Cut Ending
• Textless Opening “Shining☆Days”
• Textless Closing “You Were the Sky”
• Funimation Trailers

Unboxing Photos:

Final Notes:

My-HiME is available to order through multiple retailers across the United Kingdom. The collector’s edition Blu-ray can be ordered on Amazon UK and Anime Limited’s store.

(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.)