Akudama Drive (Limited Edition Blu-ray & DVD) Unboxing

Akudama Drive (アクダマドライブ) is a 2020 original television anime series directed by Tomohisa Taguchi, written by Norimitsu Kaihō and Tomohisa Taguchi, and produced by studio Pierrot. Staff credits also include music composers Aida Shigekazu and Maiko Iuchi and also produced by video game developer Too Kyo Games. The series first aired in Japan on October 2020.

Background:

“Across a series of volatile missions given by a mysterious black cat, a civilian girl becomes entangled with six Akudama and their twisted way of life.”

Plot Synopsis via Funimation, November 2021.

Danganronpa is a pretty intriguing visual novel series and one that also keeps people engaged with its story and characters. It’s character designs are also unique so when you see them, you recognise where they are from. The creator of Danganronpa, Kazutaka Kodaka, eventually formed a new studio called Too Kyo Games where they continued to work with Spike Chunsoft on a few other projects like Death Come True, World’s End Club and the upcoming Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. In addition to those video games, he and the team also worked on a few anime projects.

Kodaka and his crew focused on original scenarios, and the first one that they worked on was Akudama Drive, by collaborating with studio Pierrot to produce and animate the series. Studio Pierrot is an interesting choice given their history in recent years of very hit or miss adaptations like Black Clover and Tokyo Ghoul. That said, recent years had seem to finally reached a decent level with newer seasons of Kingdom and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War getting some positive feedback. Akudama Drive released around this timeframe as well which added to the community’s confidence in the studio.

In fact Akudama Drive ended up being listed as one of the best anime shows of 2020 for a lot of people. It’s concept and characters stood out and there was even an extended version of the final episode to provide the series more closure. Funimation distributed the series for the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland for streaming with an English dub and also for home video. A limited edition was also produced but was not brought over to the UK.

Limited Edition Contents:

The popularity and reception for Akudama Drive helped convince Funimation to release a limited edition box set. It’s packaging is similar to ID: INVADED with the physical items all held inside the set than separately.

The limited-edition box set features a rigid box that houses an Amaray case (with a slipcase) as well as a 60-page book and a cardboard box featuring 7 art cards, and an Acrylic standee. As I was opening the standee, I was reminded of how Death March was produced as that set’s standee was also shrink-wrapped compared to ID: INVADED and Plunderer‘s paper protection. The booklet includes character designs, interviews with the staff and visual illustrations.

The rigid box artwork is free of any information and the info sheet covers the information and specification like previous Funimation limited edition releases.

The SRP for the limited-edition set was $84.98 and there’s no exact unit count. A standard edition Blu-ray & DVD combo release is available, as the limited edition is now out of print. I ordered my set through Amazon as they had one of the last remaining stocks left.

Physical Contents:

• Rigid Box with Amaray packaging and clean artwork
• Info sheet for specification
• 60-page Booklet
• 7 Art Cards
• Acrylic Standee

On-Disc Contents:

Distributor: Funimation
Released: 30th November 2021

The limited edition release for Akudama Drive contains all 12 episodes across two Blu-ray discs and two DVD discs, with the encode and authoring done by Funimation.

Audio options include Japanese audio with English subtitles and the Funimation English dub. The white subtitles are unlockable during playback and the disc regions are playable on A & B for Blu-ray, and 1, 2 & 4 for DVD in NTSC format.

Blu-ray Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0
Video	1080p High Definition Native format 16:9 aspect ratio
Region	A B
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	No
Discs	2 BD-50s

DVD Specs:

Languages	English, Japanese
Audio	English Dolby Digital 5.1 Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0
Video	Standard Definition in NTSC format 16:9 aspect ratio
Region	1 2 4
Subtitles	English
Locked Subtitles	No
Discs	2

Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:

Disc 2:

• Key Animation Movies
• Promo Videos
• Commercials
• Textless Opening Song “STEAL!!”
• Textless Closing Song “Ready”

DVD On-Disc Extra Features:

No extras across all discs

Unboxing Photos:

Final Notes:

Akudama Drive is available to order through multiple retailers across the United States. The limited edition Blu-ray & DVD release is almost no longer available, but you may find stock over on Amazon UK (via AmazonGlobal) and Amazon US.

(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.)