Mere words cannot describe the unspeakable joy I felt when I held in my hands the Limited Edition Box Set that came with the first Region 1 DVD of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm sure that you're all tired of the hyperbolic religious references by now, so I'll just assume that you've already gone through the mental image of me squeeing like an over-excited and disturbingly hyper fangirl who happens to not actually be female.

I lack an actual method for providing clear and high-quality pictures of my purchase, at least until I get my camera fixed. And so, this entire post will contain merely pictures that are only tangentially related to the box set, inasmuch as they may possibly have something to do with it apart from being of the same series.

This image comes from the "top" of the box set. It is also featured in many other places, such as the December 2006 Newtype supplement.

First, let's look at the box. It is of a significant size, perhaps enough from the outside to hold eight DVD cases. The outside is covered with official artwork, none of them especially new, but perhaps a couple fairly rare. I have the associated pictures for four of the six sides on my hard disk, but most of them are of lesser quality, sometimes quite grainy.

The front of the box has two magnetic flaps, and opening it reveals more official artwork (on the inside of the flaps and the drawer half, but that's getting ahead of myself), all of which I possess, but it's not like I'm complaining about the opportunity to feast my eyes upon them again. The actual space to hold DVDs is big enough for four cases, and below that, is the drawer. Gold-coloured ribbons theoretically allow for easy removal of the drawer and such, but it actually took a bit of doing to wrest everything out of their places, at least for the first time. I suspect that perhaps the glossy finish caused the various items to get stuck.

Taking out the DVD and the plain cardboard box that served as filler until the other DVDs arrived revealed that inside, instead of plain white space, there was white space and very faint grey kanji which I recognized from Yuki's monologue in chronological episode 3 (the one which had almost as much jargon as an episode of Star Trek). Inside the cardboard box was a pencilboard (more official artwork), an iron-on Haruhiism logo (which seemed kind of small, but that's another matter), and Haruhi's yellow ribbon. If you're wondering, it's essentially a band of yellow cloth, connected into a circle with a short strip of black elastic. On the sides are thin loose strips that make up the butterfly-ribbons. To wear it, one first puts one's head through the circle and lets the hairband hang around one's neck (with the elastic strip behind), then one pushes the front of the hairband up onto one's forehead. It may be easier to tie the ribbons at the side beforehand.

… yes, I wore it. Moving on.

The bottom half of the inside has the drawer, and inside this drawer is another plain white filler box (which, sadly, has nothing inside), as well as the CD single for Hare Hare Yukai, which fit so snugly that I also had trouble getting it out. The inlay and such are in English, and the lyrics for the songs are written in romaji with English translations. (No, the translations don't scan at all to the tune. Also, "BOOON" is translated as "VROOOM", which may or may not make sense.) The drawer itself is covered in the same faint grey kanji mentioned above, as well as a prominent (non-reversed) SOS Brigade logo on the bottom.

So, is all this "worth it", for the $45 that Amazon charged me? Well, if you're asking if it was worth it to me, then the answer should be obvious, considering how much I am obsessing over it. Putting it objectively, or at least as objectively as I can, I'd say that the new fan will probably not care much about all the extras in the set, and might be better off getting the regular versions. All the extras can be boiled down to "box with pretty pictures and other random stuff that few would actually use".

However, the collector would do well to spend the money for this. And by "collector", I don't mean because of the whole "limited edition" thing; I would be perfectly happy if this were an unlimited edition, available to one and all. No, I mean "collector" in the sense of one who simply loves the subject matter so much that everything about it brings him/her joy, and this collector may spend several happy hours just looking at his/her prize and admiring it from every angle, regardless if there is one or one billion of this prize in existence.

The actual review of the DVD will come in a future post. (I've written several notes on it, and damned if I'll let them go to waste.) In the meantime, a final picture, this time the one used on the front panel of the drawer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 3:51 pm and is filed under melancholy of haruhi suzumiya, pretty pics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.