Super Milk-Chan Show Vol. #3 - Mania.com



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Mania Grade: B+

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Info:

  • Audio Rating: B+
  • Video Rating: A-
  • Packaging Rating: C+
  • Menus Rating: B
  • Extras Rating: B
  • Age Rating: 17 & Up
  • Region: 1 - North America
  • Released By: ADV Films
  • MSRP: 29.98
  • Running time: 135
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
  • Disc Resolution: 480i/p (mixed/unknown)
  • Disc Encoding: MPEG-2
  • Series: Super Milk-Chan

Super Milk-Chan Show Vol. #3

By Chris Beveridge     November 08, 2004
Release Date: November 23, 2004


Super Milk-Chan Show Vol. #3
© ADV Films


What They Say
Uh-oh... Things are really bad this time.

An evil pork pusher is preying on piggies! The President has lost his prized pussy (cat)! Looks like it's up to Milk and company to answer the dangerous call to duty.

(But when the Milk Show technical team loses an entire episode's sfx, that's going to be hard to do.)

The Review!
As we enter the third volume, Milk-Chan continues to be the show that as vulgar as it gets, you can't turn away because you've fallen off the sofa laughing.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its English Language dub. To be more specific, we listened to the English language version on the 100% Whole disc. All the language tracks available are in stereo so there's not a lot going on here that's really going to stand out but it's all quite serviceable and sounds solid. Dialogue is nice and clear and free of distortions (that aren't supposed to be there at least) and dropouts.

Video:
This is sort of all over the map in some ways. Milk-Chan was originally released back in 1998 as fourteen episodes that ran about 4-5 minutes each. These episodes have an interesting look to them, a 'vintage' look one might say, where the quality is very much up to date but the style feels very 60's and it has some of that hazy graininess to it. Once that went over, and it must have done well enough, in 2000 they released a series of twenty five full length episodes. These are much more vibrant and colorful while using the same basic but very eye-catching and unique designs. There are a lot of dark heavy lines around the characters and the colors are very bright and it all looks fantastic. In addition, there's a lot of live action footage as well and that all looks solid as well. Cross coloration throughout is virtually non-existent and aliasing is very minimal, giving this transfer a very smooth and enjoyable presentation.

Packaging:
You can tell exactly what kind of animation to expect right from the front cover. The President and his cute phone get the entire cover for this release though the backdrop of the blue and swirls is much milder than the previous covers. The back cover provides a few small shots of animation and a multi-colored brief summary of what to expect. A lot of space is given over to explaining what's on each of the DVDs as well as the usual array of production information and the helpful technical grid along the bottom, though the 100% Milk listing is still 40 minutes too long as the show itself is something like 90 minutes. The cover for this release is reversible with this side being just about identical to the front cover except it has a gray background and some moving around of the various items that are on the front cover. With this being a two disc set, the second disc returns to where it should be and it's not that damn flippy piece but rather embedded into the left side of the case..

Menu:
The menu, if left looping for days on end, must be considered a war crime. Each disc is essentially the same with a shot of Milk's house interior with her sitting in her chair with the selections lined along the left. The only real difference is the picture on the wall. All of this plays to the Milk song and it just goes on and on? The menus are pretty minimal in general and they all are done in-theme and look good. Access times are nice and fast and everything loads quickly. The disc correctly played to my players presets where applicable.

Extras:
On the Original Japanese Disc, we get a few extras in the form of a new opening animation entitled "Disco Milk" which is amusing and hypnotic and you must love it. Also included are the original Japanese opening and ending sequences which have the helpful note that there is no audio associated with them and this is due to licensing issues as we've since learned. An addition to this volume is the haiku's.

On the 100% disc, it's a change-up from past volumes. There's a location stills section that shows various locations of the President's office over the first couple of volumes and denotes where they are as well as what's showing up on his desk. The most amusing part here is the "Star Chat with Sally" extra that has some faux entertainment gossiper chatting up with various voice actors, often ignoring one of them completely, and just making strange comments and facial expressions. This is once again the kind of extra that I think can and does cross the sub/dub line but dub fans will enjoy it more (and I enjoyed it a lot). Rounding the extras out are a couple of Milk-Chan specific trailers that have been made since the first volumes release.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Milk-Chan, once again we have to preface things in the review section here by saying that we're only watching and actually talking about the 100% version which is not the original Japanese version nor is it the properly adapted and translated English version. It's the "experimental" piece that sends shivers of fear down some fans spines as just what could be the future of all anime. Uh huh. Yeah.

Anyway, with the third installment, we get three more full Milk-chan shows as well as the classic ones with it all wrapped up with various live action sequences. This one manages to go in a different direction than the previous volume, though I'm not sure which I like better yet. The second volume had a lot of fun with the linear live action storyline of the power going out and everyone trapped in different rooms but this one gets really creative once the opening gag is started. And that gag? Poor Christopher Borque, a name you see on a lot of credit scrolls from ADV, is brought up to stand in front of microphone where behind him is a huge Milk-chan wall banner. With a bit of prompting from Luci, he regretfully informs us that he's responsible for losing the sound effects track for episode eight.

A lot of the gags that come from this storyline is that people are constantly going back and forth along this mini-set and talking about things and letting it be captured by the microphone. You get bits such as how the women are keeping Taylor at arms length for the usual reasons, Marcy getting a hold of some shiny make-up and starting to apply it to the men she comes across and just all sorts of fun involving Taylor's new bodyguard. But what he made laughing as much as I could with this show was what will certainly be the infamous episode eight for some of these actors. Since the effects are lost, they're brought in to voice them and fill in the blanks. What's creatively fun is that when that particular sound is used, they provide a small camera shot of the actor making the sound. You'd really think Ben was going to pass out making the helicopter sounds. I didn't think Hilary would be able to keep a straight face during some of her sounds. And Rob did a great job of practicing for that door shutting sound. But man, it's when all of the cats show up that it simply went over the top and there's something like eight or nine actors lined around the screen meowing.

The actual Milk episodes themselves are once again fun to watch and quite vulgar and disturbing. A good chunk of the first episode deals with a couple of characters that keep getting close-ups of the mole and mole hair on their cheeks while our heroes watch them as they eat Deer Jerky Strips. Since the show focuses on the way that the business makes their pigs feet, it goes into the weird way they blast the entire pig and just keep the feet. Which then devolves into a pair of pigs who are in love and don't want to die and it follows their tale. It's so all over the map and disturbingly funny that you can't believe what they're doing.

That all gets topped later when the President dances naked on his desk and is provided a black dot to cover himself. When they actually let him flash his ass, that was one of the few times my wife looked up while the show was on and man did she cringe from that. Of course, she couldn't bring herself to watch the show after hearing the line from the President who wanted Milk-chan to find his lost kitty since he "wants his pussy's pussy" so much. I think that's when I nearly slid off the couch from laughing so much at how they were going with that episode.

Of course, these episodes are packed with current and older pop culture references much like the previous two volumes so what you got in there is exactly what you get here just wrapped up in a new twist with the strangeness of the shows stories and animation. The mixture of the live action and the anime is a bit stronger this time around as there are more cuts between the two than before I think, but it works to both sides advantage in the strange tale that's being told here. After the first volume, I'd gamble that most people would have fallen into whatever camps they want about how they feel about this show. I'm only finding it funnier as I go along with the 100% version and don't regret passing on the Japanese/English version at all. Sitting through those was like torture. Watching this version has me laughing almost constantly.

In Summary:
Again defying the odds, Super Milk-Chan continues to be a comedy favorite around here and I simply can't get enough of it. The mixture of the live action material and the anime works beautifully here as it manages to weave both tales well enough to link them back and forth while still mostly standing on their own merits. There's likely very few shows that could survive this kind of experimental style but Milk-Chan is the kind that seems to revel in it.

Here's hoping Foster can find some kind of hentai series to do this with.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language,English 5.1 Language,English 2.0 Language,English Subtitles,Original video haiku breaks,New opening "Disco Milk" animation,Original opening and closing animation,Location still and notes,Star Chat with Sally

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Zenith DVB-318 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player via DVI with upconversion set to 720p, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

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