First, the box itself is fairly nice. It's the standard cardboard box type, not the flimsy kind. Metallic paper, they used different images than the japanese dvd box, but retained some similar elements like the blue techy background. The new logo is a nice update from ADV's original (which was neat to begin with).
There is a creepy and probably unintended 'feature' of the box- the printed wrapper is larger than the acutal box, and wraps around to the inside. The result is that the half-inch of wrapper that folds around each side includes the other eye of each twin- meaning there are these freaky glowing disembodied glaring eyes inside the box. Fun!
The space-holder has 2 nice images from the japanese releases- good quality and no text!
The tactical ops 01 dvd itself is in a metallic stiff-paper slipcover- images are the same as the dvd cover, but has a nice fat sticker declaring Over 100 minutes of extras!
The cover is very similiar to the japanese release, I don't have it where I'm currently living, but I can dig out the scans I made way back when...
The cover is also reversible, with a clean image on the reverse.
The booklet is 10 pages on info- the print is small so even though I haven't read it it looks pretty informative. There are some charts of things, but the character images appear to be the same ones from the first series. Skimming it now, some sections are Black Technology, one for 'Guardian Angel' which seems to mostly be a brief summary of the first series. There's a chart here which I'm sure some of you know- the phoenic code. Chara profiles- Sousuke as student than other one for Mithril, Kaname, Melissa, Kurz. There's a page for Mithril, with rank charts and stuff. The last two pages are basically a general overview of FMP and Fumo... for ppl lame enough to jump in with TSR. And the text is tiny and hard to read.
Ok, on to the DVD. There is only one DVD, no second 'specials' DVD like some releases have. I'm not sure if the regular release has the same DVDs with the much touted 100 minutes of extras!! or if they acutally printed up two different DVDs. I'll have to look into that...
edited - it appears that the regular release is the same DVD and also has the slipcover?
Anyway, sorry this rambles.
A Big Mother-F Bitch Rant here- the intro sequences and trailers are not skippable!!! Arg!!!! I shouldn't have to watch a trailer to get to the TSR menu
Extras menu-
animated choices are the Epsiode 00, textless op and ed, and playing each episode with audio commentaries from various japanese people (I can list em if anyone wants, later)
Live action choices are the Tour at JDF, Location scouting in Hong Kong, and the Dawn of the Light Novel special which I think is the documentary that was aired on TV the week before TSR- I think there was a torrent for this but it never got subbed- but it shows Gatou going around the offices during production, some industry people talking about the role 'light novels' have and are playing in animation, ect. It shows Shikidouji, ect. So, if anyone's confused as to what the 'Novel' special is, this is it.
I still have to watch most of these, it just arrived yesterday and I've been making scans and caps before anything else
(and yes, I do have a slew of FMP images to share when I have the time to finish working on them and uploading them on dial-up)
BTW the video quality looks very good. A huge improvement over ADV's Fumo releases IMO. I can acutally make screencaps of these.
OH!!! I forgot to add that... FUNi made a cute error- or else are getting into recycling. The white plastic title sticker across the top of the DVD ... ah, here-
Maybe they're just very confused.
