REVIEW: ‘The Trail of Blood’ (DVD – Animeigo)

Animeigo’s DVD release of THE TRAIL OF BLOOD, the first in a three-part series, follows in their tradition of presenting select chambara films with a good-looking, although unremarkable print, accompanied by highly detailed English subtitles and historical notes. This release is available as a self-titled, single DVD or as part of the value-priced “Mikogami Trilogy” three-disc box set.

Video quality is modest on this release. There is some small measure of source print degradation, mostly from infrequent flutter and speckling, but much of the visual faults appear to be related to inferior transfers to video. Colors are strong and vibrant but the brightness level that contributes to this aspect is set a little higher than normal and this reveals unsightly compression artifacts in the dark spaces. Also noticeable throughout the movie are “mouse teeth,” the horizontal lines associated with video that has not been properly deinterlaced for digital monitors. As for aspect ratio, the print is formatted for widescreen monitors but the approximately 2.15:1 image space comes up short of the film’s original 2.35:1.

The original Japanese audio track is presented in a standard Dolby Digital two-channel format. Low-level hiss can be heard but it is not a distraction.

A feature unique to Animeigo is the presence of two English subtitle options, neither of which being close captioned. One provides the standard translation of dialogue, accompanied by occasional notes. The second set of subtitles contains only sign translation or notes and appears to be in place for students of the Japanese language. Along with the overuse of excessive multi-coloring of subtitle text, this feature is unnecessary and more likely to cause confusion.

Program Notes - The folks behind Animeigo’s chambara releases clearly have great interest in Japan beyond its film output. Like many of their other chambara releases, historical and cultural notes are included on the disc. Like the notes in the subtitles, the label is going the extra mile. The effort is appreciated although I’m seeing a pattern where the label’s notes read more like a travel guide than film notes.

Black and White Image Gallery - Original production photos are nice but not when they’re reduced to thumbnail sizes that overlap one another. Image galleries on a DVD release should be a no brainer. Make them full screen and unobstructed.

Trailers - Includes an original TRAIL OF BLOOD trailer and trailers of other chambara releases from Animeigo.

Format: Region 1 NTSC DVD
Aspect Ratio: 16×9 Widescreen (2.35:1)
Audio: Japanese (DD 2.0)
Subtitles: English
Length: 87 minutes
Release Date: 2006.10.03