Unfortunately, if you're expecting lots of extras which we've begun to take for granted in many local releases by Bandai and ADV, you won't be finding so much as a set of commercials or clean opening animation available on most discs. The anime was released in a ten DVD set in Japan, and a twelve VHS set. Every other DVD was released in a limited edition version with a display box for that DVD and the following one. Five boxes, one for each main character, with ten volumes total. The final box featured both the ninth and tenth volumes. The tenth DVD is where your bonus features come in - clean opening and closing animation, an Ichigo music video, art galleries, and interviews with the voice actors.

Clicking on a single episode will give you a sub-menu with a moving image for that episode and text links to the various chapters (opening, part one, part two, closing, and next episode preview). The previous episode's menu will also show with a still image beside it. Unfortunately, the clips seem to be chosen mostly at random and don't reflect the episodes especially well. For example, episode 35 has a scene of the girls talking at the cafe - pretty generic. Episode 36 (to my own personal amusement) shows Ryou's shower scene and Ichigo talking to Keiichiro.

For the money, originally 5,040 yen (approx. $50.40 USD) a pop, it's a little steep, but still understandable since the discs pack about 5-6 episodes each, and the presentation and quality is nice, even if it's lacking in any sort of extra goodies. The quality of the video seems decent, too, but it's difficult to say, since I was playing my DVD on a laptop that usually does DVD quality little justice. The colors, though, are bright and inviting, with high saturation. This is especially nice when you compare it to the TV-quality episodes that looked blurry and faded (I think most people have seen these for episodes 4-21). There are a few corrections, too, with bad animation and miscolorings. Here Ichigo's hair is decidedly pink(ish), and I can pick up details like eyebrows on her kitty form that otherwise fade into her black fur. The animation quality varies in volume six, as it does throughout the entire series. Most notable for quality and detail is episode 35, in which Satoshi Ishino did much of the lead animation (he also worked on episodes 10, 26, and 51, among other scenes). There were no problems to speak of when I was viewing it. I did notice, however, that the volume was very low, and that I had to turn my sound up all the way to hear it well. I'm not sure why this is, but it's not uncommon - a lot of my American-made anime DVDs play very quietly too, although perhaps not this quietly.

The official Japanese release DOES NOT offer English subtitles - or any subtitles for that matter. The subtitles you see on episodes are the hard work of fansubbing groups, and are often (and wrongly) sold on eBAY for very low prices on fan-produced discs using random art or even doujinshi to decorate the discs. Also, these discs are region 2, meaning they will NOT play in standard American DVD players, and in certain other areas across the globe. They will, however, play in a computer if you're willing to change the region permanently or only wish to watch the DVDs like... once. Every time you'll want to play a DVD from another region, it will ask you to switch again, and the number of times you can perform this switch is severly limited. In my case, I have two laptops that only I really use, so the old one makes an effective Japanese media viewing station. Another option is to buy a region-free DVD player or a DVD player or Playstation 2/3 from Japan which will play region 2 DVDs.