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Our Home’s Fox Deity: Volume One- Premium Edition, Review
By Marc | January 24th, 2011

NIS America is back with a new show doods!
 

 
After a few early missteps that NISA worked quickly to fix does a second attempt from NISA come out golden… doods? (It’s my second NISA review, I feel obligated to toss in a few doods at the beginning.  You read enough NISA Twitter posts and press releases and you will do it also.   Just passing it along to help NISA with their diabolical plot to spread the word dood around.)
 

 
The packaging for Our Home’s Fox Deity (Fox Deity from here on) is quite nice.  It is the ‘standard’ packaging for NIS America.  A nice large hard case that holds both thinpacks and a book.  The artwork is nice all around and it is as good as it was with Toradora.  The only flaw I can really find is this: if NISA does this for every release it will stop feeling special and start feeling expected.  Perhaps they should take the path Funimation is going with and after doing one printing make the series available without the fancy box and book.
 
Each of the disks is stored in a basic clear thinpack.  The cases themselves are of a good quality.  They hold the disks well and you won’t need to fight them to get the disks out.  The art on the front of each disk is an image of Ku with another cast member.  On the back of each you get a basic description of the disk contents and some screenshots. One thing to mention is there is detailed credit information for both the series as a whole and for each episode on the back of each case.  It’s an interesting change that I haven’t seen done that often.  Inside the case you get a basic yellow checkerboard pattern.  Overall great packaging, but it would have been nice if the inside of the case had some more character artwork.
 

 
The menu for Fox Deity is clean and colorful.  It uses the cover artwork from the thinpack cover which is a nice touch.  Everything is readable and nothing is confusing.  As is normal with NISA releases thus far you do not start on the main menu when you put the disk in; you start off watching the episode.  It’s an interesting touch that I’m not sure I like.  You aren’t always going to want to start with the first episode on a disk.  It isn’t really a problem, but an interesting quirk.  The other interesting quirk is that when you start an extra on disk two it plays through the rest of the extras before taking you back to the menu.  Overall it’s a very nice menu with a few quirks.
 

 
Fox Deity starts off like far to many harem series. Something happens to a guy and now girls live with him.  Which is where Fox Deity swings around and hits your expectations right in the face, because it isn’t a harem series at all:  it’s a mishmash between action, comedy, and drama.  It has characters who often are very two dimensional that we have seen many times, but it uses them so well that it is hard to not just sit back and enjoy the series.
 
The story jumps between one off episodes and small mini arcs.  Normally it is as such: Toru is targeted by a yokai, Ku and/or Ko must stop the yokai, other stuff happens in-between.  The character designs are generic, the writing often ignores the intelligence of its characters (in an episode a villain catches Toru the same way Peter and Brian Griffin caught James Woods, but with soybeans instead of candy), and it is still a show that is enjoyable to watch.  The interactions between the characters give you a smile and make you want to keep watching.
 
The one thing worth mentioning is the series definitely doesn’t mind taking a trope and ignoring what makes it a trope.  The best example being an episode where they win tickets to a hot spring.  And it ends up having just as much plot as any other episode, with almost no fanservice.
 
The episodes thus far are hinting towards more in the second half of the series, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the show turns into something great… or if it just falls apart.  It’s a good show, it may become a great show.  But for now I just can’t find too much to say about it, because it’s been a mishmash without any real focus.
 

 
Fox Deity is encoded at 480 and is progressive.  Lines are somewhat soft and colors are clean.  It’s not great, but it’s good.  I’m not sure if the lines being soft is just how the show looks or a side effect of the disk authoring, but based on how everything looks I’m inclined to say it’s how the series was animated.  Looking at it very closely you can see solid colors breaking up a bit, but it isn’t really noticeable if you just sit back and watch the series.  Overall a very nice encode.
 

 
Audio quality on the disk is perfectly fine.  It’s a Dolby 2.0 track at 192k (I’ve seen a few people comment it’s 224k, but checking the disk it is definitely 192k.)  The show is mostly talking with some degree of action in most episodes.  It’s good, but nothing special (and it doesn’t really need to be special in this case.)
 

 
The extras on Fox Deity are… not really all that good.  We start off with the standard clean opening and ending.  We move on to three minutes of commercials.  The commercials are oddly encoded as 4:3 letterboxed.  It’s nice to see them subtitled.  Often commercials on releases are left untranslated and it is nice to see the extra effort.  After that we get an odd series of four videos which by their titles would suggest they help explain the world of the show and the characters.  The first is an extra on the ‘World Setting’ of the show; this seems to just be random clips to instrumental music, and once in awhile the sound effects and voice of the clips are turned on.  It may provide information to a viewer of the series, but it doesn’t really say much.  If you haven’t seen the show then it will largely be nonsensical.  After this we get get two and a half minutes that focus on Ku, two minutes that focus on Ko, and four minutes labeled ‘The Fox and Friends.’  These are all done in the same manner as the World Setting video and there doesn’t seem to be much point to them.  The last extra is the nice book that comes in the package.  This is a great extra that bumps up the extras the set contains.  It contains character information, character art, artwork used for CDs and magazines in Japan and is just a great bonus.
 

 
Our Home’s Fox Deity fixes any complaints that prior NIS America sets had without feeling really special because the show itself, while entertaining, feels odd and almost like it is just going through the motions when watching it. You can just feel that the show could be so much more if it gave a minimum effort.
 
 
Show: B (It’s a good show that could have been better.)
Packaging: A (Great packaging.)
Video Quality: B (Good video quality.  Doesn’t ever really feel bad or great.)
Audio Quality: B (Audio is clean.)
Extras: B- (The book gives it most of its score.  The on disk extras are just odd.)

Overall (not an average): B (It’s a good release for a good show.  The show hopefully will come together with the second half of the series.)
 
Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 853×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 853×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio.)
 
This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging.
 
This DVD is labeled to work in Region 1.
 

 


 

Our Home’s Fox Deity- © Jin Shibamura / ASCII MEDIA WORKS / Oinarisama Partners
 

 

Categories: Anime Review, Reviews
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