Freedom Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

Freedom Blu-ray Movie Review

"The Earth lies still and dead."

Reviewed by Dustin Somner March 16, 2009

Freedom is undoubtedly one of the most impressive product tie-in’s I have ever witnessed. Originally produced in 2006 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Nissin Cup O Noodles, the 7 part original video animation (OVA) series was released over the course of two years, with the final (and longer) episode released to DVD in mid-2008. Featuring character and vehicle designs by Katsuhiro Otomo (director and creator of Akira and Steamboy), and animation by the Sunrise anime studio, Freedom deserves it’s place in the upper echelon of anime. Personally, this series surpasses the visual/audio quality of any anime release that has hit Blu-ray thus far, and I hope to see the same level of quality in future anime productions.

Welcome to futuristic funland of Eden.

Freedom is set in an undisclosed future, where the decimation of Earth has forced humanity to colonize the moon. This new civilization is known as the republic of Eden, and was established as a peaceful, self-sustaining opportunity for humanity to abandon their prior destructive ways (which are believed to have led to Earth’s current uninhabitable state). Takeru, Kazuma and Bismarck are three young residents of Eden, who are rapidly approaching adulthood. Though they lead uneventful lives in this peaceful society, they still manage to get their kicks by participating in race competitions using moon rover vehicles. When the somewhat rebellious Takeru is sentenced to volunteer duty on the surface of the moon, he discovers a cluster of items that appear to be the remnants of a minor crash. Among those items, is the picture of a girl, with a unique Earth structure in the background. After doing some research, Takeru comes to the conclusion that the government of Eden may be covering up the true status of Earth, and sets out to find the girl in the photo.

I’d hate to delve too far into the remaining plot of Freedom, since that would diminish the impact of this excellent series. What I will say, is there are numerous themes that run throughout the series, and come together to create a complex, multifaceted story. Takeru’s actions reminded me of the impact the youth of society have on the future, and the myriad of questions spawned by a young mind. It seems as we grow older, we gradually adopt the rules of society, and simply settle into our daily routine. Perhaps it is the innocence of Freedom’s young characters, but it was interesting to witness their actions as they continually hold the belief that they can change things. From what I can tell, Katsuhiro Otomo did not have a hand in the plot of this series (two writers are credited, but Otomo is not one of them), but his influence can be felt in nearly every facet of the plot. After I had finished watching the series, I had an interesting realization that the events could have taken place following the events of Akira. I know this was likely not anyone’s intention, but it is still cool to think about. Otomo has a unique ability to capture the realities of youth, and I felt Freedom measured up nicely next to the characterization in his prior work.

The pacing of the series is a little slow at times, but that is a necessary component of a character-based story such as this. There’s still plenty of action, but a couple episodes in the middle undergo a dramatic slowdown, and may induce a couple yawns if your not well rested. The payoff at the end makes it all worthwhile, so I would encourage anyone watching the series to not get discouraged, and stick with it all the way through. The animation has a hand-drawn style, though I would suspect this was completed using 100% CGI, and most backgrounds are hand-painted (with the exception of some CGI backgrounds). The result is nothing short of phenomenal, with even the finest details evident in every scene.

The voice-acting on both the Japanese and English tracks are of the highest quality. Nobody came across as annoyingly over the top or wooden in their delivery, and I felt like the voicework perfectly matched my perceptions of each character. As a side-note, the title song track at the beginning of each episode is “This is Love” by Utada Hikaru, and is officially my new favorite theme song from any anime series I’ve seen thus far. Usually, I’ve grown tired of a title song by the third episode, but I found myself looking forward to watching the title sequence every time.

I can’t conclude this section of the review without mentioning one of the more amusing aspects of the series. As mentioned earlier, Nissin Cup O Noodles sponsored this production, and you’ll be hard-pressed to make it through a single episode without being reminded of that fact. Characters are seen eating Cup O Noodles throughout the film, and the product placement intentions are rarely subtle. There is even a scene where they appear to be toasting with clearly labeled Cup O Noodle containers. I doubt anyone is going to run out after watching Freedom and buy a case of Nissin’s sodium loaded goodness, but you may find yourself reminded of this series next time you see a package at your local grocery store. I’m not making any suggestions, but I could picture some creative individuals coming up with the Cup O Noodles/Freedom drinking game.

Freedom Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in one of the finest high definition transfers I've seen to date, Freedom is encoded using the AVC codec, with a bitrate that hovers around a healthy 30 MBPS. I haven't had the opportunity lately to view a transfer with relatively little to complain about, so this came as a refreshing change for me. Detail, black level, contrast, and color saturation are all excellent. Since this is a direct digital to digital transfer, I would expect this to be an accurate representation of the source material, and I was never let down by the pristine nature of the animation. Banding is non-existant, and I only detected a couple of very minor flaws. The first occurred during a race scene at around 12:48 into the first episode, where the walls of the race track showed some obvious aliasing. Second, there were a couple of panning shots where I noticed a little bit of line wavering (an effect that makes it look like lines show slight movement side to side or up and down with the direction the camera is moving). These minor flaws only appeared on the first disc of the set, and are the only reason I didn't rate this transfer a perfect 5.

Freedom Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio on this release is of a similar high quality to the video. We are given 3 lossless language tracks to choose from, offered in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. The default track is in the native language of Japanese, with the two remaining tracks featuring an English and French dub. I only listened to the Japanese and English tracks, and was very pleased with the balance and directionality of both tracks. The racing sequences are a real highlight, and you'll feel like your right in the heart of the action as Takeru passes one bike after another. For an animated feature, the series contains a great deal of subtle sound effects, and both audio tracks reproduce every detail to perfection. It's worth mentioning that the English track is noticeably louder than the Japanese track, but the volume is the only difference. By turning up the volume a notch or two on the Japanese track, you'll be hard-pressed to notice a difference between these two excellent tracks. In fact, I only had one minor let-down in reflecting on the audio tracks. Considering the number of rocket blast-off's in the series, I would have preferred to hear a bit more rumble from my subwoofer, but I can understand that may have been a stylistic choice on the part of the sound engineers. Nitpicking aside, this is still reference quality material that rises above the majority of other Blu-ray releases.

The subtitles for the feature are delivered in English and French, and I am pleased to report there were no errors in the English subtitle track. This tends to be a rarity in anime releases, and it was nice to see extra care taken in ensuring the track was properly edited prior to this release.

Freedom Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Bandai has included a nice set of supplemental features spread over all four discs, and presented in 1080i or 1080p, with Linear PCM 2.0 audio.

Freedom Digest- Each disc contains short minute and a half segments that originally served as a summary of each episode. I'm glad they chose to include these as extra features, and did not incorporate them into the series, since I've always felt that disrupts the flow when your trying to watch all of the episodes back to back.

Freedom in the USA- This extra is divided into 2 segments, which run a cumulative 24 minutes. The first segment is footage taken at the 2007 Anime Expo, where the first episode of Freedom was shown to interested attendees. The director and writer are on hand to meet fans, and encourage the uninitiated to sit down and check out the first episode (presented in their booth on HD-DVD). I had to chuckle a little at the comments from the clip that praised HD-DVD (the format war seems like a long-forgotten memory at this point), and if you've never been to an anime expo, this offers a nice little glimpse of what you would see. The second segment follows the director and writer as they visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. They used this time to gain ideas that could be incorporated into later episodes of the series (though I think they are primarily there as a result of their passion for space and flight).

Fly Me to the Moon: The Apollo's Journey- Running just over 10 minutes, this is a documentary that briefly covers the technology that emerged as a result of the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to succeed in flying to space.

Freedom: The Hope- This brief feature (3 minutes) offers two different looks at racing sequences from the movie.

Talking About Freedom- The director and two primary writers sit down for two segments that run nearly 40 minutes in length. They discuss many aspects of the initial four episodes in the series, but focus mainly on elements of the story, and what they were hoping to do with the series. You'll be left with an impression that these three men are extremely passionate about nearly every aspect of the series, and have really put their heart and soul into achieving the finished product (though it would have been better to conduct these sessions following the completion of the entire series.

There are also TV spots for Nissin Cup O Noodles, that I would recommend you not watch until you have seen the entire series. I made the mistake of watching the commercial on disc two, and it reveals far too much about events that transpire in the later episodes.

Freedom Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you couldn't tell by now, I'd give Freedom my highest recommendation. The story is not complex, and most people will see the twists and turns coming a mile away, but the lasting value of Freedom lies in the show's ability to create a thought-provoking character study. The animation quality is excellent across the board, and marks a new standard for other anime productions to strive toward. I'd love to see more films or series released using the hand-drawn style of Freedom, since it makes the production feel more personal to me. The video/audio quality on this Blu-ray is truly demo-worthy material, and must be seen and heard to fully appreciate the effort that went into this release. If you have the means to add this title to your collection, and you enjoy anime with a serious tone, I'm sure you will not be disappointed in Freedom.