The DVDs have arrived.
A few toku DVDs I ordered from Amazon.co.jp are here at last. This included Ultraman Mebius & Ultraman Brothers Memorial Boxset, Ultraman Mebius Volume 7, and GARO Special Part 1. Also in the same shipment is the photobook of Shunji Igarashi, which I bought only because it promised a few behind the scenes photos from the Mebius movie. :)
Out of these DVDs, I have only finished the Mebius movie, which I found to be enjoyable enough. For me, the movie is pretty much low on plot, unlike most of the Mebius TV series, and high on making the actions stand out. I think a viewer doesn't ever need to watch even one episode of the tv series to be able to enjoy this movie, if one doesn't mind a simplistic storyline and just wants to watch it for all the colorful, albeit unrealistic CG actions (and for the Ultra Brothers, of course).
The acting is fine from everyone in the main cast. It is cool to see those original ultra actors in this movie. However, I got a distinct feeling that the movie was shot before the tv series (Mirai is never in the same scene as the rest of Crew GUYS, for instance). And I must be thinking too much, but Mirai in the movie didn't seem to be the same as Mirai in the tv series. By that I mean the movie Mirai seemed more mainstreamed, more normal, just like any other Ultra host, and not so much a starry-eyed innocent. This change was done so not to confuse people who were not familiar with his character in the tv series I suppose. Still, I probably should reserve my judgment on this until I see the movie with proper English subtitles. (Oh, why couldn't English subs be included? It has Japanese subtitles after all.)
I really love the extras on the special disc. Of note, there are the 'Making of' segment, Cast Interviews, which were conducted in some cocktail like party where actors were asked mostly the same questions and they took turn answering (or it just looked that way because of the editing), and the segment with the title that I can't read at first glance but is about the main cast going on a train one morning in July and basically doing a promotion for the movie.
I didn't really know what to expect from the photobook, aptly titled 'Mirai', but I wasn't disappointed. Most of the photos are standard j-pop idol stuff I suppose, but there are a few pages of the movie related photos, some I've never seen in the Mebius movie special disc at all.