Kiju Yoshida was a leading filmmaker on the Japanese new wave on the late 1960's and 1970's and a contemporary of the more popular Nagisa Oshima, but the culmination of the 21 titles in his film career can be found in the normally unseen, by English speaking viewers anyway, and obscure political works in this Love + Anarchism trilogy.



Arrow films have bravely produced this Limited Edition (3000 copies) with a small audience in mind, but making it available to purchasers who possess both Blu-ray players or standard definition DVD players. This option then does not restrict anyone with an interest in these films, and gives them a future option to observe the fine Blu-ray transfers perhaps at a later time when, as we all do,we upgrade our technology, in this case from DVD to Blu-ray, just as consumers embraced the change from VHS tapes to DVD. In my case I am able to loan the DVD disc to similar minded admirers of fine art cinema who in many cases have not upgraded to the Blu-ray format. Reality is that this will always remain as an obscure piece of Japanese cinema, and any notion that this film will appear in live streaming in anyone's near future is a fanciful dream. This remains a worthy DVD/Blu-ray set, that was voted at number three in a top ten Blu-rays releases poll on a popular Blu-ray review site in 2015.



The transfers of these three films are very fine, especially given their obscure nature, in particular the effort to present both cuts of Eros + Massacre, the directors cut being specifically supervised and approved by the filmmaker himself. It should be noted that each cut is very different and because of this separate discs are issued as the cuts could not be presented by seamless branching simply because the versions are so different, in some instances difference takes of shots and different compositions of shots were used in the directors cut. Also because of the 220 minute length of this version the bitrate is lower to fit the film on the disc and image quality is effected slightly. In accordance with the directors supervision, the directors cut is significantly brighter also.



A contentious issue exists regarding the subtitles on this set. Carlotta film have issued a similar set, but with French subtitles only, so this set is irrelevant to the English speaking market. On this set the subtitles are presented on the film image reflecting the original cinema presentation. The subtitles are a standard presentation of white text with a black edge enhancement so that they are readable even on a white background image. Any problems reading this text may exist by the amount of words presented on the screen, which is always a difficulty with translations on foreign film. This is especially the case with Japanese text as it is a very precise language in which one Japanese word may translate into four of five explanatory English words. This is a problem perhaps for the reader but not from the subtitle presentation.



A second contentious issue regarding this presentation is the films aspect ratio. Any thoughts that aspect ration is pretentious or unimportant issue is quite frankly an insult to the film makers vision and in this case cinematographer Motokishi Hasegawa's incredible use of the widescreen frame and his magnificent angles and composition within that frame. For this reason Eros +Massacre is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen which will obviously create black bars top and bottom of a 16x9 display devise. Despite any misguided illusions, these black bars are not simply created to place subtitles into, as has be implied about the Carlotta set. Simply put, if when watching this film on your 16x9 widescreen display devise this specific film does fill your screen completely, then your display settings are incorrect and you are therefore missing out on 30% of the film makers vision by eliminating image left and right of the screen. Alternatively it should be noted that the other two films presented on this set, Heroic Purgatory and Coup D'Etat are presented in their correct aspect ratio of 1.33:1 which if your display devise settings are correct should show black bars to the left and right of your 16x9 display devise. A 16x9 display devise will only present a full screen image if the film presented is 1.85:1 /1.77:1 aspect ratio.



Overall this is a worthy Blu-ray release for the minority interested in this piece of obscure Japanese cinema. But be advised that it is a Limited Edition which explains its purchase price, but it will not be seen again in any other form, most especially with the extra features on offer. Any arguments relating to its initial value and the purpose of the dual format are pointless.