Carnival Phantasm 1st Season

Received over a month ago but unable to do a proper review until now, Carnival Phantasm 1st Season, the OVA series that commemorates TYPE-MOON's 10th anniversary.

Carnival Phantasm, the limited edition book Catalogue and the Toranoana exclusive postcard.

The contents and all the leaflets. It includes both a dvd version and a Blu-ray version. Except for the floating menu in the blu-ray version, the contents are the same.

As every one knows, Carnival Phantasm is based in a couple of manga anthologies by Takenashi Eri called TAKE MOON that were released several years ago:

The episodes were rather nice and much more faithful to the original chapters than I expected. The biggest part in each of the four episodes included is actually a short story from the anthology:

Some minor characters that appeared in some of the stories were changed for the OVA for more popular and newer characters. For example, in the beach volleyball chapter Akira, Hanei and Souka were changed for Miyako and Sion (and Len doesn't play)
Some of the mini-gags are also faithfully based in the short stories, like Phantasmoon:

The Blu-ray it doesn't contains many extras besides the audio track "Teach me Ciel-sensei" written by Nasu itself that features Ciel-sensei and Neco-Arc loosely explaining the situations and characters on screen.

This is the floating menu in the blu-ray, featuring all the necos; the already old Neco-Arc and Neco-Arc Chaos plus the newly added Neco-Arc Bubbles (voiced by Ciel's VA Sakuma Kumi) and Neco-Arc Destiny (voiced by Caster's VA Tanaka Atsuko).

The limited edition extra, Catalogue, is an over 250 pages long artbook that compiles Takeuchi Takashi's illustrations in the last 10 years.

The format is rather small (is the same size of a dvd box) and 95 % of the contents already appeared in other media, but as a Takeuchi fan is definitely a must have and probably the best TYPE-MOON artbook available.

The contenst are divided in sections covering each franchise: Tsukihime, Melty Blood, Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/stay night, Fate/hollow ataraxia, Fate/stay night [Realta Nua], Fate others (Fate Zero, Unlimited Codes and EXTRA) and Others.

Some random photos:

Tsukihime illustrations from 2001-2002 period.

Usually each section contains a newly drawn pic. In Tsukihime section is the Arcueid to the left.

Melty Blood pictures.

Kara no Kyoukai

Fate/stay night newly drawn Saber to the left.

The Fate Others section

Fate Zero pictures from the drama cds

Thee others section includes the covers of the Vampire Wars novels.

CANAAN

Guest illustrations for Kannagi, Gainax (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) and for the Tactics eroge Harem Party

B&W pictures used in stuff like Comic Market catalogs.

The 2nd season was released this week, so I expect my copy at the end of November...