NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were obtained directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Arrow Blu-ray Region FREE - July 2017: Firstly, I am going to duplicate the comments for all three films (Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za and Yumeji) in Arrow's Blu-ray boxset.

Kudos to Arrow for their boxsets; Dekalog and other TV Works, their massive The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast, Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection, The Marx Brothers at Paramount, their Woody Allen boxsets, The Jacques Rivette Collection, many Japanese director sets; Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism, Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece The Human Condition set, Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity, also Female Prisoner Scorpion: The Complete Collection, Outlaw Gangster VIP: The Complete Collection, The Stray Cat Rock Collection - all on Blu-ray and fans are appreciative of the effort with this Seijun Suzuki's The Taisho Trilogy Blu-ray set as well. I'm amazed at your content and thank you!

We reviewed the Kino DVD set over a decade ago - and were negative about the transfers. They were poor with improperly labeled details, burned-in subtitles, chroma, bleeding, artifacts and a generally unacceptable image - even for SD. This Blu-ray edition is a far more pleasing set - the image looks vastly superior - layered contrast - richer, tighter, brighter - mostly, more information in the frame and more some visible depth - see our captures below for more of its improvement over SD. It has obvious advantages over the lesser format. The 1080P transfers are all dual-layered with max'ed out bitrates. The quality isn't perfect (some dullness in Zigeunerweisen but each 'younger' release the colors are stronger) but is such a significantly better quality that it's like seeing the films anew. They look excellent in-motion. I'm not going to register any major complaints - after suffering with these, almost unwatchable, DVDs for the last 10 years.

All three discs represent the audio via an authentic linear PCM 1.0 mono track in 24-bit in the original Japanese. It sounds flat but carries a modicum of depth and sounds clear and without flaws. Shigeru Umebayashi (The Grandmaster, 2046, The House of Flying Daggers) composed the score for Yumeji and the wonderful Yumeji's Theme plus Kaname Kawachi credited for Zigeunerweisen. The films benefit from the lossless transfer augmenting the moods running beside the film heightening the discontinuity, eroticism and chaos. There are optional English subtitles and the Blu-ray discs are coded region FREE.

In the supplements there are new introductions to each film by critic Tony Rayns - 13.5-minutes for Zigeunerweisen, 17-minutes for Kagero-za and 24-minutes for Yumeji providing background, expert analysis, touching upon themes, the director's oeuvre, historical references and giving a wonderful overview for further appreciation of the three Suzuki films. On the Zigeunerweisen disc we get Tony Rayns on the Taisho Trilogy for an effective but too-brief 10-minutes. On the Kagero-za disc we have a, 26-minute, vintage interview with Seijun Suzuki and he is off-the-cuff and as enchanting as ever. The Yumeji Blu-ray has a 10-minute 'Making of...' which has some behind the scenes footage. Each disc has a trailer for the respective film. The first pressing only receives a booklet featuring writing on the films by critic Jasper Sharp and others.