My Neighbours The Yamadas

The DVD includes nine special cinema trailers and television spots just for My Neighbours The Yamadas, as well as all the film's original storyboards, which are set up in groups of four sketches, allowing you to click through all the key scenes. The rough style of the sketches and the fact that the annotation is not translated from the Japanese will limit their appeal.

The extras also include trailers for Howl's Moving Castle and The Studio Ghibli Collection, which covers their major feature-length releases since the early Eighties. The Ghibli Collection includes trailers for Takahata's previous work Pom Poko and Only Yesterday.

Judging from its trailer, Pom Poko is certainly worth a look, as it appears to revolve entirely around warring tribes of shape-shifting racoons. There is also a trailer for my personal Ghibli favourite, My Neighbour Totoro, the story of a young girl who encounters a strange but benevolent forest spirit that looks vaguely like a cross between a large, upright cat and a bear.

Other offerings include Whisper Of The Heart, a Puss In Boots lookalike, with a young female protagonist, as well as more cat-centric tales, such as Kiki's Delivery Service and The Cat Returns. Then come the animated blockbusters: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.

The extras don't really amount to anything special, apart from the storyboards, which could have been laid out in a more interactive way. I was also disappointed by the absence of any interview with the director, or the animators. With this DVD, you are really buying the film, as well as the ability to choose whether to watch with subtitles, or an English dub.