Professor Layton And The Eternal Diva Is Out Today. How Is It?

Yes, there is a feature-length Professor Layton animated movie. If you already knew that, you probably also knew that the film has taken two long years to make the jump from Japan to North America. The wait is finally over!

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva originally released in Japan in late 2009. Of course, it takes a little time to localize the language to English, which is why it hit the U.K. in fall 2010. For some reason, North America didn't get in on this, so here we are in November 2011 finally watching this missing link in the Layton timeline thanks to Viz Media. For those out of the loop, Eternal Diva fits into the chronology like so:

The Last Specter (game 4)
The Eternal Diva
The Mask of Miracle (game 5. 3DS. Only released in Japan)
The Curious Village (game 1)
The Diabolical Box (game 2)
The Unwound Future (game 3)

As you can see, games four and five are the first two installments of the prequel trilogy. Since Eternal Diva takes place after the latest release, the Last Specter, those extra sensitive to spoilers should know that you meet several characters in the movie that are introduced first in the game. Allies like Emmy and Grosky aren't that big of a deal, but seeing the villain might be a little spoilery for those planning to take on Specter soon.

So how's the movie itself? The animation style perfectly captures the cutscenes from the games. It's predominantly hand drawn with occasional CG elements sprinkled in on large, setpiece moments. You'll recognize most of the music if you've played even one of the games, except now it's all fully orchestrated and sounds gorgeous.

The dynamic duo gets an invitation to an opera performance from one of Layton's former students, Janice Quatlane. It's not long before things go horribly wrong and all of the patrons are trapped in the theater. We find out that everyone else came to the show to earn the promised power of eternal life. Only the person who solves all the orchestrator's riddles will receive the coveted prize. The film plays out like a classic mystery, with a wide cast of eccentric characters all battling it out while being forced to work together at times. As usual, Layton is smarter than everyone, but sometimes lets others solve the puzzles that come up. He is a gentleman after all.

The extras are as bare-bones as can be on the DVD. At least those interested in hearing the Japanese language track can access it with English subtitles. I'm presuming this is the exact transfer from the British version since the film features the U.K. voice actor for Layton's sidekick, Luke, rather than the U.S. voice. The lack of bonus content is disappointing, as is the fact that there are Blu-ray editions of Diva in Europe and Japan and not here. The presentation still looks really nice, but it's not quite as sharp as it could be.

If you've played all the Layton games, you'd be crazy not to at least rent Eternal Diva. If you've only dabbled in the series, this is still worth checking out and may provide the fuel to get back into the games. However, if I were going to invest in buying Eternal Diva, I'd rather pay a little bit more for Blu-ray with some bonus features. In the U.K. you could buy a special edition of Eternal Diva including Blu-ray and DVD versions of the movie, a special features disc, and a large story board book. I guess we should be glad that Viz picked up the torch and put it out in good old region 1, but after waiting all this time I expected more bells and whistles instead of less.