Infinite: Grow - Infinite's Real Youth Life DVD Review

Woollim produced a documentary movie, Grow: Infinite's Real Youth Life, covering the span of Infinite's first world tour, One Great Step, from August 2013 to December 2013. Grow was released in theaters in December 2014 and released on DVD in August 2015. Sadly Woollim didn't release a DVD version of OGS, and Grow doesn't contain much of OGS besides snippets from various stages. However, this DVD is nice because it focuses on the personal lives of the members off stage and the various emotions and issues they faced. Now on to the unboxing!

This DVD set is the same size as typical DVD cases and Infinite's albums.

The backside has the standard information about the DVDs. There are two versions, one for the Japanese market (there's also a Blu-ray version for Japan but Region A), and one for the rest of the world. I got the one for the rest of the world, which places for regions 1, 3, 4, and 5, and has subtitles in Korean and English.

There's actually a clear exterior slip case with a metallic design to add to the overall look.

Inside the DVD case is a photobooklet (purple) and a folded poster (blue).

Here is a better look at the front covers of the photobooklet and folded poster.

The photobooklet has 21 black-and-white and color pages. There are two sets of individual photos, one of the members in dressy outfits and the other of them in playful outfits. Separating the different sections of the photobooklet are group photos.

The last two pages are candid photos from throughout the world tour. I wish more photos from the world tour were included instead of so many photoshoot photos. Also some of those photoshoot photos are purposefully blurry, which is a bit annoying.

Each DVD set contains this same poster design. The dimensions are just larger than 14.5" x 21.5" and it is thick and really high quality.

Because I got this item a couple of months later than its release, I'm not too sure about the extra promotional goods. I do know that there are also exterior posters and these exterior postcards of the individual members, but I'm not sure how people got the postcards.

This DVD set contains two DVDs. The one of the left is the documentary film and it's about 1 hour 22 minutes long. It is broken up into many short chapters, where the first few chapters focus on each member's problems or personalities. Then, later chapters reveal the conclusions. The members' problems aren't explicitly stated, for example they just state that an article came out for Myungsoo, but not what the actual article was about. These chapters really just focus on the candid emotions they felt and the support they received. Because of this formatting, the documentary isn't in chronological order, though it does follow closely. Sadly there wasn't a strong focus on all stops of OGS, though on the cities they did focus on, they did a great job. This movie shows footage mostly from behind-the-scenes of the world tour, such as the members practicing other countries' songs and languages (Hoya and Sungjong were practicing Cantonese!), as well as the members' free time (meaning not much concert footage). Lastly, it was really cool seeing footage from the L's Bravo Viewtiful 2 fanmeeting where Myungsoo performed his self-written song; this was such a nice surprise.

Disc 2 contains three special features: the movie trailer (1 min 17 sec), the behind clip (19 min 44 sec), and the commentary (1 hr 26 min 32 sec). The behind clip is a lot more lighthearted, showing the members enjoying themselves on their free time throughout the world tour. It usually focused on just one or two members at a time. It was so cute when Hoya was speaking English! And it was cool seeing the CEO buying that yellow LV tote for Sungjong; he used that bag so often!

The commentary shows Infinite viewing the documentary and giving their random comments, all while the documentary is shown in the bottom left corner for the viewer's reference. They first spoke about their impressions of the trailer, and ended with their reflections of the world tour and the documentary. My random thoughts: It was also nice seeing the members a few months after the tour finished. It was so hard for Myungsoo to watch his chapters. And I had originally thought that the narrator was so boring, but then Infinite pointed out that it's the CEO narrating haha.

Here is the image underneath the DVDs.

I miss Infinite so much, and watching the DVDs (more so the special features instead of the documentary) made me so happy again. These DVDs are like a longer version of all of those short special features in Infinite's Japanese limited albums with DVDs; I always like watching those DVDs but they're always too short for me to take the time to watch them, so it's nice having full length features such as Grow. I really do hope Woollim will officially release some sort of documentation of Infinite Effect, whether it be a concert DVD or a documentary DVD.