UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Vlad Love was awful, I can’t believe I suffered through all twelve episodes, but I stuck with it because “surely it can’t be that bad, it’s Mamoru Oshii”. Spoiler: it was that bad. Unfortunately, Oshii hasn’t made anything very worthwhile in the past two decades or more.

I can’t imagine a physical release of Vlad Love will make any money, who in their right mind would buy it?
 
Doctorkev said:
Vlad Love was awful, I can’t believe I suffered through all twelve episodes, but I stuck with it because “surely it can’t be that bad, it’s Mamoru Oshii”. Spoiler: it was that bad.
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I have to agree. I made two attempts at watching Vlad Love, but only got through five episodes. If it hadn't had Oshii's name attached I would have dropped it after one.
 
Many of AL's recent licenses have been confusing to me. I get that as a "boutique label" they don't want to (and shouldn't!) stick to only the popular stuff, but if you're going to take risks, why not take them on "hidden gems" or titles that have some kind of historical value? At least Vlad Love I can rationalize with Oshii still being a big name.

I guess they must have some kind of data that supports these decisions - would love to see even a glimpse of that. (And now that I've said that, imagine if Miles or someone else knowledgeable tweets tomorrow that statistics show there in fact being a lot of people in the UK and Europe who buy anime Blu-rays and would absolutely love (checks notes) I'm Standing on a Million Lives or Woodpecker Detective's Office.)
 
Erufailon4 said:
Many of AL's recent licenses have been confusing to me. I get that as a "boutique label" they don't want to (and shouldn't!) stick to only the popular stuff, but if you're going to take risks, why not take them on "hidden gems" or titles that have some kind of historical value? At least Vlad Love I can rationalize with Oshii still being a big name.

I guess they must have some kind of data that supports these decisions - would love to see even a glimpse of that. (And now that I've said that, imagine if Miles or someone else knowledgeable tweets tomorrow that statistics show there in fact being a lot of people in the UK and Europe who buy anime Blu-rays and would absolutely love (checks notes) I'm Standing on a Million Lives or Woodpecker Detective's Office.)
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I mean they've long done pet projects. If anything I get the feeling them doing Shonen Jump stuff is partly to allow them to continue to survive and do so. I don't think when they gave Crunchyroll booth space all those times they ever thought it'd become some leviathan competitor that would massively change their priorities and availability. It's evidently why they've been increasingly prioritising things like vinyl records.
 
Erufailon4 said:
Many of AL's recent licenses have been confusing to me. I get that as a "boutique label" they don't want to (and shouldn't!) stick to only the popular stuff, but if you're going to take risks, why not take them on "hidden gems" or titles that have some kind of historical value? At least Vlad Love I can rationalize with Oshii still being a big name.

I guess they must have some kind of data that supports these decisions - would love to see even a glimpse of that. (And now that I've said that, imagine if Miles or someone else knowledgeable tweets tomorrow that statistics show there in fact being a lot of people in the UK and Europe who buy anime Blu-rays and would absolutely love (checks notes) I'm Standing on a Million Lives or Woodpecker Detective's Office.)
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Not that confusing, it's what's available 🤷‍♂️
I think its a case of whatever Crunchyroll doesn't want to release and whatever they win over MVM (who've been doing pretty great in their licenses)

I'm sure some of the more niche titles are actually pretty good but some really do feel like padding the slate.
Them getting Naruto & Bleach was a great get that should hopefully help them survive.

Speaking personally I'd love to see them raid the old ADV & Geneon libraries and get stuff like Burn-Up, Slayers, Golden Boy, TENCHI UNIVERSE....etc.
Granted most haven't had blu ray upgrades but I'm sure they'd be a big market for a 'SD Classics' DVD only line just to get access to the titles! Spice it up even, SD on Blu ray 😱

I'd take an SD collection of Excel Saga over a Collector's Edition of Million Lives everyday of the year!!!
 
Erufailon4 said:
Many of AL's recent licenses have been confusing to me. I get that as a "boutique label" they don't want to (and shouldn't!) stick to only the popular stuff, but if you're going to take risks, why not take them on "hidden gems" or titles that have some kind of historical value? At least Vlad Love I can rationalize with Oshii still being a big name.
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I don't know if this is still the case, but at one time it wasn't unusual for licensors to force bundles of shows on licensees. In order to licence Popular Show A, they would also have to pay for Flopped Shows Y and Z. It was a way for licensors to claw back some money on failed shows that made a loss initially. In order to avoid then eating a loss themselves, the licensee would then be in the unenviable position of having to hype up junk like Wild Cardz or Jungle de Ikou.
 
Dai said:
I don't know if this is still the case, but at one time it wasn't unusual for licensors to force bundles of shows on licensees. In order to licence Popular Show A, they would also have to pay for Flopped Shows Y and Z. It was a way for licensors to claw back some money on failed shows that made a loss initially. In order to avoid then eating a loss themselves, the licensee would then be in the unenviable position of having to hype up junk like Wild Cardz or Jungle de Ikou.
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Iirc that is how AL ended up with Blood Lad and Prisma Ilya S1.
 
sniper_samurai said:
Iirc that is how AL ended up with Blood Lad and Prisma Ilya S1.
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I won't hear slander against Bell Hydra!

Andrew has been quite open that these days the bidding for new shows often starts when there's little more than a pitch document, so it's possible that practice has gone now the international market is so significant a component.

(See also things like Bearbrick getting a kids show on Apple TV.)
 
I suppose it could be a combo of bidding on shows early, then the Production Committee/licensors for these shows being slow to respond to approvals and these shows being low on both there and AL's priorities.
 
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Jon O Fun said:
Not that confusing, it's what's available 🤷‍♂️
I think its a case of whatever Crunchyroll doesn't want to release and whatever they win over MVM (who've been doing pretty great in their licenses)

I'm sure some of the more niche titles are actually pretty good but some really do feel like padding the slate.
Them getting Naruto & Bleach was a great get that should hopefully help them survive.

Speaking personally I'd love to see them raid the old ADV & Geneon libraries and get stuff like Burn-Up, Slayers, Golden Boy, TENCHI UNIVERSE....etc.
Granted most haven't had blu ray upgrades but I'm sure they'd be a big market for a 'SD Classics' DVD only line just to get access to the titles! Spice it up even, SD on Blu ray 😱

I'd take an SD collection of Excel Saga over a Collector's Edition of Million Lives everyday of the year!!!
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Agreed, there are so many titles which were released on ADV and other long gone companies, although I guess the hardest part will be getting the licence to re-release some shows and having a guess at what will likely sell.
 
Erufailon4 said:
I guess they must have some kind of data that supports these decisions - would love to see even a glimpse of that. (And now that I've said that, imagine if Miles or someone else knowledgeable tweets tomorrow that statistics show there in fact being a lot of people in the UK and Europe who buy anime Blu-rays and would absolutely love (checks notes) I'm Standing on a Million Lives or Woodpecker Detective's Office.)
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Well, I'm personally very happy that they are releasing the bolded. I've wanted it ever since it aired but it was during that period before Funimation bought Crunchyroll and little of Crunchyroll's streaming shows were getting physical releases in the US. They licensed it along with some others to Sentai, but while Sentai released most of what they got, this one is still MIA.

Since presumably AL doesn't have anything to reuse from Sentai as they do when Sentai has already released discs, I hope this is from the good disc producers/authoring house and not the bad one that is in France(?).

I'll be buying the regular edition though as I'm not really into LEs, and in particular I dislike the LEs where the disc case is just art without even the name of the show printed on it. so that the slipbox is a required part of the packaging.

And I'm not in Europe. ;)
 
Sometimes it's the question what you can get, rather than what you want ;)

Whilest in 2024 Anime Ltd created a CE variant for every release (unless the title already had some kind of CE before), they are going just the Standard Edition route for some. I guess that's fine ;)
It also seems that they had some kind of package deals with Sentai & Crunchyroll allowing them to release a huge bunch of titles, including some more obscure titles - that still may have some fans.

I'd assume that Anime Ltd would love to release some of the titles they sell Vinyls from on Blu-ray (well, if they wouldn't love these titles they wouldn't stock the Vinyls, right?), but sometimes that's just not possible.
 
Lucky_Deity said:
AL's new blog post is up, revealing April's pre-orders, includes...

  • I'm Standing on a Million Lives (CE)
  • Bleach (Part 5)
  • Woodpecker Detective's Office (CE)
  • Vlad Love
  • A Destructive God Sits Next to Me (CE)
It also includes a first look at the Spy x Family CODE: White (CE)
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One day we'll get an update on the third Eureka Seven movie.

One day...
 
I noticed that ABCiee Working Diary is currently up for early bird preorders. Does anyone know if some sort of collectors edition will be likely? I'll happily buy the standard version if not but it would be great to know for sure as I prefer to buy the collectors edition of new releases if I can.
 
It's interesting that AL have decided to not do CEs for every release. Can't help but feel that's a sensible idea given how low profile/outright bad some of them are. I mean... King's Game.

(I was going to add "and Big Order" to the above sentence but, unless I'm somehow missing it, both the CE and SE have entirely disappeared from the AL store. Huh.)
 
fabio de lunatico said:
It's interesting that AL have decided to not do CEs for every release. Can't help but feel that's a sensible idea given how low profile/outright bad some of them are. I mean... King's Game.
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I have generally bought nothing but CE's from AL over the past 10 years, and have imported quite a large quantity of them - Usually 5-6 titles from each of their three big annual sales with free international shipping. We get US LE releases very sparingly over here, and I love chipboard boxes. I also loved how many of AL's CEs also included digipaks, which I've always jumped on if it was a series I liked.

Unfortunately, AL have seemingly been using fewer and fewer digipaks in their CE's as the years have gone by, in favor of ugly Amaray cases. They also eliminated their free international shipping except during the Christmas Sale and have raised the minimum purchase amount for free shipping now, so I have had to cut back quite a bit on my purchases from them. I haven't really purchased any CE's from AL now since Christmas 2023, and the one or two I have purchased since then have been through AOL for their cheaper shipping to the US. I am hoping I can build up enough of a backlog of their CE titles from over these past two years to make a purchase during this year's Christmas Sale, though. Fingers crossed.
 
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Girls with Guns said:
Unfortunately, AL have seemingly been using fewer and fewer digipaks in their CE's as the years have gone by, in favor of ugly Amaray cases [...]I haven't really purchased any CE's from AL now since Christmas 2023, and the one or two I have purchased since then have been through AOL for their cheaper shipping to the US.
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Whilest many product renderer show blue Blu-ray amaray cases, many CE actually shipped with Scanavo Full Sleeves - see e. g. Unboxing – The Normanic Vault

Also, most CE released March 2024 and newer are exclusive to the Anime Ltd store - exceptions for Naruto & Bleach & some larger movies
 
Girls with Guns said:
Unfortunately, AL have seemingly been using fewer and fewer digipaks in their CE's as the years have gone by, in favor of ugly Amaray cases
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Digipaks might look nice but they don't do a great job of protecting the discs. The full sleeve Scanavo cases work fine, I just think in some sets the art available is weak or looks out of place and I rather they'd just include the standard in the box. The value of CEs themselves aren't what they used to be though, and I tend to go for the standards more these days as I can't justify the price for a couple of art cards.
 
The reason I lust after CEs with chipboard boxes and digipaks so much is to rid my anime collection of as much of that hideously offensive blue color as possible - Blu-ray banners on both slipcovers and coversheets and blue Blu-ray cases just make me want to vomit after all these years of collecting Blu-rays in general. If Amaray and/or Scanvo cases would all be clear or black and not have any Blu-ray banners on the top of the coversheet, then that would be just fine; otherwise, give me chipboard and a digipak every time. I even had a huge meltdown when Discotek switched from standard slipcovers to those fugly rounded-corner slipcovers they use now, because they now expose the top and bottom blue corners of the disc cases when lined up on the shelf. That defeats the entire purpose of a slipcover - to hide the ugly blue case underneath!

I also still prefer DVD-height chipboard boxes and disc cases for CE/LE releases, just for the sake of real estate available for artwork; the shorter Blu-ray cases with banners on top reek havoc with cropping all the artwork to make it fit.

Oh yeah - did I happen to mention that I somewhat dislike the color blue? 😝
 
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