UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

To be fair, November has been known for being barebones over the years due to the incoming Christmas sale.

Though I'm interested to see if they have early birds planned this year (focusing on their backlog) compared to last year.
 
bakura said:
Too all people asking this i defer you to the post i made during mcm

Just spoke with Andy, there's not going to be a title announcement panel this mcm because they they want to focus on getting the titles they've already announced out the door but there hoping to do something for Christmas.

So if we get anything it would be late November or early December.
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So, they chose not to announce anything during the panel (which I completly understand & expected with the Christmas sale coming up), but then they announce Otaku Elf (a brand new licence if I'm not mistaken) will be the next EB less than a week later.

It just looks to me like AL don't know what they are doing themselves sometimes. 😮‍💨

NormanicGrav said:
To be fair, November has been known for being barebones over the years due to the incoming Christmas sale.

Though I'm interested to see if they have early birds planned this year (focusing on their backlog) compared to last year.
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That's what I'm hoping for as well. 🤞
 
Titan said:
So, they chose not to announce anything during the panel (which I completly understand & expected with the Christmas sale coming up), but then they announce Otaku Elf (a brand new licence if I'm not mistaken) will be the next EB less than a week later.

It just looks to me like AL don't know what they are doing themselves sometimes. 😮‍💨



That's what I'm hoping for as well. 🤞
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This is my fault, I was typing fast at the time and there was confusion at the time as to whether AL were doing anything at mcm so I was typing in that context at the time but the impression I got from @Hanners was there not doing any announcements like the multiple title announcements they do in newswire until they've got there current titles out of the way but still hope to do something for Christmas (didn't say anything about 1 off from time to time).

To be honest I've personally been thinking that's why many release date titles have been pushed back so they can concentrate more on getting them out easier.
 
They also often do Cloud matsuri in Novemeber show casing some upcoming stuff as well some of the plans for the christmas sale, which I expect they will be continuing to do this year, but will have to wait and see if and if they announce streaming time/dates.
 
I do hope we get some confirmation of what's happening with SEED Freedom whenever this year ending news drops. I'm still salty about them (to my knowledge) barely advertising those theatrical screenings, so I think throwing Gundam fans a goodwill bone is deserved.
 
DJ-samurai7 said:
That's tempting… How is the video quality on those Viz Blu-rays? I’m assuming they’re using the Viz masters for these Shippuden releases.
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According to their post, they are authoring their own discs, like with Naruto part I.

I wasn't a fan of the VIZ upscales for Shippuden (so much so that I stopped collecting the Blu-rays) it's made some of the line work all jagged compared to its SD counterparts.

The pre-HD episodes would really benefit just being put on SD-Blu-ray (not everything needs an upscale!). In fact, the entirety of Naruto part I should have just been SD-Blu-ray, imo.

Shippuden is a weird one because the first 53 episodes were produced in SD 4:3. Then, it goes SD 16:9 (widescreen) from episode 54 to 150-something, and then it makes the transition to 16:9 HD for the rest of its run.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I will add though, I think the artwork on our cases look much better than the US VIZ ones:

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BrokenPhoenix said:
According to their post, they are authoring their own discs, like with Naruto part I.

I wasn't a fan of the VIZ upscales for Shippuden (so much so that I stopped collecting the Blu-rays) it's made some of the line work all jagged compared to its SD counterparts.

The pre-HD episodes would really benefit just being put on SD-Blu-ray (not everything needs an upscale!). In fact, the entirety of Naruto part I should have just been SD-Blu-ray, imo.

Shippuden is a weird one because the first 53 episodes were produced in SD 4:3. Then, it goes SD 16:9 (widescreen) from episode 54 to 150-something, and then it makes the transition to 16:9 HD for the rest of its run.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I will add though, I think the artwork on our cases look much better than the US VIZ ones:

View attachment 42394
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Oh, AL is authoring the discs? That’s actually good news. Hopefully they can fix those issues and make the video quality look natural.
 
The artwork looks good (and indeed better than the gimmicky approach Viz took with theirs) - a shame they couldn’t get enough material for an artbook like Naruto/Bleach have (though this could just be the case with the first Box) and the sets have less episodes than the Viz equivalents but I’ve been waiting for these so am looking forward to getting each set gradually as they come out (taking into account filler arcs), am all in for the first set on Thursday.
 
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HWR said:
The artwork looks good (and indeed better than the gimmicky approach Viz took with theirs) - a shame they couldn’t get enough material for an artbook like Naruto/Bleach have (though this could just be the case with the first Box) and the sets have less episodes than the Viz equivalents but I’ve been waiting for these so am looking forward to getting each set gradually as they come out (taking into account filler arcs), am all in for the first set on Thursday.
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The expectation is that each Naruto Shippuden Collector's Set will be broadly the same content-wise, so booklets are unlikely for this one (much as we would have loved to had their been enough to make that viable).

Also yes, it's me! I live! It's been so long since I last had chance to check in here the entire forum colour scheme has changed...
 
Hanners said:
The expectation is that each Naruto Shippuden Collector's Set will be broadly the same content-wise, so booklets are unlikely for this one (much as we would have loved to had their been enough to make that viable).

Also yes, it's me! I live! It's been so long since I last had chance to check in here the entire forum colour scheme has changed...
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Welcome back!
 
RedundantSquash said:
This is probably my biggest issue with them, their terrible communication. Pretty much every collectors edition I have ordered in the last year has had some sort of delay and not once have they sent a message to say why or how long the delay will be. I fully understand that delays happen but to not even send out a courtesy email is unacceptable considering they have already taken our money.

They are also terrible for responding to correspondence. Whenever I have sent an email about something it usually takes a few days to even receive an automated acknowledgement reply and even longer to get a response from an actual person. They should really look at how companies like MVM treat their customers. I had a defective disc in a bluray set, I emailed them mid morning, had a reply asking for my address to send a replacement disc to early in the afternoon and it arrived two days later!

I have bought so much less from them this year, the delays with collectors editions is bad enough as are the completely uninspired sales but even standard editions such as Oddtaxi have literally no incentive to buy from AL as they are charging £10 over everywhere else plus £3.50 postage on top.

I know physical Anime releases are a pretty niche market and we need companies like AL to keep it going but it honestly feels like sometimes they take their customers for granted and it isn't a nice feeling :(
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As I'm kicking around, I just wanted to weigh in on this topic with an apology on this specific topic (or set of topics, really).

Firstly, on delays - the frustration here for us is that this genuinely isn't a case of "there's a single problem here, what do we do to fix it?", as recent delays have been due to a variety of different issues from shipping delays from Europe into the UK (which struck a few titles without warning in one fell swoop), through to some print or disc replication delays, etc etc. We set our release dates trying to factor in all of the scenarios within our view and control, but even then curveballs can sneak up on us, and when you're working with Collector's product you're more exposed to that kind of "unknown unknown". We're always working to try and get those timeframes and release dates right though, and I'm always here to sit and ask the "can we really hit this release date?" questions to try and reduce both the number and length of delays.

On delay announcements, this is something I need to revisit again, as my best intentions of getting timely notifications out to people simply hasn't been achievable recently for a few reasons. Really, nothing but profuse apologies from me on this one, and back to the drawing board on a better process for handling them I go!

More broadly, I am pushing for better customer service communication and we have targets set up and in place, but again unforeseen circumstances have caused some issues there. I'm monitoring the numbers here and we're improving, but not where I want us to be, so I'm continuing to work towards getting this to a more ideal place.
 
Takei Daloui said:
If they have a means to tell distributors it is delayed, surely they could also send out a standard template email to anyone who bought directly saying it's delayed. Doesn't need to be fancy or anything, can be identical every time bar the title and the changed date, but at least we'd know clearly.
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Boring admin point here, but the issue isn't the template (we already have these), it's targeting sending an e-mail to the correct customers who have ordered and not cancelled etc etc. This is an entirely manual process that needs to be carried out in a GDPR compliant way, and that is the time-consuming part.

Not an excuse as you guys are all absolutely right that you should receive timely notifications of delays, but it isn't a quick job, much to my chagrin.
 
Orgun said:
Question to Anime Ltd...

Anyone care to explain how you managed to give Picturehouse a file of Char's Counterattack where the vidoe and audio weren't synced???

I traveled into London yesterday just to see CCA and I was sooo excited about and yet you managed to make it an incredibly disappointing evening.

This sort of sloppyness just isn't acceptable...
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Shadow Cat said:
My mate said the same thing yesterday evening :( I told him to email AL directly via their store as its likely a file issue AL used.

Forgot to ask if they replied and hes currently in another movie
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HellCat said:
...There was a theatrical screening of CCA?

EDIT: They're showing Endless Waltz too?

Am I just crap or was all this barely advertised?

EDIT Second: So stuff like End of Eva gets a public release but classic Gundam gets restricted to a festival. Seriously, what the hell? This is why I keep banging on about what comes off as hypocrisy.
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Just to jump in on this specifically - these weren't Anime Limited organised screenings, so they were arranged and promoted by Scotland Loves Anime. The festival is it's own entity there, so for all of the crossover there's a separation of church and state when it comes to these things.
 
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