UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

In the end, I decided to cancel my order of the Evangelion UE (I did do my best to craft a nice thankful email to Anime Limited when I cancelled to soften the blow a bit, and they said they appreciated it when they replied). I have now ordered the standard edition from Amazon UK, as while I am a dub completist I just cannot bring myself to fork out £125 after all that either. I will likely be watching the series in Japanese with English subs anyway, and if I want the classic subtitles I can watch my Platinum Edition DVD Boxset from ADV (the US R1 version). It is sad but I'll live with it, and if I really want the CE I'll buy one at a later date if I can still find it for a price I'm happy with. I want to thank AL for their polite, kindly and graciously written response and for getting the money back into my bank account straight away (I paid via Paypal so was thinking I might have to wait a few days). This cannot be an easy situation for them and I really hope they come out of this still doing well, or at least OK, good luck guys! :)
 
HOLD THE LINE

I feel like I will be the only one keeping my order at this point (exaggerated for dramatic effect)

I wonder if anything will be done concerning these quality details and if they'll be the exact same when they get to our hands or if only certain copies were affected.

Oh man. Of all the series and all the editions. I still need that book.
 
flying discs is extremely premium, as far as I'm concerned

greasy fingerprints on the discs give the whole thing a truly bespoke feel, we could then compare fingerprints between us, maybe run them by a database, find the people who worked on our specific UE and send them flowers to their personal address

endless, fun possibilites 💐
Sounds like some of the NGE assemblers took a leaf out of the books of the Nissan GT-R engineers and added that personal touch to the product, but with the far more practical fingerprint on disc in place of signature on engine. Seeing as you have access to fingerprint databases, remind me never to upset you @João Gomes.
 
I'm actually surprised it seems that discs are put in cases by hand. I had always assumed that it was done mechanically in the factory they are made. At least I think that CD's are done that way.

I haven't checked the discs for my Zavvi set yet, but I have to agree with the point about the box as well. Major disappointment the material they used as it literally picks up every mark and finger print possible. - Did absolutely no one order prototype versions before having everything made? baffling.
Most duplicators have workers which put the discs in by hand for any non-standard packaging (i.e. anything that is not amaray or standard-sized two-plates digipak). The versatility of packaging designs for home video products just makes it impossible to have it fully automated especially since the production batches are low. This is no book printing, where the quantity is often in the tens of thousands.
As for the surface picking up finger prints, there are a lot of nobles cardboard coating (as in, artwork sticker which covers the raw cardboard) which may. The soft-touch paper is one, for example. I wouldn't blame them for that point specifically as special coatings can provide amazing visual experience / quality.
Like a few people have mentioned, there's no way the second patch will change the packaging, if indeed we are using the same materials. Even without Christmas, that kind of thing will take months to organise and schedule time to replicate. It was the same situation for Gurren Lagann, back in the day.

Speaking of which, I'm beginning to wonder if there's literally no way to making multi-disk trays like this without there being some issue, at least in Europe (maybe America has the means to do it better). I like the idea of the plastic nubs better than glued-on trays, although it still doesn't appear the issue of loose disks has been fixed. More annoying to me personally is how rough and untreated the cardboard seems to be. After all these years I really would have hoped there were polished systems in place for these kind of releases.
I think they split the delivery simply due to factory constraints and paper shortage. Most elements are probably ready (as splitting the printing in two batch would increase the costs) but to be on time for christmas, they could only prepare a subset of boxsets. That is fairly common.

Regarding your second point, the French & German release of Kara no Kyoukai by Kazé uses a strictly identical attach system and it is very well made. The ten plastic nubs (made of high density foam) are perfectly centered in each circular spot and the discs are firmly held in place.
There are some drawbacks tho. Every time you press this foam, it gets very slightly bent to the point it keeps surface folds. That means it gets damaged somehow every time you remove or insert a disc. So in a rather long timelapse, this will probably show issues. The second one is related to the fact that is is just some foam sticked to the cardboard surface. If you're not careful or the glue on the nubs is not so good, they can fall off. Oh, and the discs gets scratched more easily because their surface are directly in contact to the below surface as well as dusts.

EDIT: I'll add that there are alternatives to high density foam or standard plastic digipak trays which are much better to hold a disc on cardboard. Here is an example. The disc (well, its inner center which does not hold data) only touch the small plastic surface at rest. It has much less chance to be scratched. Only downside is the apparent glue. A non-transparent piece would solve instantly this issue.
 
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Sounds like some of the NGE assemblers took a leaf out of the books of the Nissan GT-R engineers and added that personal touch to the product, but with the far more practical fingerprint on disc in place of signature on engine. Seeing as you have access to fingerprint databases, remind me never to upset you @João Gomes.

Lovely bit of trivia, there! But yes, do be careful to never upset me as my ego is quite fragile 🥚

i beg you
 
I must confess, what I understood of Dandy's post has me greatly concerned, if his KnK set and this Eva one are the same design. Little is quite so frightful to the male mind than the mental image of nobs falling off, over time. Foam/plastic glued to cardboard doesn't read £200 secure, in light of those videos as well. My hope was at worst it'd gain value over time, not be liable to degrade with usage so readily.

Right now I'm standing firm with Joe. But a lot will depend on if Andrew can give any insight. If we're relying on internet users to give info about product viability, in the face of concerns, my desire to leave my £200 deposit will deplete. As will Joe's.
 
No, no. If the high density foam is like the KnK set, I wouldn't be worried. This set is 9 years old and the nobs are still glued like they were on day 1. There's just some marks on each of them due to me removing the discs each time I watched them (you can also see marks on the blogpost I linked). The CD are also scratched but that's due to how CD are subject to scratching.
What bothers me on the other hand, are german users on the facebook page of the distributor reporting that the disc are just falling off. which means the nobs are too small and do not keep the disc in place.
 
I see. Thank you for clarifying. I was visualising having to glue them back on, DIY style, as I once had to for velcro circles on my Naruto box set. The glue stains are imprinted both on the box, and in my memories... 'twas painful.

That said, the nobs being too small is another concern I know all too well from personal experience. That was my first thought when seeing all the discs loose in the videos: that the nobs were too small to hold them, or grip them as it were.
 
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As I have stated all of the discs in the set are scratched in some ways. Their surface are in direct contact to the cardboard below, just like the Evangelion set (and a fair share of german buyers are reporting scratched discs on Leonine FB). Any hard dust below while the disc turn and it will cause damage. Fortunately the discs in my set are all playable so I did not bother to ask for them to be replaced.
tl;dr, that's not due to transport but the packaging design.
 
I see. Thank you for clarifying. I was visualising having to glue them back on, DIY style, as I once had to for velcro circles on my Naruto box set. The glue stains are imprinted both on the box, and in my memories... 'twas painful.

That said, the nobs being too small is another concern I know all too well off from personal experience. That was my first thought when seeing all the discs loose in the videos: that the nobs were too small to hold them, or grip them as it were.
You mean regarding the NGE edition? They are made of a foam-like material that does not fit very well and has some deformability. You have to force them through the disc ring. Otherwise they rise like yeast dough and push the discs out. I hope you understand what I mean. Unfortunately, I can't describe it any better than that.
I have already packed my Edition, because I will send it back on Monday, but when I move the package I can already hear that the discs have come loose again and are flinging back and forth.

As @SpaceDandy said, the complaints are piling up and the products have been removed from the distributor's site. On top of that, the box says "Ultimate Edition", (although it was never advertised that way in Germany, but always with the names "Komplettbox" i.e. Complete-box or Collector's Edition") and the logos of AL and Madman can be found (so all Region B distributors releasing this design).
Even if I were an American who had pre-ordered the GKids version, I would be cautious and not get my hopes up.
 
I'm in the 2nd set of pre-orders so I won't get mine until next year but I'm already scratching my head about what to do. I hope they address it soon. It's extremely disheartening to hear there are also issues with the Zavvi sets as well. This must be a nightmare for Andrew and the staff of AL, of all the releases that could have issues! It's obviously not their fault and they have no control over manufacturing issues but as I think someone else mentioned don't they get prototype sets sent to them long before retail? I would have hoped someone could have addressed this before things got this far and they were actually being produced.

Anyway this is a sad state of affairs all round. I guess we'll see how the situation unfolds in the run up to Christmas as more people get them in the post. I reckon there's going to be a fair amount of internet outrage trolls who are not as understanding about the situation as some of the people who are on this forum.
 
If people are cancelling as they claim you might end up in the first batch. I'll find it incredibly amusing if the sets are immaculate and the critics lose out on UE goodness as a result of pre release hysteria.
 
If people are cancelling as they claim you might end up in the first batch. I'll find it incredibly amusing if the sets are immaculate and the critics lose out on UE goodness as a result of pre release hysteria.

Honestly, as someone who cancelled my order, I fully accept this possibility, and also actually hope I'm wrong tbh cuz I don't want this release to fail horribly. In addition, in return for not buying a copy of the UE I get to have more money leftover for some other creature comfort/a rainy day - I would have been perfectly happy to spend the money had we been virtually guaranteed a nigh flawless release, but given the circumstances I will be fairly happy with my decision to cancel regardless of how the UK UE turns out :)
 
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I can see that after seeing the unboxing of Evangelion from Germany, new copies of the box appeared on the Anime Ltd. store. For me, it looks great, I like the artbook, the look of the box and the laserdisc reprints. I'm a huge fan of the series, so I couldn't deny myself the best release. By the way, this empty cardboard box in the UK version will be this keychain etc (because these items are missing in Germany edition, as I see)? Or maybe they'll pack it a little differently. In my opinion, problems with falling disks will be corrected / do not have to occur everywhere. I have the same mount with the Cowboy Bebop UE, and it works very well.
 
eh, I'm very handy and mechanically inclined, so if there is an issue with the hubs on my US Ultimate set, I'll simply figure out what different kind of material I could use for the hubs, and just fashion myself some new hubs. I'll remove the useless foam hubs, and glue on whatever better solution I can come up with. I can already envision perhaps making a hub that has a very thin "washer-like" 1/4" protrusion around the base of each hub which the center of the disc would sit on and be just slightly raised from the carboard surface underneath, to help alleviate rubbing and scratching. I wouldn't cancel my UE order just for something I could possibly modify like this.
 
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