UK Anime Distributor Animatsu Discussion Thread

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IncendiaryLemon said:
Is anyone else who bought the Animatsu release of Chuunibyou finding it hard to remove the case from the chipboard? I feel like I have to sit there waving it about and tapping the spine to get it out.
I found it more difficult to get out the first time. It's still snug but a bit of shaking seems to work most of the time now (maybe a bit more than is ideal though, to be fair).
 
Just to let people know that A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Blu-ray comes with a chipboard slipcover, the same as Chunibyo & Knights of Sidonia.
 
Titan said:
Just to let people know that A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Blu-ray comes with a chipboard slipcover, the same as Chunibyo & Knights of Sidonia.

Oh, unexpected. Thank you for posting that.
 
Whilst it's nice and unexpected that Index comes with a chipboard slip, I don't see how that alone constitutes a "Deluxe Blu-ray" as their twitter banner makes it out to be. I own the Funi BD releases which were like, half the price, so I'm unlikely to buy the series again anytime soon. I hope it sells well though.
 
A tad off topic but is Index required viewing for Railgun or are they separate? From what I've seen I'm more interested in Railgun than Index though I'd like to watch both eventually.
 
The characters and at least one of the story arcs cross over between the two, but you don't have to watch both. If you don't like Index you can solely focus on Railgun or vice versa.
 
Titan said:
Just to let people know that A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Blu-ray comes with a chipboard slipcover, the same as Chunibyo & Knights of Sidonia.
How do you know? Has anybody got this yet? (pics?) I've got it ordered from Amazon on prime delivery and I haven't had a shipped email yet... :(
 
Jon O Fun said:
Titan said:
Just to let people know that A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Blu-ray comes with a chipboard slipcover, the same as Chunibyo & Knights of Sidonia.
How do you know? Has anybody got this yet? (pics?) I've got it ordered from Amazon on prime delivery and I haven't had a shipped email yet... :(

I received my copy on Friday, from United Publications.
 
Titan said:
Jon O Fun said:
Titan said:
Just to let people know that A Certain Magical Index Season 1 Blu-ray comes with a chipboard slipcover, the same as Chunibyo & Knights of Sidonia.
How do you know? Has anybody got this yet? (pics?) I've got it ordered from Amazon on prime delivery and I haven't had a shipped email yet... :(

I received my copy on Friday, from United Publications.
Ah thanks :) to be honest my experience with Prime one day or day of release delivery is it'll show up in time 2 out 3 :(

I am actually really looking forward to this release tho as it'll be my first Animatsu release and since swearing off anything Manga branded for the forseable future it's kinda make or break :)
 
Although when they say merging, it'll be interesting to see what that actually means in practice. And if it'll have any impact on the consumer.
 
I wonder if Manga will now adopt the Animatsu approach of chip board art boxes for some releases ala Index, Sidonia, & Chunibyo or go back to the crappy cardboard 'deluxe' boxes of FMA & Titan...

Also, purely my opinion but it seems kinda silly from a business standpoint for Animatsu to build a good reputation for themselves over the last 12 months or so without any real release problems to then just throw it away and become the company that might have been great in the past but is now the industry standard for f'ing over fans and botched releases.
Manga had its day but now it'd make more sense to just rebrand Manga as Animatsu and try to work to build upon that reputation than become Manga outright and have to build up that reputation as that's gonna be a bigger challenge.

edit: sorry, I didn't mean to rant :p lol
 
Jon O Fun said:
I wonder if Manga will now adopt the Animatsu approach of chip board art boxes for some releases ala Index, Sidonia, & Chunibyo or go back to the crappy cardboard 'deluxe' boxes of FMA & Titan...

Also, purely my opinion but it seems kinda silly from a business standpoint for Animatsu to build a good reputation for themselves over the last 12 months or so without any real release problems to then just throw it away and become the company that might have been great in the past but is now the industry standard for f'ing over fans and botched releases.
Manga had its day but now it'd make more sense to just rebrand Manga as Animatsu and try to work to build upon that reputation than become Manga outright and have to build up that reputation as that's gonna be a bigger challenge.

edit: sorry, I didn't mean to rant :p lol

and to think, they've only just released their first big wave of titles - I think since Animatsu has only been gaining traction for the last twelve months, I don't think it's too late to go back to Manga entertainment just yet. it's not like Animatsu built a big bridge between themselves and Manga anyways. I guess all they have to do really is hope that fans can trust Manga to bring out decent releases.
 
Jerome is having a discussion on Twitter about Sentai's Beyond the Boundary Collector's Edition and whether or not fans in the UK would want something similar.

I'm curious! Do you like Sentai's collector's edition sets? This is the one for #BEYONDTHEBOUNDARY

Does the Amaray sized box bother you? And would you pay £99.99-£104.99 for it?

So! In short. I am interested to know who would happily buy CEs from Manga/Animatsu in DVD sized boxes like Sentai?

Our CEs would utilise US DVD sized rigid outer box, book, cards, poster, stickers etc, but not additional goodies like key-chains and specs

Our price would reflect what bonus items are included outside of discs and standard BD or DVD case inside. So! Would be lower SRP than US.

But! It might mean our UK CE is out 2-3 months after US. Send me your feedback.

In response to some of the folks he also mentioned these:
We will have a 3-disc NTSC DVD edition at £29.99 SRP and 2-disc BD edition at £39.99 SRP. Real price to customer will be lower.

We are releasing BB on DVD and Blu-ray on December 14th. But no collector's edition is planned.

There will be more of these collector's edition sets in the US and importing them into the UK for general sale is difficult.

But would you be happy if it is packaged in a DVD sized box? Because we have the option in future of buying books, boxes etc from Sentai for use in the UK edition. I am worried UK collector's will reject Amaray/DVD sized box sets for Blu-ray editions.

No chance of standard blu-ray amaray release alongside US-style boxes with DVD amarays?
Of course there is. However! On some releases the Premium CE Blu-ray set will come out first before a value edition. And this CE program would only be on select releases. By my count, probably less than 10-14 next year. Still struggling with high cost of packaging for small order and harmonising this with a fair price to consumer. I like the All the Anime model and pricing structure. Not sure if they get economy of scale with France edition?

*My reply about the idea of releasing BTB's CE over here and putting the BBFC logos on a wrap-around instead of on the box*
I'd do that. Apparently our replicator couldn't do a wrap for Index and Railgun. Sounds dumb to me. I should add. That we do have the opportunity to do our own thing - BR size box, bonus paper parts etc. Corrected. Wraps are fine. We can do that. Correction. We are releasing BTB as value edition release, but plotting 2016 CEs for the BIG licenses we have.

*Questions about OSTs*
I am enquiring about cost of CD soundtracks. Ultimately you are charged for all the extras as we factor it into the end SRP.

Overall:
If you guys have been reading all the responses to my question you can see that there is no real consensus. We r kind of f***ed because of the size of our market (Only UK and Ireland). Where US might sell 1,000 or even 5,000 CEs. We will do 10-20% of that. Which means a much higher cost per unit in special packaging. Arrrrgh! We will figure it out. THANKS.

Given the way Sentai have been treating their Collector's Editions, as long as Animatsu can keep the important stuff (On-Disc content including the exclusive CE ones like OVAs, and the better physical goods like Artbook and OSTs) then I'm happy to go for the UK version. The pricing on Beyond the Boundary is pretty ridiculous because a lot of the physical stuff is just weak - the only worthwhile pieces are the artbook and OVA.
 
Come on, if NISA and MVM can sort out an Eccentric Family Collector's Edition for £50 RRP, and the 2-cour A Lull in the Sea Collector's Edition for £120 RRP, then no way should a single-cour show like Beyond the Boundary be asking over a hundred for its RRP. And if they're seeking to emulate All the Anime, their Tokyo Ghoul is RRP ing at £60
 
Just Passing Through said:
Come on, if NISA and MVM can sort out an Eccentric Family Collector's Edition for £50 RRP, and the 2-cour A Lull in the Sea Collector's Edition for £120 RRP, then no way should a single-cour show like Beyond the Boundary be asking over a hundred for its RRP. And if they're seeking to emulate All the Anime, their Tokyo Ghoul is RRP ing at £60

Well the US CE is about $179.98, around £118.36.

Jerome mentions the removal of some physical things like Key-chains then it should bring the price down by about £10-20. About £99.99 SRP sounds about right by me (that way people can end up paying about £69.99 or £79.99 when the discounts come in).
 
Why is the DVD-sized box such a big issue? I don't see why it matters at this point; anyone who has been collecting anime for a while will have a messy collection full of all kinds of oddly-shaped boxes by now. I'd say it's less of an issue than printing BBFC logos on the box, personally. In fact I'd prefer they did a DVD-sized box if it means they can use the US artwork without tampering with it at all.

I'm not sure that stripping down the Sentai releases will ever be a path to great success, though. It puts the UK CE in that weird zone between being cheap (the regular edition) and being complete (the US CE). Then with a several month delay added into the mix, it's a sort-of-expensive, slower, less deluxe version; I can't help but feel most of the hardcore collectors are still going to buy from the US and they'll only shift a small number of copies of the UK CE unless they find a way to differentiate it beyond a small saving, because once you're already paying around £100 for something paying a little bit more seems like less of a big deal than when you're comparing smaller figures.

I'm not ever going to buy this as I didn't like the show, but I have a general interest in UK CEs and Jerome's complete turnaround from making fun of premium editions and those who buy them a while back is interesting to watch.

(I was confused at first because I thought BD cases could also be amarays which makes the question make no sense.)

R
 
While we're on the subject of BTB have Animatsu said if their version will have the US CE only OVA? I've missed it if they have :p
 
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