UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Lutga said:
Yup - I just wanted to agree with the above re. positive attitude, but keeping quiet. Personally I loved the product, and it continues to bowl me over in terms of the level you guys go to address even small issues. Above and beyond.

I kind of feel like I'm increasingly in the minority of non-perfectionist fans who still buy physical product. If there's a small error or something - sure, it sucks, but to me the show itself is always the most important thing, and small errors usually won't dent my enjoyment of that. Recently so much of conversation seems to be dominated by 'oh, that's missing / x thing on the cover isn't right / oh the spine is wrong / oh the subs are the wrong colour, font, size etc' - I feel like I'm in some completely different world where to be honest, once I've watched a show, I don't usually think about the case ever again unless I watch the show again a year down the line. It just feels a little alienating at times.
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I totally get where you're coming from, I'm of the same opinion where small things don't really bug me. However, on the other hand, AL sets are rather expensive, UEs especially, and the higher the price tag on something, the more people expect out of it, and as such are less likely to be accepting of faults, however minor they may be.
 
Lutga said:
Yup - I just wanted to agree with the above re. positive attitude, but keeping quiet. Personally I loved the product, and it continues to bowl me over in terms of the level you guys go to address even small issues. Above and beyond.

I kind of feel like I'm increasingly in the minority of non-perfectionist fans who still buy physical product. If there's a small error or something - sure, it sucks, but to me the show itself is always the most important thing, and small errors usually won't dent my enjoyment of that. Recently so much of conversation seems to be dominated by 'oh, that's missing / x thing on the cover isn't right / oh the spine is wrong / oh the subs are the wrong colour, font, size etc' - I feel like I'm in some completely different world where to be honest, once I've watched a show, I don't usually think about the case ever again unless I watch the show again a year down the line. It just feels a little alienating at times.
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Complaints about subtitles being the wrong font/colour/size might seem trivial, but it can make all the difference. There are Funimation releases where I have had to squint at the screen in order to ensure I can read them properly. That is simply not good enough, and should a similar problem arise with a release I would be aghast to see it dismissed as them simply being a "negative nancy", when it can actually be a serious accessibility issue.

For what it's worth, anime releases are so comparatively expensive and the fanbase is so passionate that any mistakes can seem like a bigger deal than it is in reality. For the amount Collector's Editions cost, I think everyone wants the best within reason that money can buy.

The difference, I suppose, is how you choose to define "within reason". I might not care about AL's spines, but lots of people display their collections, and I can appreciate that the lack of consistency would be jarring to them.
 
All fair points - and obviously people have different priorities when it comes to their collections / purchases. Back in the day I was definitely a lot more perfectionist when it came to my collection - both in terms of quantity and quality, but as time went on, my attitude changed.

But I guess what I'm getting at is that negative attitude you mentioned - obviously all this is on a sliding scale of what could call 'legitimate' concerns, but to me, when I see negative comments about things like subtitles / packaging etc, it seems like people are buying products, only to spend more time criticising them online / thinking negatively about them then actually watching them or getting positive enjoyment out of them. It's almost like this kind of self-flagellation in search of impossible degrees of perfection, when in reality, we live in a deeply imperfect world - and I guess my mindset just sides more on 'focus on the positives' than exerting myself over the negatives.

Going off topic, but it's like that thing of people who complain in restaurants vs. those that don't - that notion of negativity as something you identifiably exert yourself to do, instead of just shrugging it off with a 'hey, this kinda sucked', moving on and forgetting about it because the restaurant you visited next week was great.
 
Lutga said:
Going off topic, but it's like that thing of people who complain in restaurants vs. those that don't - that notion of negativity as something you identifiably exert yourself to do, instead of just shrugging it off with a 'hey, this kinda sucked', moving on and forgetting about it because the restaurant you visited next week was great.
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I find this topic quite interesting really but I suppose I don't want to ramble too much unless there's a dedicated thread (just a warning, if anyone was thinking of making one). I think the reality is that there's value in complaining, so not all complaining is truly "negative". If people hadn't commented on the subtitle problems with Escaflowne, then the people at Anime Limited wouldn't necessarily be aware there was a problem. That'd be especially true where there are non-universal issues, though I suppose the situation where the initial checking discs didn't have the issue while the final release did is kind of similar anyway.

Even if a problem can't be resolved, feedback can be helpful for future reference. Where it comes down to a matter of taste/preference, it can be useful to have feedback that covers the different opinions (and maybe gives an idea of which tend to be the most common).

I may sometimes take things more positively than they may be intended but I wouldn't really see a complaint as negative unless it seems deliberately aimed to highlight failures without any real concern for the actual result. People tend to be more likely to complain about issues with something because it's something they care about, so I tend to assume there's an almost inherent positivity there even if it isn't always easy to see through the frustration. At the very least, I'm hesitant to assume any malice unless there's very clear evidence to suggest it.

There's certainly room for people to be careful with the language they're using, where they may be implying stronger dissatisfaction than they really feel or where they may be using especially strong language out of frustration. Still, I do also think that there's similar room for those interpreting complaints to consider that they may be reading more negativity into comments than was intended.

I suppose I kind of ended up rambling anyway, oh well.
 
The swiftness of a replacement program being put into place doesn't really do much to ease my concerns when buying a product, the issues simply shouldn't be there in the first place. As such I don't really indulge in pre-orders these days, not that there's anything I'd really want to pre-order as of late anyways.
 
Just got a mail from Jeremy saying the FMA UE will be dispatched next Monday via TNT Residential Service, with a scheduled delivery date for Tuesday. I'm not counting on that, because I live outside the UK, but it's nice to know it'll be here next week :)
 
Y2Johnny said:
Just got a mail from Jeremy saying the FMA UE will be dispatched next Monday via TNT Residential Service, with a scheduled delivery date for Tuesday. I'm not counting on that, because I live outside the UK, but it's nice to know it'll be here next week :)
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Same. Not expecting it Tuesday as the last time AL shipped something to me via TNT they couldn't find my house, which shows up on any cursory google maps search.

Yeah, Jeremy is out of office until later in the month.
 
Glad to see Escaflowne getting a fix asap and I commend you for the swiftness of it all, but I'll be holding off on it for now as there's no point in buying it if I'm not gonna watch it til it's fixed.
 
When's Belladonna coming out? Originally it was slated for a November 28th release as a limited collector’s edition Blu-ray. I don't mind waiting, but I'd love to see what comes of it.
 
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