Any release for us is special as it’s for you the fans - without you most titles would travel nowhere. Your Name is important for the community as it’s helped convince UK cinemas to start taking the medium seriously and give you good people the chance to see these films where they belong.
With all the effort that’s gone into the release so far it’s vital for us that the home entertainment is also a success, commercially and critically for the anime community. Without the commercial side we can’t exist and to that end deadlines have to be met but we have thrown every available hour to try and make this as perfect as we can.
Sales wise you're looking at a mass market title here, which means once the date was set - we had to make it no matter what. When the master came in, we had to hit print that day or miss all the supermarket orders (which were big) and lose a huge amount of money (tens of thousands at a minimum).
Now it is not unreasonable for us when we receive a master from a company like Madman (or Funimation) to do basic spot checks, verify the region code is OK and expect that a full QC has been done prior to upload. Any other company we receive masters from do go through a full QC ourselves even on tight turnaround but in this case we put a hell of a lot of work into the book translation & editing which ate up QC time and we expected the same in return on the discs.
I note several people seemingly expect us to fully QC the discs again - but I'd stress that very often other companies don't even spot check the discs to ensure they run. There's a reason several releases from other companies have been recalled because nobody has checked the discs are the right region for example. The point is no matter how much you QC someone else's disc (or your own) stuff can slip through and in this case our QC team was focussed on the part of the release we were delivering.
I sincerely regret that you’ve cancelled your order - we said as soon as we were back we would look at the discs and we have and I'm about to post something longer about it - the conclusion being that the audio is not defective but that the video is not up to ours and committed anime fans standards, as I explain below, I will informally be offering fans the chance to replace for the next pressing. So in short for now you can enjoy a disc that the mass market would think is fine - as would most distributors - knowing that you can return it once we do our next pressing for something even better - we cannot do any more than that.
You have to understand that on such a wide-spread title unless the disc is literally frying your BD player ala
When Marnie Was There that no company can do free replacements for everyone because while not up to the AL standard ala
A Silent Voice, it also isn't faulty. Every time we have done a replacement scheme it has been because of an actual defect that has hindered enjoyment of a show and been outwith standard viewing aka:
- Cowboy Bebop (2013, replaced 2014) - Visual glitches due to capture errors on Part 1. This impaired the experience to watch and was not in the original master and while small errors, we replaced them as respect for those who supported us on our first release ever and set a good pattern in my opinion for which frankly I have only ever received grief for (this latest burst says it all).
- Durarara!!! (2014, replaced 2015) - Discs were botched in multiple ways by Siren at the time, we re-authored and replaced off our own back. Probably our most expensive replacement scheme by the by too.
- Gurren Lagann digipacks (2014) - This was an issue completely outside our hands which was frustrating after the delays in approval. This resulted in an entire printer being blacklisted by our production company actually. Probably the one we feel worst about still as it was never really resolved in terms of a fix except for a chunky voucher for the store.
- Kill la Kill Part 1 (2014, replaced 2014) - Small audio desynchronisation issue found at MCM Comic Con time. We replaced this within the same year again for anyone impacted.
- Kill la Kill Part 3 (2015, replaced 2015) - Box issue with tightness found at MCM Comic Con. We replaced this within the same year for anyone impacted).
- Escaflowne (2016, replaced 2016) - Issue on an episode not being rendered properly for BD that manifested only on the final BD so we replaced that to ensure nobody's experience was ruined.
- Your Lie in April Part 1 (2016, replaced 2017) - Issue on soft touch cover and soft touch inner making the box impossible to remove, revealing something nobody knew about printing (inc the printers!) Was replaced as soon as we knew the fix!
Most of these errors would be ignored by most distributors until general fan outrage got too much but in basically every case we've gone and pushed for it from Day 1 of a problem. Frankly speaking that's probably our biggest corporate ‘commercial hat on’ failing too but personally it's something I am proud of. Actually in terms of mistakes, I'm pretty confident we have no more than our largest competitors in the UK - the only difference is we talk about them, own them, build on them and try to do right by you. For that - we generally get what you witnessed this time.
You don't see the general public bemoan Studiocanal for example when they release a Ghibli BD with less than 100% perfect quality for example. I remain proud of our supporting the fans with the best possible product even when problems crop up. It's an occupational hazard for us as we output the largest volume of collector's products in the UK for anime and will keep doing so - with your support.
As a result what I will do for fans is if they watch the Blu-Ray and are not satisfied is they can email us at
shop.uk@alltheanime.com with a subject line of YOUR NAME - BLU-RAY and write us a (polite and short) email saying what your issue with the Blu-Ray is then we'll replace it with a disc using a fresh master when we get it in as we're going to make sure the video is improved for the second print run. You'll need to post us the disc back at your own cost and we'll replace it then at our own cost inc return shipping
.
It won't be a formal replacement scheme because simply put the discs do pass muster in general much like the Ghibli ones authored previously - but for us that's not good enough and anyone who feels aggrieved we'll do what we can for
. This release is special to me, I want it to be for you too, and especially for any videophile (like myself) who feels it isn't what they expected, let us see what we can do to warm your heart to it
.
Best,
Andrew
