UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Thanks to @anime_andrew for the detailed response on the situation with Your Name's BD release. I had faith that you would address any issues (as with previous releases). I have kept my pre-order for the steelbook and I'll make the call once I get my hands on it regarding a replacement and see whether it's noticeable on my setup or not. I'm glad we have a label with such commitment to fans in the UK as I feel there are a few labels out there who really don't give a crap about quality control or any kind of after sales service. I look forward to getting my steelbook in the post :)
 
Shadow Cat said:
+1 for this question.

While I'm not one to be overly fussy, I do love Shinkai stuff for the visuals, if it saves importing a JP release then All is good :3
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I emailed this afternoon and I have the deluxe edition on order with AL. I received a response from Lauren (who was also really helpful last week when I emailed about another matter) who confirmed I'm on the list to be contacted when the re-authored discs can be exchanged.
 
Morbo said:
I emailed this afternoon and I have the deluxe edition on order with AL. I received a response from Lauren (who was also really helpful last week when I emailed about another matter) who confirmed I'm on the list to be contacted when the re-authored discs can be exchanged.
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Same here, I have the Deluxe Edition on order via AL's store and I'm on the list.
 
I'm sure people on here, or indeed AL themselves, will let us know when discs are being sent out, so holding back for now. My question would be that as I'm buying the Deluxe from Zavvi would it be them I would have to email or AL directly?
 
D1tchd1gger said:
I'm sure people on here, or indeed AL themselves, will let us know when discs are being sent out, so holding back for now. My question would be that as I'm buying the Deluxe from Zavvi would it be them I would have to email or AL directly?
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I have Lso ordered from Zavvi so I'd like to know what the process is.
 
qaiz said:
I forgot to cancel my Your Name steelbook and it dispatched today, huh.
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From Amazon? My Collectors Edition of A Silent Voice dispatched last Thursday from Amazon aiming for Monday (release date) got here Saturday! Next Monday is the release date for Your Name so I guess it's a similar situation.
 
Robbl said:
I don't watch many anime trailers but aren't they showing a little too much here in the Eureka Seven trailer?
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Just got around to watching that trailer. In fact, I have to say, it's really nicely put together. (Esspecially like that pause when Renton does his salto.) Almost made me forget for a minute (75 second to be precise) that I actually loathed the show, lol. (But pieces of portions of dislike emmerged in latter third of the trailer, guess there is no proper hiding of those...)
(What song is that actually? That from the OST? Doesn't sound like Satou Naoki at all and also all that massivle like Nakamura Koji either. )

Incidentially, is there any chance of Eureka Seven AO getting a nice release, too? Like I totally dislike Eureka Seven, but totally like AO. (There I know I am a kind of rare animal.) I've got the Funi LE box, which is already nice, but wouldn't mind getting a bit more artwork in a booklet/book either~
 
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I would always keep my deluxe order, but the replacement is rather annoying to someone that doesn't live in uk. Probably easier (and about as expensive..) to just buy a standard edition 2nd print down the line, good consumer service anyway.

My Silent voice order arrived today. Didn't check it yet (not at home) but someone grabbed it for me, will be a nice rewatch.
 
D1tchd1gger said:
I'm sure people on here, or indeed AL themselves, will let us know when discs are being sent out, so holding back for now. My question would be that as I'm buying the Deluxe from Zavvi would it be them I would have to email or AL directly?
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E-mail us directly at the shop address Mr. Partridge gave out and we'll add your details to the list regardless of the retailer you purchased from.
 
So I totally seem to have butchered my should-have-been-order last month and it didn't went through. (There it goes again with a missed EA. ,_, )
So for planning my next best steps with least painful shipping options, could you perhaps answer me these questions?

How far are the Your Name Deluxe ones sold out? Is it likely to run out before Hyouka p1 gets listed for preorder?

And these exclusive A Silent Voice posters. The illustrations seem to not have been announced yet, but is there a chance to perhaps already say whether or not the illustrations are among the illustrations already included in the collector's edition some way or another, or are something exclusively new?

Thanks in advance~
 
anime_andrew said:
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
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*Reads Andrew's post*

*Stands up*

*Applauds*

AL have nailed it again.
 
They say it's bad practice to badmouth other folks and usually it's also not the point on stressing how much worse others are. But on the hand worth ultimately exists through a big part by constrast and I still feel like leaving this here, because I totally got a renewed appreciation there.
anime_andrew said:
  • 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.
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There already were cheers, but really, I feel a need of another stress of how cool the handing pf Your Lie in April was. (And just how nice the package design is in the first place.) Part 1 was hard to remove. But even with that "damage" it wasn't actually totally impossible to remove, you could still do that with a bit of patient heavy shaking over a pillow and without damaging the whole thing. And they didn't just try to silence it over not found any excuses, but just replaced the whole thing no questions asked.

Care for a total diffrent experience?

I just received the German "High Speed Free Starting Days". It's a digipack in non-rigid sideways slipcover of 9mm thickness. It's having a similiar issue like Your Lie in April p1 as in that the outer box is slightly too small causing the inner digipack part to be very hard to remove. And in this case impossible sounds much more adequate of an description.
I had been warned before by a pal that he had to rip apart the whole thing to get to the disc, which, most importantly, wasn't even his first case, albeit by far the worst. But even when you know it and/or are mega careful anyway and even like cut off all your nails as short as you can, you will scrub off the outer print layer of the cardbox. (Just look at this unboxing video, it's painful just to watch!)
They were always very thin and fragile, very prone to deformation (like this) and bumbs, scratches and pressure marks, but this one sure shoot the bird down.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, as, among other things, peeling off rating logo stickers regularly damages the items and their absolutly obnoxious printed on movie-screening-convention-advertise disguised as a pseudo award winning batch. Just image AL stay calling their screenings on selected cinemas a festival and slamming it as a non removable badge onto all their movie releases.
The movie came out last year, so enough time for any reaction to emmerge. I checked around quickly, but found nothing, so obviously that one movie is not a case for anything remotely like a replacement scheme and from the looks of it, most issues are just totally common pratice and folks got used to it with a sigh. As suprisingly many have language issues including a lack of enough knowledge of English, they don't even stand a chance for alternatives. Many just shut up having in mind that the Anime market was virtually dead here just a couple of years ago and pump in money just "to support the industry".
(Yes I know comparisons across territories even stand less of a chance of being appropriate, but still. I see no legitimate excuse for all of these ergonomic design disasters.)
 
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