UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

I've definitely seen Mai-Hime described as a kind of proto-Madoka in terms of its themes.

In terms of old Beez licenses though - Wolf's Rain and Planetes will always be top of my list for relicense though - hard to know if a Blu-Ray treatment would benefit them much though, given when they're from.
 
I would love a blu ray CE/UE of Planetes...I just love it. I couldn't even finish Wolfs Rain as I found incredibly boring and a real struggle to watch.
 
I'd want a Planetes Blu-ray at least on the basis of having a potentially more durable copy of it, even if it's not a vastly superior version. I also like the idea of more people being able to see the show because it's fairly unique and well made, it's a shame that it's not so easily available these days. Oddly enough, I had a few personal preference issues with Planetes as well and even came close to dropping it for fear it'd make the "wrong" choice (heck of a cliffhanger that one) but ended up really enjoying the show overall and rating it quite highly (even despite still having some issues with the ending).

I haven't gotten around to seeing Wolf's Rain, it seems to be an interesting show even if I've seen some varied reactions to it.
 
Wolf's Rain is basically the show Bones / Yoko Kanno did after the Bebop movie, so it's got real pedigree. If you've seen Ergo Proxy it has a similar feel to that, but with an infinitely better ending (probably one of my favourites to this day, albeit a really heartbreaking one).

Planetes really is so good - it basically 'did' Gravity a whole decade before that film did, its depiction of mankind in space is so believable, and I love how it really nails the themes of mortality and what it means to be human in an age of science and new frontiers.
 
I finally finished wolf's rain recently after starting & stopping it many times over the years. It had some great moments but I feel it would've been better as a 12 episode anime, there's a lot of stagnation in episodes and 4(?) Recap episodes.
Picked up planet's recently thanks to a fellow forumite posting it in the deals thread but have yet to watch it.
 
Yeah, four recap episodes in a row - it's awful. Imagine buying a disc worth of that back in the day of DVD singles... Thankfully that's what the OVA eps that cap off the show and give it the true ending are for - making up for four episodes worth of waste, ha...
 
Lutga said:
Wolf's Rain is basically the show Bones / Yoko Kanno did after the Bebop movie, so it's got real pedigree. If you've seen Ergo Proxy it has a similar feel to that, but with an infinitely better ending (probably one of my favourites to this day, albeit a really heartbreaking one).
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Heh! The ending of Wolf's Rain is jaw-on-the-floor awesome! One of my absolute favourite shows.
 
Lutga said:
I do think this comes back to one of the biggest flaws of the UK market - in that, unlike the US, it is just simply too small to effectively capture *every* show that arguably *should* be released via artistical merit.
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And this is where the BBFC, even in a perfect world, becomes harmful to niche markets that involve long-running series.

The licensing and production fees for a UK release are going to be pretty similar to an American release. But not only are we a much smaller market, with a corresponding reduction in volume-driven profit, but we have a addition fee in the production chain that's not only compulsory but that is also based on overall length.

I did a very rough calculation recently. It certainly shows why it's more or less possible for current ongoing content to be released over here but why classic long-running series are pretty hard to take a risk on releasing. Especially as sometimes customers won't buy into a long series until at least a full arc is out, if not the full series.

It's basically a per-minute video tax that stacks the deck against anything that can't guarantee huge sales figures.

Completely different markets, but it does still shock me to some degree when you compare the 100,000s that go to MCM every year to the couple of thousand that actually purchase anime in the UK today.
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It is one of the few major drawbacks of legal streaming. Not everyone's going to watch everything anyway. But now you add in that not every legal viewer will result in a physical sale.

Exposure to anime through legal means it a whole lot higher than it used to be but it does eat into the Watch Once and Only Rewatch Infrequently markets that the physical release used to be the only official method for. But the licensing, authoring, manufacturing and BBFC fees still have certain minimums that need to be recouped.
 
anime_andrew said:
Not necessarily - print is underway for the UK parts, so if discs are ready on time (which is an if until I check with Keith on Monday) then Zeta will come out sooner in the UK :).
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When the UK discs are ready, it should be signalled with a simple tweet:

"You will see the tears of time."
 
Lutga said:
Yeah, four recap episodes in a row - it's awful. Imagine buying a disc worth of that back in the day of DVD singles... Thankfully that's what the OVA eps that cap off the show and give it the true ending are for - making up for four episodes worth of waste, ha...
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Bandai at least had the decency to issue the recaps on a disc of their own, so collectors could choose not to buy it. Beez on the other hand split the recaps across two discs, so your wallet was buggered.
 
I have mixed feelings about Witch Hunter Robin - some of it (ok, quite a bit of it) is suuuuper dull/slow paced - but there's other parts which are really beautifully depicted/get the tone spot on, and it's very much a dry run for the director's future work in Ergo Proxy.
 
Smeelia said:
I'd want a Planetes Blu-ray at least on the basis of having a potentially more durable copy of it, even if it's not a vastly superior version.
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You've obviously not seen it have you? The Blu Ray for Planetes is beautiful as the show was made in HD despite when it came out. The Japan BD is fantastic.

I adored this series when I watched it and would love to see the Blu Ray come out in English sometime, it's been high on my wishlist for awhile.
 
Blaize said:
You've obviously not seen it have you? The Blu Ray for Planetes is beautiful as the show was made in HD despite when it came out. The Japan BD is fantastic.

I adored this series when I watched it and would love to see the Blu Ray come out in English sometime, it's been high on my wishlist for awhile.
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Indeed it looks nice. hissatsu's comparisons from years ago embedded below.
hissatsu said:
One of the problems caused by having an invincible backlog that can at best be kept in check, is that it can sometimes take a long time to get more than than a cursory look at new purchases. I figure if no anime was released for a year, I might catch up. Maybe.

And so, on to the Planetes JP BD box released close to a year ago. Another episode in "Stuff that will never, ever come out on BD in the US." The video quality is nice, very nice. Much better than the DVDs. I've included some comparison shots below. I'm not so hot on the new 5.1 sound mix. It's not just new mix, it's often an entirely different soundtrack. It varies from episode to episode: some are mostly unchanged, while in other episodes (5 & 6 comes to mind), most of the music is different (and not just a little different). This can be very distracting if you've seen the show before. There's a difference in the OP as well. One line is changed to one from another part of the full version of the OP. 願を 放つ時は今/Negai wo hanatsu toki wa ima in the original -> 大地をいま鳥翼けって/Daichi wo ima tori yoku kette in the 5.1 mix. Weird.

But the sound is a non-issue, since both the original (LPCM) and new 5.1 mix (TrueHD) are on the discs. Audio dramas and commentary tracks from the DVDs are present. No English of any kind, though I'm watching with subs I ripped from my US DVDs.

01 R1DVD | BD
02 R1DVD | BD
03 R1DVD | BD
04 R1DVD | BD
05 R1DVD | BD
06 R1DVD | BD
07 R1DVD | BD
08 R1DVD | BD
09 R1DVD | BD
10 R1DVD | BD
11 R1DVD | BD
12 R1DVD | BD
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Anime/Manga - View Single Post - [JP] Planetes Blu-ray Box
(Please let me know if any caps don't work because I got the link wrong. I tried to save time when I first embedded this for Blu-ray.com from the Internet Archive. I already had such a thing happen when I embedded Mononoke.)
 
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