UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

I am about ready to give up on this company. I contacted them on May 22nd to say that my Blu-ray from my Blue Giant Collectors Edition was skipping during playback. It took them 8 days to reply to me, they wanted me to send the entire collectors edition with all its contents back to them at my own cost upfront so they could investigate.

I replied instantly telling them that I thought this was unreasonable it was only the disc that was the problem and could they just send a replacement disc. It took them another 5 days to reply saying they would just send a replacement disc out to me and I should receive it soon. This was back on June 3rd and it still hasn't arrived. I contacted them again almost a week ago to ask if the replacement had been dispatched but they have not replied.

Are they a very small company that don't have many staff? They don't appear to be but I am probably wrong. This is the only reason I can think of for these terrible response times. MVM are amazing with things like this, I remember having one of their releases that had the subtitles missing on one episode, I received a replacement within a couple of days of contacting them. I will be giving MVM much more of my business now even when they are more expensive.

Sorry for the rant, I am just irritated that I paid a good amount of money for something and the company I bought it from don't seem to be taking my problem seriously :(
Yeah, sadly their customer service has been... well, it has been sh*t in recent years. For example in 2023 I contacted AL's customer service about my order arriving in damaged condition and they asked me to return it to them saying that once it has been shipped back to them they would send me a replacement. I emailed them the receipt and the tracking code immediately after I took the package to my local post office and they never replied back to me. I waited and when tracking showed that they had received it I sent them a new email saying that according to the tracking they have received the order and I asked if they could confirm that they indeed have received it and if they could now sent me the replacement. A week went by and again they never replied back to me. One day I just suddenly got a notification from my local post office that a package is arriving and I should pay the taxes for it. It turned out AL had indeed sent me a replacement but they just never bothered to let me know about it nor reply to my emails.
 
Are they are small company? Well not so much, they were small when they were independant, and since they got bought out, the customer service is just terrible, which again was never the case when independant, circle of life, great when independant and then shockingly bad when someone else buys out
It sounds like what happened with Arrow Video when they were bought out by the hut group which also owned Zavvi. Zavvi have always been shocking since they became purely online but Arrow used to be pretty good until they were absorbed (Merged doesn't sound right as it suggests it was more successful). Now they're ridiculously bad according to reports from people who order direct from them. I haven't ordered from AL in a few years now. I think the last thing I bought from them was Mobile Fighter G-Gundam so maybe I haven't ordered since the "ruination era". There are 2 soundtracks I want that I've been meaning to get round to for a while but not much else.

I'd be happy to spend more with them despite questionable service if they'd release older stuff. I still watch newer titles but I'm much more passionate about the classics.
 
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I got The Colors Within German Collector's Edition in the mail today, which uses the discs of the yet to be announced UK release.

Screenshot comparison with Japanese release
Waveform comparison of the Japanese audio track (from top to bottom: left, right, center, LFE, surround-left&right)

Unfortunately the Japanese audio track suffers from strong dynamic range compression. I can't check the US BD, but it too is not free of audio problems, but not as bad as the Plaion disc.

They also seem to use the same video master as the US BD with baked-in lowpass filtered chroma that causes the colors to be slightly muted and blurry compared to the Japanese release.
The English, German and Italian dubs are also affected by dynamic range compression https://slow.pics/c/K3VEF0wE
 
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I'm willing to volunteer to reply to all of AL's outstanding query emails, with the following conditions:

1) all of Inuyasha must be released before the end of 2025

B) I will require one (1) copy of each release

3) bring some more Gundam out too

4) licence Video Girl Ai

I think this is reasonable!
(Nods violently) More than reasonable. I fully endorse awadama as a candidate for the role.
 
I asked this a few days ago on the Received (Photos Edition) thread, but no-one answered, so I'll ask on here. Regarding Project A-ko, did Anime Limited use the Discotek masters for their release?
 
I asked this a few days ago on the Received (Photos Edition) thread, but no-one answered, so I'll ask on here. Regarding Project A-ko, did Anime Limited use the Discotek masters for their release?
They couldn't have used anything else; that's the only HD master that exists. The only other option would be an upscale of the DVD (which just reused the laserdisc master); obviously way too poor a source to be usable. That's just not going to happen, so it's definitely the same master as Discotek.

Now the encode may or may not be the same; I assume it's the same (why redo the work?), but it's not a certainty, I suppose.
 
You are talking past each others. There's a single (raw) HD scan, yes. But each publisher may conform it differently. He obviously meant the Discotek encode/conformed master. If Discotek it's a mixed bag, they did a great clean-up of the film but they failed to tonemap the master to SDR inducing banding. Not nice for an analog production.
 
You are talking past each others. There's a single (raw) HD scan, yes. But each publisher may conform it differently. He obviously meant the Discotek encode/conformed master. If Discotek it's a mixed bag, they did a great clean-up of the film but they failed to tonemap the master to SDR inducing banding. Not nice for an analog production.
Yes, admittedly, I could've phrased that better. The main reason I asked this is because sometimes, we get releases that are authored/encoded by VDMS or C'Mon Screen (in the case of a joint release with their French branch), even if a US release exists.
 
ATA French side announcements.... most of these confirmed already for the UK except Her Blue Sky
(lucky bastards, I am so very jealous. Loved it at SLA 2022)

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If the Devilman: Crybaby set is the same as what we're going to get then I'm a bit disappointed it's going to be an awkward size similar to that of Blue Giant (but at least with that set it fit the theme). It could just be how the image looks to me and it's actually a standard size but going off of that it looks larger so if so I'll just be going for the standard edition.

Hopefully I'm wrong and / or we are getting a regular sized CE.

I'm still yet to watch Her Blue Sky but I really hope we see that as well as it looks to be a good movie.

Hoping we hear more news on Cyberpunk: Edgrunners, Blood+ and Diebuster soon as well, looking forward to those sets (even if I'm yet to watch them still 😅).

EDIT: It'll also be nice if we get the steelbook for The Place Promised in Our Early Days as it's the only Shinkai movie which doesn't have one over here and would be nice to complete the collection.
 
AL is bringing Macross Frontier and Macross Delta on home video.

Is AL moving on from Gundam to Macross now that licening Gundam is... well, complicated? Don't me wrong, I like Macross Frontier but it is odd how there has been no new Gundam licenses or announcements for a while now. Also can we get Symphogear next? 🙏
 

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