Anime Series Packaging

Your Preferred Series Packaging:

  • Full Sized Cases, Boxed

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Thinpack

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Digipack

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Single Plastic Case (M-lock)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
Aion said:
It's the content that matters - everything else is superficial.
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I'd say otherwise. As much as I'll support lower-priced packaging solutions, some physical means by which one stores one's collection is needed. Otherwise one has a product to which it's hard to feel any pride over owning. I'm sure you must feel the same way to some degree.
 
The thing is, in the West at least materialism is becoming very unfair on the consumer. Capitalism has pushed this "It's good to own things, spend money, buy buy buy" philosophy that I don't necessarily disagree with - but the quality of many products seems to be coming down while the prices stay the same or even go up. Even if the price stays the the same, when they're spending less on the manufacture they're still charging the consumer more.

I just want what's fair. While I'd rather have good quality at reasonable prices, lower quality should at least go hand in hand with lower prices.
 
I'm still not seeing how prices are going up. I'm buying more anime than ever before because singles are dying and cheap sets are flourishing. There always has been and always will always be price fluctuations between releases based on numerous factors, such as licence cost and sales potential, hence some of Funimation's sets are more expensive than others. And let's face it, they probably save no more than a few dollars per unit by using thin cases with paper boxes instead of digipaks and by reducing disc counts from 6 or 7 to 4. By how much should they be expected to drop their prices?
 
But if it's only saving them a few dollars why not spend a those few dollars instead and make it more attractive to potential buyers? The order for me with new anime goes like this:

Watch fansub > Wait for official English release > Purchase official release.

If I liked the anime but the official UK or US release is somehow lacking I feel annoyed, as I want to support the creators but I don't want to spend money on a lacklustre product.
 
Because dropping prices is seen as more important. And there's also the shelf space issue I mentioned earlier. Squeezing an entire 26 episode series into a package the size of a single DVD is good for retailers and distributors. Not so good for collectors, but I guess there's not enough of us any more.
 
That kind of cost cutting and price dropping might work until collectors start coming to the conclusions I am now, that rather than bothering with such a naff release you could just keep your fansubs (six discs in a single amaray is really no more attractive to me than a folder on a hard drive) and buy some merchandise in support of the creators (this is where the artbooks come in, Aion) ;)
 
I'll admit, the reason I started buying more R2J stuff and less R1 stuff was partly to do with how consistent packaging and audio/visual quality are with Japanese releases, but then you'd never get 99.9% of people in the West to pay those prices that are required to keep that level of quality up. You have to accept compromise somewhere, the industry has been essentially dying under the old model since it hit its peak a few years ago, if anything a lot of anime companies would rank right up at the top of companies that I think try to do the best by the fans, they just have little choice in most instances.
 
I wouldn't mind buying R2 releases... but America gets them out faster, is cheaper to buy from UP1 (and the likes) than HMV and it is usually them that make the better boxsets compared to R2 releases.

I mean, I'm trying to collect singles of Witchblade... However, I've been able to get 2 packs of TTGL (4 R1 volumes) compared to 2 Witchblade singles (R2). That would be my dilema and situation with "home-grown merchandise."
 
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