I don't have issues with their prices for the products they're selling, most of the time. I just wish that not every produce was released as a high price CE to begin with- some shows don't need it. Depending on whether standard editions show up for Danmachi, and My Love Story, Manga may have just fallen foul of that as well.
This is actually a topic which interests me. Andrew has explicitly told us why TiR got a fancy edition (he liked it and personally thought it was worth doing even if it didn't sell like crazy). He's openly a pretty massive anime fan so his choices of licenses and decisions about how to release them are heavily influenced by his own enthusiasm for any given project. Whether that makes commercial sense or not is his problem to deal with, but the way it ends up working has, so far, been quite successful in my eyes - we've had special editions for shows which the US hasn't even seen fit to release in any form at all, and Andrew's taste has
a lot of overlap with my own. That's probably why I seem to be such an AL fanboy (*eyeroll*) - I genuinely like what they're doing and they pick titles which catch my eye.
Manga do things very differently - I'm not saying their way is wrong but it's definitely driven by commercial concerns rather than Andrew's personal whims. The shows which get CEs aren't picked because they especially deserve CEs or because there's a known market for them (I actually liked Parasyte, but even I have no idea who the UK CE was aimed at). They're simply picked out because it's
easy to make a CE, whether it's by teaming up with a US company who already did one or by capitalising on some decent terms negotiated directly with Japan. Jerome has been very vocal about how challenging it is to do CEs and I have sympathy for that; nobody can argue against the fact that it's a lot more effort to cater to the 'higher end' market with the higher production costs and expectations that involves. But Jerome has also gone on the record to admit that he sometimes doesn't even know what the target audience is for certain shows he's licensed at all; it's like they're randomly licensing stuff based on its availability (hence the moans about other companies making strategic alliances which lock other shows away), cost (to them) and perceived popularity (Akame Ga Kill was certainly hyped during its original airing period). Then when it comes to the time to release the content, they're working in the dark almost every time.
Not listening to feedback about bad LEs (Attack On Titan) or problems which crop up repeatedly (chapters/subtitles on local discs) is bad enough, but to me none of the shows released in this 'conveyor belt' style really feel special, either. I was once at MCM Expo and a title I really, really wanted had just come out, so I swung by the Manga UK stand to check it out. It was just shoved at the back of their stand without a single mention anywhere unless you already knew it was a new release. They hadn't even realised the UK version was missing some of the original video extras; they weren't deliberately removed, they were simply never acknowledged or included. And nobody cared. It felt like they were a subsidiary of the US distributor rather than a huge local distributor with their own expertise. I went home and imported it because I didn't want to support one of my favourite shows getting such a soulless, flawed release. Every show is someone's favourite. Every show is worked on by hundreds of individuals whose efforts deserve respect.
Even if Manga wasn't locked away from, say, Free! and gave that a UK release based on its popularity and heritage, would it sell as well from them? Would they pitch it right? Would we get a Rin Bearbrick in the CE? I think there's a
lot to be said for taking the time to deeply understand every individual show and its strengths and weaknesses and planning each release as its own project, even if that approach is less efficient. Some kinds of fans want CDs, some want posters, some want huggable pillowcases. For some shows, most of its fans just want a disc and an Amaray case.
At the end of the day I know I'm being unrealistic and Manga UK will never work in the way the boutique distributors like AL, Nozomi or NISA do. But I do feel that a bit more personal involvement in the titles they have on their books would go a long way.
Sorry for rambling.
R
