Defective or Disappointing UK Anime Discs

You guys can argue against it being included if you want, but I think its hard to argue something missing extras from the US release, whatever those extras are, isn't objectively "disappointing".

IncendiaryLemon said:
I think there's a distinction between trying to mislead people and accidentally misleading people. I don't think AL were trying to go our of their way to con people.
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Given people accused Manga of deliberately misleading people by accidentally listing a chipboard box for Death Note, instead of a cardboard one. And given AL delayed the release specifically to sort out the extras, AL's mistake seems a lot more malicious...

Obviously I'm being facetious and I don't really think either was malicious, it just annoys me how obvious people's double standards are.
 
I already added it when I swung by earlier, why are we still arguing? D:

A missing extra, however unimportant, is still relevant to the thread. Someone out there might really care about that textless closing and make their purchasing decision on that basis.

I'm in two minds about the Death Note one; on one hand it's a big disappointment to buyers, but on the other they change their packaging for reprints so often that it's quite hard to know what you're getting with Manga UK releases anyway, packaging-wise. I'd have to add quite a lot of things.

R
 
Buzz201 said:
You guys can argue against it being included if you want, but I think its hard to argue something missing extras from the US release, whatever those extras are, isn't objectively "disappointing".


Given people accused Manga of deliberately misleading people by accidentally listing a chipboard box for Death Note, instead of a cardboard one. And given AL delayed the release specifically to sort out the extras, AL's mistake seems a lot more malicious...

Obviously I'm being facetious and I don't really think either was malicious, it just annoys me how obvious people's double standards are.
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I get that - quick note to say that we did always say that two small extras would be lost due to being on DVD only for bizarre reasons but the delay was to get that extra DVD full of extras onto the release. We never pretended we'd get everything there or to my knowledge willingly mislead anyway - I'm certain I said online about it too, but too busy to trawl and check :).

Re the other mistake for Manga - these things happen sometimes, I don't think it was a deliberate mislead either. They'll be just as frustrated as you guys about it happening too as nobody wants to mis-sell a product as it's a headache in itself!
 
Rui said:
I'm in two minds about the Death Note one; on one hand it's a big disappointment to buyers, but on the other they change their packaging for reprints so often that it's quite hard to know what you're getting with Manga UK releases anyway, packaging-wise. I'd have to add quite a lot of things.

R
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I haven't used or watched my discs yet, but Death Note is, I believe, missing all of the extras except the Relight OVAs. So should be included on the list, even if packaging isn't mentioned.
 
Buzz201 said:
Obviously I'm being facetious and I don't really think either was malicious, it just annoys me how obvious people's double standards are.
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I don't think for a second, personally, that Manga's mistake was deliberate either. However, I do think that there's a pretty big gulf in difference between the errors. AL's mistake was printed on the box. Assuming the mistake was only noticed after the packaging had gone to print, it would have cost AL a good chunk of change in order to fix the error, not to mention another delay, which no one wants. Manga, on the other hand, mislead via a listing. Something that could have been changed at anytime, at no cost to them at all.
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
I don't think for a second, personally, that Manga's mistake was deliberate either. However, I do think that there's a pretty big gulf in difference between the errors. AL's mistake was printed on the box. Assuming the mistake was only noticed after the packaging had gone to print, it would have cost AL a good chunk of change in order to fix the error, not to mention another delay, which no one wants. Manga, on the other hand, mislead via a listing. Something that could have been changed at anytime, at no cost to them at all.
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You're assuming they knew about the mistake and left it. I bet they didn't even realise until they were accused of deliberately misleading people.

Why would they go back and check the listing? There would be no reason to, especially if you'd modified the listing of another product to make sure it wasn't messed up...

We all seem to be forgetting how easy it is to make an error like that. Same number of letters, starts with c- and ends with -board. Perhaps amongst the easiest copyediting errors to make?
 
Buzz201 said:
You're assuming they knew about the mistake and left it. I bet they didn't even realise until they were accused of deliberately misleading people.

Why would they go back and check the listing? There would be no reason to, especially if you'd modified the listing of another product to make sure it wasn't messed up...

We all seem to be forgetting how easy it is to make an error like that. Same number of letters, starts with c- and ends with -board. Perhaps amongst the easiest copyediting errors to make?
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Well, I was working on the assumption they were going to do a rigid box but then opted not to later on, then just failed to update the page. Also, it never said chipboard, it said 'Rigid Box'. It seems to specific to me to be a mistake. The only other conclusion I can come to is that they think a cardboard box counts as a rigid box. You could also be right though, I guess we'll never know.
 
Buzz201 said:
I haven't used or watched my discs yet, but Death Note is, I believe, missing all of the extras except the Relight OVAs. So should be included on the list, even if packaging isn't mentioned.
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Rui said:
Cheers! That sucks :(

R
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Trying to review the thing now, an yes indeed, it's a home authored jobby for Manga Entertainment. ALL of the extras are gone, not even textless credits. Given what was on the DVDs, commentaries, interviews, featurettes, that is a significant loss. Also, while they got the chapter markings right, the subtitles are their usual standard, with screen text captions inserted into the dialogue stream and subtitles getting confusing, and flashing by too quickly to notice.

Compare and contrast that to AL's Outlaw Star Blu-ray upgrade. The DVD had a couple of minor issues, some barely noticeable audio dropouts in the Japanese track, and the problem showing subtitle and signs captions at the same time. The start of episode 23 actually advised viewers to skip back and switch to the signs only track to read the caption translations after seeing the dialogue translated. The English dub slightly out of sync at the end of episode 1. All of this is fixed on the Blu-ray

Neil.T said:
Cool.

I know this is a bit off-topic, but what do you make of Funimation's packaging for Lucky Star? I think Anime Limited's is sooo much nicer.
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If I wanted packaging I would have gone with Anime Limited's easily. Funimation's is just a standard Blu-ray Amaray fatpack with eight discs, with an o-card repeating the case artwork, although the case itself has a reversible sleeve with an extras listing on the inside option. The cross coloured jaggies on the BD put me off, which is why I needed the DVD version as well.
 
Just Passing Through said:
The cross coloured jaggies on the BD put me off, which is why I needed the DVD version as well.
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Please forgive my lack of knowledge of HD upscaling, but how come Lucky Star on BD looks as it does? I know it's traceable back to the Japanese version, so... did they just go overboard with the outline sharpening or something? Would it have maybe benefitted from actually looking a little softer?

Separately, this is the most unfortunate error on AL's Lucky Star packaging, in my opinion:

On disc extras including: On Screen Text Reference Guide, Key Scenes Gallery, Promo Clips, The Adventures of Minour, Shiraishi, Cast Interviews, Textless Opening, Textless Closing, US Trailer, Trailers.
​
That's copy-and-pasted directly from an AL email newsletter but is the same as the listing on the back of the rigid box. The part I've emphasised in bold is actually supposed to read "The Adventures of Minoru Shiraishi". Whoops.

Not sure how that one crept its way in. I still love AL's set, of course. :)
 
Can anyone else with a copy of Hana & Alice confirm whether there is something off with the Japanese audio? Both 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (I do not have a 5.1 set hooked up mind) seem to suffer from what I've previously seen described as phase reversal (I'm no expert).

Neil.T said:
The Adventures of Minour, Shiraishi
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This goes right back to Funimation's packaging but, as far as I can tell, no-one over there ever noticed.
 
Shiroi Hane said:
Can anyone else with a copy of Hana & Alice confirm whether there is something off with the Japanese audio? Both 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (I do not have a 5.1 set hooked up mind) seem to suffer from what I've previously seen described as phase reversal (I'm no expert).
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Audio phase reversal? I have never heard of that term being used before.

I'll receive my copy on Monday but I don't think I'll be able to test it since the audio goes through my TV so it won't make any difference to me anyway.
 
Shiroi Hane said:
Can anyone else with a copy of Hana & Alice confirm whether there is something off with the Japanese audio? Both 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (I do not have a 5.1 set hooked up mind) seem to suffer from what I've previously seen described as phase reversal (I'm no expert).
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The blu-ray 2.0 sounds fine to me on my 2.1 setup (I've not tried 5.1), but like yourself I'm no audiophile.

A lot of the indoor scenes have a much more indoorsy echo sound to them than most other films if that's what you're picking up on? Fairly sure this is just how it was recorded though.
 
Shiroi Hane said:
I thought I'd checked the packaging online, but obviously not. The error definitely originates from FUNi though:
Shiroi Hane on Twitter
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That's a website error (everyone has just copied one batch of information without checking that it is correct), not a packaging error which is why it wasn't noticed (and you're more likely to get small errors on websites, but they shouldn't roll down to actual releases like what happened here).
 
Shiroi Hane said:
Can anyone else with a copy of Hana & Alice confirm whether there is something off with the Japanese audio? Both 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (I do not have a 5.1 set hooked up mind) seem to suffer from what I've previously seen described as phase reversal (I'm no expert).
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I noticed something unusual, too. Only during the indoor scenes, though, as NoSurprises points out. As the film was recorded live-action, the audio was also presumably recorded on-site, rather than in a booth as we anime fans are used to.

But then I changed the audio to the French dub just to check, and that sounded slightly off, too. That obviously was not recorded on-site, so I'm not sure what to think. I haven't tried the DVD yet.
 
Shiroi Hane said:
Can anyone else with a copy of Hana & Alice confirm whether there is something off with the Japanese audio? Both 2.0 and 5.1 tracks (I do not have a 5.1 set hooked up mind) seem to suffer from what I've previously seen described as phase reversal (I'm no expert).
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It does sound as you say, very much off, and is limited to mainly indoor school scenes from the little I've listened to. Unfortunately this is how the audio was mixed/recorded for the Japanese release and thus isn't technically a defect on ALs part. It can be pretty bad in some scenes though, like the classroom one @~6 minutes in. To me that sounds more like what I'd expect from a questionable quality Youtube video. Don't really know how to explain it either to be honest. Maybe an echo/reverb effect?
 
Mangaranga said:
It can be pretty bad in some scenes though, like the classroom one @~6 minutes in. To me that sounds more like what I'd expect from a questionable quality Youtube video. Don't really know how to explain it either to be honest. Maybe an echo/reverb effect?
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Yes, yes! You've nailed it exactly there. Glad to know it's not a technical fault.

By the way, I took at look at the DVD. The audio is, of course, exactly the same. Has anyone seen the video quality on it, though? :eek:

Edit: Also, I was wondering whether Anime Limited's DVD version of Space Dandy was free from the problem with missing opening/ending subs that the BD has. Can anyone confirm?
 
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