Expo Licenses & News

kaze_andrew said:
That'd be because I have 4-5 contracts on my desk that require sign-off from legal before we can talk on them ;). Plus another huge project to talk about soon!

So don't worry - plenty of announcements to go round soon :).

Andrew
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You always have such good things to counter disappointment with, I eagerly await your legal department signing off these new things! :lol:

Thanks as always for being generous enough to address my concerns. :)
 
ayase said:
Thanks for that Rui, always it's interesting to know how other people view things. Though obviously, your lack of a Region B player does make your case a little different. What's the make/model of your BD player which can turn off locked subs!? I'm sure some people would love to get their hands on one of those.
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I'm afraid the cost of entry (both financially and politically) would be a dealbreaker for most, as it's my Mac software player which casually disregards the rules. Handy though.

I think for me the priority is decent extra content first, unmolested audio second, then a good picture, when picking a release. So I'll take a DVD with goodies over a barebones BD, but if all else is equal the BD obviously wins easily. I don't really notice going from DVD to BD and take the sexier picture for granted, but I do notice when I go the other way. We watched Madoka Magica part 2 (BD) followed by Arietty (DVD) with a friend at the weekend and the shortcomings of the latter's encode were very noticeable.

R
 
My initial thoughts on all this news from the expo:

Interesting mix of info. Sengoku Basara 2 in the UK - HELL YEAH! I think this show is a lot of fun, and I'll be supporting Manga's release.

Good to hear about the Beez / Bandai >> Kaze / Manga license rescues.

NOT good to hear about Bandai holding on to the Gundam licenses. I strongly suspect this is the death knell for the franchise in the west. Would love to see more of the shows being licensed outside Japan, but I think that's going to be a very long shot somehow. Nobody seems interested in pushing the brand, and I'd imagine Bandai's asking price is crippling.
 
Thanks JPT =)

edit: oh, you were referring to Black Lagoon... you got me excited there.

ayase said:
Thanks for that Rui, always it's interesting to know how other people view things. Though obviously, your lack of a Region B player does make your case a little different.
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I ocassionally buy DVDs over bluray, generally if it's a film I'm not crazy about or one which I don't feel the improvements of BR is worth the extra cost. Generally TV series I don't buy on blu-ray, as I don't think the heightened definiton really adds much (except in the cases of bigger budget shows, specifically sci-fi and the like). To me, my BR collection represents my "best of the best" films, the have to be among my top films to get in, if that makes sense.
 
Manga announces Towanoquon for November.

know some of u who attended the @MCMExpo Anime biz panel left disappointed. I was so tired by Sunday and ill prepared. Apologies! So, to make it up to you all I have a new announcement for you. We got #Towanoquon and will release entire season on dvd in November.
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First thing I notice is that it's a 2-disc collection of 6 OVA movies running to 300 mins, subbed and dubbed.

The second thing I notice is that Sentai released it on Blu as well as DVD is the US.

The third thing I notice is that someone will point that out on Twitter in a few minutes with a "Wot, no Blu?" tweet, and we'll all have to duck.
 
I'm very tempted to be the guy that tweets "Wot, no blu?" just to see what happens but I don't have any riot shields handy :wink:
 
Loking back at that Strike Witches 2 release date, I'm inclined to take that with a big pinch of salt, not only because of the US reverse import slippage, but I can't find any mention of it being released by Madman. So where will the PAL masters come from?
 
I can be that guy who admits they already bought the US version of Towa No Quon (it's yet to ship - not cancelling it though!).

R
 
Well, MangaUK said they haven't received the Panty & Stocking masters and that's due out the week after their Strike Witches 2 date, so I guess they must have the masters from somewhere then?

Only reason for a delay I can see is could be the Japanese interfering. Question though: Is the NTSC-PAL difference a big deal in Japan? (I know it isn't here, but how about in the US/JPN?) because I keep on hearing about the Japanese importing from America, not so much as from Europe.
 
Joshawott said:
Well, MangaUK said they haven't received the Panty & Stocking masters and that's due out the week after their Strike Witches 2 date, so I guess they must have the masters from somewhere then?

Only reason for a delay I can see is could be the Japanese interfering. Question though: Is the NTSC-PAL difference a big deal in Japan? (I know it isn't here, but how about in the US/JPN?) because I keep on hearing about the Japanese importing from America, not so much as from Europe.
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Well, we're Region B for Blu and Japan are Region A, which is why some shows are coming out on European Blu before US Blu, albeit without English audio and subs.

For DVD we may both be Region 2, but Japan are NTSC and we are PAL, and historically there have been fewer NTSC players capable of playing PAL. The standard requires that all PAL players have to be NTSC compatible though.

Besides, Blu-ray is more important financially than DVD now. But either way reverse importation isn't as important a deal as it for US Japan.

But us being English, we require English assets, which means waiting for the US to create them, and a PAL nation to convert them, Australia or Europe. So the reverse import nonsense affects us indirectly.
 
Japanese and US DVD equipment generally doesn't handle PAL at all, unlike our modern day players over here which can do both. However, they can easily play the discs on their PCs without any modification if they so desire. Historically the UK has always been quite expensive so with that and the PAL issue, getting around region locking to import straight from the US has been easier/better.

I'm not sure why they would generally want to play PAL for anime though, as the original voice actors can be quite a big draw and hearing them and the often high profile music in the show played at too high a pitch is nasty. Perhaps if we tended to get stuff that the US hadn't already made available it would be more of an issue.

For BD PAL/NTSC is theoretically no longer an issue (I say theoretically because there are still some special cases where companies have gone out of their way to be annoying...), so if the Japanese companies block the US from releasing a BD and then catch wind of people in Japan buying region B players, it will be a problem.

Edit: Buu took too long typing that :)

R
 
Ah okay, that makes sense. I was always confused about how we're the same region as Japan but don't get screwed over with releases as much as America has with blu-rays. Would also explain why MangaUK weren't allowed to release NTSC DVDs, despite my old TV-VCR-DVD combi playing NTSC properly.

But then...who is MangaUK getting the PAL masters from?
 
Only thing I can think of is if Madman are releasing Strike Witches 2, and just like the US plan a Blu-release, but have to sit on it for the same reasons. That could mean that they have the PAL assets for the DVDs, but have to wait to release it simultaneously.

The fly in that ointment is that they didn't release a Blu of Season 1.
 
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