Oldmario
Thousand Master
at that price you might be better off just buying Avatar on Amazon UK, it's still £21.39
UK Anime Blu-ray & DVD Bargains
- Thread starter Capuchin
- Start date
at that price you might be better off just buying Avatar on Amazon UK, it's still £21.39
Lambadelta
Mad Scientist
wow that is tempting.
fathomlessblue
Student Council President
In one small piece of good news, my Black Friday package from Sentai finally arrived after an entire month. Seriously, I looked at my confirmation & realised I placed the order on November 16th. It took 11 days for Sentai to ship it and then an entire week stuck in customs, with the rest spent in transit.
Tutu, Cobra, Glass Mask & Casshan are blind buys for me, but if even if they aren't to my tastes the price was worth the gamble. Also Tamako Market is a show I have incredibly mixed feeling towards, but really enjoyed the movie so sprung for both sets. I picked up Dragon Dentist because I got tired of waiting to see if it would claw out of whatever licensing black hole it's currently trapped in (same with Big O, which I have to believe will see a UK release eventually). I also finally caved on Penguindrum, despite knowing the encode and Steven Foster dub/titles are pretty embarrassing, while the Mourestsu Pirates movie's there to serve as a companion piece to the MVM tv release I bought a few months back.
In any case, I'm just happy it managed to arrive before Christmas, & didn't get stuck in festive backlog hell.
Tutu, Cobra, Glass Mask & Casshan are blind buys for me, but if even if they aren't to my tastes the price was worth the gamble. Also Tamako Market is a show I have incredibly mixed feeling towards, but really enjoyed the movie so sprung for both sets. I picked up Dragon Dentist because I got tired of waiting to see if it would claw out of whatever licensing black hole it's currently trapped in (same with Big O, which I have to believe will see a UK release eventually). I also finally caved on Penguindrum, despite knowing the encode and Steven Foster dub/titles are pretty embarrassing, while the Mourestsu Pirates movie's there to serve as a companion piece to the MVM tv release I bought a few months back.
In any case, I'm just happy it managed to arrive before Christmas, & didn't get stuck in festive backlog hell.
TiagoCosta
Thousand Master
Did you order directly from sentai?
Thought it wasn't possible.
(Oregairu is great)
thedoctor2016
Mushi-shi
Using forwarders is an option
Luna
Death Scythe
It isn't. You need a proxy for a US address.
The Sentai encode and the dub bad? I also have those BDs, through I never actually watched them yet, lol. (As I also got the Japanese singles, it being one of my favorite shows.) Is the encode of the Australian any better? What's so bad about the dub?
fathomlessblue
Student Council President
Yeah, you have to use a proxy shipping service (I used Shipito, but there are several alternatives), so it's only really worth it if you buy in bulk to mitigate the extra costs. My order came to around £114 in total, but shipping to the UK was about £33, while customs was £31. Unless it's for essential releases, Sentai are personally one of the the only companies doing deals cheap enough to justify the extra fees; e.g. I mostly avoid Rightstuf, even though they ship to the UK because their deals generally aren't low enough once you factor in import cost. Most of the Sentai disks I bought ranged from around $3.99-11.99.
fathomlessblue
Student Council President
Both the dub and the subsequent dubtitles (the Penguindrum subs just copy the dub script rather than a more literal translation) were written by a fellow called Steven Foster, who was behind many of Sentai's early releases, chiefly the fanservice and comedy-based series. The guy has a reputation for being a bit of a hack, and would constantly insert dodgy jokes and outdated internet slang into his scripts. I don't think it's pervasive, but I recall several lines in the dub/subs annoying people back in the day, with the 'Panties for the win' phrase from Penguindrum being the most infamous, as it used terminology that was dated even at the time and deliberately altered the meaning of the original script for the sake of a lame joke.
As for the encode, I'm piecing together several rants by Justin Sekavis, who I recall previously claiming that the second Penguindrum release had possibly the worst encodes he has ever seen (this was around 2013-14), although I believe he may have been talking specifically about the quality of the on-disk extras, rather than the show itself.
Fortunately Sentai have improved by leaps and bounds over the years. I still think many of their dubs lag behind other licensors, but comparing shows from 5 years to upcoming series like Made in Abyss & Girls Last Tour is like night and day in terms of quality. I still don't love them favouring yellow subs, but they're hardly alone in that choice.
As for the UK/Australian releases, I couldn't say. If they used the same masters as Sentai (likely, if they include the dub), then the quality will be about the same. I know Penguindrum only saw a dvd release in the UK, and that was by Kaze, which is a company known for adding plenty of its own problems to a release.
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Luna
Death Scythe
Oh my, that doesn't sound too great... It's too bad that Kaze also handles France's release and that was sub-only DVD, so rather tough chance for a good release there. I guess I'll stick to my Japanese ones then. =/
Hm, googling about what exactly is bad about the video quality I can't seem to find any details instead I found this:
Blu-ray Forum - View Single Post - The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread
Ghost Hound is also a botched encode? If Sentai's is botched does that mean the Japanese one's also botched (as it used the sentai master for its BD box afaik?)
Hm, googling about what exactly is bad about the video quality I can't seem to find any details instead I found this:
Blu-ray Forum - View Single Post - The Anime Blu-ray Video Quality Thread
Ghost Hound is also a botched encode? If Sentai's is botched does that mean the Japanese one's also botched (as it used the sentai master for its BD box afaik?)
TiagoCosta
Thousand Master
My jp proxy buys are way cheaper than that, oh well. thanks
I sure wish they directly sent stuff WW, at least for the shows where they got WW rights.
Luna
Death Scythe
Auction ended, but I got outbid though unfortunately. =X
Just Passing Through
The Wildcard
There's this post as welll from the Siren Visual release thread...
Siren Visual licenses Mawaru Penguindrum - Fandom Post Forums
Scavenger
Adventurer
I have the Australian BD. The Australian BD doesn't exhibit the nasty compression artifacts that are visible on the Blu-ray.com review of the Sentai BD, but the picture is still interlaced. I thought the Australian BD looked fine most of the time.
fathomlessblue
Student Council President
Chances are there are cheaper ways to get around it, but as a novice when it comes proxy services, it seems about standard to me.
What JP proxy do you use, btw? I've only used White Rabbit Express before, which was fine for customs, but as I bought a fairly large art book, the p&p cost nearly as much as the item itself (although I also used the service were they actually buy the item for you, to save any kanji related mistakes).
TiagoCosta
Thousand Master
I use 2, both do everything for me. Buyee and fromjapan (which got more user friendly lately and lets you choose any store, buyee is missing at least 1 I use).
This was pretty much the only item with expensive shipping, but you can guess why. It came in a huge box.
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Denny Fisher
Dragon Knight
I'm surprised you didn't put in, What did you RECEIVE today? PHOTOS EDITION!
I wonder if Casshan and Taisho Baseball Girls are geolocked since they would need to keep printing new copies.....
I know they weren't when they first came out. I'm just curious.