This is frustrating news, and if it becomes more widespread to other companies and countries, will be a massive problem.
First off, Japan and the US used to have different region codes for DVDs, so parallel importing US titles to Japan was not much of a concern.
With Blu-ray, Japan and the US are both Region A.
Some anime companies were concerned that Japanese fans would import titles from the US instead of buying domestic, which is smart because considering the insanely overpriced Japanese Blu-rays and boxsets, the US releases were way more reasonable.
Some anime companies licensed titles out as long as they had non-removable English subtitles, or having intertitles or credits in English only, making it harder for Japanese fans to enjoy it, especially when it covers up the original Japanese text.
The came this Blu-ray title: Inu x Boku Secret Service collection from Section 23/Sentai.
Although it has a region A and Region B logo on the back, if you play this disc on a Japanese player, this appears:
Image
Well, this seems to be a new thing that the anime licensor has implemented....
How to bypass it? The languages menu won't help. You must go to the player's settings, to the parental lock / country code settings, and configure your player to the United States. Then it will work.
But some BD players (and programs like WinDVD) don't have a country code settings menu, and it can't be changed. If this is the case, SOL.
If other countries or companies start using this anti-loophole region locking technique, even region free players might have some issues...