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Sekiro

By Sekiro
in Film, TV & Radio

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Meh

Meh

Posted
Posted
Whilst I agree with Dandy_Sephy, I've noticed that Japanese companies takes the piss by releasing a mere two episodes per DVD and charging the equivalent of £20.

In fact, does anyone know why DVDs are still so damn expensive in Japan? I thought that it might be due to the VHS market being deeply entrenched, but that's pure speculation.

They're so expensive because the Japanese will buy at that price.

loljapan, and all that.

They can't sell for lower than the RRP, or something like that.

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Lorfarius

Lorfarius

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Posted
Sets like the one you link to have all the hard work done by a western studio. The pirates just take the raw data ripped from their discs and repackage it which is the sort of thing that can be done at home on your pc. pirates just happen to have DVD-9 manufacturing plants to put the final result through. If a western company put out a full series on 3 discs they'd go bust in about a week unless it was back catalogue, and even then it would be really stupid to do so.

I've been buying anime series since back when it was all provided by Manga video. The prices have always been sky high even before the pirates were providing a better service. Whats to stop a publisher providing a series in 2 box sets of say 12 episodes at a price of around £12. Thats more than doable and I know Id be willing to pick them up at that cost. Rather than forking out £15 or more for a 3 disc boxset. Have you been to HMV recently? Have you seen their prices? If the industry wants to rip me off when all I want to do is pay good money then fine let the pirates have it. I've paid enough to the likes of ADV and Manga over the years.

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Dandy_Sephy

Dandy_Sephy

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Yeah, I've seen their prices have come down in some respects (boxsets, odd cheap volume) and people are putting out better value (especially Manga of all people). Theres simply no way what you propose will happen yet. The market simply isn't big enough. £24 for 24 eps? How do you propose the studios half their costs? It's only just doable in the states and that has a market size several times the size of the uk market. You can get the first volume of Bleach (12eps on 3 discs) for £18-25 (£25 is the rrp), thats as good as you are going to see for a long time. Frankly Manga went above and beyond the call of duty on that. The second volume is 7 eps for about £15-20 (£20 rrp)

You say you've been buying anime all this time, and say the industry is ripping you off, but all you can see what the pirates are doing. It should be clearer to someone like you why the market is the way it is but you still think they can match the pirates? Not going to happen. I'm all for cheaper anime, but I don't think you are being realistic. I expect half the reason Bleach is the price it is boils down to being able to sell more units due to its tv presence and exposure to the young market. very few shows have that luxury

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Lorfarius

Lorfarius

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Posted
You say you've been buying anime all this time, and say the industry is ripping you off, but all you can see what the pirates are doing. It should be clearer to someone like you why the market is the way it is but you still think they can match the pirates? Not going to happen.

I dont expect them to match the pirates per se but they dont even attempt anything when it comes to fair pricing. It's all over priced. No wonder the pirates can come in and sell such sets.

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Meh

Meh

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Posted

The anime market's been fucked forever, really. Fansubs are often really well done, the picture quality's fantastic, and you don't have to wait a year for it to appear in the shops at an insane price.

I really wonder why they bother anymore. There can't be much money in it, surely.

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Dandy_Sephy

Dandy_Sephy

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The anime market's been fucked forever, really. Fansubs are often really well done, the picture quality's fantastic, and you don't have to wait a year for it to appear in the shops at an insane price.

I really wonder why they bother anymore. There can't be much money in it, surely.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the Market is fucked. However you are quite correct about the quality of most fansubs. I'm the case of Naruto and Bleach, the subs are usually out within 24-48 hours of airing on Japanese tv and those 180mb files are more then close enough to DVD quality as is needed. there will always be a place for DVDs though as its not as if most of the people buying will know how easy it is to get it for free

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Dandy_Sephy

Dandy_Sephy

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Actually the market is suffering a few issues. The American market has had its own casualties with Pioneer/Geneon closing down long ago at quite short notice. ADV in the states have been forced to make huge cuts in costs and it's affected their uk office. ADV UK's London office ceases to be on Friday as ADV have chosen to let another company handle their releases rather then maintain their own office. Sorry lorfarious, but I think it's been proven that uk anime can't drop to prices you're happy with. of course, ADV haven't exactly had a brilliant lineup lately but they've gone from driving the market 4-6 years ago to cutting their losses.

Very interesting interview with a guy from beez (Gundam) and manga ent (no introduction needed) regarding pricing

most anime DVD releases are lucky to shift 2,000-3,000 units in the product's lifetime on average. The retail price is really a reflection of the overall volume of sales and the pressure put on the supplier from the retailer. Also, the retailers are always competing for that sale, so they also heavily discount their retail price. E.g. Bleach Series 1 Part 1 has a suggested retail price (SRP) of £24.99, but most stores were selling it on the week of release for between £17.99-£22.99!

When a title like 300 sells over 1 million units during the full price window (generally the first 12 weeks of release) it doesn't hurt the studio to lower their price after they have passed that mark. In the past 6 weeks since 300 entered the budget chart Warners has sold another 305,000 copies of 300. They will probably sell another 500-600,000 units this year alone at £4.99. On the other hand, Naruto Unleashed Series 1 Part 1 which is a 3 disc box set with 13 episodes in dual language and one of the best selling anime DVDs of the past several years sold about 7,000 copies at full price, and another 15,000 at campaign price (between £12.99-£9.99).

I understand the consumers point of view. When they see a huge title like 300 or Spiderman 3 for £5 they may well be wondering why Manga is asking them to shell out £12.99 for Naruto the Movie? However, when it comes to box sets such as Bleach or Naruto Unleashed, I am pleased to say we are offering the best value for money out of all the anime labels in the UK. A 4-5 episode single disc release from ADV or MVM etc will retail around £15.99. That's £3.99 per episode. Whereas we are selling Naruto at £1.92 per episode. You can't really argue with that

costs from the same guy

BBFC fees: £6 per minute for reviewing the content plus a £75 surcharge on every disc submitted. So, for Naruto Unleashed we are submitting 3 English language discs and 3 Japanese language discs with subtitles. That's 13 x 30 minute episodes x 2. You do the math. -

• Marketing is in the region of 10-15% of the overall projected net revenues per release.

• Authoring fees cost between £1,000-£1,500 per disc.

• Creating subtitle files from the Japanese to English script is in the region of £5 per minute.another £2000

• Other costs include manufacturing, packaging, warehousing, shipping, picking and packing, returns fees, royalty payments to the Licensor etc

As he asked us to do the maths I've done it - £4.750 for the bbfc to rate each naruto boxset for release. I've worked out the total rating and production costs of each naruto boxset to be along the lines of £8000. Thats before a single disc has been pressed, and without the "misc" costs, which aren't exactly small.

It sure ain't cheap. This is also one of the main reasons why smaller anime series are not acquired for the UK. The costs are so high, that there is no hope in hell of even breaking even on a lot of it. Naruto is great, because even though the costs are high, there is a very good chance we will make some money on every release. There are also other ways of saving money such as sharing production and authoring costs with another PAL region distributor like Madman in Australia or Kaze in France. But, this is always not practical or necessarily allowed under our agreements with the Licensors in Japan.

Still think it's practical lorfarius? I really can't see any show other then bleach or naruto ever giving that value for money simply due to the increased sales over typical releases. Yes lower prices would mean extra sales, but it's very difficult to predict if it will generate enough revenue to make it viable. MVM probably wouldn't be doing dvds if it wasn't for sharing costs with others. That mail order division of theirs can't be making that much money to help sustain a dvd business.

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Lorfarius

Lorfarius

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Lorfarius, keep me updated how you're liking it. I really cant find my disc holder with my copy of the anime :(

The count was shot and Albert saved him, now Albert has gone into deep space with the count. His exfiancee is marrying that blonde nut job and theres about to be a Presidential speech and that blue girl (ex-princess) is about to go to his speech. It can't get much better than this. I'm starting to worry that my next anime series isn't going to be half as good as this :angry:

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imp

imp

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Posted
I've started watching Lucky Star.

I know it's pretty crappy as far as conventional anime goes, but for some reason I really like it. Not sure I can handle another 20 episodes of nothing in particular happening though. We'll see.

I quite like it. It's not always laugh out loud hilarious, but I quite like the characters, the ways in which they interact seem to be quite genuine. I don't mean the characters are realistic, but the depiction of their friendship is quite believable. It makes me smile anyway.

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Zappster

Zappster

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Yep. Agreed with that. It wasn't quite what I was expecting but I grew to love it in the end (much like I'm doing with Minami-ke's second season). I definitely felt the latter half of the show was stronger. Particularly when they started introducing those new characters such as Yui(?). There was even one very touching moment (at least I thought so) with the section in the last few episodes regarding Konata's mum. I thought that was quite sweet. Although I might just be being a bit of a pansy.

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Talvalin

Talvalin

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Posted
Fansubs are often really well done, the picture quality's fantastic, and you don't have to wait a year for it to appear in the shops at an insane price.

Quite.

I waited for the ME UK release of SAC and I wondered why I bothered in the end. The quality of the sub-titles was terrible. Not the translation mind you, but the actual letters that appeared on the screen. The fansubbed series (Laughing Man?) had sharp, readable sub-titles in stark comparison to the shit, ever-so-slightly out-of-focus sub-titles of the DVDs.

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Djx

Djx

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Posted
The anime market's been fucked forever, really...

I really wonder why they bother anymore. There can't be much money in it, surely.

Viz is probably one of the few companies making a fair bit of cash on manga, licensed merchandise and the like.

Some companies also have to put things right, such as Funimation finally releasing the Uncut DBZ boxsets.

Japan is the key market of and for all manga and anime releases.

Any worldwide success for Japanese studios is just icing on the cake, so to speak.

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Broker

Broker

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Posted

What's most depressing about the UK dvd releases is that as well as having to wait god knows how long to get them the subs are usually shit in comparison to the fansubbed ones. I checked out the Bleach DVDs and the subs are horribly inferior to the Lunar ones I was watching 5 years ago.

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Meh

Meh

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Posted
Does anyone know how many long Hellsing Ultimate is?, I thought it was 4 but I can't believe thats true after watching the ending of last night.

There's more coming. You'll be waiting about six months for the next one, though.

4 was supposed to have been released in October until they decided to delay it and finetune it.

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imp

imp

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Yep. Agreed with that. It wasn't quite what I was expecting but I grew to love it in the end (much like I'm doing with Minami-ke's second season). I definitely felt the latter half of the show was stronger. Particularly when they started introducing those new characters such as Yui(?). There was even one very touching moment (at least I thought so) with the section in the last few episodes regarding Konata's mum. I thought that was quite sweet. Although I might just be being a bit of a pansy.

o/\o I thought so too, regarding Kanata. I also found it really sweet when

kagamin thought she had a secret admirer, but it turned out to be a just a guy who wanted her stuffed animal keyring.

The characters introduced in the second half are pretty cool. In particular I really liked Hiyomi, the doujin artist who keeps on imagining Yutaka and Minami in ...certain situations.

I had a little look in HMV today and saw the Samurai Champloo box set for £40 - all seven discs in nice space-saving thin DVD cases, plus a bonus something or other tucked in there. I'm quite tempted to buy it and sell my old DVDs. Bah. Early adopters always get screwed.

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imp

imp

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I got that Champloo set a while ago from Amazon. The extra thing (which I didn't know about until I got it) is a cloth thing for hanging on the wall or whatever.

Pic with DVD case for size comparison

Ah cheers. Well, maybe I'll buy them again when they're out on blu-ray or something.

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