Nigorimasen! Blog

I recently watched the premiere episodes of The Tower of DRUAGA -the aegis of URUK- and BLASSREITER on BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube to compare the visual quality and the placement of subtitles and also to see if they were shows worth following after the first two episodes. I decided to formulate two separate posts for each series so the next one will be about Blassreiter and will likely have the same technical results. (Links: BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube.)

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Cropped from this Flickr image

This week, Best Buy is having a 50% off sale on select anime box sets. (I was tipped onto this earlier in the week from this thread on Cheap Ass Gamer but waited until now to write about it so as not to get anyone in trouble.) The titles being discounted are:

• Tokko: The Complete Series - $12.49
• Elfen Lied: Diclonius Report Thinpak- $15.99
• Noein Complete Series Box Set - $17.49
• Dragon Ball Z Season 4 Uncut Box Set - $19.99
• Mars Daybreak Anime Legends Set - $19.99
• Fullmetal Alchemist Season 2 Part 2 (ep. 41-51) - $19.99
• Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum Thinpak - $28.99
• Samurai Deeper Kyo Complete with GBA game - $29.99 [game trailer]
• Robotech Protoculture: Collection (85 dub-only episodes) - $37.49

These prices are also now up online while some of them already backordered. I’ll going to get Noein and Tokko for sure, and perhaps Elfen Lied, and pump up my Reward Zone points in the process while also snagging R.E.M.’s new album this week. Maybe I’ll get xxxHolic #1 as well…

P.S. A warning: the Eva thinpak discs lack the extras from the singles, something I found out during my interview with Sean McCoy who had done a couple episode commentaries for #20 and #26. I believe the Elfen Lied thinpak also lacks its previous extras.

For months, various industry commentators have said Japanese publishers had to change their strategies to combat wide fansub profileration and GDH has stepped up to the plate by announcing that two GONZO titles, The Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter, will be put on three different streaming video sites (Crunchyroll, YouTube, and BOST TV) at the same time as their premieres next month. In my 2008 predictions post, I posited that a Japanese studio would release English-subbed episodes near simultaneously with its original airing  - a statement I qualified at the time as a possible “crazy failure” but I’ll take wins however I can get ‘em.

The question now is how this will be implemented on each service. The highest free quality out of the three websites would seem to come from BOST but YouTube has a boatload more traffic and reach than the other two, mainly due to its embedding option. Crunchyroll is buddy-buddy with select publishers but pretty much everyone else hates them. I’m pretty sure the subtitle text will be the same across the uploads and hopefully someone fluent in Japanese (i.e. not me) will critique its accuracy compared to fansubbed efforts. I will likely check out episodes on each service when this rolls out in a couple weeks but you can react to this right now in my first poll in a while. Anyway, this is a great step in trying to get more official eyeballs that will hopefully convert into sales and I hope that it succeeds so other studios will do something similar.

Original pic courtesy of Lelouch’s Myspace blog

Lucky Star’s first US volume got dated about three weeks ago and now we find out about the extras that limited edition purchasers expect to find inside the pretty art box come May 6th. The $35 ”upgrade” will yield you pack-ins in the vein of the Haruhi LEs but tweaked a bit: the opening theme and Konata character single CDs, a T-shirt version of Ryou-ou Gakuen’s winter girl’s school uniform that frankly looks kinda lame, and a chocolate cornet screen wipe that actually might be useful. The regular edition will still feature liner notes so you can understand the more obscure references as well as “The Adventures of Minoru Shiraishi” which may or may involve footage from the fan events he hosted.

Considering the Haruhi CD singles are individually priced at $10 each and T-shirts sell for about, you’re getting a bit of a deal. One question: will all the tees be the same size, e.g. large? If so, that may cause trouble for some buyers. I remember the FLCL Ultimate Collection included a postcard to send in for your free shirt but it took over a year and a month to finally get it in the mail so there’s definitely a tradeoff between speed and getting the right size.

The latest TV schedule posted on the Adult Swim website reveals that Code Geass will premiere on the late-night block April 27th at 1:30am. That happens to be a week after the dub’s debut at New York Comic Con (April 18-20); the English version of Lucky Star will also be screened sometime during the convention.

Announced last December, the localization cast for Geass features many “stars” including Johnny Yong Bosch (Renton, Eureka Seven; Ichigo, Bleach) as Lelouch, Kate Higgins (Talho, Eureka 7; Sakura, Naruto) as C.C., and Yuri Lowenthal (Sasuke, Naruto; Alviss, MÄR) as Suzaku along with some lesser-known voices like Karen Stressman (Soifon, Bleach) as Kallen and Rebecca Forstadt (Rika Furude, Higurashi; Suiseiseki, Rozen Maiden) as Nunnally. Having a lot of talent does not guarantee a great dub, however. The morning after the episode airs, I’ll probably download it from Cartoon Palace and write some impressions but until then, I will attempt to catch up on the first season before the second season premieres in Japan next month. Ah, spring break is only two long weeks away…

There still hasn’t been a date announced for the DVDs but I think the first volume will be released some time in early summer, June/July - leaving the possibility for a promotion timed just before Anime Expo as was done with Haruhi - but that’s just some speculation on my part.

I saw the first episode of Pumpkin Scissors when it premiered in fall 2006 and found it marginally interesting but not enough to continue to the second episode. Recently I got around to watching the Volume 1 DVD that I had bought during RightStuf’s Xmas sale and I now feel the same way about the second disc: I’m kind of interested in the story but not enough to buy the next volume to find out.
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Lucky Star Vol. 1 regular edition cover (Japanese Vol. 2 LE cover)

Anime on DVD spotted new listings on Right Stuf for Lucky Star Volume 1 (episodes 1-4) with the release date currently scheduled for May 6th. It looks like Kadokawa Pictures USA is going down the same release path that they did with Haruhi by releasing a $29.98 standard edition and a $64.98 limited edition plus box. The extras in the limited edition aren’t known right now - the pics on TRSI only show the outside of the box - but I’m guessing there will probably be some pack-in items. LE pics after the jump.
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Something that has irritated me lately has been the increasing trend of DVD volumes coming with the disc inside the case and that’s it. Recent examples in my buying experience have been the regular edition of Haruhi vol. 1, Red Garden vol. 1 and Pumpkin Scissors vol. 1. Seeing the empty space on the inside left side of the case when I open it for the first time triggers a sense of disappointment because I have an expectation that there was some sense of effort put into the packaging including the inserts.
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ICv2 reported in its Guide #51: Anime/Manga that sales of anime DVDs in North America fell more than 20% in 2007 and that the estimated market size in retail dollars is $275-300 million. That drop of a fifth might seem shocking at first but once you also take into consideration a corresponding 21% drop in anime releases, the number doesn’t seem to be too much cause for alarm. The amount of releases decreased in 2006 as well to the tune of 19% so I believe the market is still consolidating through more calculated and fewer licenses. The guide writers are nevertheless optimistic about the future of anime in America based on signs we’ve heard before including a “growing awareness” among US audiences, the eagerness of US companies to shorten the gap between Japanese airings and DVD release, and those companies’ willingness to try new methods of digital distribution and lower-cost packaging.

On the manga front, it appears that 2007 was another strong year but its growth rate is beginning to taper. The profileration of new titles is still the major problem facing publishers and retailers, something that I think might become an issue for some publishers in the near future. The manga section at the Borders here in Davis almost takes up two full aisles and forced the fantasy books into another set of shelves. I personally think that the US manga market might become a bit oversaturated in the near future when I look at the projection in the ICv2 article of 33 volumes of manga being released a week but it’s just a small thought right now.

[via ANN]

The first DVD volume of xxxHolic will finally hit US shelves on March 25th, according to AnimeOnDVD’s listing of new Funimation solications. I’m excited about this not because it’s a great anime but because it’s taken so long for it to come out. The delay might have due to Funimation focusing on finishing its Tsubasa releases first, which they will do on January 8 when Tsubasa Vol. 6 is released. The first volume will feature four episodes, with Colleen Clinkenbeard voicing Yuuko and Todd Haberkorn voicing Watanuki.