Questioned By Fandom For The Week Of March 28th, 2015

Largely because they know it would be cutting their own throats in a way. While Aniplex and Pony Canyon are working with a smaller number of titles, the rest are working with a lot more titles and it would cause it so that consumers could not purchase as much from them. And they want to sell more volume overall, so the lower pricing is what will do it. Providing select limited editions helps to raise things, but at the same time they offer the lower regular priced versions as well.

It’s not declining interest, but there are complications in really going big with collectors editions since so many things have to be cleared and hurdles with getting the right materials – and in a timely fashion so you don’t lose out on the early anticipation for a release. There’s also going to be some sticker shock entering it at some point as more collectors editions come out per month as the prices are up there, and if a fan is interested in two or three of them on top of other releases, it then becomes harder to get things and it spreads out from there in a ripple effect.

What we also see is that different regions of the world have very different interests. The Haikyuu French release is interesting in what they’re getting, but it was zero surprise that we’re getting just the show. Sports shows just don’t sell here and until that changes from the fan side, it won’t change on the release side. Which is unfortunate, because a lot of fans watch these sports shows online through legal streaming, but the home video pickups simply don’t happen. So we’re lucky to get a DVD and BD release, even monolingual, in a lot of cases.

“Sitting on” it is how it likely seems to fans, but the reality is that there’s always a lot of things going on.

We’ve seen them building up a number of collectors editions recently. Beyond the Boundary may be a part of that and it takes time to clear all the rights and do it up. They may still be waiting on proper/full materials from the licensor, as they’re at the whims of when things get sent and with some shows/licensors, that can take forever and a day.

Sentai, like others, have a ton of things to get out the door and schedules have to be figured out, and since it’s likely getting a dub, there are always things about getting the right talent behind the camera as well.

So they may be waiting on any number of things, things they can’t talk about. I know they said recently that they’re getting closer to releasing new information about it and I’d keep an eye out on the convention circuit for news. I suspect they may be doing this up big, or they may be tying it to a potential movie acquisition announcement as well.

I’ve enjoyed what I’ve heard for the most part, but I continue to stress that dubs are areas where they’re not what I primarily listen to and I don’t delve into them deeply. I grew up in an era without dubs outside of the couple of things that were broadcast, like Robotech and Starblazers, and most of what I saw was either raw or subtitled.

I’m totally in favor of dubs, want more and love the whole new broadcast dub initiative out there. But for me, dubs for the majority of shows don’t do much of anything. There are some great performances that I’ve checked out from time to time, and I listen to them while writing up reviews, but they’re not things that I delve deep into critiquing.

I haven’t checked the schedule yet for the convention – I usually don’t until I get on site since it changes regularly anyway – and at this point I only know my panel is at 10:30 am on Saturday morning. But I am curious to hear the dub for that show. I only saw the first episode or two when it was simulcast and am curious as to how they’re going to run with it.

Nope. While we may get import releases from time to time and we’ll see Japanese companies coming over and finding certain levels of success with it, I don’t believe it will ever be the norm unless fandom as a whole stops buying product. The smaller your fanbase, the more you need to charge to cover costs and make something of a profit.

I used to be into model railroading when I was a kid/early teen and you used to be able to go to train shows and buy new engines for $20 or so. Prices ranged all over, but you could make some good sets with what you could get. Now the cheapest you ever see is like $200 or more. The reason being that the market for it shrunk so far that they’re producing so little and have to charge more.

But in general, if the market stays healthy and grows, we’ll be fine.

Probably still Pokemon for the most part. The majority won’t recognize it all when you get down to it though. Some in-between fans may recognize things like Dragon Ball Z maybe or Sailor Moon, but that comes more from merchandise and the like or even just that their kids are into it.