Anime on DVD reviews

[Correction]

So I'm trying to spend a birthday gift card before it expires, and I'm looking at Anime ($30 card) but I noticed that at Best Buy now they'll often have more than one 'printing' of a dvd collection, and I don't know which to trust. Case in point:

Amazon.com: Coyote Ragtime Show: Complete Box Set: Movies & TV

vs.

Amazon.com: Coyote Ragtime Show Complete Collection: Coyote Ragtime Show, Matsuri Ouse: Movies & TV

The packaging went from 3 discs to 2 discs and the publisher changed from ADV to Funimation, which sets off all kinds of alarm bells. What was sacrificed to kill that third disc?

My 'go-to' site for anime on dvd reviews gold sold/absorbed by an aggregate site that has not really kept their reviews up to date, and the amazon reviews aren't helpful in discerning between the two editions. I need an unbiased source of info that will help me out whenever this comes up, which is quite common when it comes to anime boxed sets.

Where does bg go for their trusted reviews of the anime they actually pay for?

[Merovingian]

From what i heard ADV lost a bunch of anime licenses and Funimation got full rights from many of them. As to why it was cut from 3 disc to 2, my guess is to save money, maybe ADV span the whole series in 3 DVD and Funimation was able to do it in 2. From my point of view I always like ADV films more than Funimation.

[Correction]

Yes, but how did they make it fit into two. Did they find space on the DVD by removing things like trailers, or did they fuck with the transfer quality to make the movies themselves smaller? These unknowns gnaw at me and darken the horizon for future anime purchases considerably.

[Man0warr]

Actually they usually put as few episodes as possible on each dvd volume, was more money for them when buying anime on dvd first got popular - problem is people just stopped buying it later on.

For some older anime that Funimation acquired, they are putting the whole season on just two DVDs. Wouldn't you rather pay for two DVDs with 13 episodes each than 8 or 9 with 3 episodes each?

There's no issue with space, I can put 26 episodes of standard def anime on one DVD.

This may not apply to the particular series you want to buy but Funimation acquired over 30 titles from ADV this year, some they are redoing and some they are picking up where ADV left off releasing.

The runtime is 300 minutes on both, and if memory serves that show was 12 episodes, so 12x25min is about right.

I don't buy alot of anime on DVD (usually only older series I haven't seen, I usually watch anime as it comes out in Japan) but I usually order from Amazon, I order all my manga from them as well. Alot of the websites that just sell anime DVDs you run the chance of buying a bootleg (some guy just burning the series onto DVD with fansubs, while fansubs aren't bad you can get that for free).

[Correction]

There's no issue with space, I can put 26 episodes of standard def anime on one DVD.

I guarantee you that those 26 30-minute shows compressed to fit into <5 gigs of space would not look good on my TV. Just because you can doesn't mean it's worth paying for, which is what has me worried about this Funimation takeover.

I guess I should just stop buying anime on dvd altogether, or maybe just stick to Bandai releases.

[Isiolia]

Compressing 600+ minutes onto a single disc...sure...not going to look that good. Maybe if they're MPEG-4 or whatnot (or MPEG-1), but not in standard DVD MPEG-2.
If you count double-sided and double layered discs, which are somewhat rare to actually see, then you could do it.

Plenty of anime releases initially have 3-4 episodes per disc. At maybe 25 minutes per, you're usually looking at quite a bit more room to breathe without reducing quality.

At the absolute max bitrate that DVD allows for, you get 60ish minutes per layer. Not even Superbit releases did that though, in part because DVD bitrate is variable.

Technically, around four hours is possible on a dual layered disc, provided you don't have much besides one audio and one video track.
More often, you see a pretty nicely mastered two hour+ movie, with a few extras, on one disc. Depends some on how many additional tracks, like commentaries or Digital + DTS, that sort of thing. For example, Transformers is a 143 minute movie, and includes a 5.1 Digital track in three languages (plus a commentary track I think), all on one disc, and is mastered quite well.

So, taking an anime that originally was 75-100 minutes worth of episodes per disc, and consolidating it to 150 minutes of episodes per disc really doesn't require dropping any quality.

[Man0warr]

I guarantee you that those 26 30-minute shows compressed to fit into <5 gigs of space would not look good on my TV. Just because you can doesn't mean it's worth paying for, which is what has me worried about this Funimation takeover.

No doubt, generally the shows I watch that are of that quality are just comedy or romance/comedy type stuff and just store them on data DVDs for archiving, I watch them on my PC and am near the LCD so size/quality doesn't matter too much as visuals aren't important for those shows.

The series I watch on my TV in 1080p (Gundam 00, Code Geass, Macross Frontier, etc) are 400-500mb each but they look awesome.

Anime on DVD (In the US atleast) is dying, Some of the japanese studios are already starting to experiment with other ways to get us anime. This season they started to simulcast some of the more popular shows in cooperation with Crunchyroll/Joost, for a small monthly fee - the TV studios hired translators to add subtitles and we get the shows as soon as they air in Japan. Naruto, Black God, Natsume Yuujinchou, Skip Beat! are some of the shows airing like this and I only see it getting more popular, as it lets the studios cut out the american companies and get profit straight to them.

The dubbing/licensing takes up so much time for any series but the most popular, when most people would rather listen to the japanese voice actors anyways.

[Senji]

When they were releasing disc 1 at a time it saved them money to take the same exact discs and just combine them into a box set. Similar to regular movies in many cases, normal edition has 1 disc, and the special edition includes the same main disc and just tosses the special features disc in.

Now that they are being re-released from scratch as a set, its cheaper to efficiently cram the data on to fewer discs, also to rework packaging to be cheaper.


The english dub that comes to mind I like is basically anything with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. So many english dubs are so horrible or annoying I just cant watch.

[arus2001]

The dubbing/licensing takes up so much time for any series but the most popular, when most people would rather listen to the japanese voice actors anyways.

Bit of a stretch for casual viewers, I think, and they're probably the ones more likely to buy DVDs out of curiosity than the die-hards who know all the little pirating holes or think dubs are sacrilege to the artist's intent. Hell, the uninformed buyer is probably why shovelware is so "successful" for gaming.

Personally, I wish some more correspondence went on in the production process and our side of the Pacific so actual English dubs could launch simultaneously or a week later than the Japanese counterparts. Instead, we're mostly stuck with whatever year or more old series Adult Swim decides to air at 4am on Saturday nights unless you take the risk on a buy, the rare rental (never seen anime in Blockbusters and such around here), or pirate.

From there, I just wanna say the stuff's way too expensive. $10-15 for a DVD with 4-5 episodes is okay, but $25+ with the likelihood of 2-4 months between releases on series media? Yikes. I haven't bought any anime DVDs in a long time, and the last time I did I got screwed by a bootlegger looking for that good deal. The subs on my FMA are horrible and the GitS:SAC2 discs glitch up now and then. Nevermind the fact it took me threatening to reverse the charges on my credit card after hearing nothing from him to finally get the stuff sent. Was at least going on the good faith that maybe something had sold out at the time and they were waiting on a restock. Live and learn, I guess.

[Man0warr]

The japanese voice acting community is small, maybe 200-300 active, but its even worse for american dubs - It's the same 5 guys and girls voicing everything. Can only listen to Steven Blume and Wendee Lee so many times.

[aers]

MPEG2 compression sucks dicks, the quality loss for shows where there are 13 episodes per disc (Gurren Lagann comes to mind..) is evident if you compare it to a R2 copy.

Unfortunately I don't have any comparison shots handy :/

[Isiolia]

MPEG2 compression sucks dicks, the quality loss for shows where there are 13 episodes per disc (Gurren Lagann comes to mind..) is evident if you compare it to a R2 copy.

Unfortunately I don't have any comparison shots handy :/

The actual, legit, retail release of Gurren Lagann has 4-5 episodes per disc...so...maybe you were watching a bootleg copy, and that's the reason the quality was lacking?


IMO, sales of anime on DVD suffer for a number of reasons, though mostly due to delay, price, and lack of exposure. Putting it on streaming sites makes sense, and when they do sell it, sell full seasons for prices more in line with what American (or whatever) shows sell for.
The latter does seem to have been a -general- trend more recently, but I'd question the necessity of the initial disc-by-disc release in the first place.

[Correction]

The latter does seem to have been a -general- trend more recently, but I'd question the necessity of the initial disc-by-disc release in the first place.

Hah, I've been making the same argument about month-by-month releases for comic books for years. Small boxes with 6 discs in them or gtfo. There's nothing I hate more than seeing 'limited edition' or 'collector tin' SINGLE dvd releases that only promise to take up more space on my shelves than I want them to. Who buys giant-sized crap like this anyway?

[arus2001]

The japanese voice acting community is small, maybe 200-300 active, but its even worse for american dubs - It's the same 5 guys and girls voicing everything. Can only listen to Steven Blume and Wendee Lee so many times.

It's kind of self-perpetuating, though. Unless the industry gains steam here, there aren't really the resources to scout for new talent that hasn't been doing it for years likes Blum, Lee, McGlynn, or Freeman. Anime aside, I feel like cartoons in America have been on a serious decline the past decade or so. There's a good franchise here and there, but a lot of it's just low-budget cannon fodder. Even Cartoon Network's resorted to airing live-action stuff lately.