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Funimation withdrawing Blu-Ray on some shows?

@Zalis116

The fact that the season 1 set of Baka and Test LE is still available should tell you something. If that sold poorly they probably only made a minimum print run of the season 2 LE. No point in making a lot if they will not sell. You are correct the extras are on a separate disk in the LE of season 2.

Thanks for the detailed analysis, Dessa. I'd reached roughly the same conclusions searching around on TRSI, but had missed a few like Guyver and the fact that Nabari no Ou only had its first half released on BD. But at least there are just four series that were completely released on Blu-Ray but only released on DVD for its final version. For now. And with Nabari and D.Gray-Man, IIRC the Blu-Rays were such lousy upscales that they weren't really worth it anyway.

Ggultura2764 wrote:

Would this have anything to do with whatever Japanese media companies that Funi licenses titles from only allowing DVD releases at first to prevent reverse importing of Blu-Rays?

It certainly could. As I mentioned, Baka&Test is associated with Kadokawa, who have been implicated in some of Funi's initial DVD-only releases of HD shows. And on closer inspection, Guyver is also associated with Kadokawa, though Princess Jellyfish is not.

Alan45 wrote:

Most likely it is a simple business decision. They likely decided what residual market was available and set the release accordingly. As has been noted before, some of the SAVE editions that were combo packs were in fact left over LE stock with a sticker. I doubt they even bothered with a new print run on those.

The "residual" market must've kicked in awfully soon with BakaTest 2 (the S1 DVD/BD combo is still easily available), because I think I remember searching for season 2 in mid/late 2013 and finding the LEs unavailable. The SAVE version has a brand new insert, updated to reflect the DVD-only specs. If they really did have a bunch of overstock, what did they do with the Blu-Rays? Bury them in a landfill somewhere off I-20 in west Texas?

And in another unfortunate turn, I've found that the BakaTest S2 SAVE DVDs are missing most of the extras from the original release, aside from commentaries and trailers. I'm guessing there was a dedicated Extras DVD (the Amazon page lists 5 discs) that didn't make it to SAVE, even though the case could've easily held a 4th disc from overstock. Or the extras could've been placed with the OVAs if new discs were authored... but maybe this is also Kadokawa forcing Funi's hand. I guess there's historical precedent for cheap re-releases losing on-disc extras, as seen with ADV's thinpacks and such. But I hadn't seen it from Funi yet; the aforementioned Cat Planet Cuties SAVE still contains copious extras.

Either way, gotta say I'm disappointed in how Funi handled the BakaTest franchise, or at least S2. I even watched S2 on Funi's streams (ah, the days when Funimation had functional streaming video) since the hilarious trollsubbers from S1 didn't return, so there wasn't even piracy guilt obligating me to buy S2 in the first place.

None of my SAVE sets are combos, they're all DVD only.

This is a regular thing for many of Funi's cheaper releases (SAVE line, Viridian Collection, Classics line) from what I've noticed.

Sometimes waiting for a bargain works, sometimes it doesn't. Everyone makes their own decisions. The fact that you are not guaranteed a Blu-Ray version with a SAVE edition is something that you have to consider in making the decision to wait or not.

With the SE of S1 still in print, it's obvious they over-estimated demand. Thus you have the shorter run for S2 which sold out unlike the OVAs/S1 (which let them know to do a smaller run) and now a cheap release for everyone else. This is the result of the NA market being cheap because fans are becoming cheap (see Aniplex price rage).

Well, forgive me for not being psychic

no, no, my friend
you need to wait for deep discounts black friday sale, aww yeah!
2 more months, save your money now