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Answerman - Why Are Anime Discs Re-released So Much?


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epicwizard



Joined: 03 Jul 2014
Posts: 420
Location: Ashburn, VA
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:03 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Retail buyers go through that month's new releases, and read each new title's list of selling points. Some of these aren't too far off from what gets shown to consumers ("A new release of a classic! Over 1,000,000 units sold! From the creator of _____! Based on the hit video game! As seen on Cartoon Network!")


Oh, so that's why FUNimation constantly put the selling point "From the original creators of the Gundam series" on their Sgt. Frog DVD releases.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:07 pm Reply with quote
Hello Zalis116!
Zalis116 wrote:
"Different dub!"
"Mostly/totally uncut, we swear!"
"Now newly-cropped to remove 1/4 of the image!"
"We actually left it in 4:3 and included the previews this time!"
"Cropped again and color-boosted for modern screens!"
"Now with even less of that annoying grain and texture details!"

For some reason, this reads much like a generic changelog for quite a few annual video game franchises. Undoing a previous change counts as a new feature!
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JDude042



Joined: 29 Dec 2011
Posts: 261
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:12 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
make a new release that they can charge more money for.


I never understood why Funimation had to put some weird quirk on each release, like cropped video and what not, that somehow ruined the quality of the product like the guy was mentioning before me. I always wondered if it was some evil plot from the higher ups at Funimation, so they would have an excuse to continuously re-release Dragon Ball Z, because they know a lot of ignorant and foolish people would keep buying them. I learned my lesson after their run of the original DVD singles they were putting out. I guess putting out a shoddy product over and over again makes them more money in the long run than one perfect release across each video format (DVD & Bluray), especially when they know a lot of their buyers are blissfully ignorant about what they're doing. What makes it even stranger is that other than Dragon Ball Z, they seem to handle almost everything else in a humane and competent manner. I guess Dragon Ball Z is just in a tier of its own compared to everything else anime when it comes to Funimation. This still baffles me to this day.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:21 pm Reply with quote
Mr. sickVisionz wrote:
Quote:
Why would I be annoyed if a company reissues a show that I already have? Not everything they do is about me. Nobody is forcing me to buy anything. If there aren't any noticeable upgrades to picture quality or features, I'm not going to buy it. What's the problem, exactly?


The article really could have stopped there.

I think it was worth including the last part:
"It's not about you, it's about the retail system. Don't take it personally."


MarshalBanana wrote:
I think the man was asking why not just keep printing the version they released, rather than make a new release that they can charge more money for.

That was answered in the article, and the new releases are sometimes cheaper than the previous releases.
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penguintruth



Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 8458
Location: Penguinopolis
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:21 pm Reply with quote
There currently doesn't exist a Dragon Ball Z release worth the discs it's printed on (not in play, anyway). The Dragon Boxes went out of print ages ago (I got mine, though!). The Level Sets were cancelled (very unfortunate, as they were at least as good as the DBoxes). The DBZ season Blu-Rays out now are terrible, basically the DVD Season Sets on Blu-Ray. Dragon Ball Z Kai is becoming out of print.

If you're still buying 16:9 releases of 4:3 anime, you need to stop. Just like Funimation needs to stop releasing 16:9 releases of 4:3 anime. Well, the Buu arc of Kai, when it's finally released here, is 16:9, but that's Toei's fault, at least. Boy did they crap the bed.

If you're new to DBZ, Kai is probably the best way of getting into it if you can find it.

Also, Funimation... DBZ doesn't have "seasons". It never had seasons. Even the dub didn't have as many seasons on TV as you seem to think. Stop using "seasons". "Seasons" boils my blood. DBZ ran basically nonstop from 1989 to 1996.
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ParkerALx



Joined: 09 Apr 2014
Posts: 194
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:47 pm Reply with quote
I'm actually glad Funimation keeps releasing Dragon Ball. It means they'll eventually release the show in acceptable quality. Out-of-print Dragon Boxes and cancelled Level Sets don't count.
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JDude042



Joined: 29 Dec 2011
Posts: 261
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:57 pm Reply with quote
To drive the point home even further about my previous post, Funimation has re-released Dragon Ball Z so many times in the past 15 or so years, and yet the show didn't even get a DVD release in Japan until around 2004-2005 if I recall with the Dragon Box DVD Sets, and then were released in DVD singles there afterwards, that's it. So the American company has gone through hell and high water to milk the franchise for everything they can, while the Japanese just sit back and take everything at a nice and brisk pace with their releases. Even the Japanese release at the very least has been faulted for having slightly altered colors compared to how it originally looked on TV, apparently due to the quality of the Toei's video masters of the show, but it's sure a hell of a lot better than how Funimation has gang raped the series on video.
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ChaoticThinker



Joined: 01 Sep 2016
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 4:59 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad Justin dealt with that dude the correct way. If you already own the product or if you don't like it then so be it. people around you aren't gonna nor do they have to feel the same way. this entitled narcissistic attitude of the western otaku truly is a cancer. It's all about "Them" and forget that there is people who like that stuff and/or missed the first wave. I can't even stand the "Milk" argument at all because it's a packaged product. It's supposed to be sold remember?. that's how the economic moves around through purchase and selling. People seem to forget that sadly anime expires in regards to printing and streaming. you gotta sell as many times as you can before you're told by the Japanese. "Ok, That's enough".
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JDude042



Joined: 29 Dec 2011
Posts: 261
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 5:03 pm Reply with quote
ChaoticThinker wrote:
I'm glad Justin dealt with that dude the correct way. If you already own the product or if you don't like it then so be it. people around you aren't gonna nor do they have to feel the same way. this entitled narcissistic attitude of the western otaku truly is a cancer. It's all about "Them" and forget that there is people who like that stuff and/or missed the first wave. I can't even stand the "Milk" argument at all because it's a packaged product. It's supposed to be sold remember?. that's how the economic moves around through purchase and selling. People seem to forget that sadly anime expires in regards to printing and streaming. you gotta sell as many times as you can before you're told by the Japanese. "Ok, That's enough".


This is true and applies to everything except how Funimation handles Dragon Ball Z. It's one thing to re-release a product over and over once it becomes out of print or hard to come by, but you don't tamper with the video in some asinine way. The only time tampering with the video should even be up for debate is if a competent remastering process is in question. Cropping the video to 16:9 for a show that's originally 4:3 to just play it off as being "cool" and "trendy" is idiotic. I guess Funimation really needed something to market there to make that DVD release look like a "hot product" that's worth it to the ignorant masses so they can throw their money down the crapper.
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Nonaka Machine Gun B



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 819
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 5:17 pm Reply with quote
The problem isn't that DBZ keeps getting re-released. The problem is FUNimation keeps cancelling competent releases in favor of putting out incompetent ones. I'm half-way convinced it's intentional; if they put out a "perfect" version, that's the end of it and they can't sell it anymore.
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Dfens



Joined: 08 Feb 2013
Posts: 459
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 5:22 pm Reply with quote
As a person who is in charge of running a business I can totally understand if a company like Funimation rebrands/repackages the same product in order to sell more units. They are a business and it's in their best interest to make as much profit as possible.

To me and to many other fans/customers it feels like a stab in the back or a waiting game to see if a show will be re-released and if so, it always will be at a cheaper retail price if you are willing to wait a year or two. Except if it's a limited edition kind of release those tend to go out of print to be never released again when sold out.

Lets take for example Funimations Jormungand I pre-ordered it over 2 years ago and with my membership discount and the sale price, free shipping no tax I paid about $75.00 dollars for both seasons. Now 2 years later they have a complete series box set season 1 and 2 which I can get on sale for $41.99 out the door shipped. So that is a savings of over $33.01

But the flip side is you would have had to wait over 2 and half years to get that price savings.

When it comes to their Saved Editions those no matter how much they deny it, are their dumping ground titles that didn't sell well at all. So they are heavily discounting them to sell as many copies as possible. Since they are not going to renew the license when it expires so they want make as much as they can before that happens.

Now companies like Aniplex will never go on sale so you can wait as long as you like and it's the same price day of release still till the end of time.

It's very common when a newer model of a product comes out the older one will be discounted to make way for the new ones. But since Anime doesn't get replaced or remade the formula doesn't make sense to most consumers.

But if you have a product still in production and the demand for it has drastically decreased your only option is to reduce the price to entice new buyers or people who missed it when it was initially released.


Last edited by Dfens on Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ChaoticThinker



Joined: 01 Sep 2016
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 5:42 pm Reply with quote
JDude042 wrote:


This is true and applies to everything except how Funimation handles Dragon Ball Z. It's one thing to re-release a product over and over once it becomes out of print or hard to come by, but you don't tamper with the video in some asinine way. The only time tampering with the video should even be up for debate is if a competent remastering process is in question. Cropping the video to 16:9 for a show that's originally 4:3 to just play it off as being "cool" and "trendy" is idiotic. I guess Funimation really needed something to market there to make that DVD release look like a "hot product" that's worth it to the ignorant masses so they can throw their money down the crapper.


The video tampering thing is another matter. All I am saying it should be recognized that unlike the Japanese, we don't have all the time in the world to sell and/or make profits of an anime. every anime has a clock ticking and a limit and sooner than later when we least expected it's gone for good and the prices will rise ever so high since it will be out of print.

what bothers me most about this question is the entitled attitude on which if a non-consumer is annoyed or doesn't like a series. said person wants to gag those who do purchase and/or are interested on the series and speak on their behalf and say "We don't want this" says the person who never even bought it or even showed interest in the genre and/or series. most certainly can't even count as a possible consumer.

People talk crap and shit on fictional people like "Weeabos" because honestly they don't even exist. the more I read into it the clearer it becomes that such people are just fresh Otakus that are dazzled at first and through time and/or seeing more anime they calm down. sorta how you hear a middle schooler talk about how he saw cleavage walking down the street and you as a hopefully more experienced person has had sex and/or seen uncensored stuff that really makes you grin. they're basically a non issue altogether that take care of themselves.

The true enemy of the Otaku is and one that we are overlooking too much is the entitled narcissist. people like Digibro, Mother's Basement and other YouTuber's that pit people against others because it differs from their almighty taste. Anime is for everyone, you don't have to like all genres, you don't have to accept them because it is not your place to do so. however it is necessary to acknowledge that other people have rights to watch and like whatever they like and are consumers as well. there needs to be respect. I think ever since the inception of anime on the west, now it is growing at a steady pace thanks to top 10 list and the increasing amount of exposure. (Personally I think "Piracy" has done more right than wrong for the west regarding anime).

The amount of harassment the fans of Asterisk War, SAO alongside Aniplex USA it is absurd and needs to be addressed. this question here submitted just gave us a glimpse at the growth of narcissism on our community that needs to be eradicated more so than chasing phantoms like "Weeaboos".


YouTuber's who call anything "Shit" or make videos saying ___ it is ruining anime, fails to understand anime to begin with.I hold them to the greatest of my contempt and pity.
If anime ever comes under attack, We need to stand together otherwise it might be better for it to be withdrawn from the west altogether. if people can't understand anime is for everyone, Then perhaps nobody should get anything at all.


Dfens wrote:
As a person who is in charge of running a business I can totally understand if a company like Funimation rebrands/repackages the same product in order to sell more units. They are a business and it's in their best interest to make as much profit as possible.

To me and to many other fans/customers it feels like a stab in the back or a waiting game to see if a show will be re-released and if so, it always will be at a cheaper retail price if you are willing to wait a year or two. Except if it's a limited edition kind of release those tend to go out of print to be never released again when sold out.

Lets take for example Funimations Jormungand I pre-ordered it over 2 years ago and with my membership discount and the sale price, free shipping no tax I paid about $75.00 dollars for both seasons. Now 2 years later they have a complete series box set season 1 and 2 which I can get on sale for $41.99 out the door shipped. So that is a savings of over $33.01

But the flip side is you would have had to wait over 2 years and half years to get that price savings.

When it comes to their Saved Editions those no matter how much they deny it, are their dumping ground titles that didn't sell well at all. So they are heavily discounting them to sell as many copies as possible. Since they are not going to renew the license when it expires so they want make as much as they can before that happens.

Now companies like Aniplex will never go on sale so you can wait as long as you like and it's the same price day of release still till the end of time.

It's very common when a newer model of a product comes out the older one will be discounted to make way for the new ones. But since Anime doesn't get replaced or remade the formula doesn't make sense to most consumers.

But if you have a product still in production and the demand for it has drastically decreased your only option is to reduce the price to entice new buyers or people who missed it when it was initially released.


I totally agree. I did that with Steins;Gate. When it first released it was extremely expensive and was split in to two sections. I waited a bit and now I own the whole series plus the OVA that didn't make it on the first round for around $30.00. I don't know about your S.A.V.E comment though, however now that I've seen it I might get to do some shopping because that can maybe signify a near end.


Last edited by ChaoticThinker on Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5886
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:32 pm Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
But DBZ re-releases actually can boast changes and "improvements":

"Different dub!"
"Mostly/totally uncut, we swear!"
"Now newly-cropped to remove 1/4 of the image!"
"We actually left it in 4:3 and included the previews this time!"
"Cropped again and color-boosted for modern screens!"
"Now with even less of that annoying grain and texture details!"


I knew someone was going to drop a snark bomb on the DBZ discs.
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Razor/Edge



Joined: 05 Jun 2015
Posts: 607
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 7:52 pm Reply with quote
Aphasial wrote:
Kind of makes me wonder about the S.A.V.E. and other types of re-releases.

I can't imagine there's *that much* money being saved in slightly cheaper packaging (although the lack of full-color inserts might help). When something is basically the same but sold at a much cheaper price with a cosmetic modification on the front (see also: Game Of The Year "red bar" editions of PS3 games), I kind of wonder if the SKU is being tracked separately or there's a separate contractual commitment being dealt with somewhere that allows/requires it to go out marketed somehow slightly differently.


Yeah I was thinking the same thing. The question about Dragon Ball Z was answered and makes sense, but I don't believe it extents to Funimation releasing it's SAVE and Anime Classics rereleases of shows that are way too niche to ever end up on store shelves. I guess it still means the series' name gets brought up again when the release time roles around and you might pick up a few more sales from those that had maybe forgotten about a series. But I don't see how a non-mainstream anime that wouldn't make into most major retailers shelves would have that much a sales boost from a re-release. I was under the impression that most of animes sales came from online and cons anyway.
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Jetstream2



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 32
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 7:56 pm Reply with quote
Funimation should just re-package the DBZ Dragon Box discs in regular DVD cases and make them a Funimation Store or Right Stuf exclusive. People clearly want DBZ to be available in its original aspect ratio. That way they can continue to sell the cropped releases to the ignorant masses from Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, and everywhere else its available, and the rest of us can buy it from Funimation or Right Stuf in its original aspect ratio.

Funimation, I don't care if you use the Dragon Box masters or if you use your own masters. Just release DBZ in its original aspect ratio!!!

Also, while your at it, its time to re-package the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT DVD releases as well. The Brick packaging sucks, they have horrible cover art, and they take up too much space.
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