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NEWS: Blu-ray Editions of K-ON! and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Cancelled


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Dop.L



Joined: 23 Mar 2007
Posts: 713
Location: London
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:12 am Reply with quote
Damn. All things I was going to buy. It'll be interesting to see if they quote low DVD sales as the reason for cancelling K-ON and Disappearance, as I know I was waiting for the Blu-Ray version and I suspect I'm not the only one.

The moral of the story is that if you want to purchase anime on blu-ray, you need a player that can do A region discs (UK is in region B) or buy region-free discs on the odd occasion the Japanese release has English subs.

As it stands, the blu-ray anime market in the UK is pretty much dead. At this rate we'll be lucky to even get the next Evangelion movies in blu-ray.
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vulcanraven01



Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 677
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:30 am Reply with quote
K-ON wouldn't sell on BD here, so no big loss.
Haruhi would have done quiet well I would have thought, but since Bandai shut shop, maybe that factored in the decision.
A box of FMA: Brotherhood would have been way too expensive to bother with, so a good financial decision there.

Either way, bad times for anime in general.
Just glad we have so much digital distribution these days.
Will never replace physical media releases, but it's better than nothing at all.
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Volibear



Joined: 29 Nov 2011
Posts: 344
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:39 am Reply with quote
Dop.L wrote:
Damn. All things I was going to buy. It'll be interesting to see if they quote low DVD sales as the reason for cancelling K-ON and Disappearance, as I know I was waiting for the Blu-Ray version and I suspect I'm not the only one.

The moral of the story is that if you want to purchase anime on blu-ray, you need a player that can do A region discs (UK is in region B) or buy region-free discs on the odd occasion the Japanese release has English subs.

As it stands, the blu-ray anime market in the UK is pretty much dead. At this rate we'll be lucky to even get the next Evangelion movies in blu-ray.

that is pretty much the reason, recently anything with low-ish DVD sales has been cancelled on BD, and given how BDs still sell less than DVDs here, unlike say Japan where BD is far more popular, it becomes unviable financially to sell them

and i suspect sales for Haruhi and FMA:B ARE actually sales releated, given this old news story, i doubt its just because it'll be expensive or the recent Bandai issues that FMA or Haruhi were cancelled
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-12-13/manga-uk-cancels-future-fma/brotherhood-blu-ray-discs

the BD market here as a whole still isn't very big anyway, DVD is still a far more prevalient force in the market across all sales, not just anime, and it will still take time before this changes, so it wouldn't surprise me is Manga just does BDs for series it knows will be able to sell enough and doesn't bother with new series until it knows they might sell enough
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:49 am Reply with quote
It will be interesting to see if they blame low DVD sales, as I know if I had a BD player, I wouldn't bother buying on DVD first to then be forced to buy it again later. I suspect we'll only see future BD releases of titles that Manga don't have to remaster themselves.
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sillyriri



Joined: 01 Apr 2011
Posts: 56
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:58 am Reply with quote
Dop.L wrote:
Damn. All things I was going to buy. It'll be interesting to see if they quote low DVD sales as the reason for cancelling K-ON and Disappearance, as I know I was waiting for the Blu-Ray version and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Yeah, I was waiting too. I wasn't even aware they were planning a blu-ray box set of FMA:B, but I would've bought that too. Sad
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Ryu Shoji



Joined: 15 Jul 2009
Posts: 671
Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 9:54 am Reply with quote
"Disappointed"? More like f-ing pissed off.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood was a tragedy; it was MangaUK's first real experimentation and it shown them that long series' do not last. They tried 2 volume releases with Casshern Sins and that didn't work...and then XAM'D was ballsed up...then the Gantz live-action movies...

MangaUK's PR has jerked us around with this. In the last three days alone, MangaUK's stance on K-ON! has changed from:
1) Saying it's unlikely on Facebook
2) Saying it's out in April.
3) Outright cancellation

With Haruhi, we had a confirmed date but that got delayed due to a slight technical reason with the masters. We were outright told WHEN it would be out; pre-orders were opened.
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yurixhentai



Joined: 20 Jun 2010
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 11:13 am Reply with quote
Seriously? Why bother getting people excited about a release and then deciding close to the date of that release that you won't do it? They need to think and strategically set out what they are going to do before they do it, rather than building up people's hopes and then crushing them, further making people look down on the company and possibly making people stop buying products altogether from the frustration.

I don't care about "feature film spinoffs from Bleach", I want an actual series - blu ray K-ON.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7578
Location: Wales
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:11 pm Reply with quote
Volibear wrote:
recently anything with low-ish DVD sales has been cancelled on BD, and given how BDs still sell less than DVDs here, unlike say Japan where BD is far more popular, it becomes unviable financially to sell them

Not only do they sell less, they have to make more of them (minimum order is 3000 units, which is higher than for DVD) plus the pre-unit cost is higher, plus there are licensing fees to Sony etc.

st_owly wrote:
It will be interesting to see if they blame low DVD sales, as I know if I had a BD player, I wouldn't bother buying on DVD first to then be forced to buy it again later. I suspect we'll only see future BD releases of titles that Manga don't have to remaster themselves.

With simultaneous releases they sell more DVDs than BDs so even if people are holding out for the BDs the DVD sales still give a good indication of potential BD sales (i.e. if the DVD sales suck they know the BDs are going to tank even worse).

yurixhentai wrote:
Seriously? Why bother getting people excited about a release and then deciding close to the date of that release that you won't do it?

Clearly they didn't have any intention of cancelling them when they were announced and Jerome stated he had been fighting for them ever since.
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sillyriri



Joined: 01 Apr 2011
Posts: 56
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:31 pm Reply with quote
In regards to the update... yeah, no kidding about damage to their credibility. I'm actually reluctant to buy the DVD releases now, because as far as I know they could just change their minds again if this causes the sales of the DVDs go up.

I don't really see how they can 'make it up to people' either. I think the best they could do would be not frustrating people more by letting it happen again- and that's pretty upsetting by itself, since the only way they could ensure that would be to never offer Blu-Ray releases.
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xeroth



Joined: 14 Apr 2011
Posts: 37
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:23 pm Reply with quote
I'd definitely have bought the K-On Blu-rays. DVD quality is just horrible.
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ninja noir



Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 175
Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:52 pm Reply with quote
aw crap. I was annoyed when the Haruhi BD was delayed, but was okay as long as it was being released. Now i'm just freaking pissed off. I was waiting for those K-on BD's too. Ah well, I'll just have to make do with the DVD's then.

Manga should just outright quit BD's altogether. It would save all this dissapointment in the end.
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JonLa



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:33 pm Reply with quote
I have some sympathy - lots of businesses are trimming everything to the bone to survive the latest recession. If there is only the potential to make a small profit, and the risk of a big loss, well, you just don't take the risk. Remember that the costs of BD production even for a small print run (as the anime BD market is still small in the UK) are far larger than the equivalent dvd
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Strife212



Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Posts: 9
Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:37 pm Reply with quote
I'm certainly one who was waiting for Disappearance on Blu Ray.
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:52 pm Reply with quote
All you folk posting in this thread saying "I was waiting for X on BluRay" are probably the only ones who were, sadly :/
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7578
Location: Wales
PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 3:00 pm Reply with quote
JonLa wrote:
Remember that the costs of BD production even for a small print run (as the anime BD market is still small in the UK) are far larger than the equivalent dvd

The smallest print run they can do is also 3000 units.
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