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Forum - View topicAnyone heard of this anime company?
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Ken Hayashi
 Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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Just bought Last Exile on DVD (as well as Chobits and Gokusen). It seems like it's a Hong Kong only release and it's produced by a company that calls itself SAG. It says so on the DVD box cover "For sale in Hong Kong only".
Just wondering if SAG is a legit company. Anyway, 26 episodes on 4 discs, I can't remember what region code it is. That's about, um, 7 episodes per disc or something. You guys will probably tell me it's another boot. 
Damn, it's so hard to find anime in Singapore. |
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Steventheeunuch
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Would you be able to post any pictures of the packaging? It might be legit, in the sense that the only way to fight piracy is to ifhgt it with no region code releases, but how much more expensive were they than compared to normal Bootlegs?
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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I paid S$52 for 4 DVDs. That's a lot cheaper than the stuff my friends sneak in for me from overseas (US or OZ). Slightly more expensive than known boots, which crammed 26 episodes on 3 DVDs and sold for S$39 (um, wait, that's still S$13 per DVD! DANG!). I'll get some pictures up ASAP.
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cookie
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 2460 Location: Do not contact me for support. |
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If there's a region code, it's almost certainly legit. Bootleggers use 0 because they can sell worldwide. Rarely (or never?) will bootleggers limit themselves with a region code.
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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Well, here are the pics:
Front: 
Back: 
Inside: 
More pictures of the DVDs: 
That "For sale in Hong Kong only" statement: 
Region code?: 
Looks like it's Region Code 3. Where that is I don't know. I'm just wondering if the bootleggers are banking on the fact that many DVD players sold in Singapore or the South-east Asia region are multi-region code capable (like my Pioneer and Samsung DVD players, which can play just about discs of any code as well as anything from CD-Rs to CD-RWs and some more). Who knows if they just printed a fake region code on the packaging? BTW, I stated the wrong price in my last post. I actually paid S$59, not S$52. |
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Kagemusha
 Posts: 2783 Location: Boston |
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I doubt it would be bootleg with a region code. How much is a Singapore dollar (I'm assuming thats what you mean when you say S$59) worth in relationship to a US dollar?
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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I think it's about S$1.78 to USD$1.00 right now. Some people write SGD$xxx.xx, but I'm lazy.
S$1.00 is also about equal to HK$5.00 at this moment. So the boxed set is worth about almost HK$300. |
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Nani?
 Posts: 632 |
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The regions are: Region 1 is North America north of Mexico. Region 2 is Europe and Japan, the Asian middle east plus Egypt. Region 3 is S. Korea, Taiwan, SE Asia (including Singapore), Indonesia, Phillipines, etc. Region 4 is Latin America and Australia Region 5 is Former Soviet Union, Indian Subcontinent, Afganistan, and most of Africa. Region 6 is China, I'm not sure if that includes HK or not. Also, the logo is not bootlegger I know of so you might have a legitimate product. I love the art on the disks by the way. All the best, Nani? |
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MeggieMay
 Posts: 607 |
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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PHEW! Thanks guys (and gals, if any of you are).
Legit DVDs! Yay! |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4663 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Can you look at the text around the edges of the disks? Is there any copyright information whatsoever?
I've heard that some bootleggers are getting more savvy about their customer's bootleg awareness, so, often, they'll mislabel their DVDs as being for a specific region only, even if the disks are really region-free. I have no idea if that's the case in this specific case, but I couldn't find any Region 3 disks reviewed at Anime On DVD that are from a company called "SAG", and HK Flix, which, I think, is the largest store on the Web dealing only with legitimate Hong Kong disks, doesn't have Last Exile at all, but neither site is a reliable indicator of all legitimate DVDs available in Region 3, so it's pretty much anecdotal evidence. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9903 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Don't want to ruin your happiness, but 6-7 episodes per disc at such low price (S$59.00, US$34.56)? That does not bode well, since the Taiwanese R3 legit Last Exile licensed by E-muse has only two episodes per disc, just like Japanese R2, and would cost you NT$500 (S$25.10, US$14.70). E-muse has yet released 8 of 13 discs, and the total would be NT$6500 (S$326.30, US$191.12).
Another irritating factor: The only English label is "SAC" and "For Sale in HongKong only" (note the incorrect capitalization of letter S in "Sale" and no space between "Hong" and "Kong"). All other labels, including "For Sale Only - Rental Prohibited," "Single Layer," "No Duplication," and all the introductions are purely Japanese. How do you suppose to sell a merchandise to potential customers if they can't even understand what your product is? Therefore this DVD is aimed at "insiders," those who know what the content is just by looking at the cover art and have "channels" to obtain what they want. One last thing: check the Chinese subtitle. Since it ought to be "For Sale in HongKong only" its subtitle should be traditional Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan), not simplified Chinese (China, Singapore). |
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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Yes. But I think that can also be easily faked. But I must also add that, on all the known bootleg discs I have, the copyright infomation is not there. |
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Ken Hayashi
Posts: 752 Location: Singapore |
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I'll check that tonight. Then I'll let your guys know. |
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