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zendervai wrote:

They actually released two sets before giving up. Both were the exact same kind of bad. The company, S'more Entertainment, apparently refused to put any actual effort in, so they used the generic masters Toei gave out without bothering to check if there were any better ones. (Which there were, apparently Toei offered them a little later in the process, but S'more turned them down.)

You know how a few of the streaming sites have Galaxy Express 999 and Space Pirate Captain Harlock available for streaming, but the subs are burned into the video, huge, and timed really badly? S'more used those files, but made them look worse by cramming way too many episodes on a disc. The first set initially sold kind of low numbers, but the second set just failed completely. And the head of S'more complained about how picky anime viewers are.

Hey, maybe when your product is noticeably worse than the free streaming options, people have a right to be picky about it?

Yikes, that sounds pretty terrible, and an even worse attitude from the head of the company. Is S'more still around as a company? (The name sounds like that of a shell company and that they released that to not look suspicious, but based on your description, it's not.)

While it's still inexcusable, it is still understandable from the perspective of a complete outsider to anime, someone who doesn't know about Crunchyroll or that there are still anime being made. The person who's enough of an outsider who's never heard of Attack on Titan. This guy did a home video release of Galaxy Express 999, after all, and if you're not buying it, then what other options do you have? It's not like there are other companies doing it too. Are you really going to pass up on the only anime home video release of this year? Or it's someone who's used to the 80's and 90's fansub videotape sharing and thinks anime fans are used to that kind of look (kind of like how some people with old-fashioned hobbies prefer intentionally outdated-looking things and are highly uncomfortable when something is shiny and modern).

Still, it reeks of the attitude of "Anime fans must be desperate and will fight for any little scraps no matter how bad it is!" which I kept seeing when I was in college.

Alan45 wrote:

MarshalBanana wrote:

Quote:

I have Mad Max Furry Road on Blu-Ray

Please tell me that is a typo for "Fury Road" I'm having a bit of trouble imagining a Mad Max movie with furries. Twisted Evil

Wherever there are people, there will be furries.

PurpleWarrior13 wrote:

Really glad S'more gave up on anime. The guy running that company treats fans like crap if they complain, sometimes lying. He used to be one of the people running Rhino Entertainment, and did the same thing whenever fans dared complain about the problems in their Transformers releases. The good people from Rhino went to form Shout! Factory. The bad went to S'more.

Shout! Factory is awesome. I've liked everything I've ever bought from them.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Shout! Factory is awesome. I've liked everything I've ever bought from them.

Most of their releases don't have subtitles.

ResistNormal wrote:

Pointing out the flaws of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex Blu-ray got you banned form Anchor Bay's Twitter account as well. They still haven't to my knowledge admitted that there was a problem with the release.

here is my question. after that debacle they did, why in the holy high hell do they STILL have the license???

I mean you have to believe that production ig was completely furious with anchor bay to the point that they would terminate their license distribution. the fact that they haven't done so means that 1) they either no longer give a damn about the series or 2) they completely approve the release, flaws and all.

jr240483 wrote:

here is my question. after that debacle they did, why in the holy high hell do they STILL have the license???

Because most media licensing agreements don't include some clause that will let one party entirely pull the rug out from under the other on a whim. So long as the licensing fees/royalties were paid appropriately, they still have the license until the date it expires.

jr240483 wrote:

I mean you have to believe that production ig was completely furious with anchor bay to the point that they would terminate their license distribution. the fact that they haven't done so means that 1) they either no longer give a damn about the series or 2) they completely approve the release, flaws and all.

Not necessarily. To begin with, it's rather time-consuming to be caring that much about the details of every re-release of your work in foreign markets, and most creators have more important things to worry about. And in any case Production IG wouldn't be able to; the production committee would have licensed it out, and as noted above even they wouldn't be able to just cancel the license.

jr240483 wrote:

here is my question. after that debacle they did, why in the holy high hell do they STILL have the license???

I mean you have to believe that production ig was completely furious with anchor bay to the point that they would terminate their license distribution. the fact that they haven't done so means that 1) they either no longer give a damn about the series or 2) they completely approve the release, flaws and all.

Manga Entertainment was on the production committee for Ghost in the Shell Movie and Stand Alone Complex. They were bought by Anchor Bay who then got themselves into some financial and legal trouble and were in turn bought by Starz who is now owned by Lionsgate. So I would interpret that as they own a piece (perhaps small) of these titles. Whereas I believe they were not involved in co-producing GITS: Arise or The New Movie so they have no say so there. There might be some clauses in the contracts between members of the production committee detailing how a member must handle the work or there might not be. Instead they might have a simple right to distribute the work as they see fit in overseas markets.

Unless Lionsgate steps in and does something we might have to put up with this level of quality for some time.

Last edited by FLCLGainax on Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:50 am; edited 2 times in total

Sailor Sedna wrote:

ADV also screwed up when releasing the first two seasons of Sailor Moon uncut, the video quality wasn't that great, the sound was all garbled, episode 24 had video corruption/frame rate issues, and episode 68 (they also skipped 67 at the time) also had a sound glitch where the DiC dub version played briefly. It got to the point to where they had to try to set up a replacement program but it didn't always work and there still were problems.

These two articles explain it best here:
https://www.smuncensored.com//editorial.php?article=14
https://www.smuncensored.com//editorial.php?article=15

Pioneer's releases at the time were better, even with its grain and such the picture still looked bright and crisp to me.

I wouldn't fault ADV in this case. It's possible the materials for the subbed sets came from DiC and not Toei. The prints may have been left over from when DiC did their English version, but storing them properly was an afterthought. ADV's license for the show may have been on a sublicense from DiC.
Pioneer's materials probably looked better by comparison, because they came directly from the Japanese companies.

I remember a volume of Lost Universe being unwatchable defective over multiple copies, because I bought it again only to have the same problem, and it was some time I think before I got to watch a working copy on DVD. Don't remember details though because it was 15 or more years ago.

I remember having a gundam seed dvd that simple wouldn't play on my PS3. Really surprised me, actually.

redranger wrote:

I remember having a gundam seed dvd that simple wouldn't play on my PS3. Really surprised me, actually.

Gundam00 the movie only plays on one of my two blu-ray players (the newer player), but I'm not that bothered that it doesn't play on the older Pioneer player.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

PurpleWarrior13 wrote:

Really glad S'more gave up on anime. The guy running that company treats fans like crap if they complain, sometimes lying. He used to be one of the people running Rhino Entertainment, and did the same thing whenever fans dared complain about the problems in their Transformers releases. The good people from Rhino went to form Shout! Factory. The bad went to S'more.

Shout! Factory is awesome. I've liked everything I've ever bought from them.

1) God, do I remember those various oh so fun Rhino releases.

2) Shout! Factory is fantastic but not infallible. The Escape from Catrina dvd is NOT the 2 uncut My Little Pony specials produced prior to the movie; It is the heavily edited versions of the specials, which were chopped up to make episodes for the show. Missing is :Original intros, music, outros, scenes. If Shout! Factory didn't think it was worth it to license the specials, why waste the money putting out this garbage set at all? I have the original untitled special (It was just called My Little Pony) on VHS and was heartbroken to find it was not released. That was a Rhino move. (Literally. The Rhino sets listed the edited episodes separately from the other episodes and called them the specials).

SquadmemberRitsu wrote:

Oh yeah, also I love Madman but their DVD release of Mr Osomatsu is literally just a downscaled hardsubbed Crunchyroll rip. I wish I was joking. I really hope they give it a proper release when Viz does one in the US.

You gotta keep in mind that licensors generally have to work with what they've been given, even if that means it's LQ.

Compelled to Reply wrote:

Another major reason I usually don't buy independent middle man releases by companies operating from crummy warehouses. Yes buying Aniplex, Ponycan USA, and Japanese releases are expensive, but gives you max satisfaction as a collector, especially in this day and age of streaming.

I feel that's kind of sad, though, because it's not giving a company a chance to get better. Reading the comments here it seems Sentai used to be pretty dodgy, but they're now one of the big Anime Companies releasing stuff. I guess it depends on the company tho. Sounds like the one that released GITS just don't seem to care about fans at all?

Kenshiroh wrote:

GATSU wrote:

Bobobo's gotten two terrible home vid releases so far.

Was that the one where it didn't even have subtitles, and they expected you to read the translation from a printed out PDF?

Seriously??

I bought the GitS: SAC Blu-ray releases from Japan, because at the time, it seemed like they would never get released in the US, and when it did finally come out in the US, I was planning on getting the US release so that I could get the songs and signs subtitle track (which Japanese Blu-rays never seem to have even when they put an English dub on the discs; even Aniplex of America has had issues with that), and I was hoping that we could get English subtitles for some of the extras (since they didn't get subtitles on the Japanese release - presumably, because they couldn't be taken from the original, US release of the DVDs), but having heard what happened with the US release of the Blu-rays, I saw no point in picking it up (aside from how they butchered what they did release, they didn't put what I was looking for on the release, even in butchered form). And while them doing such a bad job would be bad with any show, for them to do it with a show like GitS: SAC is that much more tragic. Not only was it a truly awesome series, but it's exactly the sort of show that you can show to folks who aren't anime fans but might ultimately be interested in anime. And IMHO, it's by far the best version of GitS and as such really should be legally available in the US.

So, while it is on the expensive side, this is one series which I would highly recommend picking up from Japan if you can afford it. It has the English dub (and I'm pretty sure it has the full English subtitles, though I watch the dub, so I don't remember beyond the fact that it doesn't have the songs and signs subtitles), and it's a really nice release. It's also a lot cheaper than many Japanese releases (though still very expensive compared to a US release). It looks like each season can be gotten from amazon.co.jp for less than $300 apiece - which makes for close to $600 in total, which is certainly painful and beyond many people's budgets, but if you really like the series, and you can afford it, it's probably worth it. But with how this series is being treated by Anchor Bay, the only other alternative to importing it would likely be to grab rips online, which is easy enough but obviously doesn't involve legally paying for the product. Such rips are far superior to what Anchor Bay did though. I know of at least one floating around that includes the songs and subtitles track too.

Anchor Bay really threw away their opportunity to make money of this given how popular a series it is. Neutral

Most of the german Anime Releases are trash. They struggle to properly convert the NTSC material to PAL which leads to ghosting (multiple frames together) Somtimes they just put old and cencored TV Masters on DVD to make a quick cash grab. And I almost forgot to mention that dubtitles are the norm here Wink

So if you are a fan of watching Anime subtitled you are out of luck in Germany.
Though I hope it will get better someday. Until then I will import my Anime from the UK.

CandisWhite wrote:

2) Shout! Factory is fantastic but not infallible. The Escape from Catrina dvd is NOT the 2 uncut My Little Pony specials produced prior to the movie; It is the heavily edited versions of the specials, which were chopped up to make episodes for the show. Missing is :Original intros, music, outros, scenes. If Shout! Factory didn't think it was worth it to license the specials, why waste the money putting out this garbage set at all? I have the original untitled special (It was just called My Little Pony) on VHS and was heartbroken to find it was not released. That was a Rhino move. (Literally. The Rhino sets listed the edited episodes separately from the other episodes and called them the specials).

Yeah, admittedly, the Season 2 release of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was edited like that too (though it was never promoted as "uncut") in that they didn't have most of the live-action segments which are supposed to open and cap each of the animated episodes, and the few that they did have were placed elsewhere as a special feature. (They did at least get the final one though, in which Mario "met" Captain Lou Albano.)

I'm still satisfied, though, because I'm glad to have any release of the show at all, even if I was pretty disappointed they weren't there. I'd get another Season 2 release on home video if they put in all of the live-action skits.

harminia wrote:

I feel that's kind of sad, though, because it's not giving a company a chance to get better. Reading the comments here it seems Sentai used to be pretty dodgy, but they're now one of the big Anime Companies releasing stuff. I guess it depends on the company tho. Sounds like the one that released GITS just don't seem to care about fans at all?

My impression about Anchor Bay is that they released Stand-Alone Complex seemingly reluctantly, as if they were given a bunch of money to do so or were pressured by their superiors. Others have said, though, that Anchor Bay has a history of these kind of half-hearted releases for every kind of home video release, so it may be the sort of company with such a loose or unfriendly workplace environment that they give it their all only on projects they actually like.

Bear in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean Anchor Bay is staffed entirely by people going through their daily grinds just for their paychecks at the end. There are some very passionate Hollywood movie fans out there who have some equally passionate grudges against anime (and considering there are some very passionate anime fans who have equally passionate grudges against Hollywood, this is a fandom rivalry, in other words). That is, their Stand-Alone Complex release, I'm willing to bet, was done by people who either care way too little or way too much.

Even in the early 2000s, Anchor Bay screwed up the first boxset for Roseanne by only including the syndicated masters with scenes cut. Roseanne Barr herself even went on one of the late night shows to talk about her frustration with them. Fortunately, Mill Creek's reissue fixes the problem.

Shout Factory isn't perfect, but usually admit mistakes when they are made, and sometimes correct the problem. Most of their releases have subtitles now.

Echo Bridge's releases of Pokemon movies 4-7 were pretty much shit too. Menus that looked like they were done in iDVD, bad video encoding, cramming 4 feature films on one disc... all of their releases sucked.

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