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REVIEW: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Blu-Ray Box Set 1

penguintruth wrote:

AoA just never learns not to overprice, do they? But I guess there are suck---I mean, customers willing to pay the extra money for a chipboard box and some paltry extras.

If you are too poor to afford a box-set, the anime is available for free online. These sets are for collectors, people who want to own a nice physical boxset that could be compared to the Japanese edition but still want a dub or subtitles on it. Funimation's releases are never worth buying because of how gaudy and low-quality they are for collectors.

If you are too poor to afford a box-set, the anime is available for free online. These sets are for collectors, people who want to own a nice physical boxset that could be compared to the Japanese edition but still want a dub or subtitles on it. Funimation's releases are never worth buying because of how gaudy and low-quality they are for collectors.

Hm. I believe to the contrary. A collector collects as much anime (they're interested in) as possible, and therefore wouldn't spend a lot of money on these exorbitantly priced sets, because it means having less money to buy other anime. That's my collecting philosophy, and I have a pretty large collection.

"Collector's Edition" usually means "money pit".

The notion that physical media of anime releases should only be for higher class collectors is what encourages this kind of price gouging to begin with and that Brotherhood's streaming expired once is a reminder that anime streaming doesn't last forever. I just don't understand this mindset of creating this artificial "collector's" rarity status for cartoon shows, particularly ones that have been out on the market for the past ten years at actual reasonable prices. It's not like FMA is a Rolex watch or something.

angelmcazares wrote:

I will say it again, the price of these AoA sets is not bad. $200 for 64 episodes is a good deal, especially if you consider that Aniplex USA could easily have charged $500 or more for the whole series. Also, the original Funimation BD releases cost around $170 combined. For those interested in collecting this show, get these sets now because once they go OOP who knows when the series will be back in print...probably never again.

Ummm when you bought set 1 and set 2 from funimation they were only about $40 each. And this was roughly a year or more before they even lost the license. This is definitely still a steep price for an older series.

I was referreing to the origininal 5 BD volumes that Funimation released. The MSRP for each set was $50; I paid around $35 for each one. The two Funi BD rereleases were ofcourse much cheaper. I am honestly surprised that fans are complaining about AoA charging $3 per episode for Brotherhood (they usually charge $10 per episode); Funimation and Sentai typically charge $35-40 for 12 episodes, which also comes to about $3 per episode.

Still... Who is going to watch the dub version of this or 2003 FMA either ever again given what we know now about Vic Mignogna? I think it pretty much ruins the dub and makes impossible to enjoy.

angelmcazares wrote:

I was referreing to the origininal 5 BD volumes that Funimation released. The MSRP for each set was $50; I paid around $35 for each one. The two Funi BD rereleases were ofcourse much cheaper. I am honestly surprised that fans are complaining about AoA charging $3 per episode for Brotherhood (they usually charge $10 per episode); Funimation and Sentai typically charge $35-40 for 12 episodes, which also comes to about $3 per episode.

Yes, but that's for the initial release of each series. FUNi just about always releases a more condensed version of any multiple-volume series for substantially less per episode, and while Sentai usually takes longer and for less steep of a discount, they usually wind up doing the same. And that's not even counting the fact that both FUNi and Sentai frequently put their catalogs on sale, something that Aniplex almost never does. Hell, Sentai in particular frequently has massive discounts on much of their catalog, to the point where I've wound up getting multiple episodes per dollar for some releases. At the end of the day, Brotherhood is a title that's been widely available in the US market for several years, so charging this much for a new release so long after its heyday is essentially price-gouging.

The only way to justify this pricing would be if they redubbed it or dramatically remastered it, but neither treatment would even be necessary for a title of this age (it's barely five years old).

kakoishii wrote:

The only way to justify this pricing would be if they redubbed it or dramatically remastered it, but neither treatment would even be necessary for a title of this age (it's barely five years old).

Something tells me that if AoA had indeed redubbed and/or done some kind of remastering to Brotherhood the people complaining about price gouging would keep saying that $200 is too much.

I lost interest in Brotherhood when Adult Swim began broadcasting it on TV cause of their endless marathons of the 1st series. That and the early story to Brotherhood was an alternate retelling of the early part of the 1st series.


Then I downloaded Brotherhood and had to force myself to finish watching it. Like I had to force myself to watch Gurren Lagann and I still didn't get it. At the end of Brotherhood I was less than impressed. Even the Milos movie couldn't save my interest, even if said movie had Maaya Sakamoto voicing the main female lead.


Aniplex's steep prices for all their are enough to turn anyone away. That, and with a certain VA's current situation, I have little to no interest in Brotherhood.