Forum - View topicNEWS: Bandai Visual USA to be Liquidated by September
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atlanime
 Posts: 67 Location: Atlanta, GA. |
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Holy crap! I better buy their stuff while they're still out there.
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7983 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Agreed, and I've gotta' say that I'm glad I can now just say "Bandai" now instead of the annoying hastle of having to distinguish between the two. |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Maybe now I can buy Gunbuster for a realistic price, like less than $25. Same with Diebuster and other possible titles.
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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Me too. With this series getting so close to completion it is a bit frustrating to know that it is on hiatus. I wouldn't mind if the series is released on Blu-ray but really hope they sell them as singles or do a 1-3, 4-5, 6-7 or 1-5, 6-7 release since I really don't need two copies of the volumes I already own. I'm also glad that they held off on releasing Shigafumi, True Tears and Sola since I preordered them and would have been upset if I was stuck with just the first volume. Fortunately I didn't order Haruka. I'm really hoping that Bandai Visual Japan will put subtitles on their R2 releases (I think there are only a handful that have them) like they are doing for some of their Blu-ray releases. BVUSA always felt redundant with BV Japan and this would be Bandai's best solution (which fits their plan) for those who can't wait and are willing to spend that extra cash. |
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Panon
Posts: 242 |
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Is this meant to be a joke? Gunbuster was their one title released at a realistic price. $25 or less for the entire OVA is "I want everything for nothing" fantasy land. |
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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I don't know which Bandai does Lucky Star, but is Bandai going to be similar like Geneon?
Because Lucky Star isn't a cheap series, a great series, but not cheap. |
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crilix
Posts: 208 |
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You can't sell moe shows without appealing to the already niche fanbase that gets shows online before they hit R1 land. It's the nature of niche products; you can't just slap a dub on moe DVD titles, distribute copies via brick and mortar stores and expect them to sell. It's not that these shows are bad or that they don't sell, but they are hard to sell to American audiences. Even the biggest fans acknowledge this. Using Geneon as an indicator of the quality of these shows is just pathetic, btw. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15299 |
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crilix:
And yet Geneon coincidentally ended up losing money on the ones which got awful reviews. |
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britannicamoore
 Posts: 2618 Location: Out. |
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To ad-lib Young Jeezy HAHAAAAA!!!!
We'll never have another moment like that again. Anyway, this was expected. Hopefully a few of their titles will go on sale. I've wanted to see a few, but I wasn't going to pay their price. Now we may see something realistic. |
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PurpleM
 Posts: 21 |
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While there are a lot of comments about new possible pricing and availability of titles, I think a crucial part of the discussion is missing: the quality of the discs.
BVUSA easily had the highest quality discs out there, completely on-par with Japanese DVDs. It may have been because the discs contained fewer episodes and therefore had better encoding and less compression -- I really don't know the reason. In any case, I don't anyone will argue against this. The quality of BEI's discs, on the other hand, seem roughly the same as the other R1 distributors -- FUNimation, ADV, etc. All of them have their good discs and bad discs, but I'm talking about an overall mean. (BTW, regarding bad discs, once I opened up a DVD 9 and found that it held only about 5.5 GB of data... lol??) I'm sure someone here who knows BEI's, FUNi's, and ADV's releases really well might beg to differ, but all I'm trying to say is that BVUSA's discs are better than BEI's discs. Now I'm just wondering if BEI, if they take over BVUSA's titles, will continue to release them at the same quality that BVUSA did. While many (most?) people will be cheering for more episodes per disc, as will I of course, I definitely don't want to sacrifice quality for price. Some people might see this as a small issue, but I just can't bring myself to be in that camp, even if it makes me a minority. I've always been a proponent of good quality items first, and well-priced items second. |
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Porcupine
 Posts: 1033 |
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Kakaba, well I personally foresaw this coming as did a lot of other people, but I think there are also many on this forum that had incorrectly felt that Bandai Visual USA was doing well, such as Randall. I hope you don't take offense with this Randall because I value the information in your posts a lot in general, but I had thought from the beginning that your argument that [Bandai Visual USA must be doing well because they continue to use the same pricing schemes and business models] was totally bogus and had tried to argue the other way.
The other pathetic thing about this is that Bandai Visual USA had been generating all sorts of worthless news about streaming online content, partnering with CrunchyRoll (I might be wrong on this one and have them confused with other companies), making the most plans for HD and Blu-Ray releases, etc. Then a month later suddenly they are gone just like that. What this means is that all these anime companies that are making noise about streaming/Blu-Ray and all that garbage and trying to sound like they are proactive and in good financial shape, are actually in terrible financial shape and near-death at the time they try all that junk. ADVision is next, they'll be dead before anyone expects it. They may even be dead at this very moment as some people are currently observing. All that garbage about ADVision wanting to promote Blu-Ray and streaming anime only reveals how desperate they are and in what terrible shape they are in. Well, those are my opinions anyway. Contrary to public opinion I've been saying from the beginning that streaming anime content is not the solution to the industries' problems and attempts to promote that are only wasting the time and resources of the R1 anime licensing companies. So far everything that I've predicted has roughly come true so I'm going to make some more predictions and wild guesses, take them for what they are. I don't think Funimation is in nearly as good a shape as people think, all their recent actions have worried me a lot. But Bandai Entertainment is in trouble too. Again, people think they are doing great because it seems like they are getting everything now...Code Geass, Gurren Lagann, Lucky Star, you name it. But in my opinion I see big problems for them. I now think it is only going to be a race to see which of these two companies goes under first, and after one dies the next one will die almost instantly afterwards, completing the R1 anime industry disaster I've been predicting since last year.
I agree with all the stuff you said about video quality. Actually, most R1 anime DVDs are DVD9s with 5.5 GB of data. That's actually the typical average for almost all of Funimation and Geneon and Bandai Ent. And they have plenty of DVD9s that are only 4.71 gigabytes to 4.9 gigabytes also. What a waste of space, it's ridiculous. The typical size per episode for Funi, Geneon, and Bandai Ent is 1.1 gigabytes, or smaller. The trailers and extras are what make the typical discs just barely require a DVD9. Last edited by Porcupine on Fri May 23, 2008 6:39 pm; edited 6 times in total |
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krelyan
Posts: 173 Location: Utah |
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BV started off well enough (I bought their first releases: the Patlabor movie LEs and Gunbuster) but they quickly started stripping "extras" while retaining the same prices. Coupled with the fact that there titles were only available at select online retailers, this hardly seems surprising.
It will be interesting to see what BEI does (if anything) with BV's titles.
 . You mean stuff like Fighting Spirit? A highly rated, shounen title? Yeah, who wouldn't have predicted that would bomb. There were a lot of other factors why Geneon is comatose atm, and it wasn't just cause "their stuff sucked." I don't see many similarities between Geneon and BVUSA.
Last edited by krelyan on Fri May 23, 2008 6:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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GATSU
Posts: 15299 |
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ADV =/= Bandai Visual.
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e-imi
 Posts: 65 |
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Okay, so I'm a bit confused and a bit panicking, so I don't think that information processed right.
Is Bandai Ent. (the anime liscensor) getting closed down? Are they in danger? Or is it Bandai Visual? 
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Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
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From what I understand Bandai Entertainment and Bandai Visual USA were essentially two separate USA companies, despite the similar name. Both of them were anime licensors. They were releasing different anime titles from each other.
Bandai Visual USA is getting closed down. Nothing new is happening with Bandai Entertainment. The article mentions Bandai Entertainment because it is possible (not confirmed, and in my opinion it won't happen) that Bandai Visual USA will make the arrangements to "give" or sell all their anime titles to Bandai Entertainment to release. Bandai Entertainment is not in any danger (officially). In my opinion they are but that is total wild speculation on my part. |
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