AH! At last! Legit copies of the Zeta Gundam movies compiled for the twentieth anniversary of Zeta Gundam, and in English!
Now, if it was $60 for a deluxe, boxed set of all three I can maybe see spending that, but at $29.99 a crack?
There's been no promotion, no push for these . . . Bandai is so freaking stooopid it makes my brain hurt . . .
6 comments:
Priced for collectors. And no promotion. Yeah, there's a great business model right there.
Gah... $64.99 for the box, but still, where was the promotion?
Does a guy have to subscribe to freakin' OtakuUSA to get news of this sort of thing?
I have worked in the anime/manga biz for seventeen years, man and boy, and I can assure you that the people in the American industry who make the business decisions are at least as stupid, but generally no stupider than, the people who run other American entertainment industries. That is to say, they are good at getting into a business when there's money to be made, and at getting out of the same business while the getting is good. You will notice that Navarre is desperately trying to unload Funimation, although they won't say so out loud.
Why? Because even the dimmest of bulbs in Stuffedshirtlandia can see that The Kids are not going to pay for Atoms when they can get the Bits for free. Money Men may not have much in the way of actual brains, but they do have a certain keen animal cunning, and can be counted on to Zig when things Zag for the worse.
As usual, it all comes down to EVANGELION. SEELE - the Suits within the U.S. localization biz — have seen Third Impact and accepted it. The True Believers, like Ikari Gendo, refuse to accept the ending as written. Guess who's going to end up being bitten in half by the Lilith of Reality when it all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down?
@ Bruce
You have the right of it, of course.
The domestic industry is hardly a spring chicken, and by now you'd have thought that they might've embraced some of these changes earlier on, but no: Scanlations and Torrents have led the way, and have led to an industry that's not so much waning as it is truly on it's last good leg, and really ought to fall on its sword and be done with it.
And of course we know the Japanese industry is hurting very badly, too: Even with the release of the "Unicorn Gundam" Blu-Ray they were a bit behind the curve, but with that release it appears that they have begun to "get it" - up to a point.
Although I'm resigned to accept that the era of Shiny Discs is over, I still collect VHS! I *like* hard copies, just not the prices they think they can get for 'em anymore: these flimsy little things aren't exactly *Laserdisc* heft, ya know!
P.S. Although the series never made a lick of sense to me, I can most certainly appreciate your allusion to Eva ; )
I just bought a VHS to DVD recorder with the intenet to copy everything over. Alas, I've discovered that VHS doesn't stand up well over time, even when stored in optimal conditions. It also looks like utter shit on a plasma.
@ Hillsy
I plan to do that eventually, but I hear ya: Even the best quality VHS looks like greyed-out crud on 1080i.
Of course, I still have a working Laserdisc player and a big ass CRT : )
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