Genres: action, drama, fantasy Themes: friendship, god, magical girl, post-apocalyptic, religion, sacrifice, shoujo-ai, tragedy Objectionable content: Significant Plot Summary: Follow the adventures Yuki Yuna and the “Hero Club” she joins as they aim to do their best for the community they live in, ranging from helping other clubs to fighting off mysterious enemies known as “Vertex”, all in time to attend classes and have fun. Number of episodes: 12 Vintage: 2014-10-16
So after watching the first 2 episodes tonight, it now makes me rather sad that Pony Canyon decided to enter the US market now.
I rather enjoyed these episodes and if it keeps up like this, I’m going to be rather torn when it comes out for sale if they follow suit with AoA releases and price structure.
I only just watched both today. I didn’t know if it might be a short episode format or not, and last night when I would watch anime on my tablet, I think I was reading some manga instead.
Wow.
I figured it would turn dark at some point, since there have been hints of it since the beginning and given Takahiro (Akame ga KILL! creator) did the Original Concept for this series, but this episode really tugged on the heartstrings hard.
I’m going to repost part of what I said in the Pony Canyon thread.
Ok, I looked up Yuki Yuna on RightStuf and it’s MSRP $89.98, selling price $71.98. 4 Episodes, dubbed, with 100 min video extras and a music CD.
I don’t know of anything else that can be said about using the Japanese Anime pricing model in the US. It will make money because of the hard core demand, but it’s my firm belief that as a long term strategy it is doomed to failure. The thing that concerns me is that it may pull the existing US distributors , Funimation, Sentai, NISA and even RightStuf, down with it when it inevitably sinks.
I’ve seen what this sort of thing - limited runs of a high investment product - has done to one of my other hobbies, shrinking and aging the customer / fan base since new customers / fans can no longer afford to enter the hobby.
I’ll paraphrase what I said too on the other thread:
That companies should use the limited collectors edition to help defray the costs of the regular editions (Basically since the discs are all part of the same print run, The LTD. Ed actually allows the regular edition to be sold at a lower price point) which keeps both the hardcore happy with their precious Ltd. Ed. and keeps the normal fans happy with a cheaper vanilla “just the show” option.
Funimation did this with both Volumes of Attack on Titan and Cowboy Bebop.
That’s true and in Funimation’s case what they did is good. AoA’s regular editions, and presumably any potential PonyCan regular edition, are still singles style issues, not full cour or series sets like Funimation, Sentai, NISA, etc.
That pushed them above the wallet pain threshold for me. So while I would like to have several of AoA’s titles, and now at least one of the new PonyCan titles, it just isn’t going to happen.
Same here, I just can’t justify spending the money on this. I wasn’t too impressed with the PMMM singles and this looks to be more of the same, in all ways.
Sadly I don’t believe that I’ll be able to mooch off of my friends who take delight in buying “status symbol” overpriced anime releases (eg:Garden of Sinners BD) as even they are turning up their noses at this mid-2000s singles release program.
Pony Canyon’s Collector’s Edition release includes both Blu-Ray and DVD versions in an oversized plastic case which comes in a see-through plastic sleeve. Both versions have issues. The review copy of the Blu-Ray disk consistently glitched badly at the 9:38-9:50 mark of episode 4 (although this could be a problem isolated to this particular screener disc; if you’ve purchased this set, please let us know if you’re having similar problems in the forums). The DVD version had problems with its English subtitles; the font is crude and ugly, but much more importantly, the subtitles have gaps where dialog is not translated. This happened several times in episode 1 alone, to the point that watching the DVD in Japanese is not recommended unless you know enough Japanese to get by without the subtitles. This problem is not duplicated on the Blu-Ray, however. Audio quality is very good for both disks, with sound effects coming through especially well on the Blu-Ray version. The visual improvement between the two is not dramatic but is evident. Both versions include Spanish subtitles in addition to English ones and an option for sign-only subtitles, and both versions simultaneously provide both English and romaji translations for the opener and closer. The original Japanese forms of the opener and closer are fully retained; translated English credits only appear in the Extras. An included CD is set up a bit strangely, as most of its dozen tracks are simply (seemingly-exact) repeats of the opener and closer themes, with a couple of karaoke songs from episode 4 thrown in for good measure.
Thanks for pointing that out. ANN did kinda hide that in their review.
What’s weird is that, as Coffee posted a while back in this thread, ANN’s video wizard worked on this release and yet it still has these issues.
I’m not sure how that’s possible, unless the video used on the bluray was hobbled.
This changes the meaning of a quote from Executive Director of Pony Canyon:
[quote]We would like to bring high-quality animation that was produced in Japan
to North American fans while keeping the quality intact as much as
possible. We are having the Japanese production producer supervise the
production of the American releases. This is quality that can be
achieved because we are Pony Canyon.[/quote]
