The old-school anime DVD/BD news thread.

[SteveH]

I don't know, everyone always blames Toei for when shit goes wrong with a US release, but when you have small companies like Discotek who have released a fairly large number of unmolested Toei anime, I can't help but suspect in many cases that the US end simply screwed up (and I still think Viz screwed up more than Toei when it came to the Sailor Moon release)

Mind, I firmly believe that the current action line "It's the Japanese' fault! We wanted to do (whatever) but they denied us!" is an easy excuse because it HAS happened over and over. The followup excuse normally is "we couldn't help it, there was nothing we could do".

Which, oddly enough, tends to be the default Japanese action line, that quick phrase that usually translates as "It couldn't be helped" when, yes, it could have been helped but 'they' didn't want to put the effort in.

[usamimi]

Discotek announced the release date of Robot Carnival on their Facebook (Sept. 1), but said they will be selling copies early at Otakon, Anime Iowa, and San Japan! I'm pretty tempted to ask friends to pick me up a copy at Otakon, since I know people going...

[greg]

That is cool! I will gladly throw away my crappy Chinese bootleg of that movie with its crappy Chingrish subtitles. I had lost track of finding it on LaserDisc a year or so ago, too. A Discotek release would be great to get.

[usamimi]

That is cool! I will gladly throw away my crappy Chinese bootleg of that movie with its crappy Chingrish subtitles. I had lost track of finding it on LaserDisc a year or so ago, too. A Discotek release would be great to get.

YES! I was so happy they announced it right before I recorded my Robot Carnival podcast ep, so we were totally geeking out over it during recording, lol. XD I can't wait to see it on a legit DVD! Nitro and I never bought one of the bootleg ones, tho we were really tempted...still have the ol' Streamline VHS tape!

[SteveH]

Geeze o pete, wasn't Robot Carnival another of the 'holy grail' titles that 'everybody' wanted but no studio could pull the trigger on, for whatever reason?

the world becomes more strange.

[greg]

.still have the ol' Streamline VHS tape!

That reminds me of my personal experience with Robot Carnival on VHS. I wanted to buy it, after it was reissued by Orion Pictures. I bought it at Suncoast at the mall, but it had tracking issues. I took it back to the store and requested a replacement. Several days later, they called me to let me know it had come in. But the shrinkwrap was different, as was the price tag. They said that they get them from the distribution center like that sometimes. Hmm... OK, so I took it home and it turns out that it was the exact same VHS tape that they had re-shrinkwrapped. It still had the same video glitch. I took it back and complained. They apologized, and said that they would order another one. Guess what? The "third" one was the same damned tape. So, I just demanded my money back and I never did own the movie on VHS.

[SteveH]

.still have the ol' Streamline VHS tape!

That reminds me of my personal experience with Robot Carnival on VHS. I wanted to buy it, after it was reissued by Orion Pictures. I bought it at Suncoast at the mall, but it had tracking issues. I took it back to the store and requested a replacement. Several days later, they called me to let me know it had come in. But the shrinkwrap was different, as was the price tag. They said that they get them from the distribution center like that sometimes. Hmm... OK, so I took it home and it turns out that it was the exact same VHS tape that they had re-shrinkwrapped. It still had the same video glitch. I took it back and complained. They apologized, and said that they would order another one. Guess what? The "third" one was the same damned tape. So, I just demanded my money back and I never did own the movie on VHS.

That's an odd story. I can tell you from my years working at Suncoast, we never had a shrinkwrap machine.

What might have happened. Suncoast, in the good old days, ordered niche product, such as anime on VHS (pre-1999, when it went 'mainstream' in the stores), from two jobbers, Navarre Corp. and Baker and Taylor.

It's completely possible there was an entire production run of that tape that was glitched up.

I'm not saying 100% they weren't intentionally screwing you on that tape. I AM saying there's no profit for pulling that kind of crap on someone, it's actually too much work to do that. 'Course, doesn't matter now.

I can tell you, if this was one of Orion's 'cheap for sell-thru' tapes, a T-35 recorded at 4 hour speed, that was the majority of your problem. Most VHS machines made after the mid-80s didn't have a distinct 4 hour speed circuit anymore, they just kind of 'worked around' making it between 2 hour and 6 hour speed. this made tracking rather difficult when the tape is recorded at 4 hour speed. If there's ANY damage or error on the edge where the tracking code is stored, the VCR would end up 'hunting' the speed, trying to figure it out.

I'm probably not explaining this well. And it has been a few decades since I've dealt with it.

[greg]

Steve, I was convinced that it was not the store employees' fault, but that it was the distributor that was re-shrinkwrapping the video and sending it back to the store. Thus the long wait times.

I do remember that 4 hour VCR setting, actually. Our first family VCR was bought in 1988, and it had that setting, IIRC. So Orion was skimping, huh? That would explain it. I never had any problems with other store-bought videos back then.

[greg]

There's a nice sale at Rightstuf.com for Nozomi titles now. I'm very tempted to get the 2nd volume of Space Cobra. Cat's Eye Season 1 is there, too. I hadn't seen this before, but they've reissued their Dirty Pair TV series in a "lite box" format that should save some shelf space. I've just about maxed out my storage shelf capacity.

[usamimi]

Amazon has Robot Carnival up for pre-order now! http://amzn.to/1CQZiMt