If it would be this way the situation would be simple, but the reality doesn't work this way. In reality the Blu-ray prices drop steadily and Anime don't exist in a vacuum.

The production costs of Blu-rays as of DVDs, drop withz higher production runs.
Expensive titles generally sell few discs, so you have to throw away a lot of discs (that you payed for). The cheaper the discs, the more you can sell.

In fact even normal films are under a huge pressure to drop the prices, even if it means compromises.

If your logic would be correct it would make much more sense to simply produce english subs and dubs and sell them directly to the US, that's more or less what Bandai tryed, but as we can see with very limited success, instead they now try to work with methods like in Kurokami.

Piracy is wrong. Period. Enough of that topic, let's move on.

Funimation's mastering policies/QC is just all screwed up. On the one hand they will do something beautiful like Evangelion 1.11 and then they will go and do a shit job like Tsubasa/xxxHolic. Makes you think there is only one person on staff over there who gives a damn about Blu-Ray because most of their stuff is substandard.

Wow, I've never been searched when entering Japan, nor asked if I had any copied DVDs.

Huh? All the major electronics mfrs make DVD and Blu-ray recorders in Japan, how can it be illegal to use them?

this is because hes at an airport. japanese hate exporting anything. has nothing to do with piracy

Yeah, most people enter Japan through airports, including me.

Um, exports are pretty much the main part of Japan's economy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Japan

That doesn't even make sense.

i'm not talking about products designed for international consumption. Japan has a domestic economy and an export economy. They do everything they can to prevent foreign consumers from accessing their domestic economy. Nearly everything nowadays is copyrighted. Japanese TV is usually region locked and blocked outside of japan. youtube videos are blocked by ip, so are japanese websites and video streams from japanese news stations. That's what I'm referring to. Japanese don't care if you steal, they care if you export domestic products. DVD-RWs can house things like eroge games which are designed specifically for japanese domestic market and take years to ever leave japanese shores, and less than .1% of them ever do.

There's plenty of companies that deal in eroge exports in Japan, none of them have ever been shut down as far as I know

On topic of quality, I really wish Gundam Unicorn was available on somewhere other than Amazon.com... Like, I dunno, Amazon.ca! I hate buying stuff from Amazon.com from Canada, but I may have to in this case.

It's really too bad that FAILimation has most of the good shows... I am glad Bandai can release something good, even if they did swing and miss with Kurokami (no japanese audio). But I don't like that show anyway, and I just hope that trend doesn't continue :p
What can I look forward to from them in the future anyway? All I can think of right now is Gundam Unicorn (almost spelt it Unicron... just watched that movie om Blu the other day, haha!)

I can only speak out of personal experience but in the past 3 years we've passed customs at Kansai International Airport 8 times and on every occasion we were at the very least asked if we had counterfeit material with us. When they see I'm carrying DVD-RW's with me, they explicitely ask if they contain copy-righted material. On one occasion we were even asked to open one of the boxes of chocolates we always take with us to give to the family, so they could check they effectively contain chocolates and not something else.

When we visited Seoul and returned through Takamatsu Airport in Kagawa, I was also explicitely asked if I had illegal material or material that infringes on copy-rights.


As for taping things, people are allowed to tape SDTV for personal use and are allowed to lend it to friends. However, that is not valid for digital TV broadcasts. I've seen posters prohibiting such recordings at Takamatsu airport as well as at city hall. I would have to ask my (Japanese) wife the exact laws in that regard but there are definitely strict limitations regarding HDTV broadcast recordings, much stricter than SDTV recordings.

2nd Sentai BD release...
EDIT: For those who are unfamiliar with this...

Sweet! Now if Clannad would come to Blu-ray I would be happy.

I wouldn't be surprised since it's one of their biggest selling releases and the fact that they did create a dub. But it's good to see them release more Blu's...Hopefully Viz will follow.

Very nice! But that is a steep price on LEGENDS OF THE DARK KING COMPLETE COLLECTION BLU-RAY EDITION for only 13 episodes. BTW, what is Sentai's first BD release?

Appleseed

That's right! And it was a good release, Thanks!

It looks like Sentai is using standard DTS as an audio track as it appears Legends of the Dark King will use that as well as Appleseed (as posted on Mania.com). Not too happy about that- hopefully they will mend their ways.

OK, long thread here, so I don't know if this has been brought up yet, but since US and Asia have the same region code, is there a list for Japanese Blu-Ray releases that include an English dub? I'm not sure how often English dubs are included there, but I know at least the Ghost in the Shelll: SAC BD includes it.

Appleseed? It isn't out yet. Ex Machina was a Warner title


Anyone know what the deal is with the new release of Vexille? It is showing as Vexille: Isolation on the cover. Is it a different movie? Can't see anything on IMDB

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Your right, very long day, ex machina was the first thing that came to mind. Looking forward to see how Sentai's blu-rays turn out.

Last I saw, the new release of Vexille was cancelled for good. It was just a cheaper version of the original.