End of the line for Bandai Entertainment

[NastyNate]

I can't help but think I am part of the problem with this. But every time I wanted to buy one of their shows it was so expensive. I really did want to buy gundam 00. They just had them at darn High prices with getting the whole series would be over 100 dollars. I have been hoping that they would release a single set for around 60 dollars but I guess I better check ebay for the old ones now and hope I get a good deal.

Well I am putting it off no more. As a precautionary measure I went ahead and ordered all the seasons of Gundam 00 and the movie on amazon.com and got the bargain prices for each with a grand total of $112. Going to set me back, but I have a feeling they could go sky high when they are out of print.

[Destiny_Gundam]

You probably could have waited for Rightstuf to have a fire sale.

Even so, that's an incredibly low price for a 50 episode series + a movie. A single set for $60 is what you can expect for only 13 episodes, let alone 50.

[Chris]

I can't help but think I am part of the problem with this. But every time I wanted to buy one of their shows it was so expensive. I really did want to buy gundam 00. They just had them at darn High prices with getting the whole series would be over 100 dollars. I have been hoping that they would release a single set for around 60 dollars but I guess I better check ebay for the old ones now and hope I get a good deal.

Well I am putting it off no more. As a precautionary measure I went ahead and ordered all the seasons of Gundam 00 and the movie on amazon.com and got the bargain prices for each with a grand total of $112. Going to set me back, but I have a feeling they could go sky high when they are out of print.

Nate, you really need to stop feeling as though you're part of the problem when it comes to anime and video games. The money you spend on these things is not some welfare that these companies are entitled to. You're not required to support them, and you spend what you can afford. Companies compete to survive, and some don't. That's capitalism, and that's the way it is. It's not your fault or the fault of other consumers for not buying enough things. The amount of mismanagement on the Japanese side would've ensured BEI's downfall no matter what.

[NastyNate]

Nate, you really need to stop feeling as though you're part of the problem when it comes to anime and video games. The money you spend on these things is not some welfare that these companies are entitled to. You're not required to support them, and you spend what you can afford. Companies compete to survive, and some don't. That's capitalism, and that's the way it is. It's not your fault or the fault of other consumers for not buying enough things. The amount of mismanagement on the Japanese side would've ensured BEI's downfall no matter what.

You're right. Thanks for that Chris.

[Admiral Larsen]

I can't help but think I am part of the problem with this. But every time I wanted to buy one of their shows it was so expensive. I really did want to buy gundam 00. They just had them at darn High prices with getting the whole series would be over 100 dollars. I have been hoping that they would release a single set for around 60 dollars but I guess I better check ebay for the old ones now and hope I get a good deal.

Well I am putting it off no more. As a precautionary measure I went ahead and ordered all the seasons of Gundam 00 and the movie on amazon.com and got the bargain prices for each with a grand total of $112. Going to set me back, but I have a feeling they could go sky high when they are out of print.

You shouldn't worry yourself about holding off on buying these and feeling that you have had a hand (if small) with all of this. IMO you were more than well within your rights for doing so. Chris is right with his statements that the behavior on the Japanese side would have lead to this same disaster no matter what happened elsewhere.

[Destiny_Gundam]

That you feel bad about it proves you're not part of the problem. The people who are part of the problem are the ones who just download fansubs and don't care enough to even consider buying something.

[kmagryffindor]

If your feeling bad that Bandai-Ent is getting out of the "printing" business then you are not part of the problem. I have always been a fan of the Anime Legends collections, and have invested in almost every Gundam series in print here in the US and all of the original releases of Code Geass R1 and R2. Am i heart broken that they will no longer be producing there own DVD's/ Blu rays and manga? Out side of the lose of the Anime Legends sets, not really. It is not an exaggeration to say Bandai had problems in their media production, especially DVDs. Bandai was hap hazard with their production and the standard varied. And lets face it the Bandai Store was an attempt to get direct returns. I am happy to see licencing is going to become more of a focus. Bandai, as well as others, need to create a marketing campaign for the Americas and Europe before they can expect to sell hard media. (i.e. actually make appealing trailers that are on the web in viral campaigns and get that media out there for viewing). Hopefully this move away from trying to sell physical product will lead to more innovation in promoting and showing the creative material they are licensing. It's not going to be cheap and easy and it won't be fast but fans need to just be calm an wait and see. Now as for Gundam, my major fear right now is the DUB of Unicorn. I am a DUB fan. Will this effect the dubbing of future Unicorn eps? Or did Sunrise and Bandai Japan handle working with NYAV Post? So for me it's just the worry of future Gundam Dubbing. But again only time will tell, just let companies know that there fans do care and tell them what we want. That's all we can do outside of investing in the product if we like the price and actually want it.
Well that's my two cents and concerns for now.

EDIT:
This Keeps my hopes up for the DUB of Unicorn because according to the official website Sunrise was the company that worked directly with NYAV Post.

http://www.gundam-unicorn.net/en/staffc ... .html#cast

[JEFFPIATT]

If your feeling bad that Bandai-Ent is getting out of the "printing" business then you are not part of the problem. I have always been a fan of the Anime Legends collections, and have invested in almost every Gundam series in print here in the US and all of the original releases of Code Geass R1 and R2. Am i heart broken that they will no longer be producing there own DVD's/ Blu rays and manga? Out side of the lose of the Anime Legends sets, not really. It is not an exaggeration to say Bandai had problems in their media production, especially DVDs. Bandai was hap hazard with their production and the standard varied. And lets face it the Bandai Store was an attempt to get direct returns. I am happy to see licencing is going to become more of a focus. Bandai, as well as others, need to create a marketing campaign for the Americas and Europe before they can expect to sell hard media. (i.e. actually make appealing trailers that are on the web in viral campaigns and get that media out there for viewing). Hopefully this move away from trying to sell physical product will lead to more innovation in promoting and showing the creative material they are licensing. It's not going to be cheap and easy and it won't be fast but fans need to just be calm an wait and see. Now as for Gundam, my major fear right now is the DUB of Unicorn. I am a DUB fan. Will this effect the dubbing of future Unicorn eps? Or did Sunrise and Bandai Japan handle working with NYAV Post? So for me it's just the worry of future Gundam Dubbing. But again only time will tell, just let companies know that there fans do care and tell them what we want. That's all we can do outside of investing in the product if we like the price and actually want it.
Well that's my two cents and concerns for now.

I agree with you on the trailer front if it were not for Techtv airing Crest of the Stars i would have never bought it the Trailer that they made to put on the DVD's barely told the plot and acted more like an music video the early gundam ones were also bad they spent a good chunk of the 0083 one explaining about how big gundam was in japan. i think that the internet streaming helps alot since we can now see the new stuff with out waiting for an network to get it.

[HellCat]

Remember I mentioned Beez? Seems they're bowing out too http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/news/ ... -new-anime

One wonders if head office is pulling the local branches to an attempt a 'my way or the highway' policy on selling titles?

[yazi88]

I think the last couple of things I bought from Bandai Entertainment were the legends pack of: King Gainer, Outlaw Star, and Mars Daybreak. The Outlaw Star I bought last year while Mars Daybreak was about 2 years ago. Mind you I bought them from a FYE retailer rather than online. Although King Gainer I got at a Youma-Con back in 2008.

[zetatype]

Well unless Sunrise decides to use some else as a distributor in the future I'm gonna have to start hunting down anime series I want before the supply runs low and people start tripling the prices.

As for Gundam Unicorn, I'm glad that since the blu-ray is released through Bandai Visuals I'll still be able to complete the collection, though its gonna cost me. Originally I had planned on just buying the DVD releases but that won't happen for part 3 (episodes 5 & 6)

[JEFFPIATT]

Well unless Sunrise decides to use some else as a distributor in the future I'm gonna have to start hunting down anime series I want before the supply runs low and people start tripling the prices.

As for Gundam Unicorn, I'm glad that since the blu-ray is released through Bandai Visuals I'll still be able to complete the collection, though its gonna cost me. Originally I had planned on just buying the DVD releases but that won't happen for part 3 (episodes 5 & 6)

Bandai is not closing the same way pioneer did and selling some titles off while "black hoeing" the rest of there catalog. any title BEI has in print up to the last run in feb will still be pressed and sold until BEI's license runs out for it. BEI is getting out of the anime distribution and switching over to an licensing clearing house for Bandai visual titles in the us market. when bandai first opened up shop in the us they used pioneer LDC us to press there DVD's. the major issue BEI had was the fact that they answered directly to the same people they were told to buy from and bandai wanted to market in the us like they could in japan.

[sweet-d]

damn sad news fracked up my weekend.

[BloodKnight]

It's definitely terrible news, especially since we won't get some of what was promised. But MAYBE once there licensing expires, another company will pick up some of the stuff that won't be released. Gundam in America is most likely done though, with the exception of Unicorn. Maybe someone will pick of AGE at some point, but I won't hold my breath. Damn, I really wanted that Turn A release!

[Antares]

This is sad, and it only reinforces my biggest regret of never owning a properly licensed LoGH. Not because BEI was handling it (no one is ), but it only shows the general trend going into a spiral faster than expected.

Personally, given the way I've felt about new shows, I don't think I would've been making any purchases of new titles anyway; I haven't felt excited about a show in a long time. I have some old favorites that I'd like to own for myself, but the market is dodgy at best: I found the Yakitate Japan DVD boxset in Amazon, but there is no info, aside from the compulsory tech specs, about it at all. No reviews, no nothing. It's a hundred bucks plus shipping to Europe that I'd have to fork over on good faith that it has everything it should in good working order. Something that interests me, a sub-o-phile, is the quality of the subs.

If the release quality in subs, for example, were comparable to the excellent fansubs I recall watching back in 2005ish, I would pay the price gladly. I still feel burned about the Ergo Proxy DVD set (official release, though I can't recall which company right now) where the subber had been abysmally bad and not only did a bad job, but had none of the insight to provide any additional info at all. While I know we shouldn't praise fansubbing here, I've ran into fansubs that have been not only informative and instructive, but also funny.

It's a bitter pill to pay $100 to own something you feel got an inferior version of. Of course, in the native Japanese market this isn't a problem, but when licensing abroad it sometimes shows the lack of investment in the localized product (perhaps because they couldn't afford more), and diminishes the perceived value of the purchase as a whole. When you get what you think you should, whatever you happened to pay for e.g. Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny isn't as important as having the boxsets of your shelf.

Like someone said earlier, I had hoped this current trend would've affected dubs first, and subs later, but the fall of BEI shows that far from improving said concerns, it is possible even less attention will be paid to them in the future. That is a sad thing to consider indeed.

EDIT: To fully reveal my ignorance here, how does the manga publishing tie in with BEI or others? Do they do anime and only anime, while the publishing houses that do manga are completely separate entities? I always figured that at least by buying the manga, which was often more readily available than the DVDs, I could show some appreciation for the series that I've liked. Well, I guess that's still true for the Japanese parent company...

[azrael]

This probably deserves it's own thread but, yet another sign of the times:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... -its-staff

[JEFFPIATT]

sad part is the fact that gundam age looks like it might have fit well on nick based on it's animation style. the issue with the old anime business model was the fact that when you licensed an show you prepay-ed for the rights and the company you paid owned the additional stuff you funded like the dubbing track BEI would produce an english dub for the us market on there dime while the owner of the show got to own it and resell it to other English speaking markets. the new internet media market allows them to sell world wide directly only haveing to pay them selves for the dub tracks and not driving an NA company in to the ground producing media.

[Casval Rem Daikun]

This sucks. I was truly looking forward to owning Turn-A Gundam with an official sub.
If they haven't finished the sub work yet, there's pretty much no chance it'll ever get done.

I guess I will window up doing what I'd planned to do before they announced they were releasing it and importing it then adding the subs myself. I was debating doing so with MS Igloo 2 (yeah, I was one of the 12 people that bought MS Igloo from Bandai Visual) anyway, although the DVD price is so insane that it makes the equally insane BluRay price look like a bargain.

I guess the only real long term hope is that someone at Bandai and Sunrise realizes that they cannot continue to do business with only their domestic market in mind, and that they need to recognize that markets outside Japan, for the most part will not readily pay Japanese prices for content, no matter how much they may want said content. In doing so, they might just figure out that the very real fear they have of releasing product cheaper outside Japan will drive the domestic market to simply import it is an indicator that the domestic market also feels ripped off by the price but they pay it because they want to support the shows they love but are too polite to complain about the price.

[Uso_Evin]

I really don't understand why Bandai (JPN) are so awkward with their releases through Bandai Ent (USA) and Beez. I understand the argument that they don't want Japanese fans importing cheaper box sets from international markets. Look at Italian Gundam releases as an example. These are essentially exact replicas of the Japanese releases, with the special packages and bonus features but at a fraction of the price. Look at these Mobile Suit Gundam box sets, at the price of 35 EURO each:

http://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B00423B ... =426865031

http://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B00423B ... =426865031

There are similar box sets for almost all Gundam releases, and similar good prices (especially compared to Japanese prices). Even the Unicorn Blu Rays are only 21 EURO.

Why can Italy release these sets at decent prices, while America and Britain/France aren't granted the same releases? These all include Japanese language tracks, so surely Japanese fans can just import from Italy?

[Uso_Evin]

Apologies, double post.