UK Anime Releases For 14/07/08

July 13th, 2008 by Brack

Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour - Vol.7

Seven volumes at £19.99 RRP a piece for a 26 episode TV anime series. That’s £139.93 you’d have spent if you were buying this at RRP. Probably around £85 if you were buying them on the web on the week of release.

Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour - Complete Volumes 1-7 (Play.com Exclusive)

Amusingly punching the purchasers of this series in the dick on the same day, play.com have a boxset of the same series, £79.99 RRP, £59.99 with discount. That’s still probably too much, but you would be utterly gutted if you’d been buying this series one disc at a time, only to see that you could have saved between £25-80 if you’d waited.

Posted in Anime | Tags: , | No Comments »

UK Anime Releases For 30/06/08

June 29th, 2008 by Brack

Just the one this week.

Bleach: Series 2: Part 1

In which we get to the third phase of a Shonen Jump manga’s life and we find the start of the “big plot”. Often you get a few trial chapters where the series introduces the characters and series concept, then a longer story where it finds it’s feet, before moving onto the main the story. Shaman King did it, Naruto very clearly did it, One Piece did the first two steps, but then kept the rest of series to multiple arcs similar to Dragonball. And talking of Dragonball, Bleach’s big plot owes a lot the Red Ribbon Army arc (and to be fair, One Piece similarly raided this for it’s Enies Lobby arc).

The biggest plus for the series is that adapts the manga at a pace quite unlike it’s peers. These episodes clear through manga material at least twice as fast as Naruto or One Piece typically do. This gets the series into trouble later, but here the series is refreshingly light on typical time stretching devices such as long reaction shots and lengthy recaps and flashbacks.

The cost of this is that you don’t get the occasional dazzling animation display that Naruto has, instead Bleach maintains a solid level of competency throughout.

The eleven episodes here can be picked up from online merchants for around £15, which is a decent price in the current DVD market, though I’d argue that just buying the manga would be the better way spending of that cash, as it’d get you three volumes and change. But it’s only better by a margin, as this boxset pretty much cover volumes 9, 10 and 11 of the manga. Yes, 31 episodes in and they’ve covered nearly 11 volumes of manga, that’s how pacey the adapatation is.

Posted in Anime | Tags: , | No Comments »

UK Anime Releases for 16/06/08

June 15th, 2008 by Brack

Noir: The Complete Boxset

As I’m sure I’ve said here before, Noir is no good.

Like most Bee Train productions it’s stilted, dull and frequently mistakes nothing happening with atmosphere. Also this boxset has a RRP of £59.99 for 26 episodes on 7 discs. Oh and some dogtags if you are the sort of schmuck who is easily impressed with cheap add-on tack.

Play.com has it for £44.99, so let’s get some perspective on what ADV are offering us, and see what we could get for the same price from there:

You could get Ghost In The Shell: SAC 1st Gig! Complete Box Set AND Ghost In The Shell: SAC 2nd Gig! Complete Box Set AND Ghost In The Shell / Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence and still have change from £45. That’s 52 episodes of TV animation and two feature films for the same price as all of Noir.

Those are all older releases though that have since dropped in RRP. Let’s look at things still on their original RRP:

You could get 3 Naruto box sets for a little less than the Noir set. That’s 39 episodes of TV animation (some of it far better than Noir’s) for the same price of Noir’s 26. It’s not as good a deal as the Ghost In The Shell titles (that’s such a bargain that even I, who didn’t like SAC, am tempted), but it’s still much more comparable to other non-anime TV boxsets on the market.

Talking of which, for the same money as the Noir set, you could get seasons 5,6 & 7 of The Simpsons for the same price from Play at the moment. That’s 70+ episodes of prime Simpsons for the same cost as 26 episodes of dull “girls with guns” anime.

Or assuming you really liked Noir, and therefore have no taste, you could get 4 seasons of Family Guy and still have a fiver left over to buy some rat poison to kill yourself with.

If you purchase Noir, you hate money.

Posted in Anime | Tags: , | No Comments »

UK Anime Releases for 19/05/08

May 16th, 2008 by Brack

Mushi-shi: Vol 4
Hell Girl: Vol.2 - Puddle
Berserk: Requited Desires Vol.5

Single volume time. You don’t need any of these that badly. Particularly Hell Girl.

Negima: The Complete Series

I wrote something on Negima on my livejournal (back when I had a naive idea to keep the hate away from this site) that sums up my feelings on this series nicely.

As Ken Akamatsu’s previous series Love Hina was to Maison Ikkoku, Negima is to Harry Potter.

Which is to say, crap.

Posted in Anime, Comics | Tags: | No Comments »

UK Anime Releases for 28/04/08

April 27th, 2008 by Brack

Eureka Seven: Vol.10
Ah! My Goddess: Flights Of Fancy Vol.1
Kurau: Phantom Memory Vol.4
.Hack//Roots: Vol.6

More single volume nonsense. The AMG volume can be found for a tenner, so that might be worth your while if AMG is your thing. Though you’d probably be better buying a Kosuke Fujishima artbook, as that will look far better than any anime adaption is going to, and you want to have to put up with his insipid writing.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex - 2nd GIG: Individual Eleven (11)

Another GITS series chiseled down to a 2 hour film. Not really sure who these are aimed at, and it smacks a little of double dipping. What’s worse is you can pick up the 2nd GIG Box Set for about 20 quid now.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

UK Anime releases for 07/04/08

April 3rd, 2008 by Brack

Naruto Unleashed: Series 3 Part 1 (3 Discs)

More reasonably priced ninja-ry.

Witchblade: Vol. 2
Ergo Proxy: Vol.5
Basilisk: Vol.6 - Fate’s Finest Hour
.Hack//Roots: Vol.6

Single volumes of shows you don’t need .

Gunbuster 2

Hey, wasn’t this supposed to come out a fortnight ago? Well this appears to still be the entire thing, for 25 quid, but can be found for 16 quid shopping around.

Yu Gi Oh GX: Vol.3

Yu Gi Oh GX is odd show, stripping out a lot of the goofy Egyptian / Lovecraftian nonsense of the original for the most part and introducing an element of self-aware goofiness to the scripts that has echoes of the Yu Gi Oh abridged parodies. This is 3 dubbed eps for £5.99, which is about right for kids DVDs.

Paranoia Agent Box Set (Thin Pack)

This has a £40 RRP, buy you can find it for £32. Which as it’s originally a Geneon product is about the same amount of overpriced-ness that the US release had. As good as the show is, this release is the same amount of episodes as the Naruto release has.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

UK Anime releases for 31/03/08

March 27th, 2008 by Brack

Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour - Vol.5

You know, it would have been fun to see this get released two eps a disc at that old £5.99 price point the original Guyver VHS had. See if that magic could be worked twice.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Laughing Man

It’s the first season of SAC as a film.

Stratos 4: Complete Collection

This got delayed a week. So did other stuff, but I’ll get to that next week.

Fantastic Children: Complete Collection

This is looking like a good deal. £35 RRP for a 26 episode series. Yes, this is the holy grail, an anime TV release with a price point comparable to other 21-26 episode non-anime TV series releases (namely Sony, Fox and Universal releases - the trinity of “gettting it right” in my book). And it’s a good series to boot. Play have it listed as this coming Monday, Amazon a week later though.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Complete Collection Box 1

Insanely, this is also from Bandai, has a lower running time, and is twice the price as Fantastic Children.

Which makes me wonder if a) the listings for Fantastic Children are right or b) Beez are out of their fucking minds.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

UK Anime releases for 24/03/08

March 20th, 2008 by Brack

There might have been something out last week, I’m not sure. Play.com did have The Tick DVD listed as last weeks “anime” release though. This week the flood gates seem to have been thrown wide open.

Gunbuster 2

RRP is £24.99, which feels a little high, but it is an OAV series rather than a TV series, and if you look you can find it for 16 quid. As long as I don’t hear anything awful about the video transfer, I’m going to get this. I don’t know if we are getting the extras the Bandai Visual USA releases have, but it’s sure as hell a lot cheaper than they are charging in the US (it’d cost me about £40 plus postage for the US releases).

Stratos 4: Complete Collection

More sensible series packaging from Beez. This totally doesn’t look like my sort of thing, but £25 RRP for a complete 13 episode TV show is an OK price, especially when you can find it for about 2/3 that online.

Crest Of The Stars: The Complete Series

Hmm, one could argue Beez maybe putting too many boxsets out on the same day, but that might be churlish of me. What I said about Stratos 4 goes here too.

S-Cry-Ed: Complete Collection

And they have a 26 ep series too. These are £49.99 a boxset, which I definitely think is at least 10 quid too pricey. Sure it’s just twice the price of the 12/13 ep series, but you aren’t finding twice the online discounts. You can find this for about £38 online, which is still too much to pay for an average TV quality series.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Destiny - Vol.10

If you’ve been buying this series you’ve probably now spent between 120 and 200 pounds. Was it worth it?

Beck: Vol 3 (Mongolian Chop Squad)

Beck’s a good if inconsistent series, not worth picking up in single volume form.

Moon Phase: Vol.5 - Phase 5

Terrible vampire cat girl moe show.

Peach Girl: Vol.4

Shojo anime, that if I recall correctly, has a similar rough looking quality to it as GTO. Say what you like about Revelation (uncommunicative is what I usually like to say about them), they do have a better grasp on price points than most. 4 episodes for a £16 RRP is still a little too high I think for TV animation, but far more realistic than Beez’s £20 RRP on the Gundam Seed volumes.

Requiem From The Darkness (Thin Pack Set)

MVM add to the week’s boxset flood with this underrated series. £30 RPP though for 13 eps. Play have it for 18 quid which is better, and cheaper than importing it. If Gunbuster 2 wasn’t out the same week, I’d probably get this.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

UK Anime releases for 10/03/08

March 6th, 2008 by Brack

And we are back on track.

Black Lagoon Vol.1

While Geneon as a distributor of anime may be dead in the water in the US at present, they still have distributors in the UK and Australia. Geneon’s UK distro, MVM releases the first volume of this excellent action series next week. This is one of those series where if you can get a single disc under a tenner it may well be worth your while getting, as the quality is very high. And as one of their other 12-13 ep series, Paranoia Agent, is thirty quid from MVM’s own site, you might want to get it in singles anyway as the box really isn’t likely to offer much of a saving.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

Anime released in the UK for 03/03/2008

March 5th, 2008 by Brack

Late due to Minamicon.

Naruto: The Lost Story

What is this? A Jump Festa OAV? It’s cheaply priced, so if you are a big Naruto fan, go knock yourself out. Otherwise getting the film is probably a better bet, as at least the dumb ninja fun is delivered with sassy animation.

Elemental Gelade: Vol.6

I always want to call this Elemental Gerald. Last volume I believe.

Gun Sword: Vol. 7

This has the look of a show created with one eye on the US market. Last volume of this too I believe. Both this and Elemental Gerald are anime shows that are just there. They look like they’ve been designed by marketeers and you can’t imagine them ever being anyone’s favourite show. They just seem to have been produced because the anime industry needed to produced a certain amount of anime in year.

Blood The Last Vampire

Looks like a budget reissue, given the short running time six quid is a much better price for this. Despite some nice animation, the story is very shallow.

Posted in Anime | Tags: | No Comments »

« Previous Entries