UK Anime Distributor Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Real pleased to see Rent-A-Girlfriend. Granbelm, Science Fell in Love and Somali I've heard the names of before but don't know much about them, I'm intrigued to look into them more though.

God of High School I remember watching the first three episodes way back and it was alright, would like to give a full watch before deciding if I want to buy it though.

Venus Wars is another I've heard of but know not a lot about but I welcome more retro anime so will likely get it.

Will get Eureka Seven to go with the other two and Blue Thermal I quite enjoyed so will pick that up as well sometime.

Castlevania I'm yet to watch any of and Gundam, as nice of a set as it is, when I finally start collecting it I'm going to stick to standards for consistency.

The Patlabor triple drop are clearly my pre-orders for next month now. I do want Great Pretender but I feel it is going to be pricey and with three Patlabor films the same month, it's one or the other for me most likely.

With all those January announcements I was getting concerned that A Place Further Than The Universe would be the same month as well so I'm kind of glad it's a bit off still, as much as I want it.

Overall some really cool announcements, considering AL seem to be picking up all the Crunchyroll licenses which were released by either Viz or Sentai in the U.S. I assume there is a good chance we'll see the first season of My Next Life as a Villainess eventually as that was a Sentai release, right? correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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ussjtrunks said:
Convinced Inuyasha Season 2 doesn’t exist, how can we expect AL to release Bleach and Naruto in a timely fashion if they have struggled to release even the second season of Inuyasha
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Naruto and Bleach would sell like hot cakes. You'd think they'd be motivated to release them smoothly and in its entirety. We've only had the DVDs in the UK and they're OOP, so it's about time.
 
Lucky_Deity said:
Overall some really cool announcements, considering AL seem to be picking up all the Crunchyroll licenses which were released by either Viz or Sentai in the U.S. I assume there is a good chance we'll see the first season of My Next Life as a Villainess eventually as that was a Sentai release, right? correct me if I'm wrong.
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Yeah there's a good chance we'll see I'm Standing on a Million Lives, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Monster Girl Doctor, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Noblesse, and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Season 1. World Trigger will likely be skipped due to its length, while Food Wars Seasons 4 & 5 and Haikyu!! Season 4 are probably too early to say.
 
NormanicGrav said:
Yeah there's a good chance we'll see I'm Standing on a Million Lives, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Monster Girl Doctor, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Noblesse, and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Season 1. World Trigger will likely be skipped due to its length, while Food Wars Seasons 4 & 5 and Haikyu!! Season 4 are probably too early to say.
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Thanks! thought so and can definitely see Eizouken happening, especially seeing as AL have the majority if not all of Yuasa's works?
 
Such a disappointment. I struggle to get excited about AL for home media anymore. They're the reason I started buying blu-rays properly, and it's depressing to see them resort to just phoning it in all the time after 10 years.

Rent-a-Girlfriend - Love this anime, but there's no point buying an AL release. Seasons 2 and 3 weren't Sentai so they may never happen for that reason, and even if AL can get them, they have an awful track record for season 2s, let alone season 3s.

Granbelm, Science Fell in Love, Somali and the Forst Spirit. More titles Sentai released years ago, seeing pointless collector's editions because it's all AL can get.

Castlevania is garbage as far as I'm concerned, but that may be of interest to others. Same for The God of High-School; I'm sure it has its fans. Maybe AL just isn't a distributor that reflects my interests anymore? No, that can't be it, I'm still in love with their theatrical output and Andrew's work on SLA produced an amazing lineup just last month.

Venus Wars I'll probably pick up. Enjoyed it at SLA when it screened,,but never got round to importing Discotek's disc before it went OOP. Nor did I buy Sentai's disc, which I expect this will be based on.

It was nice of them to finally announce The Great Pretender preorders for the UK, bit extravagant a release for me to buy on early bird, but maybe in next year's Xmas sale as I kind of enjoyed the anime.

Three CEs for the Patlabor movies with no outer artbox seems to just be a ploy so they can shaft us with the classic Anime Limited complete collection in an artbox just 12 months later and cheaper.

Godzilla and Dorehedro - more boring black vinyl for the UK, can't wait to see what colours Crunchyroll Store gets.

Gundam The Origin Complete Collection - I'll admit, I'm impressed at how long they held back from releasing this complete collection to supersede the two seperate collections, but I suppose releasing two Gundam titles a year does limit quite how many re-releases you can throw together. At least when 2024's second and final Gundam release is announced, there's a good chance it will be the Gundam Trilogy 4K blu-rays.

Blue Thermal's CE is a little basic, sure, but the movie was great so I'll be picking it up. Might actually come in at just under a year after the US release, pending any delays.

Eureka: Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution - Can't fault them here, they know theses movies aren't selling, so credit for actually seeing them through. Will have to grab this at some point to finish watching the trilogy as I never got round to watching the fansub.

A Place Further than the Universe - The CE is looking good for this one. It's good to see that when they're actively catering to the US market as well, they pull out all the stops and don't just give us a 16 page booklet and rigid artbox.


That seems like a lot of negativity, even for me, but Anime Limited's announcements no longer bring me any joy or excitement, just the lengthy wait for the dissapointment down the road. I really do miss the Anime Limited of old, and I know they can be better. 😢

Being a UK anime fan sucks nowadays, between streaming and home media.
 
I think it's like with anything, you're not going to be interested in every single annoucement I suppose. I know Gundam is incredibly popular but as soon as anyone mentions it I go to sleep.

But I do agree with the above points, there is something to be said for releasing the first season of something and never getting round to the other seasons.
 
That is a sh.t ton of Patlabor, excited to watch 2.

Started watching Great Pretender this week and it’s been fun, CE looks meaty too!

Also the return of digipaks, bless
 
ActionFaust said:
Taking a rare break from being a hater to say I'm on the side of AL on this issue. If the first season is a poor seller I too would be cautious of licensing another.
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It's a self fulfilling prophecy to some degree with AL though. With Kakegurui, for example, they announced season 1 over a year before Sentai did in the US, and kept telling us to wait. Sentai then announced season 1, got both it and season 2 out the door before we even got season 1, and AL have spent 2 years telling us to wait for season 2 while Sentai's have been on sale multiple times. There needs to be a solid plan for follow-up seasons.
 
Nice to see all the Patlabor movies getting a release. Can @anime_andrew or @Hanners please confirm if these releases are just replicating the Maiden Japan discs exactly or if the Manga UK dubs will be included? Similar question for Venus Wars: will it include the old dub or just the new Sentai one?
 
There were some nice announcements in my opinion, but many of these titles are a little late for me or ones that have already had nice releases in the US. I'm thinking about Venus Wars or Rent-a-Girlfriend S1 (the 2nd one still has a chance to achieve something if there are further seasons). I love Patlabor, but I already have it from Sentai. Should I buy again for the nice packaging and booklet? I'm a bit inclined to do so, but it's a pity there won't be UHD or soundtracks. A Place Further than the Universe or Eureka - finally, that's how I put it. Same with Castlevania. Every time I think that the previous season didn't sell well and they canceled it, they announce another one. Godzilla and Dorehedro on vinyl surprised me positively (although they could have been tempted to put them all in a box with three Godzilla parts, by the way), but I'm still waiting for the OST from Blame on vinyl, announced over a year ago. I hope that they will be tempted to release Godzilla of these films on Blu-ray, because nowhere else has it been released with ENG subtitles, which is a pity, because I really like this approach to this famous monster. Gundam The Origin Complete made me laugh a little because I expected it earlier (when Anime Ltd FR announced it) and I almost thought it wouldn't be released in the UK and it was announced.
 
Jaysgba said:
It's a self fulfilling prophecy to some degree with AL though. With Kakegurui, for example, they announced season 1 over a year before Sentai did in the US, and kept telling us to wait. Sentai then announced season 1, got both it and season 2 out the door before we even got season 1, and AL have spent 2 years telling us to wait for season 2 while Sentai's have been on sale multiple times. There needs to be a solid plan for follow-up seasons.
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This is exactly what I mean. I'd love to buy Kakegurui from AL and have it as part of my collection. However, knowing that they may not ever release season 2 kind of puts me off.

It's all well and good pumping out season 1s for a lot of series, but they seem to have developed a reputation for not providing subsequent seasons as much as they could. I can see why some people are hesistant to drop money on season 1s if they aren't sure they are going to get the next seasons... which then means the sales for season 1 may not be as high as they could be.
 
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Will definitely pick up A Place Futher Than the Universe and the 3rd Hi-Evo film, and while I own the US set there's still a high chance I'll pick up the first 2 Patlabor films, finally I'll maybe pick up the Great Pretender set, see how I feel at the time on that one.
 
ActionFaust said:
At least with Kakegurui they've actually confirmed they have it. I'm referring to stuff like March Comes in like a Lion and Sound! Euphonium where they haven't confirmed a release (that I know of).
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If I remember correctly, with Sound! Euphonium S2 said something like that it was difficult, and that was said sometime during this year. I took it as - we probably won't make it and I bought the US edition before it was gone, like s2 from March Comes in like a Lion.
 
I guess the current strategy is just to sub-license as much of Sentai's library as possible. It's a reasonable enough decision in the short-term, although given how Sentai has been nearly strangled out of the US licensing market, there probably won't be many recent acquisitions coming from that agreement.

There wasn't really anything I'm interested in outside of A Place Further Than the Universe, but it's nice that fairly niche shows like Granbelm & Somali are coming out, even if I have doubts they'll find much success. On the other hand, for whatever you can say about Rant A Girlfriend, it certainly seems to be a popular enough, even if I can't tell how much of the audience is hatewatching it at this point.

Well, I'll play the long-game & maybe a few of my more beloved Sentai releases will see a future release. Looking at you, Chihayafuru, Eizouken, Akiba Maid War etc etc.


Also, it was pretty funny watching the youtube comment feed during the Patlabor film announcements.

Commentor - "So do you have both Japanese & English audio
Andy - "Yep, we have both sub & dub!"
Another commentor - "Yes, but do you have both English dubs?"
Andy - ...

Well, if what I suspect will happen, happens, it is what it is. It's still kinda a wild decision to release fancy editions of beloved, but incredibly niche films, but not have the audio that cemented them as cult classics over here, particularly given their infamous nature as being pretty huge commercial duds. I still own those glorious Honneamise dvd sets than they couldn't give away and also bought the Sentai boxset that has the 47 ep tv show, 7 ep original ova, 16 ep New Files ova and all three movies for like £30-35 in a sale... and I still watch bootleg versions of the latter with the Manga dub added. That's enough editions without the OG dub. It's why I still own the original Manga dvd, despite it looking like a vhs tape.
 
Very excited about A Place Further Than The Universe, definitely a series deserving of a nice CE and it looks the part with a good old digipak no less.

Eureka I'm very happy about as well - I loved Anemone as well and will be good to finally watch the finale.

Patlabor I already got the american xxl pack but am yet to watch 🤦‍♂️. For Dorohedoro I wish it was the anime being released as a CE. Great Pretender been meaning to watch for ages and maybe will be pushed into it to see if it's worth the asking price.

Apart from that, I have to say I'm finding the AL CE spines a bit uninspiring - my shelves seem awash in AL White with the odd scatterings of colour with Don Glees and Millennium Actress...
 
Some interesting licenses here but nothing really for me. I am interested in Venus Wars but that has some issues concerning the dubs. I knew they would have Venus Wars after seeing them have it for SLA. Seeing as Sentai saw fit to redub it and then not included the original dub on their blu ray release I have little faith AL will for theirs. Especially since most of AL recent out put is Sentai sub licenses reusing their discs. I am pretty sure Discotek used the Manga UK dub for their release in 2015 but I don't own the disc so can't confirm.

I also didn't have high expectations for Patlabor 1 and 2 Manga UK dubs being included as from what @fathomlessblue said AL ignored the question about the dubs. Its kind of sad that Manga UK dubs are so often left off releases in favour of other. I wish more company's were like Discotek and actually cared about getting the all of the dubs if possible.
 
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