UK Anime Distributor Manga Entertainment Discussion Thread

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Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Lutga said:
I was gonna say - is deleting comments their new policy? Or maybe they have no policy?

Either way, I don't think them continuing to bury their heads in the sand is great...

I only say this because I care about the company (and God knows they've made that difficult recently) but I wish they'd just comment one way or another to let the fans that actually buy their product where things stand.
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Sad thing is, I'm not looking for them to fix all the issues and send out replacements, I was just kinda hoping they would acknowledge the concerns over how poor their releases have been as of late and maybe try and improve them. However ignoring it and sweeping it under the rug just reaffirms why I don't buy anything they've touched bar Bleach, and now I'm thinking I'll sell what I have and watch the rest on Crunchyroll as the idea of giving them money as they are now annoys me to no end...sad to see them go this way really.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

It just seems ironic that the oldest and largest company in UK Anime fandom spends twenty years building up its profile, and then arguably undoes a good deal of that in simply six months.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

I did notice that my comment had been deleted and reappeared. I agree it is pretty scummy to try and hide these sort of issues. Instead of fixing them and acknowledging them they believe sweeping PAYING customers criticisms under the rug is the right thing to do.

It's appalling behavior. I'm not buying their releases anymore after seeing them trying to intentionally hide their problems with this release. I really want to support the UK industry, but as soon as I see Manga have licensed a show in future, I shall be importing.

Anime Limited hold their hands high in the sky when there's an issue, and that is totally commendable.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Just posted on Manga's FB page:

Hi Everyone,
Apologies for the radio silence on reported Fairy Tail issues. We've been spinning disks in all sorts of players and it continues, we'll have an update for you soon.
In response to Fairy Tail becoming a DVD only release. There is always the chance with a long running shonen series like Fairy Tail that interest will begin to decline in a format like Blu-ray and we as a distributor must make the hard choice to drop that format for future releases. It was a tough decision but we always try to bring you guys the formats you love where possible.
We'd rather take a chance on bringing you the formats that you want rather than not at all. Sometimes this works out and in cases like this, it disappoints both us and the fans.
Again, we apologise for the inconvenience.
The Manga UK Team
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Sort of reiterating my post on Facebook, but I'd rather a chance not be taken if it's not definite the entire show will be released on Blu-Ray. I worry that their statement and use of the word "chance" could even fall foul to half season sets not getting their second part on Blu-Ray.

Also, what does "spinning disks" have to do with subtitles being out entirely along with poor chapter markers and conversion issues?
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Nice to see them finally give a response, but heck, if Fairy Tail can't do the numbers on BR these days then nothing can.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

They only just switched up to BD in the first place! At least they have switched to damage control. I hope it's really expensive for them so they start a new policy of spinning up those discs before release ^^;;;

R
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Also from their FB:

Importing has become a big trend recently and unfortunately affects sales statistics in the EU which then affects decisions when it comes to acquisitions as well as format choices. We do try Steve and we'll keep on trying. (We're also working on that pesky Quality Control issue that's been doing the rounds).

There has been an isolated incident of subtitles going out of sync, we're testing the disks but are also contacting online reviewers to see if they also experienced this issue.
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Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Why has importing become a big trend 'recently'? I don't disagree with the underlying message (early adopters buying elsewhere makes the pool of people waiting for a UK BD even tinier than it already was) but people have been importing en masse for years and Jerome moaned about it on a regular basis back in the day too.

If they're seeing a surge in importing now when nothing major has changed at the low end - S.A.V.E. releases are less cheap now than when the exchange rate was crazy a few years back, many import specialists have closed their doors and the import threshold has changed to favour UK companies - then I think they're mixing up cause and effect. I do see a lot of people around here importing high end releases from the US, but no UK equivalent will ever exist and we can't be representative of the casual buyers Manga UK pitches their releases at. Something is fishy.

R
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

While I can understand the frustration, I think it's too easy to fall back on importing as an excuse. There's a reason why people are importing - the challenge is to work around it and offer an attractive alternative. Anime Ltd. have pretty much nailed that so far, and it's arguably up to other companies to follow suit/rise to the challenge in whatever way they think will work best.

Effectively 'giving up' doesn't do justice to UK fans if the message is just 'oh, they're all importing, so why bother'.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Absolutely. Why are we importing? Well, the exact same product can already be purchased sooner from other sources. The customer service is better overseas, quality control issues are usually fixed and the same content comes out sooner and on more formats.

What value are Manga UK adding to those releases for those of us who aren't fervent nationalists (or still using PAL-only televisions in 2015)? Nothing.

The distributors figured out a clever way to save costs by using foreign materials, and in turn the customers did the same. When a company chooses to specialise in something which is intrinsically linked to an international industry - like Japanese animation - they'd be silly to assume that fans don't know about the world outside the UK.

Manga UK keep telling us what we want: we want cheap rehashes of material already available from other English-speaking countries with the bare minimum of quality control they can get away with. Then when nobody turns up to buy them after all, it's somehow our fault. All they actually have to do to make the importers stop and take note is to release things which are better (or even just 'as good') as what we can get elsewhere, the way Anime Limited is doing.

If they aren't going to cater for people capable of importing in the first place, they cannot turn around and complain when those people take their business elsewhere. As long as they cling to this attitude and upset their core audience (Attack On Titan, Naruto: Blood Prison and Fairy Tail; none of these are titles you should be angering people over) then the pool of people staying loyal to them will continue to shrink.

R
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Exactly as above.

They need to offer something more. Essentially Manga UK give us less on most of their releases (IE: inferior encodes).
MVM may give us basic releases at times, but a lot of their stuff they release on Blu-Ray is because the imports are very expensive, so they've found the UK market for those products (Monogatari). Or they are very close to US release dates and work out cheaper too. Manga sometimes take 6-12 months for their titles at times.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Yup - MVM have really come into their own with affordable releases coming very shortly after the US releases, and have reaped the reward as such. Monogatari and Watamote proved there's appetite for that kind of release, and shows that affordable Blu-Ray releases can work for the right titles, if handled promptly.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Honestly, whilst I didn't say this on the FB page (Re: Fairy Tail), my course of action on Fairy Tail (Which I have binge watched the last two weeks via Netflix) is to just wait for the rest to be available on Netflix (Not buying on Amazon, no muti lang option might Itunes if multi lang) and watch it as legally as possible whilst giving Manga not one damn red cent of my money.

If it never shows up, there's the importers.

Manga have done the biggest load of nothing to make me even look at the Home video section these days.

Elaniel said:
Also, what does "spinning disks" have to do with subtitles being out entirely along with poor chapter markers and conversion issues?
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It's a badly made pun about spinning plates. The PR Tron 1990 they have typing out those statements does not have any knowledge of the concept of "humor" other than it exists.
It is also keenly aware that Android Hell is a real place and it will be the place it will be consigned to if people aren't tricked into buying badly converted, non chaptered coasters.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

THat's nice to see but it's probably to late to have them undo the last 2 years of damage they've done to the brand.

Like they'll always been known as those asses who force PAL video encoding for no reason whatsoever and punted everything down to DVD only when it suited them.

Like I doubt we'll ever see HD Fairy Tail outside of VOD where you're prone to fallen victim to version lock out (IE: Dubs or bust) or strightjacket level DRM (or Netflix) for one thing.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

I don't think they've damaged their brand if you ask me. With the core anime fans? The ones who are vocal and know the MVM's from the Anime Limited's? Sure, I could see that. But a vast majority of the anime sales in the UK and a big chunk of the people who buy Manga's titles are people who take this art form in from a cursory glance. It's why you see titles like Origin: Spirits of the Past constantly in the top selling every year (>25,000 sales for 2012, second best selling title for 2012 behind Arrietty at >40,000 at number 1 and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time at number 3 at >15,000 sales), both of which are constantly in the top 10 sales each month. In terms of sales, it's Ghibli, DBZ, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Pokemon and your Manga films (Akira, GITS, The Girl who Lept etc) that chart without fail. Manga have a library that keeps people coming, and if their sales wane, it's due to people getting tired of having to keep up with the never ending box-sets for these seemingly never ending Shounens that make up a big part of Manga's release slate.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

They might have a library that keeps people coming, but they have a work ethic and an attitude problem (Which we can now safely say wasn't entirely Jerome!) that drives them away and into the hands of competitors/importers/illicit methods.

Johnny Dropout might not know his PALs from his Not the Sonic Characters, but he knows his DVD chapters and if they're not working right that can't do Manga any damn good in a world where every other media exists and is taking eyes off them.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

ConanThe3rd said:
THat's nice to see but it's probably to late to have them undo the last 2 years of damage they've done to the brand.

Like they'll always been known as those asses who force PAL video encoding for no reason whatsoever and punted everything down to DVD only when it suited them.

Like I doubt we'll ever see HD Fairy Tail outside of VOD where you're prone to fallen victim to version lock out (IE: Dubs or bust) or strightjacket level DRM (or Netflix) for one thing.
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Not many people have the axe to grind with the brand that you seem to have, so I doubt it is damaged longer term as far as the average buyer is concerned.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Manga Entertainment Discussion Th

Your average casual anime buyer who just picks stuff up from HMV probably hasn't even noticed.
 
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