Space Battleship Yamato 2199

for the States, yes. for Japan...i don't think so.

 

For animation, it was the 26th top seller in the first half of 2015 (after only being out 11 days). This included foreign animation works such as Frozen and Big Hero 6, which were on top by a large margin over their Japanese native animations.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-06-17/top-selling-animation-in-japan-by-title-2015/.89373

 

Hopefully it did better in the following weeks.

 

I read somewhere that anime BDs and DVDs are incredible expensive in Japan and the video rentals are still very popular. For these (and other) reasons these sales figures are not comparable with those of other countries.

 

All forms of media are expensive there.

Going by US dollars:

A CD is $10-20 in the states while in Japan it's the equivalent of $25-40
A DVD $15-25 here, in Japan it would cost you the equivalent of $35-50
A Blu-ray is $15-35 here, in Japan it's the equivalent of $50-60

That doesn't include any shipping charges either, which would be even more money. At least by American standards this is price gouging. It would be fine if that $35-60 got you the whole series but that's just for one disc with a single film or 2-3 episodes on it. Granted that's for new items though, things might decrease in price given time.

When I import a single BD movie it's usually around $75 for the film (when you add even the cheapest shipping option, SAL.)

 

Which was why importing the entire Yamto 2199 series was expensive. It is slightly cheaper now, but not because they lowered the price. The Dollar to yen exchange rate is favorable to the dollar at present. What would have cost about $700 in 2012 cost a bit over $500 now.

 

By comparison, Ghibli's top selling BD is The Wind Rises at around 70k units. So it's a good number.
Media sales, particularly BD, is a niche market in Japan.

Also, I almost hoped that someone would announce something at AX regarding RA/R1 releases again. Doubly so since LOGH just got picked up by Sentai of all people.

 

I am more hoping for a continuation announcement that a local release (since I have them all already). The BD is All Regions (with English subtitles), it just suffers from Japanese prices. The slightly cheaper DVD is R2 and has no subtitles.

The only real addition the stalled Star Blazers 2199 releases had was Spanish subtitles and a slightly cheaper price.

The LOGH got licensed is interesting. I was told that there had been an attempt to get that in the late 90s or early 2000s, but it was just too expensive for that many episodes. Plus if someone wanted to dub it like they were doing to the likes of Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon in the 90s, the price for the absolutely gigantic cast would be astounding.

 

Hot damn! They licensed LOGH! Never thought i'd see the day for the same reasons. Too long and expensive to do. I just read they are releasing the first 3 novels the series is based on also early next year. I can't wait.

 

Yep, saw that too. I only just finished watching the first of four seasons of LoGH and was damn impressed. Tens of thousands of starships duking it out on a regular basis? Two massive armadas at war for decades? Soundtrack of classical music from all the greats? I'm in.

The series is really dated though, so this release would likely be in box sets only at a budget price (13 or 26 episode at a go - there's 110 episodes to the main series, and quite a few side story OVAs too). People would only get into it because of its (seriously awesome) story though - the animation holds up fairly well, but it's nowhere near the kinetic fury people are used to. The closest thing to an ACTUAL space opera there ever will be. Love it.

Mark

 

Wow. Someone in the U.S. licensed Legend of Galactic Heroes? I have a friend who'll be very happy at hearing that. I thought it was an interesting concept t be sure, and of what I sat through, there were some good episodes; but IMO way too much exposition at times. YMMV.

 

Legend of the Galactic Heroes being licensed is the best news I heard all year. Although, I think the best we can hope for, in terms of a release, is a bunch of sub-only DVDs. I would of course love for them to dub it, but with something so old and long, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. The only way it would it get dubbed is if they want to try and market it out to non-anime science fiction fans and have a lot of cash to burn.

Also in Sentai's announcement was a license rescue for When They Cry (Higurashi no Naku Koroni) and further licensing of the same franchise to include Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai the sequel series that solves all the mysteries of the first season, and one of the OVAs Higurashi no Naku Koroni Rei.

So basically they did the impossible twice in one announcement.

 

Tentative information: There has reportedly been an interview with the show's executive producer (Souji Nishizaki) in this month's Yamato Premium Fan Club magazine (#11). The tentative information is that there will be a new series starting in Fall of 2016, based at least partially on the old Yamato 2 series and the film Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato. Also a possible plan for a se of 3 or 4 episodes to follow that series (an OVA or perhaps another film like Ark of the Stars depending on how it is produced). Also that he would like to continue to Yamato Resurrection film series his father started in 2009.

This is tentative. Waiting for the likes of Tim Eldred to got a copy and translate it in the next few weeks.

 

I'm sure if it's legit they'll be an ANN article on it eventually.

 

I saw the news on another board via a person who reads Japanese. Here's the original link:
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/myedf/e/e6b2115f210fe2e5690c3c53866eb158
And this is his translation:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173322264&postcount=10537

I guess you don't introduce fake Klingons if you didn't want to use them! But the staggered theatre release means another 2 years for the whole thing to trickle out again.

 

Means one can save money between BD releases. Japanese BD are expensive, but if the yen remains down, the second series will cost a third less than the first.

 

My overall response is: "Yay! (looking forward to their version of the Andromeda Class with the double-barreled Wave Motion Guns. "

(That said, I hope the project continues to makes their Blu-Rays with English subtitles - yes, it's expensive for me to get them directly from Japan, but I'm happy to pay if I get something I can understand in some form .)

 

Now this is going to be interesting... It just occurred to me that Okita, having given the promise not to use the wave motion gun as a weapon again will, in absentia, break his promise by the construction of Andromeda and its twin guns. Not to mention the other new capital ships coming up in the next-gen EDF assembly line that possess WMG's, like the Borodino and Lexington. I wonder how Starsha will respond to this breaking of his promise? I guess the EDF can always say that he wasn't speaking for the whole fleet or that the promise only applied to Yamato. I predict a small tidbit of moral dilemma sub-plot in the future.

 

^^^
Yep, I'm sure that will be a plot point somewhere; but it's like the subtext they added to SBY 2199 (which was NOT in the original 1973 version of SBY) of the EDF firing on the first Gamillas ships that entered the Sol BEFORE the Gamillas gave the "Surrender and be a Vassal World of our Empire..."; effectively showing that Humans started the war (out of our arrogance and fear) BEFORE there was a real/valid reason to fight.

 

I imagine it could be a case of "you can't put the genie back into the bottle" when it comes to the wave motion gun. The ships will have a wave motion engine regardless of anything else, and practical experience on Yamato's voyage shows that the wave motion gun is a good tool to have. However to keep the letter of the treaty (though perhaps not the spirit of the treaty) Earth warships might have modified wave motion guns. Either they will have them built in but covered (like Yamato's) that can only be unsealed by special wavers from the government. Or the wave motion guns are modified so that they cannot destroy planets.

The Earth Wave Motion guns in Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato and Yamato Resurrection have an unusually effect. They fire quickly compared to Yamato's, but reach a certain distance from the enemy and then burst out in a shower of smaller energy beams that destroy many ships in a cone from the blast point. Yamato herself never has this ability, and the Earth fleet in Final Yamato had wave motion gun effects similar to Yamato. The Earth fleet in Yamato 2 only use their wave motion guns once, and it could have been either method due to how it is seen...though they are the exact same ships as in Farewell to Yamato.

I would think that the next series Earth fleet will use the "spread effect" or however you call it, version of the wave motion gun see in Farewell to Yamato as their way around the Iscandarian Treaty. This makes the weapon more effective against fleets of enemy ships, but not so much a threat to planets, as while you could vaporize a city with this weapon, you can't crack a planet's crust with it. Andromeda's twin version being the more effective way to do it over the other ships which have a splitter in the barrel.