FUNimation To Release 4th FMA Packaging in 4 Years

I was offline most of Tuesday as I spent time out with some friends watching Transformers on Blu-Ray (still an average movie but in greater visual fidelity) and playing video games. In doing a cursory catch-up on Twitter messages (i.e. NOT trudging through numerous pages of updates), I came across one from Borderline Hikikomori‘s CJ Blackwing that linked to RACS’ Full Metal Alchemist anime page. According to them, FUNimation will be releasing two season sets this upcoming spring: Season 1 (ep. 1-28) is set to come out January 27th and be a smushing together of the previous first and second DVD box sets, which collectively bundled singles 1 through 7, while Season 2 (ep. 29-51) has a date of March 10th and collates box sets 3 & 4, aka singles 8 through 13.

*sigh* Do any of you remember how some early singles purchasers of ADV titles became irritated when box sets came out soon after the final single had come out, and later thinpaks that were stripped of the singles’ extras? Customers began to expect a box set/thinpack release for all series, so many waited until those came out to make their purchases instead of going the more expensive route of buying single volumes. Seeing that behavior, along with evaluating packaging costs, likely spurred FUNi toward their current strategy of putting most of their new series out in 12/13-episode “season sets” – recent exceptions include Darker Than Black and Baccano! Part of FUNi’s reasoning in this case might be to head off depleting stock of the previous box sets, which aren’t hard to find online right now, but a potential jump in sales of a valuable brand could also be a motivation.

I decided to research the previous Region 1 releases using ANN’s extensive release catalog and here’s a breakdown of the last three packaged releases of FMA in shiny disc form:

1) initial run of singles:
Vol. 1 on Feb 8, 2005 – Vol. 13 on Sep 26, 2006; 13 volumes in 20 months.
MSRP: $29.98 each – total: $389.74

2) Viridian collection reboxing:
two re-releases monthly starting Oct 16, 2007, the final three on Mar 4th ’08.
MSRP: $19.98 each – total: $259.74

3) four box sets:
#1 on Sep 18th ’07, #2 on Nov 13th, #3 on Jan 15th ’08, #4 March 11th.
MSRP: $49.98 each – total: $199.92

After the upcoming “season sets” hit shelves, each individual episode will have been put out FOUR different times. I guess I’m lucky that I didn’t buy any of the previous releases so I’m looking forward to these if I decide I really want to own the series. It’s worth noting that FUNimation has begun reauthoring episodes in their latest 25/26-episode box sets, such as Mushi-shi, to fit more onto a single disc – the two sets coming in spring should each consist of 4 discs. It’s not the repackaging model that Bandai Entertainment used in their Anime Legends collections of throwing old volume discs into a bulky box, allowing FUNi a little more product per shelf inch in Best Buy and other B&M stores.

All this may not matter anyway when the new adaptation of the manga premieres in April. It will most likely bear a widescreen aspect ratio – the first series was full frame – and trend more closely toward the original storyline, meaning once manga-only Xing and its characters should show up. It’ll hopefully address some of the plot issues (particularly those in the last twenty episodes) and other problems that annoyed an Animefringe writer in spring 2005. Opinion Prone laid out possible routes it could take earlier this month and though I share the concern many have about the production catching up to the manga, which has monthly chapter releases, I am not too worried about it.