Archive for the “Shopping” Category

TRSI added a bunch of items to their online catalog today and along with many repackagings and consolidations in FUNimation’s September solicitations, there were many previously unannounced items and details to be found as well.

(UPDATE 6/24 3:44PM PDT: Robert of his eponymous Anime Corner Store wrote a post [saw via scottfrye] saying they now have pretty much all the same items up for pre-order.)

GONZO anime Burst Angel is evidently getting a Blu-ray release on September 29th at a list price of $79.98. (TRSI’s pre-order price is currently $60.) It will have all 24 TV episodes and the Infinity OVA, just like its Viridian Collection release in June 2008, except now in high-definition.

Nabari no Ou will have its first 13-episode set come out on September 22nd at a typical $59.98 price point. The ninja action series was one of Funi’s New Show A Go Go licenses last December and the manga is currently being published by Yen Press.

Sgt. Frog (aka Keroro) Season 1 Part 1 comes out on Sept. 22nd. That date was announced during their main panel at Anime Next but not the “budget” list price of $39.98 for 12 episodes. That’s at the same level as their Shin-chan releases but this will be a hybrid release (remember their test episode from November?) unlike the dubbed only Shin-chan.

Other first-run releases include the second half of Big Windup! sliding home (TRSI; RACS) on Sept. 29th ($59.99 MSRP), 6 weeks after the first half; the second half of Kaze no Stigma dropping on Sept. 1st ($59.98 MSRP); and One Piece Season 2 Part 3 continuing the adventures of the Going Merry crew on Sept. 29th ($49.98 MSRP). RACS also has that One Piece box set listed, saying it contains episodes 79-91.

After having finished with their Dragon Ball GT and DBZ uncut box sets, Funi will give the same treatment to the original Dragon Ball series when they release the first season uncut DVD set on Sept. 15th for $49.98 MSRP, the same price point as their previous uncut box sets from the franchise.

I’ll wrap up talking about Funi with some former Geneon releases. On Sept. 29, a box set of Heat Guy J will come out at $49.98 MSRP (TRSI) and both Black Lagoon seasons are being repackaged into a single box set at $69.98 MSRP, also on Sept. 29 (RACS; TRSI). There will also be a number of repricings of their $69.98 Geneon box set reissues last year: Ergo Proxy on Sept. 29th (RACS; TRSI), Fate/stay night on Sept. 1st (RACS; TRSI), and Shakugan no Shana on Sept. 15th (RACS; TRSI).

Finally: there are some Nozomi releases of some decades-old series. The first of two Kimba the White Lion mini-collections come out at $49.98 MSRP on October 6th (link), the second Gigantor collection on Sept. 15 for $39.98 MSRP (link), and two mini-collections of Astro Boy, both on Oct. 6th at $49.98 MSRP apiece (set 1, set 2)

Whew, that was tiring to put together!

UPDATE 6/23 11:10 PM PDT: I later found out that Nozomi had issued separate press releases about the Kimba and Astro Boy mini-sets.

Monday afternoon I stopped by the Best Buy in Natomas (store #660) and bought Case Closed Season 3, which was 17.99 after the half-off discount. Ghost Hunt Parts 1 and 2 were also there for the same price but I’m a little tight on money right now (typical college student excuse). But I’ll try to pick those up at a later time, promise. Once I got home, I was surprised by how thin the volume actually was, given this was my first neo-FUNimation set.
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Cropped from this Flickr image

This week, Best Buy is having a 50% off sale on select anime box sets. (I was tipped onto this earlier in the week from this thread on Cheap Ass Gamer but waited until now to write about it so as not to get anyone in trouble.) The titles being discounted are:

• Tokko: The Complete Series – $12.49
• Elfen Lied: Diclonius Report Thinpak- $15.99
• Noein Complete Series Box Set – $17.49
• Dragon Ball Z Season 4 Uncut Box Set – $19.99
• Mars Daybreak Anime Legends Set – $19.99
• Fullmetal Alchemist Season 2 Part 2 (ep. 41-51) – $19.99
• Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum Thinpak – $28.99
• Samurai Deeper Kyo Complete with GBA game – $29.99 [game trailer]
• Robotech Protoculture: Collection (85 dub-only episodes) – $37.49

These prices are also now up online while some of them already backordered. I’ll going to get Noein and Tokko for sure, and perhaps Elfen Lied, and pump up my Reward Zone points in the process while also snagging R.E.M.’s new album this week. Maybe I’ll get xxxHolic #1 as well…

P.S. A warning: the Eva thinpak discs lack the extras from the singles, something I found out during my interview with Sean McCoy who had done a couple episode commentaries for #20 and #26. I believe the Elfen Lied thinpak also lacks its previous extras.

I feel bad that I haven’t been posting as much as I would like due to school picking up again. However, I don’t feel really bad since I haven’t had much to write about lately. Anyway, yesterday afternoon, I found something to center a composition around. I was in Fry’s to ask about a recording device for some kind of security camera [in-line text ad] setup for my house at the co-op and after I got pointed in the right direction and took some notes, I wandered over the games section to see if they had any deals. There weren’t many but there WAS something that surprised me.

Plentiful shrinkwrapped copies of Katamari Damacy at its original price of $20! (The game is also “in stock” on frys.com at the same price.) By comparison, Gamestop only has used copies priced at $29.99, ten dollars more. I didn’t have a PS2 back when it was released in the summer of 2004 but now that I own one, I instantly grabbed one off the shelf while wondering why this store still had a fair number of new copies three years after its release.
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The September and December 2007 issues of Shonen Ace, respectively.

Last week I ordered two issues of Shonen Ace from Akadot Retail mainly for the pack-in extras (got the tip for December from Furu Anime Panikku) and received them in the mail Wednesday. The “appendix” for September’s issue was a Haruhi battery-operated fan while December had a medium size Evangelion T-shirt meant to celebrate the 13th anniversary of Shonen Ace. More pictures after the jump.

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Last night, I was browsing through the top song charts of various countries’ iTunes Stores and I was surprised to find “Sousei no Aquarion” by Akino, the first opening theme to the anime of the same name, on the Japanese chart. I then thought to myself, “Hey, wasn’t that one of Funimation’s Kickoff ‘07 licenses?” I checked and found I was right but then I began to wondering why I hadn’t heard anything about an upcoming release. The landing page for Aquarion says “Coming Fall 2007″, which seems to be a projection that be missed since it’s almost winter and there’s still no definite word. Meanwhile the other six titles seem to be doing fine.
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Before this week, the downloadable episodes that ADV Films was selling through its website were priced at $4.99 each, much higher than anime on iTunes albeit ADV’s stuff was at a much higher bitrate as well. Now the company has announced that it has begun offering downloads of “over 500 episodes” from 32 series for $1.99. Sounds good, right? Well, maybe not if you look at what you’re getting for your two bucks.
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AnimeNation is now selling the first four episodes of Girls’ High through streaming Windows Media for $1.99 a piece, which seems to be the company’s first foray into non-adult PPV content. I watched the first episode of Girls’ High on the preview DVD in the first issue of Otaku USA and thought it was okay. It was funny in parts but not enough for me to want to purchase the first volume. However, since I am curious about how new anime distribution systems function (see my previous posts about ADV Universe and iTunes), I decided to give it a shot.
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Last week, I foolishly bought 25 Geneon DVDs for $100 from RightStuf and they arrived at my regular home Wednesday, waiting for me until I came home from Davis on Friday. The problem is that I had to pack three small boxes to take home the discs that I had in my apartment. While I was carrying them to the car, I came to the realization that I have too many DVDs (anime and domestic films).
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I can’t believe that it took reading about Bandai Visual’s rather high pricing of the Gunbuster and fans’ reaction to it at SakuraCon last weekend to get me to write a post after a ten-day absence. My explanation is that I was distracted by a bunch of things including classes, chores, laundry, compiling my radio playlist, spending Easter day with my family, anime club, and watching the first season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on DVD. In that span of time, I start writing a couple of entries but I wasn’t able to finish them to my liking so I just moved on. In case you want to know, the first one would have been posted on Easter about religion in anime and would have focused on Scrapped Princess, FMA, and Chrono Crusade while the second was an informational post about MyAnimeList. Anyway, I apologize in advance if this is a relatively long post but I have a lot of stuff I want to discuss.

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