Posts Tagged “best buy”

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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Remember the misreported story last month about Best Buy getting rid of their anime section? Well, details of the company’s actual plans were revealed yesterday (saw via ANN) and they involve ranking of titles and clearance sales next month.

Once I read the words “A-list”, “B-list”, and “C-list” in the ANN article, I immediately thought back to two previous posts I had written in response to ADV Films’ John Ledford using similar terminology to describe how marketable different anime series are. In this case, the A-list titles will be “around 20 core anime SKUs”, according to ICv2, and would be carried in all locations; those would presumably include Afro Samurai, Naruto, and Dragon Ball Z. The B-list series (”over 100 anime SKUs”) would appear in about half of their 1,000+ stores and the C-listers would only show up in their top 200 stores nationwide as part of “large scale anime assortments”. So something like Baccano! may fall into the B range while Save Me! Lollipop and Indian Summer would likely fall under the C category. A reminder: these categorizations are based on expected marketability and not directly reflective of the quality of the series themselves.

I perused the list of stores ICv2 posted (ANN’s copy has store numbers) that will have 50% off clearance sales March 1st-21st and found two that I sometimes frequent – one in Vacaville and the other in Natomas – are on it so I’ll try to stop by both those in early March to see what’s available (and snag any good stuff) as well as do before and after shots of their respective sections. The ones in Citrus Heights and Arden Fair (Sacramento) weren’t listed so I’m assuming both will continue to carry A’s & some B’s.

There was no indication of a reduction in their online offerings but there may be a decline in how many copies they order as an entire retailer. This move will result in fewer total sales of anime in their B&M stores and pushing more people toward other online-only outfits but it may negligible for the company since the stores that are contracting their shelf space weren’t making an impact anyway. I hope many of those vacated spaces aren’t replaced by plastic instruments…

So just to recap: only the best-selling stores will carry the widest breadth of anime, the middle will carry a more moderate amount, and the least will have significantly pared-down sections – and there will be clearance sales next month.

When I began composing this in the afternoon, I thought it would be just another collection of news items baked into a Potluck post but then a few more things came to light this evening and the above image suspiciously gained more relevance.

UPDATE 1/18 12:37AM PST: AnimeNews.biz has issued a retraction to their story about Best Buy and how they shelf anime in their stores. Instead of removing sections entirely, they are “in the process of realigning the anime section of each store depending on title popularity”. I have accordingly adjusted that portion of this post.
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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.