BVU Flies with Sola– Could Be A Big Deal?
Blah blah blah, Bandai Visual USA + sola, $49.99/disc, three episodes per disc, June 10th, no dubs, etc.
Does anyone else think BVU is really moving to the (relative) mainstream of anime? I mean, look at their past titles: Patlabor, Gunbuster, Demon Prince Enma, Wings of Rean, Super Robot Wars, MS Gundam IGLOO, SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers, Galaxy Angel– all space, mech, sci-fi, adventury, kinda “big” series.
And now look at their most recent license: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de, Shigofumi, True Tears, sola. The first two have some adventure and stuff, but none of these are “big” titles (yes, I know sola was voted top anime of ‘07 on Yahoo! Japan, but I just can’t take that very seriously), and True Tears in particular is an absolute slice-of-life romancey thing. I guess what I’m trying to say is, all of these recent licenses are of moe shows, which is so different from what BVU has done in the past.
Now, True Tears and Shigofumi were both produced by Bandai Visual Japan. But sola is not– which may make it the FIRST title ever to be released by BVU that is not related to Bandai Japan in some way. The closest would be HaruToki, which was only distributed by Bandai Japan. But everything else Bandai Visual USA has was either produced by Bandai Visual or by one of its subsidiaries like Freedom was done by Sunrise and Super Robot Wars is based on games made by Banpresto.
This is assuming all of my research is correct anyway, but sola was created by MediaWorks, which is part of Kadokawa Shoten. Then again, Broccoli Books scored the English manga license, and Broccoli USA and BVU have long been buddy-buddies.
Well, we’ll see if this means anything. Just thought I’d point it out for you industry-watchers. :)
After I got a comment from DiGiKerot, I went and poked around some more sites– specifically the Japanese wikpedia entry for sola –and they list Bandai Visual (Japan) as one of the production companies. The English sites just haven’t caught up to it yet (and it’s not mentioned on the official Japanese site either). So, so much for that! Sorry for the red herring. ;)
I’m pretty sure Sola was actually distro’d via BV in Japan - I’ve seen it advertised on a number of their DVD releases, and in their Beat and Chibi-Beat advertising leaflets.
@DiGi: I went and looked at the Japanese wiki entry after I got your comment, and they DO list Bandai Visual as one of the production companies on it– just none of the English-language sites have caught up (and it’s not mentioned on the official Japanese site either). So that takes care of that! Updating. :)
Bandai has been around for a long time, releatively speaking, and they seem to know where to invest their $$ and what to promote when. Looking through their catalogue they have a lot of good anime, okay, low stink ratio. Perhaps their “sniffing of the winds” and pricing structure are closer to the mark as far as what it takes to remain in business. At first I was like “no way” when the pricing was announced but after watching Geneon fail and ADV thrashing about I am re-thinking my stance.
@Auglaize: Good points all– though I’m still sketchy; moe doesn’t sell in the US like it does in Japan. Time will tell!
Well, as amusing as sola was, it isn’t worth $50 a disk. :(