A new press release from Bandai Visual USA has announced that they’re delaying the releases of sola, True Tears, and Shigofumi– they want to reconsider their packaging strategy.

Having reviewed the current market conditions and expectations, Bandai Visual co., ltd. and Bandai Visual USA Inc. are now reconsidering the overall release strategy of packaged
animation media in the United States and in the global marketplace.

I wonder if that means they figured out that anime fans don’t like a release strategy that includes a single episode on a $39.99 disc? ‘Bout time!

So upon Bandai Visual USA’s announcement of True Tears and Shigofumi, I calculated the per-episode price of each 13-episode series– six 2-episode discs at $39.99 each plus one 1-episode disc at $29.99 = $269.93, divided by 13 = $20.76 per episode. I later talked about Right Stuf’s release of Emma as being more reasonable and was brought back to a per-episode price, and it came up again on IRC with Blood+.

So I started wondering: how much does an episode of anime generally cost? In search of this answer, I went through all January US anime DVD releases and calculated the price per episode of each release (excluding movies and special editions). I DID leave in a Geneon release for comparison, as well as a couple of other cancelled releases (like Hikaru no Go).

Now, keep in mind that this is really NOT enough samples to get a really solid view on all the companies. I mean, sure, ADV, FUNi, VIZ, and Bandai Entertainment each put out a good chunk of releases, but BVU only had two, Geneon only had one that I could find enough info on to include, and TRSI only had one period. Media Blasters and Manga Entertainment also both had only two each, and Manga’s were both box set re-releases (which, of course, tend to be much cheaper).

The average price of a single anime episode, though, was $5.65. The most expensive company was, of course, Bandai Visual USA (at an average of $16.66 per episode– but again, only two releases in January to work with). The cheapest was Manga Entertainment, who again only had box set re-releases that averaged to $1.99/ep; Bandai Entertainment was in second with $4.70/ep.

The cheapest anime was the Medabots box set (if I got the number of episodes right) at $1.35/ep; second place was Noein at $1.84/ep. The most expensive were, again, BVU’s releases, MS Gundam IGLOO and Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars, both at $16.66/ep.

The average per-episode price for box sets and rereleases was $3.19/ep; for new releases it was $7.05/ep.

Let me reiterate that this is all pretty unscientific– I really should go through, say, all of 2007’s releases to provide a more accurate picture. (Maybe I’ll get to it someday.) But this is a bit of a taste, I suppose. If you want to see my spreadsheet you can grab it here.

Well, kudos to BVU on speed: they’ve licensed both Shigofumi: Letters from the Departed and True Tears, according to Anime on DVD. Both shows are currently airing in Japan, having started in early January, and their first discs are both do out in the US in May. That means they won’t be out before their runs in Japan are over (each show is 13 episodes), but that’s still pretty quick turnaround for a full DVD release– as AoD points out, the North American DVDs will come out only a couple of months after the Japanese counterpart DVDs.

However, it’s Bandai Visual USA, so each 13-ep series will come out on 7 discs. Shigofumi will have 2 eps per disc except for the final disc, which will only have one; True Tears will have 2 eps per disc except for the FIRST disc, which will only have one– I guess BVU is experimenting. 1-episode discs will cost $29.99 and 2-episode discs will cost $39.99. For those of you counting, that means each series will cost about $270, or about $20.75 per episode. Yowch.

If you want my First Date reviews for these series, Shigofumi is here and True Tears is here.

Okay, it’s a pretty unscientific manner of gauging popularity, but I dare you to come up with something better. Hashihime has one of those reports about what anime has the most completed threads (=1000 posts) on 2channel, and the winner for winter ‘08 anime so far is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei by a longshot– 67 to 17 for second-placer True Tears. Yatterman, surprisingly, takes third with 13. Shigofumi and Spice and Wolf round out the top five with 11 and 9, respectively.

Catch the rest of the list here. Make sure you read the added notes (like the fact that Minamike ~Okawari~ is sharing threads with its predecessor, making it hard to gauge). And try to ignore things like the fact that Hatenkou Yuugi accidentally got named Hakuten Yuugi (which is kinda funny; “Hatenkou Yuugi” would = roughly “Unprecedented Games,” “Hakuten Yuugi” would = “Infectious Games.” Like, as in a disease-type infection).

Original source: Hashihime

• Title: True Tears
• Studio: PA Works
• Genre: Romance

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥½

• Animation: ♥♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Okay, but…WTF is this shit?)

Thoughts:
Okay, let’s see how much of this I managed to get straight. Shinichiro belongs to a family that does traditional Japanese dance (Mugiha), but he wants to draw manga. He also lives with a hot chick named Hiromi, the daughter of his dad’s deceased friend, who he kinda has a crush on. But she keeps herself separate from the family.

Then one day he meets a transfer student who is stuck up a tree. She drags him to a chicken coop and tells him that one of the chickens wants to fly and the other doesn’t. She also tells Shinichiro that he doesn’t want to fly either. He makes some comment about how she can fly ’cause she’s an airhead, and she curses him.

Life doesn’t get any betterafter that : he has a rough dance class, and he accidentally walks in on Hiromi about to take a bath. So he grabs a tissue box and…makes a chicken out of it as an offering to the strange girl, Noe. Then his remarkably young-looking mother opens a rejection letter from a manga publisher, causing some family havoc.

He gets to school and offers the chicken thing to Noe, and she drags him to the coop again, where it turns out that the bird she liked has been eaten by a racoon. She yells at the other chicken to tell her what happened. She and Shinichiro officially introduce themselves to each other, and he sees her in the light of a sunset, and..that’s the end of the episode.

I guess Noe is supposed to be charmingly eccentric, but I kinda think she’s just batshit insane. I don’t find her very cute, though I know I’m supposed to. Honestly, I just feel perplexed by her. And I feel a bit sorry for Shinichiro for being such a spineless pansy.

And yet, to be fair, I keep hearing about how popular the series is already, so there may just be something about it I’m completely missing. And I do feel intrigued enough to watch a second episode, to be sure…if only to see if I can make more sense of it. But yeah, I just felt confused, and not in an amusing way like with Zetsubou, which feels intentional, but more of a “…no, seriously, what am I missing?” way.