For the anime or DBZ fans(which I'm one of), FUNI has been kind enough to reveal the tech specs for us.

-It will be widescreen, either 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 is my guess
-Codec is AVC averaging 15-18 mbps
-No LPCM or DD audio, it will use DTS 5.1 instead

http://animeondvd.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/23032/

For those who don't know, this release combines the first two Broly movies. The total run time should be about 2 hours. Still no price available, normally anime DVD's have a higher price then Hollywood DVD's. But DBZ even in America is a already a old franchise(and a very successful one). I don't expect a crazy high MSRP like Bandai is doing for Wings of Honneamise. I think they'll set it at $34.99 like almost everything else.

Also Bandai has announced 3 more anime Blu-Ray releases, they are Metropolis, Memories, and Spriggan. According to Animeondvd, all 3 will be encoded in AVC(with a aspect ratio of 1:85:1) and have a 5.1 PCM track. All 3 will also be bundled with the DVD version of the same movie and sell for 10,290 yen($88.89). Considering that The Wings of Honneamise is coming out for $79.99 MSRP in the states, I expect these three to have the same MSRP price if they do come out here.

im in for the dbz!

Why oh why did they have to pick the ****** DBZ movies? Why not the first few, Cooler's movies, or Fusion Reborn???

$80 for one anime movie? HOLY ****ING ****!!! Bandai can kiss my ass on that.

I would expect the transfer on the Funimation DBZ disc to be horrible or at least unsatisfactory. It's been well known that Funimation tampers with they're transfers for DBZ and are working from poor masters from Toei JPN anyway. Usually their DVDs have over-satured colors, a zoomed-in frame, and other problems. Also, their so-called "remastering technique" isn't worth much - as they don't do anything to clean up things like scratches in the film, cigarette burns and what have you - they just do things like over-saturate the colors and call it remastering.

If this release was tranfered from the pristine Toei "Dragon Box" movie masters/release, then it would have some quality. But it is not, so I would expect several glaring problems with the AV of this.

Why oh why did they have to pick the ****** DBZ movies? Why not the first few, Cooler's movies, or Fusion Reborn???

$80 for one anime movie? HOLY ****ING ****!!! Bandai can kiss my ass on that.

LOL, so true. You think they may have forgotten which country this is. I've never seen WOH, but I heard it's a true classic. So when I heard it was coming to Blu-Ray, I was kind of excited, then I saw the price and my jaw dropped. Sure we could find it for $60 or so at online retailers, but that's still ridiculously high for just one movie, and it's not even some kind of super collectors item.

I'm a anime fan, but I can hardly find any anime movies that interest me. So I hope these companies could start shifting there focus towards TV series. FUNI has said that they plan on releasing there more popular products on Blu-Ray. I hope one of them turns out to be "Full Metal Panic: TSR". That I would buy in a heartbeat.

what pathetic specs

Go superbit and use full res lossless for God's sake

use the gift BD has given to you!

what pathetic specs

Go superbit and use full res lossless for God's sake

use the gift BD has given to you!

Superbit is just a Sony marketing thing, there's nothing special behind it.

Spriggan is a brilliant anime, but ~$90? Have they completely lost their minds? No thanks. I like anime, but not that much.

Superbit is just a Sony marketing thing, there's nothing special behind it.

I don't think you quite understand the Superbit concept in this case. Using all available space of a BD-50 for nothing but audio and video is quite special. It will allow us to see out movies at there very best.

Sorry, I can't help but laugh at Funi's entrance in the world of HDM. In the DBZ DB announcement thread on this forum I derided them, and what do you know, they've lived up (or I should say down) to expectations. No PCM?! Only Funi could be so pathetic to go to the trouble to putting together a HDM release, without adding a PCM track. Not to mention they chose as their first release an utterly safe and boring property like DBZ. I'm a freakin' die hard anime fan and I couldn't give to sh*ts about DBZ. :( God, Funi is a joke of a distributor.

Good to hear about more Bandai releases though. Hopefully all those show up on amazon US one day so I can get them for $50, as opposed to the $90+ it'd cost to import them, which is soooo not worth it IMO.

Guys, Sony will be pricing their titles from ~$20-$30 here in the US and abroad. Tekkon Kinkreet is coming out here in the US Sept 25th. Sony UK is also releasing The Cowboy Bebop Movie, and Paprika in the UK in Jan, and I suspect they'll be forthcoming in the near future here in the US as well.

Rarely do I suggest you not purchase a competitor's title, but Bandai US needs to get in line with its competitors, and they need to learn that we in the US are not willing to pay what the Japanese market is willing to for a title. I know I sure as hell am not. $80?MSRP No freakin' way!!! And get rid of the DVD pack-in to bring the price down!!!:mad:

Come on Dave, if you're seriously getting out of wack at a $50 title, which is what I have Wings of Honneamise preordered for via amazon, you're out of touch. That's about what they used to charge for a one ep VHS release! They price it the way they do because otherwise they're out of business. It's not that hard to understand. It's really no mystery. Any body familiar with profit margins in the anime industry understands this fact. So either we have this industry putting out great stuff that fills a niche, and pay more for the content to keep them in business, or they don't exist. Which scenario do you prefer Dave?

MS got Bandai through the door into the HDM world, in grand fashion, which is something all HDM fans should applaud MS for doing (motivated of course by MS wanting to get their codec in use). But from all the interviews given by Bandai, they've learned a whole lot from their partnership with MS for their first releases, and so I expect these to be great quality HDM releases. Remastered and lovingly cared for hi def transfers and lossless audio tracks, what the hell else does an HD fan need? :)

And with the 40% amazon discount, and $80 msrp title works out to $50 shipped. $50 to get some of the works of Yamaga-sensei and Oshii-sensei in freakin' 1080p with lossless audio, at this stage of the game?! Are you freakin' kidding me? Anybody decrying this situation has a passing interest in the art form at best. I feel like I'm stealing to get these releases at $50 a piece.

Now, Wings of Honneamise is their only title announced for US release so far, so I'd be pissed if they leave everything else over in Japan, but with the English audio and subs that exist on the Japanese releases, I just don't see that happening.


Oh, and last of all, let's please not have identical expectations as to what a relatively small company like Bandai is capable of and what a behemoth like Sony can do. Apples and oranges.

Bandai's been going slowly insane with pricing for all their releases, standard-def or not. I still get weirded out by how similar their new logo is to SPHE's (purple nebula thing), and I wonder if somehow the corporate mental dysfunction has spread.

I think Metropolis should be interesting to watch in HD though. While I didn't find the Astro Boy character design all that appealing the lushness and detail of the backgrounds is definately top-class.

@Capek: So you'd be fine if we all started paying over a hundred bucks for every DVD purchase too, just because they "used" to cost that much? Remember, the things cost all of five bucks to make and ship to your favorite retailer, if that even.

Pre-order for Wings of Honneamise from Amazon is @ $55.95

http://www.amazon.com/Wings-Honneamise-Blu-ray-Morimoto-Mitsuki/dp/B000TKCNWY

I actually pre-ordered Tekkon Kinkreet for $26.95

http://www.amazon.com/Tekkon-Kinkreet-Blu-ray-Yoshinori-Okada/dp/B000TGCR3S

I'd like Memories, but not for that much.

Keep in mind that most of these Bandai Visual releases are priced exactly the same as the DVD releases have been for years. Anime pricing in Japan has always been high. Bandai Visual USA is unfortunately carrying that through to their US releases as well, but it's a small # of titles overall.

Just don't confuse Bandai Visual Japan's pricing as indicative of things in the US as a whole; they're pricing for their market with what their titles have sold in the past.

That price is insanee. Still considering whether or not to purchase the DBZ. I used to love it but it's been a while :P Never did see the Brolly movies though :O!

@Capek: So you'd be fine if we all started paying over a hundred bucks for every DVD purchase too, just because they "used" to cost that much? Remember, the things cost all of five bucks to make and ship to your favorite retailer, if that even.
Did you even read my post? What don't you understand about the difference between the big boys that put out most of most of the DVDs we buy, and relatively smaller company like Bandai, putting out niche content like anime? I say "apples and oranges", and you ask this question. Must not have actually read my post...

Guys, Sony will be pricing their titles from ~$20-$30 here in the US and abroad. Tekkon Kinkreet is coming out here in the US Sept 25th. Sony UK is also releasing The Cowboy Bebop Movie, and Paprika in the UK in Jan, and I suspect they'll be forthcoming in the near future here in the US as well.

Whoa, Cowboy Bebop is coming to Blu-Ray? I hope Sony releases it over here as well, I'd love to get that. I'd also like to check out Paprika whenever that releases.

Whoa, Cowboy Bebop is coming to Blu-Ray?Sony owns the rights to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, NOT the series. Bandai owns the rights to the series.

It's pretty much guaranteed Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Paprika will be released in the US by Sony, as they were showing Paprika on Blu at Comicon.

Its funny that FUNImation states that these movies come from 35mm masters...(they don't exist, TOEI stated they created high def masters from their 16mm prints!) DBZ on blu ray, I'll glady pass.

Did you even read my post? What don't you understand about the difference between the big boys that put out most of most of the DVDs we buy, and relatively smaller company like Bandai, putting out niche content like anime? I say "apples and oranges", and you ask this question. Must not have actually read my post...
I guess I did miss that one. I still don't agree with the notion though, because while anime might still be called 'niche' by some I don't think it is at all. For one, it has its own rack at Best Buy, just like "Disney" has a rack, and "HD-DVD" and "Blu-Ray" have their own racks too. In fact, there's more anime at my local Best Buy than HD and BD titles combined, and about the same as all the Disney stuff.

If you want to say that anime distributors in the US are in trouble then sure, I bet they are. But listen to them... it's not that sales are poor, it's that all of the rights-holders think there's an unending gravy train, and nobody wants to release their title for less than a bazillion dollars (insert Dr. Evil pinky here). Anime as a market is growing, yet profits are falling. That's a huge red flag that something is Seriously Broken.

From AnimeNewsNetwork:
Japan's Media Development Research Institute announced that the Japanese anime market grew to 241.5 billion yen (about US$2.026 billion) in 2006. That is the highest level since the institute started surveying in 1990, and represents the third year of continuous growth. The institute credits movies like Tales from Earthsea, Pokémon, and Doraemon as well as the increase in television anime titles for the growth, but notes that the number of DVD titles has dropped. The market has grown 220 percent since 1990 (then at 106.9 billion yen or US$896.8 million) and 150 percent since 2000.

Does that sound like an industry that has to charge $50 a disc because its children are wearing potato sacks and divvying up a single M&M for xmas dinner? Bandai as an example is interesting... they're losing money sure but it seems like it's all from their game and toys divisions. Overall Bandai's profits were up 71% last year. Funimation sales were up 48% in Q1 2007, almost enough to offset the mismanagement of their parent company.

If anime is suffering, then like the music and film biz, it's because of greedy licensors and bad product distribution and pricing, not because there's no market. I don't buy anime, even though I love it as a genre. Wanna know why? Price. If they priced 'Wings of Honneamise' or 'Akira' at $15 a title like everything else out there I would likely divert some of my discretionary DVD spending to anime, but as long as I have the option of paying $15 for 2 hours of fun with a 'real' movie or $27 for 66 minutes of just a part of a series, guess which disc I take to the register?

As far as publishers go I have some admiration for Viz. You might argue about quality and all but they push out titles like there was no tomorrow. Guess what you can get a copy of 'Naruto' for at amazon? $12 bucks! Viz knows how to butter its bread, not surprising given how long they've been around.

Bandai from appearances seems to be the worst of this 'old school' thinking, and no doubt if they need the extra money it's because they can't sell things properly. Come on, anime is everywhere, it has cable channels and manga (as a connected medium) has as much shelf space at Borders as the 'mystery' section! This isn't an issue of a niche space, it's a problem of overpricing and the usual "too much" syndrome, where there is just too much junk that costs too much to buy. And how am I supposed to keep my interest when these people release 3 episodes every other month, for a 52 show series? I'd be better off watching network television, and that's an insult!

Even if I had $500 a month to spend on anime alone, I don't think I could keep up with all the various titles and releases... this isn't 1990 when you had to go to a specialty vendor just to rent a bootlegged tape of "Riding Bean" on VHS.

And yet again, if you want to call oranges oranges... "Honneamise" was a theatrical run, not a direct-to-video (or OVA) run. It doesn't have the same marketing channels, just like the original "Ghost in the Shell" movie wasn't marketed to the usual anime channels when Manga picked it up and did a good media blitz with it. If Bandai (or anyone else) wants to charge me $50 a disc for some obscure TV show fine (Paramount did it for Star Trek on HD right? hah hah), but I don't want to accept it's fine for a theatrical movie. That's called gouging.

Now Spiderman 3 is $50 SRP. This isn't an anime thing, it's a "how much can we charge" thing. I'm willing to accept being wrong, because I'm not in the anime biz, but the idea that this is a niche thing seems silly to me. Now hand me a block of cheese to go with my whine.

Actually, Bandai is charging $80 SRP for their BDs (Honneamise), not $50. People are getting the "$50" for prices listed at Amazon ($55) after their discount. Plus as I said in my last post, there really is no reason for the DVD pack-ins. That just inflates the prices even more. Most likely people who want to buy they disc have had the DVD for years anyways.

No doubt wildfire99 you make good points, and it's not that I feel any kind of major disagreement with them, but anime is still a niche market, because it's mainly boys under 25 that go for it. So by definition it's niche, regardless of it's increasing visibility at big box stores. Maybe in another 10-20 years it'll be like the video game industry is now, where people in their 30's and 40's who grew up on games still play them, but right now it's only the kids who are into anime. Also, the real reason the anime market is stagnant in the US is because it's audience is notoriously cheap. A lot, and I mean the majority of anime fans get their fix via usenet/torrents/utube etc. (About those Japanese market numbers, I'm almost sure they include manga sales, which are huge in Japan and probably make up the majority of that 2 billion figure. I think manga is a lot more profitable than animated shows, so I'm not sure how relevant those numbers are in this context.)

But getting back to the idea that it's simply a matter of them pricing their product out of the market. Take a moment when you have the time to check out what anime goes for on ebay. Lowering their prices would help, but the "market value" for this stuff seems to be so low that I'm not sure how much.

Now, you're definitely right that the root of the problem is greedy licensor's, but what can US distributors do about it? They can cheap out on crappy encodes and authoring, jam a bunch of episodes on each disk -- creating perceived value, but further exacerbating the PQ problems introduced by said crappy encodes -- and end up with something that's not worth wasting a 10er on (Funi being the worst), or they can do it right, pay for a quality encode, keep the number of eps per disk down to keep the bit rate and an acceptable level, and charge a little more (like Bandai for instance).

And when you get right down to it, 50-60% of the BDs you'll see on the shelves of BBY are priced $35, and every HD-DVD combo is priced $35, so after tax I'd be $38. So it's not like $50 is in some other stratosphere from what the Hollywood studios are pricing their releases at. If a difference of $12 is what is needed for Bandai to put out a high quality HD release, well that seems pretty fare to me.

Well to put things into perspective, this is only Bandai so far with these outrageous prices. Sony isn't a anime company so even though they have some nice stuff, they're not in the same category as Bandai, FUNI, Viz, or ADV. FUNI hasn't released a price for DBZ yet, so the word is still out on them.

But Geneon on the other hand has released there first high def anime, Freedom. It's on HD-DVD(a HD-DVD/DVD hybrid) and has a MSRP of $39.95, which I think is a fair price. I expect that same price from FUNI for the DBZ movie combo. So I don't think this will be a trend with anime on HD formats, it'll just be Bandai IMO. I hope they change there minds, but if not then I hope there series aren't priced similar. If Gundam 0(the brand new upcoming series) comes out on Blu-Ray it would be scary to see a MSRP of $50+ per disc(probably 10 total disc) for a 50 episode series.

Well to put things into perspective, this is only Bandai so far with these outrageous prices. Sony isn't a anime company so even though they have some nice stuff, they're not in the same category as Bandai, FUNI, Viz, or ADV. FUNI hasn't released a price for DBZ yet, so the word is still out on them.

But Geneon on the other hand has released there first high def anime, Freedom. It's on HD-DVD(a HD-DVD/DVD hybrid) and has a MSRP of $39.95, which I think is a fair price. I expect that same price from FUNI for the DBZ movie combo. So I don't think this will be a trend with anime on HD formats, it'll just be Bandai IMO. I hope they change there minds, but if not then I hope there series aren't priced similar. If Gundam 0(the brand new upcoming series) comes out on Blu-Ray it would be scary to see a MSRP of $50+ per disc(probably 10 total disc) for a 50 episode series.
Um, not sure where you got your info, but Freedom is a Bandai release of a 6 episode OVA series, one episode per disk. So it's $40 for 25 minutes of content. Atm Bandai is the only anime company who has released HDM.

Holy crap, I just looked it up and assumed there was 3 episodes. Man that's even crazier then what Bandai is doing. Please save us FUNI, or Sony please license everything from now on. I want my anime on high def, but my wallet can't afford these possibly crazy high prices.

I mean really, imagine if Gundam 0 came out on Blu-Ray. That'll probably be 50 epsiodes split to 10 disc at say $59.95 MSRP. Even when discounted, I'll probably have to fork over $40+ and spend a total of $400+ for the entire series :eek: :(

Holy crap, I just looked it up and assumed there was 3 episodes. Man that's even crazier then what Bandai is doing. Please save us FUNI, or Sony please license everything from now on. I want my anime on high def, but my wallet can't afford these possibly crazy high prices.

I mean really, imagine if Gundam 0 came out on Blu-Ray. That'll probably be 50 epsiodes split to 10 disc at say $59.95 MSRP. Even when discounted, I'll probably have to fork over $40+ and spend a total of $400+ for the entire series :eek: :(
No no no, it IS Bandai doing it. Freedom is a Bandai release. lol

No no no, it IS Bandai doing it. Freedom is a Bandai release. lol

The problem is that we have:

Bandai Visual (Japan)
Bandai Visual USA (ports their JApanese releases w/subtitles for same price as Japan)
Bandai Entertainment

Bandai Entertainment is getting a bad rap for practices at the other companies. BVUSA isn't even a sister company but rather a cousin company, as Bandai Entertainment is under Bandai America, not Bandai Visual Japan.

Oh crap, that's two things I got wrong :o

Someone must stop Bandai before every other company going High Def looks over at there prices and thinks "yeah, we'll probably do that to"

The problem is that we have:

Bandai Visual (Japan)
Bandai Visual USA (ports their JApanese releases w/subtitles for same price as Japan)
Bandai Entertainment

Bandai Entertainment is getting a bad rap for practices at the other companies. BVUSA isn't even a sister company but rather a cousin company, as Bandai Entertainment is under Bandai America, not Bandai Visual Japan.
Right, and BVUSA is releasing these HDM under the Honneamise label. It's just easier to write Bandai and not parse the details.

I'll reserve judgement until they start releasing classic episodes of high demand titles like Cowboy Bebop. Right now it seems like they're just testing the waters.

ADV was supposed to release HD titles in WMV format quite a few years ago so it's clear they have a few ready to go, but are holding back.

A lot, and I mean the majority of anime fans get their fix via usenet/torrents/utube etc.
I've done that a couple times but only for titles that aren't released. I have no idea if it's being done just to 'cheap out' on buying stuff like with mp3. I suppose at that point you need to draw a strong line between fansubbing and piracy, though it seems like both ends are getting squeezed these days. That of course just creates more pressure to pirate, since now people are feeling like they have fewer choices... a vicious circle?

Adding on a DVD is silly... I mean what, is that an extra 25 cents to press out? And now you can tack on an extra $20 to your list price. That's a pretty harsh scam, even for HD-DVD combos where arguably you have greater replication costs due to bonding the two halves together.

Take a moment when you have the time to check out what anime goes for on ebay. Lowering their prices would help, but the "market value" for this stuff seems to be so low that I'm not sure how much.
Most of the stuff on EBay is Hong Kong bootlegged imports, though. Anything 'genuine' seems to go for something nutty that is close to or higher than what you could buy it for used from a proper vendor.

Now, you're definitely right that the root of the problem is greedy licensor's, but what can US distributors do about it? They can cheap out on crappy encodes and authoring, jam a bunch of episodes on each disk -- creating perceived value, but further exacerbating the PQ problems introduced by said crappy encodes -- and end up with something that's not worth wasting a 10er on (Funi being the worst), or they can do it right, pay for a quality encode, keep the number of eps per disk down to keep the bit rate and an acceptable level, and charge a little more (like Bandai for instance).
Well encoding is easy as pie these days, the trick is getting the damned licensor to give you a decent master in the first place. I've seen a few titles lately that looked like the poor anime company got some raggedy old u-matic tape. You can't solve that by throwing bits at it. Then again, even with good masters, I have to wonder about some of the compressionists and what they were doing (or not doing) with their encoded video.

You make a good point about episode counts however, especially considering we're talking about a BD disc now. How long will it be before we see some of these huge 15-disc sets being condensed down into a nice 4-disc single-pack ala "Planet Earth"? Probably never, because nobody in their right mind would pay $350 for what looks like a single movie. I'd love to actually buy the DBZ set (remastered or not) on BD, but with sane price points. The remastered seasons seem to average out at $30 a piece, which with about 8 seasons (26 eps each) you're at $240 for the whole kit, which is a lot but IMO reasonable. If they do that on BD disc, I'm there. Chances are such a creature would fetch upwards of $65 a season instead, though the replication costs are merely double or less (from $5 to $10).

And when you get right down to it, 50-60% of the BDs you'll see on the shelves of BBY are priced $35, and every HD-DVD combo is priced $35, so after tax I'd be $38. So it's not like $50 is in some other stratosphere from what the Hollywood studios are pricing their releases at.
But I was using the Amazon price. If you want to use BB pricing then say, "Honneamise" will be $75, even tax-free. That's just about double the cost, and you have to consider also that the anime run-times are almost half of what your usual bang-boom action movies are. So if it's a matter of compression cost, that doesn't pan out either. You're paying twice as much for half the product, or an up-charge of 400%.

As noted here also, "Freedom" definately sets the bar for ridiculousness at $1.66 a minute ($99.97 an hour) at SRP--on top of the fact that it's basically a freaking commercial for noodles (when Pepsi did that with Top Gun, the price went down). I don't care what Bandai does, I can rent their stuff and buy everyone elses', but this is a disturbing trend that seemed to come out of nowhere, at least to me. I want to make sure it has a very brief existence.

But in the end, it is the licensors. What can any of us do about it? It seems like these media/movie vendors are impervious to pain, and they just go bankrupt before changing business practices. Then someone screams piracy, the laws shuffle around, and like the mad hatter's tea party, nothing really changes. I'm starting to wonder if that's why there is so much emotion in these high-def areas, because we're all starting to realize that there is no such thing as consumer choice or market forces at play with movies/media/music. We're slaves forever, and we can only hope our masters are benevolent.

Who cares.

Can I get Kenshin OVA.

Whoa, Cowboy Bebop is coming to Blu-Ray? I hope Sony releases it over here as well, I'd love to get that. I'd also like to check out Paprika whenever that releases.

Meh, the Cowboy Bebop movie sucked. It was too damn long and could have been done in less than an hour. Hell, it should have just been a 2 parter. The series on the other hand was brilliant and is definitely a great series.

Back to DBZ though, I might pass on getting the rest of the box sets in case Funi plans to release them on BR soon then. They already did a wonderful job of remastering them for DVD, so I can't wait to see how they would look on BR.

The top three anime movies I want on BR are:

Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
Macross Do You Remember Love
Fatal Fury the Motion Picture