I’m really grateful that Geneon went out on a limb and licensed Ichigo Mashimaro (Strawberry Marshmallow) for the North American market. I’ve gotten lazy about DVD purchases as of late - I’m buying less and less, and only bother when a sale comes along - so, even though Ichigo Mashimaro has topped my “to buy” list for some time now, I’ve only just now gotten around to purchasing the first volume (along with the second volume, which hit stores this week).
For all basic purposes, this is my first “full” rewatch of the show. Still, I’ve rewatched certain individual episodes more times than I can count since they first aired in Japan. You would think it would get old, but even now, I’m fighting the urge to rewatch those same episodes again and again and… well, you get the picture. Typically, when it comes to comedy shows such as this, there comes a point when the jokes just don’t work any longer. For some odd reason, such is not the case with Ichigo Mashimaro. I suspect it’s a matter of the show being so incredibly dense. When there’s a million gags per episode, it takes just as many viewings before things get stale.
Then again, you could probably say the same for gag-heavy shows like Excel Saga. If I remember correctly, I never managed to finish Excel Saga.
So, there’s probably more to it. Comparisons of Ichigo Mashimaro with Azumanga Daioh are common, for example, but, as much I like Azumanga Daioh, I’ve never rewatched in its entirety - despite several tries. Why? The jokes just fall flat. I’ll admit to caring more for Ichigo Mashimaro than AzuDai, of course, but even so, as similar as the two shows are, you would think they’d have nearly the same amount of rewatch value. What’s so special about Ichigo Mashimaro?
Don’t forget that they’re releasing these every two months instead of every 4-6 months and not for inflated (30-40 per DVD) prices unlike SOME companies (hack-ADV-ahem). In fact, tehy’ve addressed my biggest concern regarding DVD releases (slowness), so the fact it’s also Ichigo Mashimaro is only icing on the cake.
Geneon did miss out on some translations though - they don’t translate or explain what the chants sometimes heard in the background are (like the bamboo seller), and they didn’t even write ‘uke’ right from Episode 5, or explain why it was funny (Miu’s using a word nobody would expect a 10-year-old to know OR use, as Chika’s confused question to Nobue suggests). Plus, the fact that they’re all cute (and Miu serves as a source of slapstick humor) probably helps its longevity.
With Azumanga Daioh, ADV missed out on some translations as well, but the main thing keeping me from rewatching more than individual episodes is probably that the episodes themselves are composed of several skits (which may or may not be related), and that can get a little repetitive as there’s not always anything to carry each episode through… plus all of the characters are a tad… bland. Miu, on the other hand, is almost always fun to watch - and while they do play up to the stereotypes some (like the foreigner who’s more Japanese than the Japanese), they tend to put in a little twist to make them more amusing (Nobue’s lolicon tendencies, Chika’s occasional bouts of violence).
>>Don’t forget that they’re releasing these every two months instead of every 4-6 months and not for inflated (30-40 per DVD) prices unlike SOME companies (hack-ADV-ahem).
Buy online and you’ll get up to 50% off so that point is moot. :P
Except ADV STILL charges a lot.. and takes forever to release. Unlike Geneon, which takes one of the complaints about official releases that I’ve had for ages (slow to release, on top of high prices per volume) out of the excuse list.
Since when does ADV (or any R1 distributor) regularly release DVDs 4-6 months apart at $30-$40 a piece? They release discs on a bimonthly basis for $25-$30, just like everyone else. The North American anime industry ain’t perfect, ADV included, but I’m tired of hearing people make false statements like this when they feel like “stickin’ it to the man”. Get real.
As for Geneon’s translation work in Ichigo Mashimaro, I’ve been happy with it. If I remember correctly, the bamboo seller’s call WAS translated and subtitled (the first time, at least). As for the “uke” joke, that’s the sort of thing that can only be handled with separate translation notes. They were nice enough to retain “uke” in the subtitles, however, so if someone wanted to look it up, it’s easy enough. Given the nature of that exchange in the show, there’s really no way they could have explained the joke in the dialogue without doing some sort of rewrite.
Honestly, I’ve never understood why people get nitpicky about cultural jokes not being translated the way they’d like in a DVD release. After all, if you’re so well-versed in Japanese culture that you automatically understand what’s going on, should the translation matter all that much? It’s like bitching about the lack of honorifics in subtitle translations. It’s not like they go in and bleep the damn things out in the audio track.
Well, they had it as ‘uge’, not ‘uke’, so if you didn’t know what the original joke was.. well, you’re stuck - a Google search doesn’t turn up the meaning of ‘uge’ but ‘uke’ will show up correctly as “submissive”. ADV at least included translation notes with their DVD releases… which are missing from the Geneon package I have. That’s one thing that was left out, but I’m mostly nitpicking here. The reason that I picked up that particular example was because the joke there with regards to the lame name-calling was that Miu would pull out an insult which was completely unbecoming (and unexpected) of someone her age.. and without explaining what ‘uke’ was, or even spelling it correctly, it’s rather hard to figure out why Chika was as confused as she was.
Last I looked, the wait between Azumanga Daioh releases was about 4 months or so, at least from what I recall a few years back while waiting for them to ship it out - that may not have been true, but that’s what I remember. I’m just glad Geneon’s been releasing the series promptly, which makes it easier for me to collect - I’m not trying to ’stick it to the man’, but I do enjoy being able to get the series for a reasonable price at a reasonable pace. As far as the $30-40 figure goes, that’s what I’ve seen in Canada.. at least up till this year, with Geneon releases being less expensive than ADV on average - the NGE Platinum discs were about $50 CDN/40 USD apiece, and Amazon still shows NGE Platinum DVDs for about $30 USD a disc. Madlax is also shown at $30 a disc retail (not counting Amazon’s discounted pricing), as is FMP: Fumoffu.
In contrast, the retail price for Strawberry Mashmallow (Ichigo Mashimaro) is $25 a disc, as are Stellvia and several other titles. While others are still priced higher (Tsukihime, Saiyuki), I’d consider them slightly cheaper on average. They’re also better, IMO, at releasing boxed sets faster; I know they put out Haibane Renmei just last year in a boxed set, but Maburaho and several other ADV series (Fumoffu was done LAST year) have yet to get the boxed set treatment, much less the thinpak one.
I didn’t realize you were talking about Canadian prices. In the United States, at least, ADV’s releases are priced in the same range as every other studio’s. $29.99 is standard MSRP here. Geneon’s Strawberry Marshmallow release is indeed a few dollars cheaper; they do that with certain niche titles. Stellvia, on the other hand, was cheaper because each disc only contained 3 episodes. I’ve seen ADV adjust prices for certain shows in a similar fashion.
As for ADV’s release of Azumanga Daioh, it was actually monthly for some volumes. Two volumes had a two month wait. So, that’s actually a quicker release schedule than normal. I’m not sure what happened in your case.
As for “uke”, you’re correct… I went back to check, and was indeed subtitled as “uge”, which doesn’t make much sense at all. Typo?
Typo or the editor had a bad day - with the ‘g’, you lose the joke completely. “Uke” is the accepted Romanji spelling, last I looked. You also forgot that Strawberry Marshmallow has the $3 coupon off; which brings the price even lower, which is something I do like about their release… that and I’ve yet to see delays on Geneon’s side. ADV has, in the past, set a release date which they couldn’t keep… but I can’t tell you if they’ve done that lately, because I haven’t really been following more than a few of their titles for the past year or so (Fumoffu was my primary focus, ADV-side). At least they’re better than Bandai, which promised the GITS:SAC Official Log 2 for January 2006…
Personally, I do prefer the way releases are done now, as compared to the past (in general, they seem to be faster, especially on Geneon’s side)… although I admit that I like how Geneon priced Ichigo Mashimaro better than some of the other companies’ releases. Amazon has Funimation’s Negima release at $35 a disc ATM, for Volumes 2-4, for example… which is a bit of a reversion to 2001’s pricing, IIRC.
“As far as the $30-40 figure goes, that’s what I’ve seen in Canada.. at least up till this year, with Geneon releases being less expensive than ADV on average…”
Wow. Here in the Northern USA, the AzuDai discs were $20 at BestBuy, $25 at MediaPlay, and they were mostly monthly (as Jeff mentioned).
Meanwhile, Geneon releases are MORE expensive in stores, listing at $30 (online prices may vary, of course).
I’m not going to badtalk ADV, ever. Say what you want; their thinpacks are a great way to get series for, essentially, nothing. For that alone, they deserve kudos. Yes, they sit on licensing, yes, they’ve had business problems, yadda yadda. Such is life.
At least they’re still there, bringing us anime. Most of the gripes I’ve heard against them sound like “let’s attack the big guy” whining.
Though I DO wish they’d stop with the NGE already.
I can’t stand Ichigo Mashimaro. It’s so forced and artificial that I cannot bear to watch. Of course, I dutifuly bought a DVD, but I never watch it. Azumanga Daioh I saw about 35 times, although I stopped counting long ago. There’s no comparison really.
I was also dissapointed with the lack of translation notes for the release.. I know they say that a joke isn’t funny if it has to be explained, but regardless…
Most of the cultural things or translation fiddling I can recall from the first time I watched the fansubs and got the info, but there’s some stuff (such as the bit in disc one where Miu starts asking about curry and then gets laid out) that I can’t remember what the deal was
And then if I hadn’t ever seen the show before, well I’d be even more lost let’s say. The show still works, but to the uninitiated it’d seem a lot more abstract. But then maybe Geneon figure that this release only appeals to hardcore fans already, I dunno?
I’d also say that Ichigo Mashimaro probably has replay value since it also has that slice of life/nostalga thing going for it, and because Miu rules. So once the gags are all known, there’s still other stuff to enjoy. Not to say that Azumanga doesn’t have nostalga and entertaining characters, but it’s certainly more of a skitfest.
Haesslich - The $35 Negima DVDs are probably the LE versions shipping with the Figurmate figures and probably some other tat - they should also have cheaper versions listed. Even then, Funi realised how, well, awful the show was and they have something like twice the number of episodes as most shows would have per DVD (I think volume 1 is something insane like 6 episodes).
The only R1 company I currently have any major beef with is Bandai Ent (not Visual) with anything which isn’t Gundam or Eureka 7 - they just feel so damn cheap at the moment. The My-HiME release so bare-bones its painful, and what is there isn’t exactly well done. Even the EU release is better, as that at least has inserts (16 pages ones at that).
I like Geneon, though. Their releases feel the most like value for money, and they are pretty much the only R1 company with consistant first-pressing bonuses (as much as a pain as some can be to track down). The little things like inserts, pencil boards and completely pointless shell necklaces just result in a release which leaves a far better impression than any other the other labels.
I don’t care about IchiMashi though :P
Pete, I’m with you on AzuDaioh. I can always watch it; it has the honor of being the only anime my mother, MomDuck, actually likes.
I do think it’s a show that gets better as you get older, though… For example, I love the show, and I just had my 20-Year High School reunion. However, the Duck U. Anime Club has watched it, and 95% of them think it’s not funny in the least.
It’s the whole “remember the old days” thing. For them, at most, it’s been four years… maybe too recent.
But that’s just my guess.
DiGiKerot - I agree that Geneon has the best reputation, IMO, of all the R1 companies - they release on time (usually), they’re not too expensive, and their bonuses are usually more than just an interview with the English VA (unlike say, BGC2040). They also used to release things like pencil case sets (Chobits), which were nice little knick-knacks, if relatively useless otherwise.
Bandai Visual usually has nice bonuses with their releases though, at least with the LE stuff - T-shirts, figurines, CDs, etc. Great stuff; probably some of the best pack-in material I’ve ever seen, and their extras for GITS:SAC were interesting (interviews witih the directors and seiyuu, and so on). ADV’s not been bad with their extras on the non-Thinpak releases (they either suck like BGC2040’s or have some extra material that is actually entertaiing), but Geneon’s probably been the most consistent overall. I’m actually looking forward to Black Lagoon, and what they do with it.
Zaitzev: I guess it’s a matter of taste - personally I find various episodes kinda boring (outside of the Okinawa thing, the cultural festivals, etc), but the nostalgia value of IchiMashi (they approach their days with an innocence everyone’s lost by the time they hit 14) to be worth it by itself. That, and Miu constantly ending up as the butt of the slapstick humor.
Wonderduck: My complaint with ADV isn’t the thinpaks (I’ve picked up two myself), but more that there are series they’ve been sitting on for years that have yet to see a Perfect Collection, much less a thinpack. I am -not- going to go out and pick up each DVD of Fumoffu for $40 CDN and hope the store has all three in stock; I WILL pick it up if I can get it in a DVD boxed set for about $30-35 a disc. Now they’ve also licensed Haruhi, I do wonder how they’ll translate the jokes, since like PPD, there’s quite a bit of stuff in there that depends on a fairly wide understanding of anime cliches and series references… which aren’t quite as played up as PaniPoniDash’s.
I stand corrected - Haruhi’s not licensed… YET.
“My complaint with ADV isn’t the thinpaks, but more that there are series they’ve been sitting on for years…”
I’ve heard this complaint before, and my reaction is always the same: so what?
They own the rights to those series. If they can’t release the shows fast enough to suit you, you can always try to raise the cash to form your own company, get studio time, hire actors, buy the rights to a show, release a series, make more money, and repeat until you have the ability to compete in a niche market.
Then you can get the rights to whatever show you want, and release the series WHEN you want.
I applaud ADV for being able to bring anime to the masses for a low price, and having been able to do it for a long time. Yeah, I’d love to see the Classic Dirty Pair TV show released, or any number of the shows they have the rights to, and I will, eventually get to.
ADV-bashing always sounds the same as Microsoft-bashing… because they’re a big target, they’re easy to hate, despite what they’ve done for the hobby.
Get over it.
Wonderduck - I’m still waiting for the Fumoffu boxed set, among other things. If they’d actually put out the boxed set, so I could get everything in one go (and at a slightly cheaper price), I’d be more content. As it is, I’ve been spending my money with other companies who aren’t attempting to produce a live-action NGE, and who havent’ been sitting on Yotsuba for over a year, and who haven’t cancelled manga series in the middle of their runs because they’ve apparently overspent their funds.
The rate they’re going, I don’t expect to see a third of the series they’ve licensed for about five years, or until they sell the license to Funimation or someone else who’ll actually produce it. :P It’s one thing to ‘bring great anime to the masses’ - it’s another to sit on a series until nobody’s interested in it anymore, then release it to little fanfare. One reason GITS:SAC did well for Bandai was because they not only pre-licensed it, but pushed it out while it was still a hot property. Azumanga Daioh, as noted above, was put out in a fairly timely fashion while people were still talking about the series… which meant that those who saw it fansubbed recently (in the past year) were likely to buy it. If they’d released Azumanga Daioh now, there might be fewer people purchasing it because all the buzz is gone. It’s one thing to license a series - but if it isn’t released in a timely fashion, then the property may be worth less than it could’ve been earlier while word-of-mouth and hype on the series was high enough to promise a greater return on the investment.
It’s a bit like real estate - if you buy a property, sell it when the property’ll be worth more… not when its value has dropped through the floor. Or would you be the type who’d invest $300,000 in a home purchase, then sit on it for five years until the neighborhood values had devalued the property so you’d only be guaranteed to get maybe $200,000 out of it at most? People were all ga-ga about .hack//SIGN three or so years ago; if Bandai had sat on the license until now, after the mediocre .hack//ROOTS had come out, how many people do you think would be as eager to buy the first .hack series right now, especially if they’d been exposed to .hack//ROOTS before seeing .hack//SIGN? These things have a shelf life - will Haruhi have one equivalent to NGE, which is still being milked ten years later? I honestly don’t know, but if I was spending $5-6 million to license it I’d want to make sure that I shipped out the first DVD while people were still talking about it, rather than wait 4 years when people might’ve moved onto something else.
I’ll be honest - I don’t expect to see some series from them for a long time, given the way they licensed series two, three years ago.. and then promptly stopped talking about them. I also wish they’d get their perfect collections or boxed sets out sooner, especially since series like Fumoffu were finished their releases almost a year ago - is it really THAT hard to package all three DVDs together in one set? They’re already translated, published, and being sold individually. How much harder is it to just reissue them all in the same collector box they shipped with Volume 1? Or are they spending all their money trying to hire people for the NGE Live Action?
Is it really that hard to purchase all three DVDs seperately? I mean, if you really want the series that badly, why not? YOU’RE the one waiting for the box-set, while ADV works out their money problems.
Weirdly, that would make it seem like the best way to get the box-set released is to buy the individual DVDs. Then they’d see that there’s a market for the series, and they’d have the money to do things like that, instead of bringing out anime as they do now.
*shrug* I don’t want to come off as an ADV fanboy. While about half of my collection is from them, I have no particular love for the company, anymore than I do for Bandai or Funimation or TRSI. I appreciate them for bringing anime to me at a bearable price, period. I’d rather they continued to exist instead of the alternative. Yes, they made bad business decisions. I hope they come out of it. While they work through their problems, I’m not going to complain about them… they’ve got enough things to worry about.
And, honestly, I hope they CAN get the Live-action NGE off the ground and in the theatres. I’d like to see it; if they want to spend some of their money on that, I’m okay with it: they’ll get a decent return on their investment if it’s any good, like as not.
What’s your problem with it? Because it’ll keep them from releasing a show that might sell 1/10th of what the movie could bring them? It’s a moot point right now, since there hasn’t been any visible movement on the NGE live-action in some time…
If EA was sitting on a game that you wanted, while they released another in the “Need For Speed” series, would you complain about that as well? Even though they don’t have to release it?
Wonder: Because in my case, I’ve gone through five stores, and NONE of them have all three volumes. Period. This includes major chains, anime specialty shops, and your usual runs into places other than Best Buy. The major chains tend to stock boxed sets more than they do individual volumes.. or at least it’s easier to find a boxed set with everything, versus hunting three separate DVDs. To get Volume 2, I have to order over the Net… and being blunt, given a choice between Fumoffu two weeks later and IchiMashi now, I’m picking up IchiMashi. There are several series they’ve released which are still without boxed sets (NGE Platinum Edition’s one of the few they’ve released in the past two years which got a boxed set as soon as all of the individual DVDs were released), so they’re able to do this. Why they haven’t, I don’t know. I am more than happy to give them money, if I can find the product - and that’s been the issue for me. Series with boxed sets are a LOT easier to collect, since you get everything in one go, rather than having to hunt down 7 different items.
I was a little upset when they dumped Steel Angel Kurumi, two volumes from the end - it’s a little like getting interrupted in the middle of something. Yotsuba was trotting along at 3 months per release, then dropped completely off the map until Otakon, when Williams mentioned they MIGHT have Volume 4 out in Q1 2007… a year after Volume 3′d come out. The only manga I know of that they’re pushing regular, ATM, is NGE: Angelic Days, which just came out with Volume 2 some three months after Vol 1 came out. Basically, it seems pretty much any project but NGE’s not only second-class but on the backburner. The worst part for me is not that they do it, but that they do it without announcing it or even hinting at it… so you’re stuck wondering month after month whether they’ll ever let the license go so someone will actually sell it and give me something to spend money on.
And as far as EA goes, at least EA releases games or cancels them outright and says so - with non-NGE projects, it’s anyone’s guess when ADV will release things. With luck, the Funimation conneciton for FMP: TSR means that they MAY ship that series in a timely fashion. However, I tend to trust Geneon more at the moment when it comes to releasing series… if only because they’ve yet to run into any major ‘unannounced’ delays the past year or two.
“I am more than happy to give them money, if I can find the product…”
Correction: if you can find the product where you want it, when you want it, at the price you want it at.
“Why they haven’t, I don’t know.”
You’ve already said that you don’t care enough about one series to bother ordering one DVD online (two weeks my tailfeathers!). Maybe it’s because they don’t think the box set would sell?
Say what you want about NGE, it’s obviously still selling well enough for ADV to keep putting it out.
Wonderduck - part of retail is having the item present. A boxed set is easier for the stores to stock… and therefore, for me to buy. If it’s not there for me to buy when I go in, I probably will spend my money elsewhere, unless there’s a stronger incentive for me to get it at that time (limited edition, t-shirts, whatever). Yes, I can get them separately.. but at the same time, it’s still an inconvenience to me, as a buyer. And so my money goes elsewhere, all things being equal - and I’ll get Fumoffu another day. A boxed set is a bit of an incentive for me as a buyer - it saves me hunting, and they tend to be a tad cheaper than buying them individually - and don’t tell me that money doesnt’ matter to you in this context, if it means you can buy more anime with the same amount of it.
In my case, it’s two weeks - I’ve ordered online before from the States, and it tends to take that long to go anywhere other than the continental U.S. The regional stores can ship faster, but it also means that they have to have the product handy - not all of them will have it in stock, which means I’m stuck on a backorder.
ADV’s panels this year didn’t seem all that impressive, especially after their rename of Utawarerumono. The best part for me is that they gave us a date for Yotsuba Volume 4, assuming it doesn’t get delayed or vanish into la-la land, unlike the NGE: Angelic Days manga which is shipping on a regular schedule. When that arrives in store, I expect I’ll have some money ready for ADV to pick up. Until then, I’m probably going to be keeping it available for other purposes.