Querl Dox
For, what is it, 24 episodes and the movie? Ridiculous. The era of DVD companies charging what they want because fans WILL pay it is coming to an end. It's not just anime that has this problem, but any strongly fan-based genre. I love 'Deep Space 9,' it's my favorite of all of the Star Trek series', but there is no way I can justify paying upwards of $90 per season for the show. The same for 'Dr. Who,' which has something like 10 episodes in a DVD set. That's paying $10 per EPISODE to watch something that was broadcast for free on TV.
Well let's see. I paid somewhere in the region of $70 for Heroes season 1, $100 for Doctor Who Series 2, $35 for Justice League season 1, and $100 for the complete Invader Zim.
- Heroes was all 24 or 26 episodes, whichever it was, and the decent extras.
- Doctor Who Series 2 was 15 episodes including standard features and Doctor Who Confidential.
- Justice League was probably around 10 to 15 episodes I think with sparse features.
- Zim was probably around 24 episodes total, along with the special features discs and the foot high maquette of his house that came with the set.
I'd put Heroes at what I'd expect to pay for a full season of a live action series, as it's on par with what The Sopranos or Entourage would debut at. I can stomach the premium for Doctor Who, because it's actually worth it. Doctor Who Series 2 was by far the best television I've ever seen and so I don't mind paying that extra $30 even though some miniscule amount of my tax dollars went to making it (fun fact, Canada's CBC kicked in some money to produce the current run of Doctor Who and it airs here on network television in the slot after Heroes).
Now back in 2002, I paid a grand total of $150 to own- legitimately- all three volumes of Gainax's FLCL. FLCL is a six episode OVA spread out over three volumes, meaning two episodes per disc and a whopping price of $25 an episode. That's price gouging.
There's also the fact that anime distributors are refusing to follow the now industry standard for releasing TV on DVD. They're still relying on the outmoded idea of releasing "volumes" of a season and an eventual "box set" for marginally less than the total cost of the previous volumes.
Purchasing Doctor Who, Heroes, or Justice League means buying a single multi-disc package, usually between three and six discs. It's the only way that makes sense because it really isn't like you're only going to want Inu Yasha episodes 30-34. You want the whole ******** thing. The only really logical anime release I can think of using the current model is ADV's uncut Sailor Moon release from 2004.
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