AnimEigo’s Yawara! Going Out of Print
AnimEigo has announced that its 40 episode Yawara! DVD boxed set will go out of print on August 31. AnimEigo secured an initial domestic distribution license for the 1989 shoujo/sports anime series in 2006 and released the first 40 episodes in a 6 disc DVD collection in 2008. In 2010, AnimEigo announced that it was unable to secure a distribution license for the TV series’ remaining 84 episodes.
The remaining copies of this set are quite affordable now [a whole lot cheaper than it was years ago when I bought it], and 40 episodes of Yawara! is preferable to no episodes. So if you’re tentative about this, pick it up now while you still can.
Source: Fandom Post
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I picked this up a little while ago, somewhat astounded at how low it’s selling at. But regardless of the price, it’s definitely worth picking up… very solid character development and engaging storytelling.
Long time ago, AnimEigo was one of my favorite home video companies… They still release good product, just nothing new that isn’t samurai cinema.
Their anime releases were among the most well-documented in the domestic anime scene and they were actually developing a good track record for DVD (and to lesser extent dubs).
I think AnimEigo’s problems started after anime became “big” on DVD in the early 2000’s. They just didn’t want to compete for big licenses, pay hefty license fees, and get into distribution wars. I think the owners felt fine with the size of the company and wanted to remain solvent as opposed to going into debt by trying to be Number One in the US. We’ve seen at least 3-4 major companies dissolve into insolvency and as many who made announcement but never released anything of consequence.
It’s a good thing that AnimEigo’s releases from the 1990s had long licenses and that they were mostly memorable or good series (Urusei Yatsura, Oh My Goddess OVA series, the original and best Bubblegum Crisis, the first North American release of SDF Macross, and quirky shows like Otaku No Video).
But many of the rights to those series have lapsed and the DVD’s and previous LD’s are long out-of-print. (That’s right, folks… Some stuff released by AnimEigo on domestic LD never got re-released on DVD — Genesis Survivor Gaiarth, Lupin and the Treasure of Babylon amongst them. Some things had such short release windows on DVD that it’s much easier to find the LD’s — Spirit of Wonder original OVA, Baoh {an awful OVA that the less said about the better!}.)
Sad to say, that the Yawara sampler DVD is probably the last anime I got in the mail from AnimEigo… and it became the first anime release of theirs that I skipped. Just couldn’t get into the pilot episodes on that DVD — and I usually perservere through the most boring shit, too.
I’ll remember the AnimEigo I met face to face in the mid-1990s Anime Expo but frankly that era is over. IF the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA series ever gets a US release on Blu ray, I suspect it will be through another company. AnimEigo just doesn’t go after new anime licenses anymore…