Anime News Network says that Bandai Visual has inadvertently announced the release of the first volume of the sola anime. The release is currently scheduled for June 10th 2008, but there have been no statements made regarding dubs or the number of episodes on each disc. The webpage is currently rather vague and has no DVD art or story summaries shown.
Bandai Visual, please just buzz off and leave the anime to companies who are RESPONSIBLE. While I’m glad sola got licensed by someone, like I’ve said in previous rants, it’s not worth it if you charge $30 for one, two or three sub-only episodes. I hope, though, that there’s limited edition DVDs with nice extras available. I believe there was an excellent LE release in Japan (I saw it blogged somewhere) with promo art and lots of other goodies. I’d pay $40 or more for that.
Bandai Visual may regain my support if they put a little more love into this project. sola certainly deserves it.
~CJ
EDIT: Three subbed-only episodes per disc, for a total of five volumes. The first one comes with an 8-page booklet and four character postcards.
Price? $50 for one volume. If you don’t believe me, ANN’s update is here. Didn’t the Japanese LEs contain much more goodies than that? Jerks…
Hurray! …I think? Bandai’s so terrible when it comes to both prices and extras on DVDs, especially when you consider the $29.99 MSRB price tag – and no dub, even! Methinks Bandai forgot how to properly calculate DVD prices…
Wow, this is a tough one. Suspend my Bandai boycott, or buy for the love of Sola? Hmm… In the end, I guess it all comes down to how many episodes they’ll be packaging on a DVD.
//ponders.
I’m excited, but also somewhat disappointed that sola was licensed. It’s great that it was licensed, but to be released by Bandai? The only thing I hope they don’t do is ruin the series, but luckily for me, I have the Japanese LE DVD set already.
@rebastu: Is 3 episodes per disc enough for you? Is $50 cheap for you? If so, you’re in good shape. >_>
@Adun: Bandai Visual can’t really ruin the series if they’re not dubbing it, right? Of course, if they kill the image/sound quality (or butcher the trailer, lol) I guess that would count… ^_^;;