You may remember that, some months ago, NISA released Toradora on R1 DVD, which I duely posted about, and all was good. Well, sorta good anyway – lovely packaging, but there was something of a headache with merged interlaced frames resulting in all sorts of video issues, most prominently some frustrating ghosting problems. Problems NISA promised to correct.

Which they did with the commencement of the shipping of replacement disks towards the end of last week. I have to say in that regard, kudos for NISA – not only did they admit there was a problem, they also instigated what has to have been one of the least painful replacement processes I’ve suffered (even for a non-R1 customer like myself), and even managed to get it here to me in the UK more quickly than the postal system managed to get them to some parts of the US.
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Not-ADV have pulled their usual trick of not announcing they’ve grabbed a show until they’ve actually solicited it for release, and have just revealed that they’ll be putting out Taishou Baseball Girls (Mandatory link?) and the 2004 subversive magical-girl show Uta-Kata at some point this November.

Taishou is, if not exactly the most interesting of the two, certainly the more eyebrow raising. There’s now a long-established US market tradition of sports-related anime not selling in the slightest, with Funimation having certainly made it abundantly clear that Big Wind-up did absolutely terrible for them. I suppose Not-ADV would be the only R1 label with past experience of releasing shows about plucky girls taking on the establishment by playing baseball, having released Princess Nine, but that was a long, long time ago, and market conditions are very, very different to what they were back then. You’ll have to forgive me for not really thinking that cute girls are quite enough to counteract the consumer-kryptonite that is the baseball part of the equation, regardless of what element takes precedence in the show.

Which just really makes it a shame that Sentai tends not to say a whole lot about anything these days – regardless of whether or not it does terribly or astonishing well, we’ll probably never get any reliable indication of it. Ho-hum.

So, my copy of one of NISAs first DVD releases turned up today – that being the first Toradora set, being that I’m not really interested in Persona despite (or, given what I’ve heard, more likely because) of the fact that I’m a fan of the games. Of course, being the first release from a new publisher on the R1 side of things, particularly a release that’s generate a lot of talk for various reason, it’s certainly one what’s worth going into in some detail.

First off, it’s freaking huge. The only thing I have of a comparable size is last months R2 Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2 release from last month – with which it’s pictured above. There’s really very little comparable on the market in terms of how this is packaged.
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I can’t help but think there’s something astonishingly familiar about this screencap from, of all things, Halo Legends, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

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Really, Funimation? Dragonaut? Seriously? Was it cheap? Were you forced to pick it up as part of a package deal? Have you merely gone crazy?

Slightly more interesting is probably the fact that they’ve also picked up the two Duraga series and Blassreiter, both of which have been available to watch for free over Crunchy Roll amongst other sources. I kind of figured these shows, no matter how popular they may become, would just linger in limbo as far as DVD releases go. If nothing else, it probably gives those looking for an R1 DVD release of Strike Witches something of a glimmer of hope. It’ll be interesting to see how well these shows sell.

They also grabbed Bamboo Blade, but in light of the licensing of Dragonaut, it’s hard to particularly care over the sound of my own laughter.