Strumvogel

It might be too little, too late but there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of a number of small retail associations - and, which is more critical a couple of major players, such as Animate and Yodobashi Camera - addressing the complaints they have received to their Bandai reps.

It might not have any effect this time, but the ostrich has had its head pulled from the sand and slapped by a not inconsiderable number of, normally quiescent fans...

One chap, who posted to the retail forum to which the Missus subscribes commented on the seemingly random, and subjective nature of the edits as well. He found the, now infamous head-stomp few less shocking than Milia melting the face off one Zenty (not editted) or fabulous swan-song of Roy (gunpod to the spine, blood to the visor)... He further commented on the disturbing nature of even this minor revisionism (and yes, he did cite Lucas) as an unnecessary meddling with an already established cultural product - though his comparing it to book-burning went into hyperbole...

I just hope that the momentum (personal and industry) keeps up here, because Josey Wale's famous saying applies all over the World and at all times:

"Don't p*** down my back, then tell me it's raining!"

Thanks for keeping us in touch on that side of thing nautilus. At the every least we know that Bandai-Namco and Kawamori is getting a clear message that what they did is very stupid, causing some loss of sales as well as unhappy fans and retailers.

-snip-

Translation: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Heh. That actually works for me, though it's not something I'd actually send. It's just one of those things you'd write just to vent your frustration and immediately delete.

That and for a laugh.

Unfortunately I couldn't cancel even I wanted to.

Which was too bad because of the problems with this set I'm pretty sure I can find myself a secondhand version easily now if I wanted to, unlike before where the demand for it was so high preorders kept running out in the same day.

And picking it up secondhand is probably more worth while considering how much the damn thing cost as it is.

Well, I know that we're only just one week into the release of the BD, but has there been any news about this issue (from Bandai? Fans? Anyone? Ch2?) as of yet?

Last thing I want to hear is that short of a few people returning their copies, the fans in Japan is just keeping quiet and taking what Bandai fed them. They in the end are the only ones that can do anything about it.

After all Bandai(& Japanese companies in general) are just going to ignore anything coming from outside of Japan.

The problem is that whatever positives this set has, it is essentially tainted. It's been falsely advertised as the theatrical version when we know it's not due to the edits.

In my case I actually ordered an extra copy as a birthday gift for a friend. So how am I actually going to be able to give this to him in good conscience now?

I guess I can say that it's inpart a joke gift I suppose? Darn expensive one.

"KAWAMORIIIII!!!!" *shakes fist*

Actually no, it isnt. Its been displayed twice - for a week in Tokyo (probably when all the interview footage was taken) and 3 days in Nagoya. Whenever it gets reassembled in Osaka (unannounced as of yet) it will probably be for 2-3 days max. As a result I know plenty of locals who missed out on seeing it too, for what its worth.

......

Soo....

Can I blame that on him too? *j/k*

That's a real pity that it's only got such a short display time. Maybe it's more fragile than we thought and can't afford to be out too much. Still it'd be nice if we can get a semi-permanent display of it somewhere.

LOL. I'd send him a picture of me standing on the giant hand mooning him with the words "blur" and "this" on each cheek.

Then he'll make this face...

Still not as terrifying as the time I managed to get into a staring contest with him back '07. It only took a second and he won.

Then he made AKB0048 to punish me some more....

I wish I was in Japan. I'd be breaking into a 1:1 scale VF-25 right now... nope...I'm in SoCal, USA...

Ahh. My mistake.

That thing is in Osaka now isn't it? I doubt they'd have taken it down if they can use it to help promote the *sigh* DYRL BDs.... If I broke in to it, I'd have a picture taken of me in the cockpit crying into my hands, subtitled "WHY KAWAMORI WHY?"

Yeah I'm going to beat that horse. It ain't dead yet anyway....

*not bitter*

You can +1 for me when you bitch to the rep. I also would have added a simple 3 letters for the rep to bring back but somehow I don't think "W-T-F" means very much in Japan. The closest analogue I think is " orz "? But that's more of a geek term.

In anycase just a very simple polite "Very disappointed" will do I think.

I have no doubt that Bandai is starting to go thru the emails from fans right now and getting them ready to be forwarded to Kawamori right now with the basic message of "You are a goddamn idiot".

He's probably going to have to comment about his decisions sooner or later especially with Bandai's comment in one of the post earlier that this is all under Kawamori's supervision.

Which probably means that they see the problems early on and decided to wash their hands of it all, or after when the fans started sending messages to them telling them they don't want changes by which time it was all too late to do anything anymore but to start distancing themselves.

Like I said before, Kawamori is just going to have to take his lumps whatever the case.

Has anyone who ordered from CDJapan received any movement or notifications yet? There has been no charge to my credit card this morning, but it says my order status is "processed" - but I haven't received any e-mails of any kind yet. - argh...

I was on the second round of orders and my EMS just got activated.

The best thing of all for me is the magazine article collection. Fantastic. I also love how they actually included the interview I translated last week where Kawamori states clearly that PUTTING A WALL OF TEXT TO EXPLAIN STUFF IS STUPID. Shame he obviously didn't read it.

Hahah!! I wonder if Kawamori also get to approve the merchs in the box. If not I'd like to think it's someone in the company in a roundabout way of getting back at him for all his edits...

both of you suck!

cdj's failing me.

no email and no activity in my cust-acct.

it's friggin' noon over there!

wtf, (cd)japan !?

Was yours a special order or one of those that were lucky enough to get into the first round orders? That may count towards it.

And you can't really blame CDJ too much when you consider those two are actually in the very country it's shipping from. The local market takes precedence.

I don't remember saying that... Or did I?? Sorry if I did. I don't think that is happening at all, I think it's more a case of "It's my movie and I'll do what I want because now I am over 50, so of course I understand what my 20-year old self would have wanted when he was making this cartoon".

Hey maybe Kawamori is THE SUPERVISION ARMY

If that's the case then he's going to be in a bad spot as he's more beholden to the fan's criticism as well as that of the publishing company if the sales takes a hit because of those decisions.

He really should have the movie titled as a director's cut as many here have mentioned.

If the initial sales look great, and then it drops off the face of the map, I'm sure the company would be looking at second hand sales as much as possible.

Maybe. But you know they'd just spin it in anyway they can make themselves and their decisions come out smelling like roses anyway. They're really not accountable to anyone but themselves and their own perceived image.

Nothing will happen until someone of greater stature puts their foot down and say to them "WTF, man?"

It's unfortunate that the overwhelming pre-order sales have pretty much made up the minds for those who made these changes that it was a success. They'd do better to check out the secondhand stores immediately after to see just how much of the sales they're actually losing.

As it is the only recourse of the fans to get their message thru is by flaming the companies and those involved directly.

I find it strange they think this is a good idea. For the new generation? Just who do they think is paying the premium price for the BDs?

I suspect this may have been something upper management had dictated on down because it "..makes good marketing sense.." and everyone else just have to follow their lead if they know what's good for them.

Either way, they're all going to have to face the oncoming nerd rage/storm.

Second. SDF w/o Mikimoto = do not want.

The kit will be released in 4 days. Anyone else on the sideline like me?

AMZ jp already has a bunch of 1 star reviews, mainly people complaining about the price and re're're'release on the BD format.

So they're complaining with a 1 star review saying it's a re-release without the actual product? Safely say we can discount them for now.

If you know where to look(I'm talking about in Japan here, just in case) you can usually find stocks before the release date though they get harder to get ahead of time the more expensive the product is, and this is really expensive.

I've gotten books, CDs and DVDs anywhere from days to week ahead of time that way. Some books I heard have turned up a whole month ahead of time this way.

You would think the episodic nature would be more inclusive to the general public.

I mainly liked the original OP more in part due to familiarity and it's "softer" picture look. There some real charm to it.

The remake just look too sharp which like nyhone said, pushing the uncanny valley line. Though kudos to it making the focus more on the characters since they are the ones that really made the series work.

I'm going to have to dig out my old PM to check out just how scaled down it is but looking at that pic with the BDs, it looks to be 2/3 of the original book's size.

I'm surprised since it's about 1/3 larger than I was expecting.

Looks like it might be packed with the book flat as a base of the package with everything else placed on top of it

anyway, for those of us who preordered the "special request" thingy and tried to cancel to get the not-special-request cdjapan-item, bad news:

yeah. bummer.

oh, well...

Think of it this way, you're already shelling out that much for the actual product anyway, what's a few dollars more. As a bonus you get it relatively fast and you can track it all the way to your door.

As for the points, do you really get that many things from CD Japan to make a good use of them? Unlike before the points from them these days actually expires in a years time. Gone are the days when I built up so much points over time that I actually could have bought a DVD from them with nothing but the points. Good times.

It's possible they'll just tell you to cancel your order and order again if that's the case.

Once again not too sure if I'm just confusing CdJapan with another store I use. It's been so long since I looked at the policies. Amazon.jp though, makes things so easy.

I don't think you can cancel CD Japan orders. I never could. Perhaps their policies have changed.

The reason for the packaging looking like it's being handled rougher is due to amazon.jp using DHL as it's carrier. DHL packaging tends to be handled and proccesed around more than the others hence the rough around the edges look when it arrived. I've heard of things shipped from Japan that routed thru HK and Frankfurt before getting to my friends.

Fortunately amazon.jp always packed their things carefully so while the delivery box may look rough, the actual products has always pristine in my experience.

I think you meant it isn't compatible with ACAH. That's a pity.

Ace Combat Assault Horizon is a direction Project Aces needed to go with the game, it's just too bad it just didn't really work too well, at least with me anyway. I enjoy AC6 more in the end, I mean, damn... it's AC6 we're talking about here. I guess I just really miss the sense of freedom and sharp visuals of that game.

Anyway I hope this game controls better than the previous games that came in the Hybrid packs. Damn unlikely but what can we do? The last few games I ended up spamming missiles not knowing what the hell I was doing and came up with an S ranking anyway.

That's a pity. Things looked great for the short time they managed to allocated some extra copies for their site. Even when they ran out of those they specifically put up a special order link things were still looking up.

Atleast there are now at least three other options out there for those outside of Japan.

Damn, I really thought CD Japan could scrounge up other copies from other sources. Looks like their sources is suffering the same problems.