All About The New Bubblegum Crisis Release

Ahh, Bubblegum Crisis. It's AnimEigo's flagship title, best seller, and most famous title... for good reason. And now it's getting the ROYAL treatment.

Some fans were shocked and horrified that we were discontinuing the venerable series. Why? While the old release was pretty decent, there were a handful of deficiencies that we wanted to fix:

• In order to fit the whole series onto one disc, the bitrate was pretty low, and audio was reduced to Dolby Digital. We wanted to give the show some more breathing room, and take advantage of lossless audio. I mean, think of the MUSIC.

• The packaging had some issues that made it not great for retail/convention sale. There was no synopsis on the box, for one...

• Nearly all the bonus features were missing

So, we're redoing it as a two disc set with all the fixin's. This is in keeping with our general desire to give all of the classic AnimEigo titles a fresh coat of paint as we move them to a new replicator. Check out the new package by Brady Hartel, along with the gorgeous (and MediaOCD Store Exclusive) cardboard slipcover:

*yes, I know it says 2023, we fixed the print files but I forgot to update the web art. Whoops.

It's still very early in the production process, so we're still finalizing the bonus features. However, here's where we currently stand:

• Hurricane Live 2032 (SD)

  • Contains music videos for Konya wa Hurricane, Mad Machine, Wild and Scarred, Victory, and Asu e Touchdown

  • Contains extended promo for ep 4

• Hurricane Live 2033 (SD)

  • Contains music videos for Asu e Touchdown (live footage), Crisis - Run With Anger, Devil and Angel's Kiss, Say Yes! (live footage), Bara no Soldier, Rock Me, and Jumping Heart (live footage).

• Bye Bye Knight Sabers - Holiday in Bali (SD)

  • Idol video of the voice actresses enjoying a vacation in Bali, with some music from the series

• Remastered HD music videos (not used as a menu)

  • All fully animated videos from Hurricane Live, recut in HD

• Original Promo for ep3 (and the one for 4 in Hurricane Live 2032)

• New interview with Kenichi Sonoda

We believe these to be all the bonus features that have ever existed. The DVD set also had a giant pile of text interviews and granular episode synopses, but as navigable menus. It's a LOT of text. Like, 14,000 words, total. I'm trying to figure out the best way to present it all. Would love to hear some suggestions in the comments. Should we do a book? On-disc galleries? Let us know.

We also tracked down every foreign language dub that has ever existed (to our knowledge). It's very rare that a single anime publisher has the rights to do this, so we wanted to preserve them while they were still relatively easy to find. The one that got away was a Latin American Spanish dub produced in Venezuela. We don't know for sure that it was completed, and the only copies we could find of the first few episodes were in such terrible condition that they were completely unusable. Latin American dubs were notorious for not being well preserved, so we've given up on including this one. All of the previously available subtitle tracks will be included as well, including French, German, Italian, Finnish and Japanese. We're also adding Spanish subtitles for the first time.

The video itself will from the same masters as previous Blu-ray releases, albeit a little sharper and with better reproduction of the original film grain (as we're using better compression). We are looking into reducing flicker in certain scenes. Before anybody asks, we don't have the rights to include a soundtrack (and the re-recorded English songs have been impossible to find – and our sources tell us that they were stored on DAT tapes, a format that has been notorious for losing its data over the years).

THAT is Bubblegum Crisis. And the new PERFECT COLLECTION will be out in February.

If you have the previous Blu-ray release, you can get a 50% off coupon code to upgrade yours right here!

Here are a few other updates, in case you missed our most recent livestream:

• We've licensed the film Nasu – Summer in Andalusia! Written and directed by Kitaro Kosaka (animation director on Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke; director of Okko's Inn) and animated at Madhouse, this 47-minute gem totally slipped under the radar of most fans, but it is absolutely gorgeous. More about this one soon.

  
  

• We have a new logo! We wanted something that hinted at the retro goodness that we're best known for. Check it out!

As always, thank you for your support! We're off to TIFFCOM in Tokyo in a few weeks to hopefully sign some of our pending deals. We hope we can surprise and delight you in the months to come!

Justin