Where will we be?

Anime Limited will be set up at Booth #1003 – just over from the main stage so stop by and say hello!

What are we up to?

There are quite a few things going on at our booth this year, including the following:

• Anime Limited will be partnering up with our friends at Kaze in order to bring you the latest in their and 101 Anime’s DVD offerings. The titles will include the latest parts of your favourite shows so make sure you stop by and catch up!
• Shinichiro Watanabe will be there! As you’ve all heard, Cowboy Bebop director and overlord Shinichiro Watanabe will be signing stuff at our booth once a day during the expo for an hour a day. Mr. Watanabe will be signing one piece per person, so please don’t bring everything you own and thus, weigh yourself down with possessions and disappointment.
• Anime Limited’s booth will come complete with a gorgeous panel dedicated to Cowboy Bebop (I’ve seen the designs, they’re pretty). So come along and have a look, feel free to take pictures, pose with it or what have you. If you do take pictures with our panel, don’t forget to share them with us on our Facebook page! (www.facebook.com/alltheanime)
• New title announcements! Yep, that’s right we’ve got several new title announcements to make at MCM London so make sure you pay special attention on the Saturday and Sunday. We will also be posting these announcements online so if you’re not there live, you won’t miss out.
• Finally, the big one everyone’s looking forward to: Shinichiro Watanabe will be taking part in a series of panels at MCM London on the Friday and Saturday. Make sure you make time to attend as they will definitely be one of the most sought after events of the conference.

We’ll be posting times and places for the signings and panels soon, so keep an eye out for more announcements.

So that’s it for now! We’ve got a busy couple of weeks ahead of us but it’s going to be fun. Come by and say hello, check out our booth and feel free to share your experiences with the world, or at least the conference. Whether or not you’re at MCM London, you can still find out what’s happening by following our Twitter account and Facebook page.

See you all there!

Kerry (Marketing)

Highest sales overall:

Notes from El Presidente:

- To make this chart you had to sell more than 300 copies.
- HOWEVER to sit at the top of it – you had to sell under 1,050.
- The above range is not out of the ordinary for a regular month.
- With HMV returning to the picture now, the range may shift by a few hundred units from June.

Top sellers for new releases in April:

Notes from El Presidente:

- To make the bottom of this chart you had to sell over 100 copies [EDIT: Apologies, Oblivion Island's shift to April 1st threw us as it showed up on a different date in sales data]

- To reach the top of it you had to sell under 800 copies.

- The difference between #10 and Vampire Princess Miyu (which didn’t make the top 10) was very small.

BONUS FACTOID: Perfect Blue:

Also a small factoid for people, while it was stated that Perfect Blue didn’t do so well vs the price for reacquiring it in the UK before in a previous podcast from our friends at Manga UK – we think there may have been a bit of confusion over what they meant.  BVA figures show it actually sold over 55,000 copies on DVD previously – a lot of which were pretty cheap but still represents lot of units!

That still puts it just inside Manga UK’s top 10 sellers of all time, so we suspect what was meant was that at the time everyone started looking for the license again it was in a rights management agency’s hands who wanted $$$$$$$$ for it beyond what was fair.  When the rights reverted, the fee went back to something more reflective of its actual value.  That said it also became much harder to find the correct rights holder at that point too!

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Hope these figures are proving interesting to people!  We’ll keep posting them up so long as there’s interest .

[*] OK – it’s that or focus on localising a booklet from French to English for one of Anime Ltd’s clients and I figure, why not procrastinate for a bit…

Highest sales over all:

Highest sales of titles released in March:

Interesting to note that Code Geass still ranks number 3 despite being a re-release.

We’re very excited to announce that Shinichiro Watanabe – director of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Kids on the Slope will be coming to the UK courtesy of London Comic Con as their Anime Guest of Honor for May expo!

It’s something we have had to keep quiet until now – but we’re finally at the stage where we can announce it.  He’ll be at the event to promote both the upcoming HD release of Cowboy Bebop as well as his most recent show – Kids on the Slope (Sakimichi no Apollon).

EVENTS AT MCM EXPO:

Asides from him participating in panels across MCM Expo’s weekend – we’ll have some exclusive signing sessions on the Anime Limited booth promoting both shows – with Sakimichi no Apollon coming out from our friends at MVM (www.mvm-films.com).

FOR PRE-ORDERS OF BEBOP ONLY:

Pre-order either at HMV or Amazon before MCM and bring proof of pre-order and while stocks last we’ll give you an exclusive A4 Bebop print to get signed.  These are extremely limited in volume so come early to avoid disappointment!  Preview image will go up online at AlltheAnime.com at the start of May.

Pre-orders will open no later than May 1^st

Look forward to seeing you at London Comic Con!  

2013: Skyscrapers across the world are hit by suicide bombers with no apparent connection. The nine heroes gather once again after three decades to fight against this faceless menace. They appear untouched by time, but society around them has changed dramatically, as has the very idea of “justice” they used to believe in…

What is their role in the world now?

Theatrical release Q2 2013, coming to DVD and Blu Ray Q4 2013

© 2012 009 RE:CYBORG Production Committee

Highest sales over all

Highest sales of titles released in February

What do you guys think? Surprised by what you see?

Here are the sales for all titles in January.

And here are the sales for just new titles released that month. 

As you’ll note – there is still a disparate difference between what is actually the top 10 in volume vs what is new in the UK market.   To give some background too – while stats are good sometimes on a month to month basis we find it hard to find a metric that works on numbers.  To give you a bit of meat to chew on though – for  new titles, to make it to #10 for a new title – you just need to sell more than 100 copies…

Sorry for the wait on this folks, thanks for sticking with us. Keep an eye out for February’s figures, it’ll be up much quicker (rumour has it even Friday)!

Production I.G, the Tokyo-based studio that brought you Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 animation segment, presents 009 RE:CYBORG, a mature and thought-provoking approach to Shotaro Ishinomori’s classic manga, Cyborg 009/

From the director of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Music by Kenji Kawai (Apocalypse, Avalon, Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers). Sound design by Tom Myers at Skywalker Sound (WALL-E, Toy Story 3).  The animation in 009 Re:Cyborg is fully computer-generated (like the Pixar movies) but treated with cel-shader, a program that allows to keep the look of traditional Japanese 2D animation. For this reason, it is called “cel-looking CG animation.”

Limited theatrical release across the UK will begin in Spring 2013 – making it the one of the first places outside of Asia you will be able to see the film on theatrical release.

Exact run dates, cities and screenings will be confirmed very shortly and we can confirm the film will be screened in Japanese with English subtitles in both 2D and 3D.

ABOUT RE:CYBORG-009:

Once there were nine cybernetic heroes who had long fought for justice. But as their struggle finally restored peace, they eventually disappeared from the pages of history and from people’s memory. 2013: skyscrapers across the world are hit by suicide bombers with no apparent connection. The nine heroes gather once again after three decades to fight against this faceless menace. They appear untouched by time, but society around them has changed dramatically, as it has the very idea of “justice” they used to believe in… What is their role in the world now?

ABOUT SHOTARO ISHINOMORI:

Ishinomori (1938 – 1998) is considered one of the most representative and influential Japanese comic artists. His opera omnia, encompassing an astoundingly broad variety of themes, includes 770 works collected into 500 volumes for a total of 128,000 pages, making him the Guinnes World Record-holder for the “most comics published by one author”. He received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, the Japan Cartoonists Association Award and the Minister of Education Award for his work. He also received the special Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize for his long lasting contributions to the manga medium.

ABOUT PRODUCTION I.G:

Established by Mitsuhisa Ishikawa in 1987, Tokyo-based Production I.G is one of the world’s leading animation studios and home to all Mamoru Oshii’s animated feature films. With its cutting-edge works, such as Ghost in the Shell (1995), Jin-Roh (1999, Berlinale Official Selection), Blood: The Last Vampire (2000, Fantasia Public Prize), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (animation segment, 2003), Palme d’Or-nominated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), Golden Lion-nominated The Sky Crawlers (2008) and APSA winner A Letter to Momo (2012), I.G has gained high reputation around the globe, inspiring Hollywood creators such as James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

Official Website: http://www.production-ig.com

ABOUT ANIME LIMITED:

Founded by Andrew Partridge in late 2012, the company’s key focus is to provide a high level of quality both in terms of its acquisitions and the way releases are treated in the UK. Anime Limited strives to deliver top quality anime films on the big screen and to a range of other media too including digital and home video.

Official Website: http://www.alltheanime.com

Why do it if it’s not all Anime Limited titles in the top (if ever in the charts)?  We think it’s interesting to get a picture of the market size just now.

For  now though we’re going to look back at 2012 though:

If you pare that back to reveal the top sellers which were released in 2012:

In the interests of fairness over both of these we’ve excluded the exact sales numbers and just stated what it was over – meaning it literally could be anywhere over that number.  It’s not our place to give out exact numbers for non Anime Ltd works but we wanted to give you an impression of size of market here in the UK.

We’ll be putting together the top 10 sellers of January shortly too for people with ranking only. Who knows, when time allows we may also dig a bit further back to historical sales over the last few years in the UK market too.

SOURCE: British Video Association

- Acquisitions: The difficult part – deciding what to pick up and more importantly taking the hit if it fails.

- Business development: Finding shiny new opportunities and reeling them in from across the globe to give you the shiniest experiences possible.

- Theatrical: Tackling everything from working out where the prints are to securing screens and strong enough promotional budgets to support films.

- Events: Finding new opportunities to do cool stuff all the way along to conventions as people may be used to seeing me at.

- The Boring Stuff: Cashflows, admin and general hiring, firing and applying general beatings to minions**.

In general I get involved across the chain though so outreach and publicity too.  When you’re in a startup company that’s generally the way of it though and my goal’s to give you all a little bit of insight into what goes on in an anime company without boring anyone to tears!

Before this I used to work at Beez Entertainment before they shuttered their doors and I still do in fact consult for our good friends at Viz Media Europe too. Asides from that I also run an animation festival called Scotland Loves Anime - which is about to go into its fourth year of running.

For those particularly curious – outside of work I’m an avid gamer (currently working my way through Zone of the Enders in HD) and like nothing more than travelling a lot.  Which is a good thing as you’ll regularly get updates from me abroad on work!  If you have a question or otherwise you can reach me at andrew A-T alltheanime DO-T com (replace the A-T and DO-T with symbols and remove spaces as required).

Looking forward to working with everyone***!

- Andrew Partridge

* Yes there’s more than just me and an extensive range of figures from different shows here.  There are in fact three of us total.
** We love all our employees equally, no beatings occur.  Honest.
*** I am also impressed you followed these footnotes up to this point – next up we’ll talk about our upcoming release formats and get some discussion going!