At the time of writing, the anime movie Dragon Ball Super: Superhero sits above the blockbuster Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thieves, Shazam! Anger of the Godsand the hit Top gun: Maverick for the most popular Blu-ray releases on Amazon. It all points to a bigger phenomenon: In 2023, with so many studios and companies turning to streaming services, home video releases of anime, namely DVD, Blu-ray, and box sets, are thriving.
It’s not hard to see why so many companies have moved to the streaming model. Subscriptions to streaming services over the past decade have seen enormous growth. Meanwhile, home video sales have been steadily declining – DVD and Blu-ray purchases fell almost 20% from 2020 to 2021. Even shows with huge fan bases that seem ripe for collectors, such as The Mandalorian, remain diskless in the United States. But anime home video seems to be bucking this trend, as fans and avid collectors still seem intent on taking home hard copies of their favorites.
Calculating anime home video sales is complicated. The market for it in Japan has been declining almost annually for the past decade – coinciding with the global transition to digital platforms – but specific releases, such as the first Demon slayer film, may arouse more interest. That film has both the highest box office in Japanese history and sold over a million copies on Blu-ray and DVD within the first three days of release. To put that kind of success into perspective, only three US blockbusters in 2022 sold more than one million copies throughout the year.
But the appetite for anime has only grown in the US, to the extent that in August 2022, Sony acquired Right Stuf Anime, a distributor founded in 1987 that expanded into selling anime, live-action releases, toys, manga, and all sorts other things. collectibles. (Sony also owns Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service.) At a time when anime home video was far from ubiquitous, here’s an ad in the back of a magazine, a seller with a huge collection at a convention there, and a few chances between message boards – Right Stuf’s mission was to give the anime consumer “everything in one place” and a trusted system to deliver it to them. It was a fruitful operation. At this point, Right Stuf says it’s the largest online seller of anime in North America.
Over the years, Right Stuf co-founder Shawne Kleckner has seen anime home video rise in popularity: “It started out as more of an enthusiast, tape-trading, underground thing in the ’80s, and is now a full-fledged industry. As anime became more available abroad, so did interest in home video. “It wasn’t hard to find passion for the product,” says Kleckner. “It was more about making sure that passion was served.” And while other companies have reduced their home video capacity, Right Stuf worked the other way around. “Many companies don’t invest in their infrastructure,” says Kleckner. “I made sure we invested in our infrastructure every year.”
Photo: Sadie Gennis/Polygoon
Fans have a “pent-up demand for those products,” Kleckner said. They are a group that deals with “home video products[s] as a collector’s item, not as a consumable.” Streaming services allow consumption, but make collecting impossible. And fans of physical anime media want the highest possible quality for picture and sound, along with a range of special features and solid packaging that makes it look as good in the store as it does in the Blu-ray player.
But how do you get it there? American anime home video is often lamented for its tendency towards sparseness and bare-bones releases intended to capitalize on a show’s popularity and not much else. Companies like Discotek and Anime Limited are trying to change this. The latter, based in Glasgow, Scotland, has recently released three separate editions Neon Genesis Evangeliona series that, along with Cowboy Bebop, is considered one of the most important pillars of the medium. And yet licensing rights issues had prevented it from being released on Blu-ray outside Japan.
With Standard, Collector’s and Ultimate Editions to choose from – each with increasingly elaborate packaging and a wider range of special features – the sets brought Evangelion back in style. Even the pricey ultimate edition Twelve hours sold out. Demand was just as great in the US – when distributor GKids released a limited ultimate set Evangelion in North America, pre-orders sold out on the first day.
Discotek, on the other hand, has not worked to release anything as high-profile as Evangelion in the US, but its catalog and success have proven that anime is anything but a niche experience. Discotek’s line of anime and live action titles, titles that are often “rescued” from expired licensing deals or seem too obscure for a larger company to take a chance on, have endeared the company to home video enthusiasts. Discotek occupies five of the top 10 spots in the current list of the top 10 best-selling anime Blu-rays on Right Stuf.
“Sometimes we can do more and make it look better, sound better, fill it with extras,” says Marc Levy, a quality control manager and producer who has worked with Discotek. “But at the very least, people know we’re going to do our best and they’re getting something that maybe they didn’t see coming or knew existed.”
Photo: Toussaint Egan/Polygoon
It mainly comes across in the recent release of the first season of Digimon: digital monsters, a cornerstone of the millennial Saturday morning experience and yet one that, according to Levy, was often “thrown on discs and that was about it.” With a digital remaster and visual upscaling, Discotek’s version is the best the show has ever seen in the United States. “It was important to me that thought and effort was put into it, in places that people would notice and even in places that people might not notice,” says Levy.
For many of the people involved in this work, this care is not only mandated by the job, it is the culmination of a lifetime of being anime fans themselves. Justin Sevakis is the owner of MediaOCD, a company that has brought its post-production services to both Discotek and Anime Limited, and a business that has evolved from an intense hobby into a full-time career. As a young adult dissatisfied with American anime releases, he would put together his own from different countries and combine the features he most wanted, eventually Frankensteining together the ultimate disc.
“I think it makes sense for people these days to just buy your favorites,” says Sevakis, “but what makes anime special is that fans have a lot of favorites. They are very passionate and know that this won’t be forever.” Streaming services tend to play hot potato games with shows, and licensing can happen in ways fans didn’t expect. Bleach, the mega-popular series, was on Crunchyroll’s platform for years before Disney bought the rights to it and began airing its much-anticipated sequel on Hulu. Fans had to choose between buying a whole new subscription, missing the show, or downloading it illegally.
With home video, anime fans don’t have to worry about their favorites getting out of reach due to licensing agreements they have no control over. “What we release should be the last time you ever have to buy an anime,” says Sevakis. “If the disc itself is capable of handling the best quality a show could ever be presented in, we should.” It is this dedication that allows anime home video, and especially boutique publishers such as Discotek and Anime Limited, to thrive in a world that envisions physical media as an ancient practice.
“If we can help dust that stuff off and turn it into something that people enjoy looking at and sharing with their friends,” Sevakis muses, “what could be better than that?”