Forum - View topicPile of Shame - SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3187 |
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I love this movie. Where it lacks in writing it makes up for it in zany fun. I own both the DVD and Blu-ray (got the BD for half off from the Bandai Store closing sale!) There is an interesting extra feature that highlights the "toon shade" process.
BVUSA was a strange experiment. After all these years I still have much love for their products. Wish we could have had full releases of true tears and sola instead of the "Anime Legends" sets that came after the fold. Two of my favorite series from that time. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3561 Location: Finland |
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Justin, the infobox at the bottom of the article displays the Japanese name for Dead Heat, the subject of the previous column from two weeks ago. The rest seems accurate though...
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IanC
Posts: 685 Location: Essex, England |
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BVUSA was a horrible company that released a few gems and a few gems in the rough. But the actual releases were crap.
I quite liked SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next though. Fun little experimental film. |
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luffypirate
Posts: 3187 |
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I wouldn't say that. The picture quality and audio on their discs was ahead of what the other companies were releasing at the time. They were one of the first to offer BD options (the ONLY to offer HD-DVD options) and they provided booklets with all of their single discs when other companies were in the process of phasing them out. They had some elaborate releases planned (sola limited edition singles with a postcard book) but never came to fruition because of the abrupt exit from our market. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1846 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Shouldn't the intro end with BVUSA being folded into Bandai Entertainment?
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GVman
 Posts: 730 |
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Despite having the same Japanese parent company, they were two separate entities. Bandai Ent's closure had more to do with big daddy Bandai being mad that cheaply-priced box sets do better than DVD singles. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11584 |
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^ @ GVman: I was wondering about that, and your reply confuses me even more. So are you saying BVUSA wasn't subsumed into B.Ent and just vanished from the face of the earth, or was instead eaten by the parent company, or both were integrated into Bandai or what?
How would you correct that sentence (which currently says that BVUSA was folded into BVUSA, and that makes no sense)? I've never been able to keep all these entities and their fates straight. |
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GVman
Posts: 730 |
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Everything I've always heard on the subject indicated that BVUSA was just absorbed back into Bandai Japan. To my knowledge, B.Ent never got the licenses BVUSA had because they were separate entities.
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1thought
Posts: 65 |
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Is that the reason why? The $29.99 5/4/3 eps a disc just couldn't last long it's becomes too expensive over time for fans to buy multiple series. The recent move of more affordable collections can make it more affordable to purchase more series than just a few. I think the move was too late. There was big boom for anime in the early 2000's I think it was too expensive for the average new fan to stay interested and they were lost as fans. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11584 |
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Hmm, well the article has changed and Justin sez it was folded into Bandai Entertainment. The Encyclopedia (with 20 different Bandai listings!) page for Bandai Ent. states, "Originally, the company was not affiliated with Bandai Visual USA, but on May 23, 2008, Bandai Namco Holdings announced the merger of both companies on July 1, with Bandai Visual USA's assets to be liquidated by September."
I don't pretend to understand what that means (liquidated how - sold back to the parent company? To Bandai Ent.? to the highest bidder? And if they liquidated everything, what's left to merge?), but thanks for trying!  I mean, I don't even know if Bandai Entertainment still exists - I know they stopping putting out product, but I can't tell if they're officially kaput or if they're still floating around as a legal corporation doing...something. 
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I saw Tokyo Metro Explorers on a store shelf at Fry's Electronics. I looked at it and got the impression of it being something for little kids.
Also, regarding the homeless portrayed very inaccurately: The government of Tokyo tries to hide the homeless population from people by forcibly crowding them into little tents, so perhaps the non-homeless populace, by never seeing them, imagine them as nearly a mythical people, albeit of an untouchable caste. I mean, you had stuff like Tokyo Godfathers, which had deep, layered homeless characters, but if you never actually physically see homeless people, I can understand why one might come to weird conclusions about them when having to write about them.
Yeah, I remember saving up a bunch when I was much younger to get Tenchi Muyo! for $130. I knew it was a whole lot, but they all seemed to be priced that way. It does make me wonder now--since anime studios today more or less accept that Americans will either buy their home video cheap or not buy them at all, is there is kind of reluctance companies like FUNimation and Viz still constantly put up with? |
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2906 |
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It's sad that "SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers:The Next" didn't get an English dub. It doesn't look too bad. This thing sounds like "The Goonies" but handled differently. I don't know how it would have fared if it had gotten a dub. I think it would have done a lot better if it had.
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6172 Location: USA |
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I remember this feature when it was released. Didn't know that it was an Otomo project. Oh don't forget that another release BVUSA did was 'Honneamise' as well, in fact that was one of their first (I think).
Yeah, for some reason 3D with 2D cell shading seems to work pretty well in video gaming, but as far as using it as an animation medium... not so much. So I pretty know what you're talking about. I guess we should take a look at Tank Police in the 'Pile of Shame' column next. But it almost seems like it could still be a gem. Sometimes they are, which is why these column are so important. Because someone remember this film, and no matter how bad it it could be someone found something in it, but it seems that it had some room for potential but kind of fell flat. As much as I like 3D animation, I'm not crazy about this kind as a "film" medium. I often wonder how KakuRenBou did when compared to this, because it's up the same alley. |
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Joe Carpenter
 Posts: 503 |
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boy, I hate to think of anime fans who weren't around back in 2007, that years feels like yesterday to me |
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TheTheory
 Posts: 1029 Location: Central PA |
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I purchased the blu-ray for this at the height of my anime collecting days. If memory serves, it was a few years after the release, so 2009 or 10ish, and I found a copy floating around on eBay at a low enough price I decided to take a chance on it. Figured if I didn't like it, I could flip it and make back at least what I spent, if not a bit more.
Well, I watched it once. Said, "huh", and promptly shelved it. When I needed to start selling off my collection it was one of the first things I decided to get rid of. And whatever I ended up selling it for was definitely less than I paid for it. (Somehow my "this will be worth the same or more later" plans never pan out like that!) |
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