Re: Shout! Factory's Transformers: The Japanese Collection: Victory Released
Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 1:15 am
Darth Bombshell wrote:Sabrblade wrote:There's also Transformers: Zone, which Shout! Factory is not releasing.
Was there ever an actual reason stated as to why they weren't going to, or is it just down to those involved not wanting to?
Here is the reason:
TFwiki on Toei: Perhaps unflatteringly, Toei is notorious among Western anime distributors for their difficulty to work with. For distributers releasing their material outside of Japan, Toei often refuses to provide quality video masters. The masters they do provide are often of terrible picture and sound quality, and some times are even incomplete in their material. The masters for The Headmasters cartoon Toei provided to Metrodome for UK release contained none of the before credits recaps and next episode segments; unfortunate, as some of those segments contained new content and not just clips. For the US releases of Scramble City, Sony was provided the video but refused the soundtrack (forcing them to replace it with a non-optional audio commentary). Shout! Factory fared even worse, being outright denied in their request for Scramble City entirely, citing, "Toei has no interest in licensing to third parties". Toei later denied them a distribution license for the Zone OVA. Toei's stubbornness to cooperate with Western companies is infamous outside of Transformers, particularly among Western distributors of Sailor Moon material.
I hope that answers your question. And also... To be honest, if you want to have a good laugh, watch the diorama version of Scramble City.