Good lord, from what I've read, the price is *29,400* Yen, which at the current exchange rate, is $384!!! I love BWII and have been eagerly been awaiting it ever being released on a decent DVD-format, but at that price, good gawd, there aren't even that many nutball diehard Otaku in Japan to buy that! If it was a Region 0 non-coded DVD that could play in the US, and the price was $100 or less, *maybe* I'd import it, but, yeahhhhh.... There's just *no* reason that's so hideously expensive, it's almost like they don't *want* people to buy it!
I hope that cover isn't final, because Lio Convoy is looking horribly off-model there. Then again, I don't really understand the trend of slapping really ugly art on VHS/DVD cases. Also, why Lio Convoy/Megastorm? Shouldn't he have been paired with Galvatron?
You do realise that this is a somewhat normal Japanese price, right? DVDs and Blu-Rays are more expensive in Japan than anywhere else in the world. Even New Zealand and Australia and parts of Europe that get screwed on prices compared to America still get them way cheaper than Japan. The irony is that Japan is where most of the stuff gets made and yet it's more expensive there. One of the main reasons that it costs so much is how many discs they use, and that is to say, a lot. They limit the number of episodes they put on a single disc so that each episode can be put onto the disc uncompressed, for the best quality. It may not be completely noticeable but if you look hard enough between, say, an anime released in Japan and a dub of that anime released in North America, the quality is definitely different, even if by a small margin. That said, I still wouldn't be content to pay that amount of money unless I was some rich businessman (which I'm not. At least, not yet), but I'm sure this will get localised at some point (and it'd be really awesome if it got dubbed, too, although at this point, a sub-only DVD release is better than nothing and fine by me), and it will be a lot cheaper then. Anyway.... Beast Wars II. Hell yeah. I've only watched a little of it, but it's pretty cool, and it's something that we've never really been able to watch. To finally have it on DVD, even if only in Japan for the time being.... Awesome. Let's hope they do a Beast Wars Neo set as well.
I for one am willing to shell out that much money for BWII. Sure it's a lot of money, but I'm also not spending much money since I passed on DOTM stuff. Which has allowed me to go after some pretty high priced items. Plus I have this long term goal to have every single TF series on DVD... so the only one left will be BW Neo(which is sure to fallow).
It is quite expensive but thats how japanese dvd sets are. Dont you remember the dragon ball/z/gt dragonboxes? they were super expensive too!
With that pricetag, don't expect to see this in english anytime soon...like, for a few years at least. It's kinda why it took so bloody long to get the Dragonboxes stateside. Japanese licensors don't like selling their properties abroad without a hefty pricetag because then all the Japanese viewers who want this stuff will opt for the much cheaper option of importing, causing the Japanese distributor to lose money. And it's also why the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series was a dub-only release, it hadn't been released on DVD in Japan at all yet and Bandai didn't like the idea of releasing it later with this kind of insane pricetag only to not sell a single copy because all the fans had already bought theirs from the US.
My son will love this if it ever comes out over here, he'll be saying look dad it's Claw Jaw, it's Claw Jaw!
