I hate to sound like a moaning old granddad, but do you remember the good old days? The mid-nineties were a great time for Manga in the UK. New volumes of The Guyver were hitting stores at an alarming rate, uncountable copies of Akira were selling, and Manga were frantically translating and releasing as many new videos as they could to keep up with the high demand for more anime.

Long term Manga fanatics like me will remember the time when every VHS tape had an application form on the insert, and many came with catalogues and leaflets filled with future releases and merchandise to order. An episode of New Dominion Tank Police cost £5.99, ‘Manga-zine’s were arriving at your door every quarter, and each video was swimming in previews of what is to come. I think I may even still have my Manga Video Collector’s Edition catalog somewhere.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Manga UK was a dedicated company. They were good at what they did. A D Vision and Pioneer gave us dubbed videos, sure, and Kiseki Films desperately tried to keep up with the others by throwing terrible low budget dubs and cheaply subtitled videos onto the shelves, but Manga gave us so much more. But alas, the enthusiasm hath faded.

The not-so-long ago ascension of the DVD medium could have been the best thing that ever happened to Manga. Whole OVA series’ can fit onto one disk, and series’ too big to fit onto one can be released as box-sets, those small, folded-up pieces of card with a DVD attached to each face. Purchasing one copy can give you access to both the subtitled and dubbed version, something which many anime fans have longed for. This could have been Manga UK’s chance, after a lengthy lull in popularity, to have started again, a new beginning.

Instead, however, we have this:

‘The Collection’. What is ‘The Collection’? Any Manga films, apart from the real big ones such as Akira and Ninja Scroll, are released in this format. The good news is that they only cost between £5 and £10. The bad news is that they might as well be bare-bones DVDs. From what I’ve tried out, they’ve only had one audio track, usually English, and no subtitles. The only special features are trailers for a bunch of other bare bones DVDs, this time ADV style ‘music video’ trailers to Mad Capsule Markets music, rather than any kind of information or proper announcements. Now, I'm not complaining about the prices. The cheaper the better, that’s what I say. I am, however, complaining about how little we get in features on these horribly packaged DVDs, and how few titles have actually been brought to us in the DVD format.



The reason for this seems to be mostly due to the fact that people fond enough of anime to want to buy the DVD versions have already gone and imported them in Region 1. This shouldn’t mean that Manga don’t need to try anymore though. With the right advertising they could be at the top again, especially since the recent craze over those butchered would-be-animes we see on TV now such as Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing. I couldn’t count the number of DBZ fans I’ve met who want to try out more anime but can’t seem to find anything that sounds interesting for a decent price.

Just one TV advert, Manga, just one… The trailers for the others are on the DVDs. Get people to buy one of them and they’ll buy more. Or release an anime on TV and put exciting trailers and such for other Manga titles on the DVD release. At least do something!. If something doesn’t happen soon, UK anime is as good as dead, and we’ll all have to import.

- Article by Sam Bo!

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