Shomin Sample's UK home video release on hold

It's fair to say that Funimation Entertainment's UK output has been in something of a state of flux in recent months - after the initial batch of releases handled via Anime Limited were delayed substantially, some titles have subsequently seen their DVD components removed to become Blu-ray only releases due to the oddities of licensor requirements, while My Hero Academia has seen the company shift to Universal Pictures as its UK distributor in what may well be a sign of things to come.

Yesterday brought us news of another rumbling around a UK title from Funimation Entertainment, with reports surfacing that our domestic home video release of Shomin Sample has been cancelled.

Specifically, retailer Anime On-Line have now cancelled all pre-orders for this Blu-ray Complete Series Collection release, informing customers that the title has been "deleted and is no longer being released".

Last year saw a planned DVD release of Rainy Cocoa cancelled due to incredibly poor pre-order numbers, while other recent Funimation Entertainment titles have struggled with very slow UK retail sales - could Shomin Sample be another casualty of a perceived lack of interest in the title?

We're currently yet to hear any official word from Funimation Entertainment or UK partner Anime Limited, but we'll be sure to update you if we hear any more on the future of this particular title.

For now the series does at least remain in the UK in streaming form, courtesy of FunimationNow.

UPDATE - 6PM 12/04/2017: Anime Limited have now updated us on the situation around this title via the latest All the Anime Newswire:

Shomin Sample was set to be a Blu-ray+DVD combo pack release. However a licensor request has meant this is no longer possible as the DVD component would have to authored in PAL format. As we’ve discussed before when this has impacted other titles, including No-Rin to name one, it is cost prohibitive to author a PAL master for this title. On top of that the overall quality from a PAL master is worse than an NTSC master, and is not the quality we aspire to.

Over the past few days some of you have likely noticed that listings for Shomin Sample as a whole have been removed from retailer listings. The primary reason for this is that until we have been able to get clarification on a number of details when it comes to releasing this – including whether a Blu-ray only release is possible – we have taken the decision to remove this title from retailers listing for now.

To clarify, the release is not cancelled. It’s on hold while we get everything sorted behind the scenes. It’s entirely possible you hear this title mentioned again by us until there is an actual update on this. Rest assured that Shomin Sample will get a UK release at some point. We just can’t comment on how and when that will be at this point in time.

The headline to this news story has also been updated to reflect this information.