Who's your favorite distributor?

[Bushido Philosopher]

...in most cases, they are capturing from analog source. What do you think the FILM is?

heheh....my bad....forgot that many of them are old....
but still i'm not so sure since rainbowing comes from simple bad capture.

what have you seen this in? I've seen quite a few ADV titles, but never anything like what you describe.

In the Sakura Wars OAV I thought I was gonna throw up at the major rainbowing it got. Was like I watching VHS. The Samurai X Movie I saw a lot of pixely noise in many dark areas.

But of course since NDW said, many have come from analog sources so I guess many times it can't be helped. I need to see their source footage to really be sure.

[KLin]

AD Vision by far. Usually they pack more extras than Pioneer or Bandai. They are not afraid to look up and hire new voice talent for their dubs. Generally they have very good taste in the anime to domesticate. They are going to domesticate lots of previously highly anticipated series by the fan community such as fullmetal.panic!, NOIR, Gensoumaden Saiyuki, and RahXephon. They fit more episodes into each DVD disc than Pioneer or Bandai and at a lower cost per episode.

At Best Buy AD Police TV - To Protect and Serve which is 12 episodes costs 5 dollars less than Vandread Second Stage, vol. 3 which is 3 episodes. ADP TV comes with all character sketches, ADP encyclopedia, all character artwork, clean opening, and clean ending. Vandread comes with foil cards, some character sketches, clean openings, and promo clips. AD Police TV is accurately subtitled, Vandread the Second Stage is not accurately subtitled in certain places.

Just so you know I'm not being biased by the anime title, I like Vandread better as a series more than ADP TV.

And for a non-DVD related positive point of AD Vision is that they set up the Anime Network where there's only anime playing on one channel all day. (Although it's a pay to watch feature) No other distributor has done that yet.

Tokyopop is also steadily improving, right now they're slightly behind Bandai and Pioneer as far as extras and quantity of episodes but they are steadily catching up by including such bonus extras as Tokyopop authentic mangas, friendship charms, and music CD OSTs, and having more faithful subtitles. Keeping the familiar appelations of -sempai, etc.

This is how I'd list the distributors in order from favorite to least favorite:

AD Vision
Pioneer
Bandai
Tokyopop
Anime Works
Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps

I own DVDs by all the companies, and I honestly think that order is not too exaggerated.

[LittleKefalos]

Although I know what you meant when I replied and all, I just thought I'd point out that technically Pioneer "distributes" for a lot of companies including ADV. But I know that you didn't mean it this way, nor is this how I answered it.

Anyways just thought I'd point this out. 8)

[LittleKefalos]

Sorry for being vague this is what I meant. Go to the site for more, but as you can see they "distribute" for Viz and Bandai.

http://www.pioneeranimation.com/about.php



"Pioneer Animation
Recognizing the potential of Japanese animation in the U.S. marketplace, Pioneer Entertainment's (PEA) first major initiative was to license a variety of popular Japanese series and introduce them to the American home viewing audience. With more than 20 million units shipped to date, the overwhelming success of the Pokémon series is a testament to the foresight of Pioneer Entertainment's (PEA) management team. Pioneer Entertainment (PEA) also distributes animated programming for Viz Communications and Bandai Entertainment including the popular Gundam Wing series. In addition, Pioneer Entertainment (PEA) has produced its own animated series, Tenchi Muyo!, which launches on the Cartoon Network in the summer of 2000 along with home videos and a full line of licensed merchandise. Today, Pioneer Entertainment (PEA) is the largest supplier of Japanese animation in the U.S. and boasts an impressive library of titles including Sailor Moon, Miffy and Dragon Ball Z among others. In addition, Pioneer Entertainment (PEA) was the second largest supplier of children's non-theatrical videos in 1999 with an 18% share of this lucrative category."

[Golden Saucer]

those bootleg chinese DVD pirating companies