Party Like It's 1999
A dub-only Blu-ray? Really? Am I in high school again?
This could be a bad omen. US anime Blu-rays are rare enough already, but this indicates what American distributors have been saying for a while: Japanese licensors are reluctant to have newer shows put out on BD in the US. The concern is "reverse importing". If a show is selling in America for half the price of the Japanese release, why wouldn't a Japanese buy the American release (especially since US BDs are not region locked in Japan)? Removing the Japanese language track from the US release might do the trick. And with anime Blu-rays selling well in Japan, (and American fans having largely convinced themselves that anime has no monetary value), I can only fault them so much for wanting to make a little money off their work.
This could be a bad omen. US anime Blu-rays are rare enough already, but this indicates what American distributors have been saying for a while: Japanese licensors are reluctant to have newer shows put out on BD in the US. The concern is "reverse importing". If a show is selling in America for half the price of the Japanese release, why wouldn't a Japanese buy the American release (especially since US BDs are not region locked in Japan)? Removing the Japanese language track from the US release might do the trick. And with anime Blu-rays selling well in Japan, (and American fans having largely convinced themselves that anime has no monetary value), I can only fault them so much for wanting to make a little money off their work.