Releasing a DVD

I haven’t written words here in a while, and it’s mostly because I couldn’t really think of anything worthwhile to write about. But now I’ve finally thought of something. What is the process of releasing a DVD/BD state side?

First, your typical turnaround from the airing of the final episode to DVD/BD release date in the US is about a year and a half, give or take six months or so (sometimes more, rarely less). Funimation’s products, as far as I can tell, usually have a year and a half turnaround. There are some outliers (Like A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun) and things like Hellsing and the other Geneon/ADV stuff that Funimation hauled in after Geneon/ADV’s respective demises won’t use this same turnaround.

There are several reasons as to why this takes so long. The first and foremost reason is materials. The Japanese licensor just can’t get the music, the video, the scripts, or the whatever elses to the US licensee fast enough. This, I suspect, is what delayed Hellsing and A Certain Magical Index for so long. However, the license itself can take forever to complete as well, and that can stall a release faster than anything. The most recent, or perhaps most notable, example I can think of is Evangelion 2.0. The problem with that was that Gainax (the production company behind Evangelion) thinks the product is worth its weight in gold. And if you combine all the merchandise that Eva has released over the years, that’s a lot of gold. Anyway, Gainax wanted way too much for the license and Funimation had to either talk them down or concede to a higher price than they wanted to (probably a combination thereof).

Of course, there can be several other reasons as to why production is stalled. The video could be flawed in some way or the English dub audio could be flawed in some way or they could have to recast someone based on the Japanese input or whatever. It really depends on the title itself and the bumps in the road that particular title runs into.

[Note: The Japanese have the final say in everything, including scripts, casts, DVD/BD menus…As far as I know, every part of the US release has to be approved by someone on the Japanese side of things. I’m sure that sometimes, they’ll just sign off on stuff willy-nilly. But for something like Evangelion, I would bet some Gainax intern has to look through everything that a higher up executive or production member doesn’t want to.]

Moving right along, the licenses themselves are split into several parts. So when you license a series from Japan, you have to get the license for the music, for the DVD release, for the BD release, for the streaming release, and so many others that I don’t even know. Sometimes, however, you get a license that just says “home video release license” (or the actual technical title). But what that means is that the licensee gets to release that show on DVD, on BD, and on any future home video thing that we invent for the duration of the license. That’s why you’d see so many, “Sentai formally announces license for X show” or “Funimation announces home video release for Y show.” Because, nowadays, these companies will just license the streaming first to see how it does and then license the actual show for home video. Sentai’s just been announcing that it will stream X show, but never formally says it has a license for anything (but you can bet that it does have a license for X show if Sentai is streaming it).

Finally, there’s the dub production. That’s a whole separate article that I’ll just save for later because that goes through producers, line producers, directors, script writers, actors, and a whole plethora of other important people (those are the folks during the ending that you skip over). But the US licensee goes through dub production, gets it signed off by the Japanese, and finally releases that title in the US. A formal announcement of release date, I would imagine, comes pretty near the end of production. But dub actors usually records shows about four to six months prior to release. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but I believe it hovers around that.

When it finally gets released, the typical thing to do now is 13-episode sets. Very rarely do you see sets with fewer episodes than that (unless the complete series is fewer episodes than 13). The most recent ones that I can think of are Madoka Magica and K-ON!’s first season, both of which were release in four-episode sets. Funimation has, on at least three occasions, released the complete series at one time in two 13-episode sets. But very rarely do you see sets that are released with more than 13-episode in a first run, unless it’s a reprint or an old title (shows that Discotek and Nozomi have been licensing are among these exceptions).

This release schedule is much easier on the wallet than how it used to be. Now, you can get 13 episodes for about $45, usually less, sometimes more. Before, you would spend $20-30 on four episodes. Oh how the times have changed.

Well, that’s a quick and dirty version of the process, with I’m sure a good bunch of holes missing in what I’m saying. But this is the gist of it all, I believe.