Sword Art Online UK DVD and Blu-ray Release Details
Date: 2013 August 20 16:27
Posted by Joe
Over the weekend of AyaCon on Sunday 18th August 2013 Manga Entertainment UK announced the release details of the of the highly anticipated Sword Art Online. Like the US release the UK edition will be released over 4 parts.
Release details are still to be confirmed, but they're aiming to release the first volume in December 2013 and the last volume by March 2014.
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Now here's the eye watering part. The suggested retail price for each DVD volume is £19.99 with each blu-ray volume £29.99. To be fair the blu-ray pack also comes with the DVD, but combi-packs are not normally priced that high.
This means it will cost you £79.96 to get the whole series on DVD or £119.96 on blu-ray. Being the suggested retail price means that retailers can sell it cheaper and often do. We don't like whiny sense of entitlement fan type rants, but ouch.
It seems that Aniplex who are renowned for being very expensive are setting the prices here as Sword Art Online is a 25 episode series, with each episode about 23 minutes long.
We know Sword Art Online is a fan favourite, but at £80 on DVD for 25 episodes that's not always the best use of an anime fans budget. Manga UK don't always set their prices so high Steins;Gate Part 1 is currently £16.09 on Amazon.co.uk on DVD and £22.91 on blu-ray. While Steins;Gate Part 2 is available for pre-order for £16.85 on DVD and £23.27 on Blu-ray. So the whole of Steins;Gate Season 1 would cost £32.94 on DVD or £46.18 on blu-ray. Roughly at those prices you can almost get 3 anime series for the cost of Sword Art Online.
Manga Entertainment UK have been able to set better SRPs before and we've covered that they've had the best price for any English language edition of Madoka Magica. The Blu-ray collection for Madoka has an SRP of £29.99, being half the length of SOA it means that if it had the same episode count the blu-rays would be still be half the price.
Meanwhile over in France, you can get the first 14 episodes for €50 in a special collectors edition, which contains the first story arc on both DVD and blu-ray! It's in French without any English, but it shows that the sets aren't insanely priced everywhere.
We are curious to know if this kind of price point for Aniplex titles will stay? Also will fans buy titles at that price? Source: Manga Entertainment UK
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