On March 4th, Sony Pictures will finally be releasing Blood+ on store shelves, according to ANN. Sony's not going with a typical release schedule, though. Instead of just offering a special edition and a regular edition of the discs, Sony is targeting the impatient anime fan:
Both the US$119.95 collector's set, which will contain the first 25 episodes of the series, and the first US$24.96 single DVD, which will contain the first five episodes only, will be available on that date.
The show ran for 52 epsiodes, so they'll be putting out two collector's sets, or what will end up being 10 or 11 discs on the single DVD option. It's about damn time that this show made it onto DVD. It's been licensed for way too long without a DVD release. I remember stopping with Blood+ because it was licensed, and I missed out on so much. At this point, I can't help but get the collector's set for the show. It's too good of a deal to pass up.
What about the rest of you? Are you willing to drop $120 to watch the entirety of the series all at once?
I used to spend well over $1000 a year for 2-3 years on anime. I was new to it then and bought series I slap myself for watching now. I have the same cash flow but I'm much more discerning in what I deem worthy of buying vs. Netflix. If there's a series I want to buy these days, I just wait for the thinpak release that's 50% or more off the individual sum.
In a perfect world the collector's edition would come out for $70-80 and the individual discs for $15 on the usual schedule. Distribute a much larger portion of the collector's SKU, knowing that people would rather pay $70-80 now, instead of $90 over 6 months. The way they are going about this is making me avoid both SKU's since I don't want to buy them piecemeal over half a year or pay over $100 for something that will be $80 or less later.