Anime Blu-rays and DvDs are more popular than ever

As of the date this article was written, anime films were in theaters. Dragon Ball Super HeroThe blockbuster sits on top of the pillar Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Shazam! Shazam!And the smash hit Maverick is the Top Gun in Maverick Popular Amazon Blu-ray Releases All of this points to an even larger phenomenon. In 2023, with so many companies and studios switching to streaming services for anime releases, DVD, Bluray and boxed sets are flourishing.

It’s not hard to see why so many companies have pivoted to the streaming model. Streaming subscriptions have grown massively in the past decade. Meanwhile, home video sales have steadily dropped — DVD and Blu-ray purchases declined almost 20% from 2020 to 2021. Even popular shows like The Simpsons and Game of Thrones, which have huge fan bases and seem to be ripe for collecting, aren’t attracting collectors. The MandalorianIn the United States,. remains disc-less. Fans of anime and serious collectors seem to have bucked this trend by bringing home physical copies.

Calculating home video anime sales can be difficult. The market for it in Japan has been declining almost yearly for the past decade — coinciding with the worldwide move to digital platforms — but specific releases, like the first Demon SlayerFilms can spark greater interest. This movie had the highest box-office in Japanese history and also sold more than a million Blu-rays and DVDs within three days after its release. In 2022, three American blockbuster movies sold over a million DVDs in the whole year.

Sony bought Right Stuf Anime in August 2022. Right Stuf Anime was established in 1987, but expanded its business to include anime, movies, comics, toys and other collectibles. Sony owns Crunchyroll – an anime streaming service. In an era where anime home video was far from ubiquitous — one might find an ad in the back of a magazine here, a vendor with a massive collection at a convention there, and a smattering of opportunities among message boards — Right Stuf’s mission was to give the anime consumer “everything in one place” and a trusted system of delivering it to them. The operation was successful. At this point, Right Stuf says it’s the largest online seller of anime in North America.

Over the years, Right Stuf co-founder Shawne Kleckner has watched anime home video rise in popularity: “It started out as more of an enthusiast, tape-trading, underground thing in the ’80s, to being a full-fledged industry today.” As anime became more available overseas, the interest in home video also grew. “It was not difficult to find passion for the product,” Kleckner says. “It was more of just making sure that that passion was served.” And while other companies have diminished their capacity for home video, Right Stuf worked in reverse. “A lot of companies don’t invest in their infrastructure,” Kleckner says. “I made sure that we invested in our infrastructure every year.”

Photo: Sadie Gennis/Polygon

Fans have a “pent-up demand for those products,” Kleckner said. They’re a group that “treats home video product[s] as a collectible, not as a consumable.” Streaming services allow for consumption, but make collecting impossible. Fans of physical anime media demand the best possible visuals, audio and special features. They also want a solid package that looks as great on the shelf and in Blu-ray as it does inside.

But how do you get there? American anime home video has often been lamented for its tendency toward sparseness and bare-bones releases meant to capitalize on a show’s popularity and not do much else. Discotek and Anime Limited are working to correct this. Glasgow-based Anime Limited recently released three different editions of Neon Genesis EvangelionThe series is a collection of episodes that are aired along with Cowboy BebopThe medium is regarded as one of its major pillars. Despite this, the licensing rights issue prevented its Blu-ray release in countries outside Japan.

With standard, collector’s, and ultimate editions to choose from — each with progressively more elaborate packaging and a wider array of special features — the sets brought Evangelion The ultimate edition is back. Even the expensive ultimate edition sold out within 12 hours. Demand was just as intense in the U.S. — when distributor GKids released a limited ultimate set of Evangelion In North America pre-orders have sold out in the first day.

Discotek, on the other hand, hasn’t worked to release anything as high-profile as Evangelion In the U.S. but with its success and catalog, anime has proved to be anything but niche. Discotek’s array of anime and live action titles, ones often “rescued” from lapsed licensing deals or seeming too obscure for a bigger company to take a chance on, has endeared the company to home video enthusiasts. Discotek is occupying five of 10 places in Right Stuf’s current top 10 anime Blu-rays list.

“Sometimes we can do more and make it look nicer, sound better, stuff it with extras,” Marc Levy, a quality control manager and producer who has worked with Discotek, says. “But at the very least, people know we’re gonna do our best and they’ll get something that maybe they didn’t see coming, or know existed.”

Photo: Toussaint Egan/Polygon

This is especially evident in the recently released first season.Digimon Digital Monsters, a cornerstone of the millennial Saturday morning experience and yet one that’s often been, according to Levy, “thrown on discs and that was about it.” With a digital remaster and a visual upscaling, Discotek’s version is the best the show has ever looked in the United States. “It was important to me that the thought and effort be put into it, in places people would notice, and even places people might not notice,” Levy says.

For many of the people involved in this work, this care isn’t just mandated by the job, it’s the pinnacle of a lifetime of being anime fans themselves. Justin Sevakis, owner of MediaOCD is a man who has turned his passion into a career. He started out as a hobby and now runs a business that provides post-production for both Discotek Anime Limited. As a young adult that was dissatisfied with American anime releases, he’d splice together his own from different countries and combine the features he wanted most, eventually Frankensteining together the ultimate disc.

“I think what makes sense these days for people is to just buy your favorites,” Sevakis says, “but the thing that makes anime special is that fans have a lot of favorites. They’re very passionate and they know it’s not going to be around forever.” Streaming services tend to play games of hot potato with shows, and licensing buyouts can occur in ways that fans didn’t expect. Bleach, the mega-popular series, was on Crunchyroll’s platform for years before Disney bought the rights to it and began airing its long-awaited follow-up on Hulu. The fans had to decide whether they wanted a new subscription or not.

With home video, anime fans don’t have to worry about watching their favorites slip out of reach thanks to licensing deals out of their control. “What we’re releasing should be the last time you ever need to buy an anime,” Sevakis says. “If the disc itself is capable of handling the best quality that a show could ever possibly be presented in, we should do that.” It’s dedication like this that allows anime home video, and especially boutique publishers like Discotek and Anime Limited, to thrive in a world that imagines physical media as an ancient practice.

“If we can help dust that stuff off and make it something that people will happily watch and share with their friends,” Sevakis muses, “then what could be better than that?”