Danica Davidson
April 17, 2023 
A lot of people stream anime, but that doesn’t take away a desire to own hard copies of favorites. Anime on Blu-ray and DVD is still a big business.
“It started out as more of an enthusiast, tape-trading, underground thing in the ’80s, to being a full-fledged industry today,” Shawne Kleckner, the co-founder of Right Stuf, said about buying anime.
Streaming services have made more anime titles more available than ever. But there is a major downside to streaming. Anime (or any other kinds of shows and movies) can be available one day and yanked from the platform the next. Because of this, many people want to make sure the anime they love best stays available to them, no matter what’s going on with a streaming service. One example of this is Bleach, which was on Crunchyroll for a long time, but then Disney nabbed the rights and switched up where people could see the franchise.
For an example of the popularity of anime home video, GKIDS created an ultimate set of Evangelion to release . . . and sold out the first day the pre-order became available.
Another company that’s really into home video anime is Discotek Media. They’re known for rescuing anime from other companies that went under or have lapsed licensing deals.
Justin Sevakis, who owns the post-production studio MediaOCD, remarked, “I think what makes sense these days for people is to just buy your favorites, 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.”
He continued, “What we’re releasing should be the last time you ever need to buy an anime. If the disc itself is capable of handling the best quality that a show could ever possibly be presented in, we should do that.”
Source: Polygon
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
