Garden of Words, Shinkai and collections – Oh My!

First off – it’s really exciting to be turning this work around so quickly for folks!  It’s taken a fair bit of work for everyone over a stressful period to make it happen too!

Secondly – here’s the official trailer for folks – please share it and spread the word that you can pre-order the DVD version here and the Blu-Ray version here:

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR_3mwYl6Q4[/youtube]

DVD pre-order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Words-DVD-Makoto-Shinkai/dp/B00HYYHP94/

Blu-Ray pre-order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Words-Blu-ray-Makoto-Shinkai/dp/B00HYYHP26/

Next up – we know some folks have a few questions so pulling the biggest ones off Facebook and Twitter – here we go:

1. The “film” is only 46 minutes long – why should I buy the DVD / BD / Laser-Etched Rock?

Firstly, while it’s short it’s probably one of Makoto Shinkai’s greatest works to date – it takes the essence of 5 Centimetres Per Second and distils it into a really beautiful and tight piece of narrative.

Secondly and more importantly you’re not just getting the film itself but a slew of extra content that matches releases worldwide that include:

Interviews (52 minutes with the Japanese cast and director), 
The film in storyboard format, narrated (45 minutes), 
English production stillls, 
Japanese trailer, 
The Works of Makoto Shinkai, 
English commentary track with cast, 
Japanese commentary with English subtitles.

So on top of the film you have at least 100 minutes of isolated extras and 2 x commentary tracks on top of the film itself for you to enjoy as well – giving you more insight into the film than you’d get normally!

2. It’s 46 minutes long, why are you packing it into a Manga-esque standard edition instead of an insane deluxe edition?

This one was a painful one for us – but realistically given the length of the show and cost to access the extras it wasn’t really viable to do both and even if we’d picked the packaging side it would have raised the price point to £34.99 for a deluxe combi-pack, which for the length of the work did not seem like a proposition we would want to ask people to stick out for initially!

So we prioritised video content for this work as we felt it provided you with the best possible value for money just now while making it available quickly – hopefully that makes sense!

It’s not going to be the case for all works – just when you deal with a shorter property, it’s a difficult case of price point  that will engage everyone vs what you can offer – as ultimately we want as many people to see this film as possible!

3. What about that Shinkai collection you talked about before?  Is it cool if I wait for that…*looks for cage to fall down*?

It absolutely is cool if you do wait for that!  That said – the issue is we’re not far off the 15th anniversary of Shinkai-san’s first recorded short – She and Her Cat!   We’re currently putting together the best possible plan we can based on that and hope to have more information for around June / July about it and realistically a release date for Christmas would be my optimistic guess for it – could be Q1 2015 depending on what extras we can liberate .

It also goes without saying that depending on what extras we can liberate combined with the goal being a complete collection of works to date that it will be a high priced set when settled though too!

If you’re cool waiting it’s absolutely fine to do so – but I figured it would be good to let folks know how long it may take as this kind of work requires a lot of discussing and negotiating.

Hope this all helps!

Andrew,
El Presidente, Anime Limited