GURREN LAGANN – UPDATE

We’ve been getting some reports since Monday about a few Gurren Lagann Ultimate issues so I thought I’d take the time to address them here before training down to London MCM Expo with a Betelgeusean in tow (imagine seeing that in your carriage…)

1. AMAZON / ZAVVI DELIVERIES

Basically we’re unsure what’s happened here, stock was dispatched on time to Amazon based on their specs but seems that something went odd there.  If you pre-ordered you will definitely get a copy of Gurren Lagann from Amazon, Zavvi or other retailers.  We’re unsure why deliveries have been delayed but as of yesterday over 800 had been shipped so we’d imagine the remainder will go out today or tomorrow.

It’s very frustrating we know, but it’s wholly a problem elsewhere in the chain – we’re unsure what happened there!

What’s the fix?

Sadly just requires time and patience – sorry about this one but it is out of our hands!

2. DIGIPACKS

People are reporting (and we’ve verified with some of our stock here now) – basically what we have established so far (to best of our and Sony’s knowledge) is that the printers did not leave the trays on the Gurren Ultimate digipack to dry long enough when glued – the result being most commonly the third tray is loose.

How printed goods work is this:

We / Sony commission a printer -> Printer produces printed goods -> Sony prints discs and integrates parts.  What happened is the initial shipments of goods to the warehouse were also not up to scratch so the glue was likely knocked around even more.

What’s the fix?

We’ve gone ballistic with the printers, as has Sony who are mortified this has happened given the project was a labour of love there too!  The end result is that we’ll be issuing replacement digi-packs as soon as possible (I’d expect by end of November latest) that are fixed and to ship them out to anyone impacted at no cost to yourselves.

We’ll be setting up a contact information form in due course over the next week asking for your details to get these out to you if you were impacted by it (which by our estimate is between 40%-50% of units which patently were rushed).  Take a photo for now of any impact and we’ll sort that.

3. On-Disc points

Some people have flagged that there are some video issues on episodes 5, 7 and 10 for Gurren Lagann.  These issues were flagged in QC – at these points the images froze and the audio continued. We tracked down the reason for this – it was down to the masters we received having the audio but no video at these points.

If you’re curious about them and haven’t noticed them you’ll find them in these points only:

Episode 5: 20:47 – 20:56 (9 seconds, picture here)
Episode 7: 08:29 – 08:42 (13 seconds, picture here)
Episode 10: 17:27 (momentary, picture here)

At these points we made a call – we had to switch in the DVD footage as the best solution since no re-supply was possible in this case. Otherwise, you would have had 9 seconds, 13 seconds and a momentary image freeze with ongoing audio in its place. Not ideal. These are the only instances and as you can tell they are not over any crucial moments, so whilst annoying it doesn’t impact the overall viewing pleasure & quality of watching Team Gurren on your big TV.

Some isolated cases of audio sounding flat on the Japanese 2.0 have also been reported, we’re investigating now but it appears to be a Prologic II issue. While these instances were flagged during QC, the authoring house, ourselves and the majority of QCers couldn’t replicate the issue. However, a deft reviewer did flag a point on ProLogic II decoding that corresponds to what was described.

What’s the fix?  

In the video’s case – there is none I’m afraid!  It shouldn’t take away from the experience and if it does then we’re very sorry to hear it but there’s little we can do on that front. If it had breached 60 seconds or a manual capture error had occurred on our side then we’d be all over replacing this, but quite simply we can’t do that in this case. It’s a tough one but important to view in the context of the overall viewing experience and the price point of other markets.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope it answers your questions. As ever, feel free to comment and discuss.

AP