Go easy on Animeigo...
Yeah, their stuff sometimes is a bit pricy when you buy it in a store, but you have to keep in mind they are one of the smallest ADR houses out there. Geneon is owned by Pioneer, and so they have a huge corporation backing them (same as most of the others). All Animeigo has is themselves, and they still bring over some of the best series. They're all fans too, and end up selling the stuff at the bare minimum they can afford to sell it at and still stay in business. I know that unlike some of the ADR houses, all of their voice actors hold down other jobs, because they simply can't pay them enough to do it full time. All the producers and stuff help out with the voice chores too.
High prices are caused by a lot of things... concerning SDF Macross, I'd be willing to bet that Robotech had a large part to play in the high price. Because of how popular Robotech is, I'd say the original Japanese company wanted a hefty chunk of change, and there wasn't a huge demand, since most people have seen robotech... so they did what they could, and made it so that at least the hardcore fans could get it.
I know that they released You're Under Arrest at very reasonable prices (with 4 eps per disc). Also, if you're buying it at a store, understand that the price is probably being jacked up a lot. The places that sell anime near where I live usually run US $29.99 a disc. Animeigo was selling the boxsets (3 discs plus a bonus disc) from their website for about 70 bucks.
Regarding the Ah! My Goddess OVA, they probably could have fit it on one disc, but the picture quality would have suffered greatly. The less you try to cram on a DVD, the better the quality. It is one of those series that is so important to me that I'd rather have it as 5 discs to be honest...
They aren't anywhere near as bad as Funimation, which will release the first disc of a series with 4 episodes, then drop down to 3 episodes per disc so they can stretch it to an 8 disc set. Bandei used to be really good on that count... Cowboy Bebop was only 6 disc for the whole 26 episode series, but with Tenchi Muyo GXP, they stretched it to 8 discs to earn a little more of the almighty dollar.
Still, all things considered, we're lucky. In Japan, they get one episode per DVD typically.
Larry
21-Feb-2005