Reprint the Final Volumes of Dunbine

To:  ADV Films

To - The distributors of ADV Films.

Back in 2003, you surprised many fans with your decision to license Yoshiyuki Tomino's 1983 series 'Aura Battler Dunbine' for an American release.
While there was some skepticism over some aspects of the release (most notably, the decision to hire former Streamline bigwig Carl Macek to direct the US release) people still gave the benefit of the doubt and trusted your judgement.
The series was released with what was, for the show's age, a surprising amount of fanfare. With magazine fliers, promotional articles, OnDemand network spots, and even getting Newtype USA to agree to doing a promotion for the release, there were clearly some high hopes riding on this series.
Unfortunately, as is the case with many older series, the show didn't become a runaway success in the US. This was due to a number of elements, the show's age and some issues with distribution being the two key points (many citing they had a hard time being able to find the DVDs locally, only ever being able to purchase them on websites, which naturally cost it some numbers.)
You noticed these numbers and, as a result, scaled back your distribution. This could be understood and accepted.
What followed afterwards, however, was neither acceptable, nor terribly logical.

While you still continued to keep up production of the discs for the first ten volumes (and, as far as can be seen, they are still in production) for some reason, you chose to only produce very limited numbers of the final two volumes of the series ('Secrets of Byston Well' and 'Final Fate of Byston Well.')
After the limited production of these two, you ceased production of these particular volumes all together.
Contrary to what you seemed to feel when you made this change, however, people DID notice.
Many sites on the web have had people ask where one could purchase the final two DVDs, many more have reportedly emailed you personally asking about this and received no reply, not even a form letter.
Meanwhile, what scant few copies have been found have been seen selling in upwards of $100-300 on Amazon, and some people, out of frustration, are beginning to look into purchasing bootleg copies.

When asked if there would ever be any further releases of the final volumes at the 2007 Otakon convention, one of your booth's representatives said there would be no more plans made to make any more copies unless 'Sufficient interest' was shown.
The number he gave as a ballpark was 500 requests. Whether or not this meets that quota specifically, hopefully it may still serve to show, while far from the people clamoring for, say, another Evangelion rerelease, there are still many people interested in finally being able to conclude their collection of this series.

We thank you for choosing to bring the series over in the first place, and hope this will prompt you to re-evaluate your current decision regarding its handling.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Reprint the Final Volumes of Dunbine Petition to ADV Films was created by and written by Todd Bubier (tbubier@stumail.frc.mass.edu).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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