I have no love at all for FMA:Brotherhood, I feel that it shouldn't exist, but I chanced on some news on interest to me. Things do not look good for UK anime Blu-ray releases.

Uk Anime Network News wrote:

QUOTE:
We've quickly become huge fans of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood during the course of this year, as this reboot of the popular franchise which closely follows the manga it is adapted from has seen its first two volumes hit our shores so far, with more to come in 2011.

However, if you've been collecting the series on Blu-Ray thus far, prepare to be disappointed - Manga Entertainment has announced that future volumes of this series will be released on DVD only, dropping the Blu-Ray releases that have previously been made available simultaneously while citing poor sales of the show on Blu-Ray - Part 1 has sold just 750 copies thus far on the format compared to strong DVD sales figures.

So, evidentialy, the UK isn't ready for a blu-ray anime series, that's a bit annoying. However, it gets better.

Uk Anime Network News wrote:

QUOTE:
After yesterday's press release from Manga Entertainment announcing that the UK won't be seeing the remainder of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood released on Blu-Ray, with the company sticking to DVD releases for the rest of the series, the minds of those fans who did purchase the first two parts of the show on Blu-Ray invariably turned towards importing the remaining volumes from the US given that FUNimation's releases of this series to date have been free from region locking.

However, we have to bring you a word of caution directly from a representative of Australian distributor Madman Entertainment, via a post on the Anime News Network forum. The post in question states that as of part three of the series, both FUNimation in the US and Madman in Australia will be region locking their Blu-Ray releases of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

Effectively, this means that UK anime fans wanting the entirety of this series on Blu-Ray won't be able to import the US releases, as their Region A doesn't match our own Region B. However, that does mean that Madman's releases will be compatible with UK Blu-Ray players, giving you one avenue of completing the series.

If nothing else, this sudden change in region coding coupled with Manga Entertainment dropping their Blu-Ray releases of this show paints a confusing picture in terms of licensing agreements and conditions for the series - one can only wonder if the sales picture in the UK might have been different had Blu-Ray region locks been in place from the very start...

Weeelllll, what we can conclude from this? Three factors seem to have been at work here. The first is that the dedicated fans didn't wait for a UK release, the second is that Blu-rays are still expensive as format, and the third is that we only got the original few years back. All this adds up to small sales.

What do you think?