Butcha-U Box: The Complete Pooters Collection

When does it ship?

More Fakku highway robbery. Reminder that a doujin from a store in Japan is approximately $7USD, which includes the store's profit, as they're usually $5USD at Comiket. 7x6=42, so even with the extra little menu and box case, this *should* be about $50-55USD. Instead it's $80.

Another note: They could have gone the omnibus route (which is a really nice quality omnibus, I have the original Japanese version), but it'd be a lot harder to justify selling it at $80 because they couldn't use their excuses of "we're printing multiple books", "you're getting 6 books for that price", blah blah blah. You're getting the equivalent of a book for more than quadruple the price of regular Fakku books.

I've literally only said it once, with the Asanagi box, before this. You're making up stuff about as bad as Fakku does when trying to justify the price. If all that extra money went back to the artist, then hey, kinda acceptable. But the excuses given previously don't justify why they are so much higher priced than a doujin in Japan. It's not like they have licensing fees with a doujin, as doujins are by definition self-published. It's just scummy price-gouging.

This might be the first physical purchase I make, just hope the stock lasts until Thursday so I can pick one up.

I appreciate the response in this manner, actually explaining something instead of giving excuses I've heard in the past such as "the paper size is different". I've done a lot of looking into the doujin industry over the years, but haven't heard of the "collab quote" thing before, and I'm guessing that's something they try to keep on the downlow a bit. One of those "we all do it, but we won't really speak of it" things. Kinda similar to how in Japan, different digital retailers will require different amounts of censorship, so the artists don't usually say where the least censorship is, it's just kinda known amongst the community.

I just honestly feel like the whole thing is more a "set a set price for these boxes, hope we get enough collectors to buy a bunch", especially after being told with the Asanagi box that the $80 was a very fair price because of paper sizes, printing multiple books instead of one, etc. But then the Pooters box, which has double the doujins in it, is the exact same price, kinda throwing out that previous argument. I can understand the thought of going with the individuals over the omnibus for the collection thing with AX. But is there any thought being given to say, doing the omnibus without it being a collector's edition for a cheaper price? Because honestly, the omnibus, brand new from Mandarake (while currently unavailable) is priced at 1700 yen. That's less than 1/4th the price of your box set. And honestly, just flipped through my copy, and the censorship there is very fair. Just a few black bars, with most of everything still visible. It's not mosaics, or white-outs, or heavy bar censoring.

My main issue is basically the fact that these feel more like you get a little slipcover made for them, an extra illustration or two, slap "COLLECTOR'S ITEM" on it, and feel that justifies jacking the price up. Heck, this and the Asanagi set both are shorter than the average tankoubon, so even if you sold the omnibus as a standalone product for the same tankoubon price, that should be quite a fair bit more profit than per tankoubon, as you don't have any fees to say, Wani over licensing the book (which granted, may be a part of Fakku's pre-existing deal with them, but I would imagine some of what you pay accounts for that. Would be surprisingly bad business sense for them to go "You can publish whatever tankoubons you want without any fees"). Heck, doing doujin omnibuses should be a bigger thing for y'all, as you can say to the consumers "Every bit of the licensing fee went to the artist", they're usually shorter than your average tankoubon, and even if the "bigger paper cost more" argument wants to be stuck with, you can sell them each for $25USD a pop. I get the whole "collectability" thing, but it just seems like both an anti-consumer and anti-profit move to constrain these sorts of releases to overly-priced collector's editions. I'm even in quite a few hentai-based Discord servers, and general consensus in them is "I'd buy these doujins without the collector's items if they were more reasonably priced". Considering most of those people just then instead pirate the digital versions (which sadly does happen, no point in denying that), that's profit you'd otherwise never see coming to you.

Again, I appreciate the more measured, explanatory response instead of excuses. And I hope that somehow, some of these options I listed somehow were not thought of by you folks and can at least be considered. I would LOVE to buy the Pooters stuff physically, either individually or the omnibus, in English and uncensored, but considering these were all fan translated ages ago online before you ever reached any kind of deal with this, and having the whole physical omnibus for much cheaper, there is absolutely no way I could justify to myself paying $80 for this. I WANT to support the artists and you (planning on getting the newest Bosshi release after the holidays to put by my Japanese copy, and would love to buy Noise and Satsuki Imonet tankoubons from you all), but I just can't support what is, for all intents and purposes, overpriced products that are clearly aimed at people who will throw wads of cash at you for anything labeled "Collector's".

Since you guys printed this I’m hoping beyond all hope that we can get an official English release of Butcha-U’s SACRIFICE HEROES series a box set would be amazing but digital is fine also