Manga UK are the largest and unquestionably most important anime distributor in the UK. Not only do they handle the lion's share of UK anime releases directly, they also publish UK anime titles for the French company Kazé. The only niche anime in this country which doesn't come through their company these days is that released by MVM, a smaller, no-nonsense company I have a lot of respect for.
Manga UK are also significant for being, hands down, the worst anime distributor I have ever encountered worldwide.
Manga UK are not involved with streaming new anime, all they do is repackage existing releases for the local market, usually with masters from Australian anime companies and dubs created by the larger US studios. They also treat their paying customers atrociously and release shoddy, poor quality products on a regular basis. As there is no competition, Manga UK can freely act as they please. They do not listen to customer feedback. They do not need to.
There is no incentive for Manga UK to act in a competitive way or improve their service. They have a captive market and the region locking arrangements for DVD and blu-ray are kind to them. The recent moves by Aniplex, which block their US arm from being able to export English language materials to other English-speaking regions, coincides with Manga UK's announcement of their acquisition of a few high profile Aniplex titles. Because Manga UK know that their versions will be inferior in quality and uncompetitive, I can only conclude they have pressured the licensor to strictly enforce their exclusive rights to sell to UK customers, in order to take away their audience's right to choose which versions are best for them.
After all:
Therefore, with no power to convince them to produce a higher quality product and treat their customers with basic civility, I prefer to take the only other path available to me and completely avoid Manga UK releases. I am not suggesting that other people should do the same, because I recognise that Manga UK is releasing a product a certain demographic very much wants to have: cheap, poor quality rereleases of mainstream anime titles which can be snapped up on a tight budget. I wish them continued success with that. But I do not feel that I myself, as a paying customer, should have to deal with this extremely unprofessional company when superior alternatives exist.
The first and most significant problem with buying from Manga UK is that they have difficulties performing any quality control on their products, and once a problem does occur there's no attempt at reasonable customer service. One particularly infamous incident was when the US release of the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuuutsu originally came with mono audio, rather than the stereo promised on the box. The problem was widely reported and Bandai eventually set up a replacement plan for affected customers in the US. The Manga UK version of this series came out many months later, and although hopes were high that the release would be problem-free, some users had concerns and notified Manga UK about the problem through Twitter.
When the DVDs finally appeared, many months after the US version was made widely available, it was swiftly reported that the UK version retained the audio problems of the original, faulty US release. While this was technically the fault of the Australian company who produced the discs for Manga UK, fans were shocked that their warnings had been completely ignored and no proper quality control had been put in place in the production process.
Manga UK found itself being criticised, and leapt to defend itself.
Despite acknowledging that they had been warned about the problem, they took absolutely no responsibility for their inaction and did nothing to reassure customers that they should trust Manga UK releases in future. As usual, no effort was made to correct the faulty discs. This is the kind of service UK customers have come to expect from the biggest and self-proclaimed best UK anime distributor.
One incident does not make a trend, but Manga UK's lack of consideration for quality has a long history. Whether it's releasing a number of titles with poorly translated 'dubtitles' (even though proper subtitle tracks existed in other countries), poor quality PAL conversions complete with 'juddering', missing subtitles, mistimed subtitles or measurably lower quality video/audio: if there's an authoring mistake you can make with DVDs, Manga UK have made it, often repeatedly. They are quick to blame their Australian partner, Madman Entertainment, at every opportunity, and yet they continue to apparently keep trusting them to produce Manga UK's materials for them without checking the quality themselves.
Similarly, Manga UK's Kazé releases block the playback timer (so you can't see how far through a disc you are) and lock the subtitles to the Japanese track only (so you can't watch the dub and have subtitles displayed). These flaws are Kazé's fault, but UK fans need someone to pass this feedback on and fight for us, and the company which proudly prints their corporate logo on every box should carry some responsibility there.
As Manga UK don't take responsibility for correcting their mistakes, is it any wonder people who prefer their purchases to work properly start to look elsewhere?
Here is an example I can quickly illustrate.
Ouran High School Host Club was released in the wrong aspect ratio entirely, which looks awful. It had other issues as well, but this was the worst. Here's a sample picture to illustrate the difference between the normal version of Ouran (left) and Manga UK's stretched version (right) when played on the same equipment:
In the middle is a sample picture from the series' UK DVD cover, which is reproduced at the correct aspect ratio (unlike the contents of the package, which it should represent). The poor quality of the scan is not Manga's fault; please concentrate only on how the image has been stretched.
Again, no replacements were ever made for fans who had purchased the series. I appreciate that Manga UK has a very small market in this country and it would be prohibitively expensive to have to correct its errors, but I'd at least expect them to take steps to prevent the blunders happening on such a regular basis through quality control. I had never seen Ouran before I watched Manga UK's version, and even then it was swiftly obvious that something was wrong with the video.
The only way that a British fan can get a properly authored version of Ouran is to import it from another region.
I have chosen to limit my complaints to streaming and DVD for the most part, but at this point I'd also like to note that Manga UK has also soured the UK blu-ray market for anime by repeatedly releasing titles on blu-ray then cancelling later volumes when the initial sales aren't good enough. While I have sympathy for the situation - and indeed I don't believe the UK market is large enough to support niche hobbies on blu-ray in the first place - this again shows how the most dedicated fans rely on imports to collect anime.
The only way that a British fan can finish these abandoned blu-ray series without switching to an inferior format is to import them from another region.
Since Manga UK frequently makes errors they will never correct, passionate fans often find themselves trying to improve the situation in future by notifying Manga UK when a release is not satisfactory. If you do find yourself criticising a Manga UK release for its poor quality, however, you will find yourself accused of unreasonable perfectionism. One particularly painful exchange took place shortly after the Haruhi incident, culminating in the use of the word "fanspergers". This appears to be a portmanteau of "fan" and "Asperger's [syndrome]", used here to ridicule people who expect products they pay for to be of a reasonable standard. I won't delve further into the connotations of the remark and what it says about Manga UK's attitude towards people whose lives are affected by the disorder; I think the context speaks for itself:
One importer's attempt to engage them was met with the warning that "It has been proven that most Asian anime exporters r also black market organ smugglers". This was swiftly followed by "BTW i made up that bit about Asian anime exporters smuggling body organs. But they r heavily involved in sex traffickin ...And shark fin smuggling". These tweets were swiftly deleted after an outspoken Asian woman expressed her rightful disgust at the ignorant and racist attitude on display.
Manga UK believe that they can say anything they like, to whomever they like, so long as it's eventually followed by a surly apology (generally with an offensive insult buried inside). This is not conduct I wish to support.
The rudeness Manga UK shows to its customers doesn't stop at their buyers. Even their own business partners are targets. One famously documented case had them publicly criticising a major Japanese anime licensor for being unreasonable and - ironically - declaring that they would boycott them in future. This wasn't a casual, exasperated remark made off the record by a disgruntled employee; the criticism was broadcast through official Manga UK channels. They did not mention which Japanese company it was that they were insulting, but the clue that it was a company who could function as "a producer, distributor or US licensee" led fans to draw their own conclusions that it was most likely to be Bandai.
Although in this case the victim of the public insults was a company rather than my fellow fans, it left some of those fans feeling extremely uncomfortable regardless. Insulting your business partners is unprofessional at best, and downright crazy when it's so easy for them to find out about it. As a British fan I feel embarrassed to be represented by such a feckless company when cross-cultural negotiations are so important to the hobby.
Furthermore, if we take Manga UK's statement as truth, the only way that a British fan can buy the bulk of this large licensor's anime series in future is to import them from another region. MVM can only release so many titles per year on their own.
And this is why I no longer purchase any content released with Manga UK's involvement. Paying extra to import a series from a more reputable company is worth the additional inconvenience involved. I do not want the money that I earn for my hobby to support the appalling attitude which Manga UK shows to its business partners and fans any more, and I find it frustrating that anime companies are trying to force me to work with this local distributor, rather than distributors in other English-speaking regions who deserve my money far more.
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