Reddit reviews Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506706444/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_359iDbCRME55B

I own all three of these and they are super cool.

I was given the first Ultimania Archive as a gift recently and I really love it. It's a book full of concept art, development history, and just general information about the first six games of the series. Great gift for any fan and it's fairly cheap too.

Apparently they just released an Ultimania this last June that covers the first 5 or so games. Pt. 2 comes out in december, and PT 3 (The one that covers 13) comes out in April.

Amazon link to the first book

Tagging /u/FFXI_MOBILE_ES for visibility.

Not explicitly relevant to Japan Travel, but an English version of FF Ultimania covering FF1-6 was just announced. Hopefully it has some of the content you are looking for

Anything from Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D illustrator, among others). All of the Final Fantasy compilations are good and I would recommend the Art of Metal Gear Solid I-IV book as well.

The Art of Metal Gear Solid I-IV https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506705812/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AlRPDbFCFFRBH

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506706444/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_qMomh98bxFD9h

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506706622/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_LAxO4tBIZrTtg

The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616551607?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This one is up for pre-order of you like pixel art
FF DOT: The Pixel Art of Final Fantasy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506713521/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_nnRPDbPFQ1KJK

These books are in Japanese and are known as Ultimania's. The first english one will be released in June and are up for preorder.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-Ultimania-Archive-1/dp/1506706444

If you wanted to opt for something extra to go with the lightning deck, I'd suggest the Ultimania Archive books (English translated Volume 2 releases in December). They have tons of behind the scenes info about the games in each volume (Vol. 1 covers games I-VI, Vol. 2 will cover VII-IX, and when Vol. 3 releases next year... X-XIV) a lot of the artwork done by Yoshitaka Amano, concept sketches, maps of the world. For under $20, it's a really great coffee table book to flip through and take a look at all the work that goes into each game.

Or maybe a Lightning plush to go with the deck. lol

If your friend is a little more into Final Fantasy than just XIII though, definitely either one of the Ultimania Archive books or one of Amano's artbooks like "The Sky" or "Illustrations". Best of luck to you!

Not sure if they have stuff about development on the Ultimania Archive Vol. 1. I know they have a lil bit of VII on the Vol. 2 but dunno about the previous ones.

It's a great book tho, try to check it

You literally just calculated the cost of only the LP's. This is a great example of Reddit talking out of their ass, getting upvoted by laymen, and everyone going about their ignorant day.

I'm not saying it's not a great value, but they are running much less in quantity than other runs of anything similar. I'm saying the argument of "they are just making 200 dollars profit off each one that is sold for 250" is just ignorant nonsense that people who know nothing about manufacturing, design, product delivery, economies of scale, etc... would argue.

This is the primary reason why Anime in Japan, Blu-Ray releases there, are significantly more expensive, because they run a LOT less DVD/Blu-Ray, they also recoup losses because they don't get as much on TV, and they have higher licensing costs.

Also the licensing on those tracks is probably more complex as Yoko Kanno frequently used inspiration from or just straight up ripping music from other artists (with their permission though), and they likely had some kind of distribution agreement as a result.

That tracklist is also likely not what we will see as it will be 2x lps. You could expect to see about 1.5 hours of sound maximum on 2 LP's and they would likely be doing a sort of greatest hits style compilation.

The art book manufacturing, licensing, etc...

The Digipak manufacturing, licensing, etc...

>Your "economies of scale" argument is kinda bullshit because 1,000 copies of an album on vinyl is actually a lot for a run.

It's not a lot for a run depending on the situation. If Funimation has project managers, artists, designers, etc... all priced into the end product so they can get a return on every sale... then you can see how these indirect labor costs being factored into the project can be overly represented in the end product. When a bigger company like Funimation vs some tiny indie record pressing company (like we are seeing much more of these) does a run, it's going to be more expensive for Funimation to do a small scale run because of the operating overhead. But if the indie little company does a huge run, they may not be able to keep up with production, might get details wrong, the quality of execution might be off, etc... But also big companies just have a ton of overhead and the price of products sold needs to recoup that overhead. This is why AAA games are 60 bucks and they milk you for DLC right now (because the industry is shifting a lot on profit margins), when you have fully complete indie titles going for 10 bucks. Because the overhead is smaller, they can reasonably operate on a smaller budget, a smaller scale, etc...

Don't tell me it's bullshit, I work in plastics manufacturing, and we deal with customers sizing us up compared to bigger and smaller manufacturing shops. We have advantages and disadvantages, you have to know how manufacturing works in general at all levels to understand why the Funimation product is more expensive than you might traditionally expect.

ALSO.

They probably have significantly higher profit margins as a goal on top of all this extra overhead, so that will be overrepresented on a per sale basis especially as smaller scale.

https://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/D-ec/mic/mic8/Resources/Image121b.gif

Don't tell me stuff that I actually know about is bullshit. For instance...

https://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Bebop-Remix-Complete-Collection/dp/B00102FF7U

This is a cheap crappy box compared to what you would be getting in the one included, and this box was certainly made at a much larger scale (think instead of 1,000 more like 50,000 or 100,000) so the overhead is going to be decimated to a tiny amount by comparison in the final cost. The box you are getting is steel not plastic, that drives the cost up a lot, and will be overrepresented in it.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-Ultimania-Archive-1/dp/1506706444

This is an example artbook. 36 dollars. More pages, probably similar binding, but again, this is going to be a much higher order than 1,000. I pre-ordered this the day it was put up on Amazon and it's been months and months and it's still up for pre-order. There are probably 100 times as many of these being made. And the design is literally just a translation job from an already existing design, so less overhead from creative staff, whereas it seems like the cowboy bebop art book included is going to be a new product, so it has to be designed from the ground up for this one limited run. So you go from 36 dollars to reasonably 50 or maybe even more at this point. That's not far fetched.

The Lithographs, mass produced, could typically be sold under 10 dollars, but if they are only a limited run, again that's probably closer to 25-30 dollars because the machine time, labor, and overhead from indirect labor is being represented in the price 100 to 1000 times more than something typical like this if it's comparing a 1,000 run versus a 100,000 or 1,000,000 part run.

My criticism of Funimation in this situation would be this...

They should have made one boxset collectors edition to consolidate it (screw the bookends wtf), increased the run to meet what would be the ACTUAL demand which I would guess would be around 100,000 over a significantly long period of time, so they can drop the price and retain a significant margin. I'm not sitting her just defending Funimation like some fanboy, it's just all the armchair doesn't actually do production or manufacturing kind of people that piss me off. Tired of reading people claiming there are conspiracies that Funimation makes a 80% margin on something like this, that's complete bullshit.