Mobile Suit Gundam: IBO's Limited Edition Misprint | The Shelf

 

00:00 Introduction 

00:16 Overview of Season One's Limited Edition Set 

00:51 Overview of Season Two's Limited Edition Set 

01:08 What Went Wrong? 

02:37 Funimation's Response to My Questions 

03:12 Conclusion 

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Hello everyone, and welcome to The Shelf. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans Limited Edition box set. The first of the two limited edition sets was released in November of 2017 by Funimation, and contains all 25 episodes of the first season of Iron-Blooded Orphans on both Blu-ray and DVD. The episodes are divided into two parts, and packed in a chipboard artbox, with the space for the two remaining parts being occupied by a filler box. It also came with a 24-page artbook and a Gundam Plastic Model, or “Gunpla.” The Gunpla is a 1/144 scale–which is the smallest size–model of Gundam Barbatos and the Smoothbore Gun. It’s also HG, or High Grade, which are models that have a larger range of motion and are easier to pose. And all of this comes packaged in a limited edition box. The second limited edition set was released in August of 2018, and contains all 25 episodes of the show’s second season, which was also divided into two parts. This set came with a digital copy of the episodes, another 24-page art book, and another Gunpla. This one is also an HG 1/144 model, but it features Gundam Bael.

Unfortunately, like everything else that I’ve covered in this series, something went wrong. The issue lies with the two discs of season one part one, which contain episodes 1-13. The disc artwork for both are actually misprinted. According to the artwork, disc one is supposed to contain episodes 1-7, but actually contains episodes 1-9. Disc two is supposed to contain episodes 8-13, but actually contains episodes 10-13. When I was watching Iron-Blooded Orphans, this really threw me off, and I didn’t really know what to think of it. I was assuming that it was just a misprint, but I couldn’t find any evidence of this misprint actually existing. There wasn’t any sort of statement from Funimation, and I didn’t see any reviews that mention it. From either the press, or user reviews on sites like Amazon. But, just when I was starting to think that there was a chance that I’d been bamboozled with the highest quality bootleg that I’ve ever seen or some sort of disc swap, I found an interesting comment. Funimation used to have a series called Hey, Nice Package! where they would unbox some of their newest limited edition releases. In the same month that the first limited edition set of Iron-Blooded Orphans was slated for release, Funimation featured it in Hey, Nice Package!. And, while scrolling through the comment section, I found a comment that confirmed my initial suspicions. 

It was the explanation that made the most sense, but the reason that I was initially skeptical was because it seemed like no one else had this experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were threads about this on the Funimation forums, but, unfortunately, those were shut down in 2020. So, while it’s possible that discussions about this were had on various corners of the internet, it doesn’t look like the people affected made enough noise for it to receive any significant coverage. This leads me to believe that either this issue wasn’t all that widespread, that people just didn’t notice, or that they didn’t care. It is just a cosmetic issue. I did reach out to Funimation for additional information, and here’s what they said:

As Funimation, we produce different content based on requests from different retailers and the public. That is the reason why you can find different products with third parties. At the moment, we have different processes and replacement programs for items purchased directly from our website. For items purchased from third-party services, our best suggestion is to contact them directly and request an explanation and if possible, a replacement.

And since I bought this from a third-party seller, if there was any sort of disc replacement program for this particular set, they wouldn’t be able to tell me about it.

Allow me to share that I'm not able to give you accurate information because the item was not purchased directly from our shop. But sometimes within a considered production of articles, a small number of articles may have different errors compared to the rest of the articles [Edited for Clarity].

So, again, my best guess is that it wasn’t a widespread production issue, and it’s a cosmetic defect that’s easily missed or forgotten about. But let me know what you all think. 

If any of you were lurking in Funimation’s forums at the time and saw some discussion about this, let me know in the comments. Maybe we can get a better idea of how big this problem actually was.  Also, if you have this set, were your discs printed correctly? Thank you all for tuning into this episode of The Shelf, and I’ll see you all next time.

 

Sources:

 

 https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/releases.php?id=38605

 https://www.gunpla101.com/gunpla-grade-and-scale-101/

 https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/High_Grade

 https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/releases.php?id=35837

 https://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-1060806/funimation-forums-shut-down-august-12-2020