Lupin gets no love from any companies over here. I was just talking to my friend about how hard it is to find good anime now when everything is flooded with crap or the stuff cartoon network aims at kids.
The kids stuff sells way bette in the US. Same in Japan... It's just in Japan they tolerate the niche market for the older kids stuff better than they do here in the US. Animation niche markets have never been a huge target for big companies. There's just not the million sellers there that big companies would want to bother with!
The best-selling Japanese stuff in the US is generally things like Pokemon and the Ghibli features. At best, the Ghibli features might sell a few hundred thousand units but that pales besides the millions of units the big Hollywood features can potentially sell.
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We were lucky we got as much Lupin III TV as we did.
Geneon really took the series as far as they could in the US but it just wasn't a big seller. It was also a ratings failure on Cartoon Network. (It was one of the few shows I could watch over and over again without getting bored! It has much more life in it than any of the Viz/Shonen Jump crap that's shown on Adult Swim now... I hate the current anime line-up on CN and skip that ****.)
I got most of those Geneon Lupin volumes for sale dirt-cheap when a lot of Geneon inventory was being cleared out at $5 per DVD. I think I have most of the Lupin DVD releases for the US except for 2 of the Discotec DVDs and the short-printed Streamline DVD collection of Miyazaki episodes from the first Lupin III TV series.
Funimation also released something like over half the feature films and TV specials but at the end of the day threw in the towel, too.
Right now, the only company actively going after Lupin III licenses for the US is Discotec/Eastern Star. They've already released the live-action Lupin III film as well as their version of Fuma Conspiracy (which was released previously by AnimEigo) and Episode 0: First Contact.
Last I read was that Discotec has negotiated for the first Lupin III TV series and will begin releasing that show on DVD next year...
In the meantime, a restoration project is being worked on for the Lupin III TV series in Japan and they'll begin releasing it on Blu ray within the next year. DVD sales for anime are getting close to all-but-dead in Japan. DVD's doing better in the US for anime --- Blu ray is still a bit too expensive for many people and really not worth it over half the time since most anime TV series in hi-def are still video upscales(!) -- but even the anime snobs in the US pretty much won't get anything on DVD unless there's no chance of a Blu ray release.
Again, the decision to buy or not buy BD for anime depends on the series. For older TV shows, they really weren't designed for hi-def so there's no point in buying something like the original Gundam or Macross TV series on BD. The detail just isn't there for hi-def and you'll only notice the scratches and mistakes all that much better in HD. For anime features, BD releases are generally the better buy...